Work by influential Italian painter to make first appearance here

In his short life, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio managed to brawl his way into trouble and change the face of modern painting.

The Italian artist of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, who never made it to his 39th birthday, bathed his religious subjects in dramatic shafts of light and produced canvases that were both physically and psychologically realistic.

Today, only about 80 of his paintings (almost all unsigned) have survived, yet his influence on fellow painters and the baroque school was so profound as to inspire the term “Caravaggiesque.”

For the first time, Columbus will host a Caravaggio painting — Ecce Homo, the portrait of Jesus with Pontius Pilate and the centerpiece of a “focus exhibit” featuring works by painters influenced by him.

“Caravaggio: Behold the Man! The Impact of a Revolutionary Realist” will open on Friday in the Columbus Museum of Art, 480 E. Broad St.

“I am really excited by this painting,” said Dominique Vasseur, curator of European art, who secured Ecce Homo for the exhibit.

“It’s an extremely powerful painting. .?.?. The sense of the isolation of Christ and the sacrificial feeling is so strong. There is so much emotion.”

Ecce Homo will be displayed with 10 other paintings from the early to mid-1600s, on loan from Ohio museums and one private collector.

Genesis of the exhibit

To celebrate the city’s bicentennial in 2012, the museum wanted something “really important from Europe” and looked to Columbus’ sister city of Genoa, Italy, Vasseur said.

“It was a seaport with lots of wealthy families and with ties to Spain. And it was the hometown of Christopher Columbus.”

Ecce Homo is the only Caravaggio painting at the Musei di Strada Nuova — Palazzo Bianco and, Vasseur said, “the one I wanted.”

He made some initial contacts and went to Genoa in November to meet with the museum’s director, who doesn’t speak English. Vasseur doesn’t speak Italian, but both men speak French. Talking in that language, they came to a “gentleman’s agreement” that Columbus could borrow the painting. Yet a written contract wasn’t secured until March.

Museum Director Nannette V. Maciejunes “kept asking if we’d heard anything from the Italians,” said Nancy Colvin, the museum’s marketing and public-relations manager.

Raffaella Besta, curator at the Genoa museum, said the loan was agreed to because of the sister-city relationship.

In fact, she said via email, “the statue of Cristoforo Colombo, a gift from Genoa, stands in front of your City Hall.”

The painting will be shown in the United States for only the second time; it previously was part of a large Caravaggio exhibit in 1985 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

About the artist

Caravaggio was born in 1571 in Milan.

If you were an Italian artist during the period, you looked to wealthy patrons or the Roman Catholic Church for commissions. Consequently, most paintings were religious scenes or portraits.

Among Caravaggio’s works were The Calling of St. Matthew, The Taking of Christ, Death of the Virgin and David With the Head of Goliath (with Caravaggio painting his head as that of the giant).

Although he depicted traditional religious scenes, Caravaggio shunned the tradition of an idealized interpretation of his subjects. He often used models he found in the streets and painted them in a realistic style considered shocking.

“Critics and the art establishment at the time really hated the rawness, the reality of his work,” Vasseur said. “They thought he was too arrogant, too cheeky.”

That view may also have had something to do with the painter’s private life, which was wild and combative. In 1606, Caravaggio killed a man and fled Rome with a bounty on his head. He lived and painted in Naples and Sicily and, attempting to return to Rome to receive a pardon, died in Tuscany at age 38. He may have suffered a fever or lead poisoning or both. Last year marked the 400th anniversary of his death.

“He was the tragic bad boy,” Vasseur said. “His life reads like a novel.”

Power of the painting

Ecce Homo (about 1605) depicts a Bible scene from John: 19 in which Pontius Pilate, displaying Jesus to the crowds, cries, “Behold, the man!” Jesus is dressed mockingly in robes and already crowned with thorns. It appears that Pilate’s face is that of an older, haggard Caravaggio.

The painting is widely accepted as one of Caravaggio’s, but some scholars still dispute its authenticity. Indeed, the authenticity of a number of Caravaggio works has been questioned largely because the artist didn’t sign his works.

Vasseur said Ecce Homo had hung in the stairwell of the Royal Naval Academy in Genoa and was damaged during the bombings of World War II. It was returned to the Genoa museum and put into its storerooms. In 1953, the museum’s director rediscovered the painting and realized it was probably a real Caravaggio. The damaged work — which had most likely been restored in the 18th century — was restored again in the 1950s.

The painting is relatively small — 50¾ inches by 40½ inches — and was probably made for a private collection rather than to be displayed as an altarpiece.

Its power, Vasseur said, lies in how Ecce Homo captures a heightened moment of intense psychological poignancy.

“Caravaggio’s art was so revolutionary and so widely imitated,” Vasseur said.

Even into the 20th century.

Filmmaker Martin Scorsese recounted the impact that Caravaggio had on his movies in a book about the painter by Andrew Graham-Dixon.

“He was choosing a moment that was not the absolute moment of the beginning of the action,” Scorsese said. “It was like modern staging in film: It was so powerful and direct. .?.?. I thought, I can use this too. .?.?. He sort of pervaded the entirety of the bar sequences in Mean Streets.”

Other works in the show

Ecce Homo will be surrounded by paintings by artists who were heavily influenced by Caravaggio. The 10 works are on loan from Ohio’s major museums and one private collector, Dr. Carlo Croce of Columbus.

“Some of these works are eerily similar to original Caravaggios, including (Croce’s) Love Victorious by Bernardo Strozzi and St. John the Baptist by Tanzio da Varallo (from the Allen Memorial Arts Museum at Oberlin College),” Vasseur said.

Also included are: Allegory of the Four Seasons by Bartolomeo Manfredi, Judith With the Head of Holofernes by Carlo Saraceni and The Flea Hunt by Gerrit van Honthorst, all from the Dayton Art Institute; The Supper at Emmaus by Hendrick Terbrugghen (Toledo Museum of Art); Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata by Simon Vouet (Croce); The Liberation of Saint Peter by Abraham Bloemaert (Cincinnati Art Museum); Cupid by Johann Liss (Cleveland Museum of Art); and Figures Around a Table by Candlelight (Columbus Museum of Art).

The last painting, Caravaggio-influenced as all the others, originally was thought to be by Gerhard Seghers. After the museum consulted with scholars, however, it seemed more likely to have been painted by Gerrit van Deurs.

As Vasseur said, “another tantalizing case.”

ngilson@dispatch.com