When Rembrandt met Caravaggio

On the 400th anniversary of the birth of Holland's most famous painter, Rembrant van Rijn, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam presents an exhibition of his paintings alongside those of his contemporary, Caravaggio. Kay Sheehy travels to the Dutch capital to meet the museum's curator, and to compare and contrast the work of these two great artists for RTÉ Radio 1's visual arts series, Eye Candy.
Above are two of the great works, Rembrandt's 'The Jewish Bride' and Caravaggio's 'The Coversion of the Magdalen'

This year the Dutch are celebrating the 400th anniversary of the birth of their greatest painter, Rembrandt van Rijn. The opening salvo of a year of celebratory events is a bare-knuckle contest of skill between Rembrandt and his contemporary, the Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Rembrandt-Caravaggio is currently on view in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam – work by both artists hangs side by side, inviting comparison and contrast. In a new series of the Radio 1 visual arts programme Eye Candy, presenter Kay Sheehy visits Amsterdam to talk to the curator of the exhibition, Duncan Bull.

Rembrandt and Caravaggio never met during their lifetimes, as Rembrandt never travelled outside the Netherlands, but it seems that he must have been aware of the Italian's work. A group of artists who lived in Utrecht had travelled to Italy and been influenced by the techniques of Caravaggio. Like him, they began to use ordinary people, beggars, prostitutes and tramps as their models. It is also clear that Rembrandt was influenced by Caravaggio's use of one light source within his predominantly dark paintings to achieve the optimum amount of dramatic tension.

The ability to conjure up the subtleties of a human relationship in purely visual terms is something that only the greatest artists have achieved. Rembrandt's 'The Jewish Bride' (pictured above, right) has been described as "one of the greatest expressions of tender fusion of spiritual and physical love in the history of painting". While Caravaggio's 'Conversion of the Magdalen' (above, left), through the use of gesture and illuminated close up, shows the moment when Mary Magdalen decides to give up her life of sin.

Another painting in the exhibition, Rembrandt's 'The Blinding of Samson' graphically shows the moment when the strongman's eyes are gorged out. The artist uses light as a metaphor for Samson's blindness, as the golden hew washes over his body into darkness. In Caravaggio's telling of the story of Judith, who, having allowed herself to be seduced by the commander of the Assyrians who had besieged her town, beheads him as he sleeps. Caravaggio uses one strong beam of light to contrast the action against a dark crimson backdrop. The light skims from the muscular torso of the naked Holofernes to the blood spurting from his neck, it pauses on Judith's breasts before moving to the look of disgust on her face, leaving us in no doubt about the consequences of lust.

?More Eye Candy is on RTÉ Radio 1 at 7.30pm on Tuesday, 16 May. The Rembrandt-Caravaggio exhibition is on view in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam until 18 June