ROME — In a roomful of Caravaggios in the Galleria Borghese, the windows are left wide open in late summer.
Fragrant breezes from the surrounding park, beams of buttery Roman sunlight, and the swoops of shrieking swallows and sparrows are all just feet away from some of the most coveted and adored canvases anywhere — Boy With a Fruit Basket, The Madonna of Palafrenieri, Self-Portrait as Bacchus, St. John the Baptist, among them.
Although the French-style windows are fitted with iron bars, the squares are large enough for any of the birds to fly through and into the room, perhaps pecking at the ripe berries depicted in some of the works, no different than those growing now on trees in the park. Bees could be easily fooled into pollinating the painted flowers.
The paintings are part of the living world, not set apart from it — with chirpings, plashing fountains, and the whoops of teenagers pedaling the electric bicycles just beyond. The canvases that are populated by Caravaggio’s boys and figures recreating biblical scenes and bacchanalia are revealed in full natural light and air — as are the equally beautiful present-day young men milling about the room, some of whom the artist might likely have procured as his models.
And maybe this is how artworks need to be seen, despite the elements. After all, every one of the paintings in this gallery, and elsewhere in the museum, was made to be hung in the rooms of a house, albeit often royal ones. They were meant to be part of the visible décor, interacted with, their surfaces perhaps brushed with a hand, even sniffed. For many decades, maybe even centuries, the paint on canvas or panel can be detected with a close whiff.
Glass frames, ropes, and other barriers establish an actual and emotional distancing from the very object to which we are supposed to have visceral responses. Protection immediately imbues anything with a value. To see the art in the Borghese requires days-in-advance reservations and long lines, so it is hardly a casual encounter one has with the museum and its collection. Many of the paintings and sculptures are revealed informally in an otherwise highly formal setting. A palace, even absent its resident royalty, is a palace nonetheless.
In America, these Caravaggios would likely be sequestered in a windowless, temperature-controlled inner gallery, the arms of humidity meters swinging, the works perhaps further distanced by velvet ropes or projecting ledges to prevent viewers from moving too close. Of course artworks need to be protected from vandals, both from those with deliberate missions to destroy and those who are merely clumsy with their swollen backpacks or walking in hypnotic trances reading text messages on their screen.
To “see” the Pieta, for instance, in St. Peter’s is to actually look mostly at a glass wall, smudged by the countless international noses pressed against it. The gleaming sculpture is situated sufficiently far behind the pane that the artwork has little effect as a work of art. Its dimensionality is lost, appearing more as a two-dimensional image. It is diminished in size, given its simple distance from the eye. Also, there are so many jousting selfie sticks piercing the air that they appear to replicate a giant, obscuring crown of thorns.
In 1972, a madman vandal claiming to be Christ smashed away at the sculpture—thus, the resulting glass. Although the Pieta has always been famous, that vandal’s very act, ironically, imbued the sculpture with an even greater “must-see” status, which, then, for many of us, reduces it to a “maybe-see”.
A kind of indifference sets in when in Rome. At the Galleria Doria Pamphilj, so many masters fill the walls that you cannot even see those positioned high up, their scenes further obscured by glaring lighting reflecting off the surfaces (put on your sunglasses, which help). Some of the works by Filippo Lippi and Velazquez, Titian and Raphael, hang directly beneath blistered plastered ceilings, indicating water leaks. That, of course, is too casual an approach to displaying the art.
Works by Caravaggio are certainly iconic ones, but fortunately, they still remain fresh, not over-exposed like Leonardo’s Mona Lisa or Botticelli’s Birth of Venus; works seen too much elicit a form of disdain, despite their merits. By being able to see these Caravaggio paintings in a room filled with an afternoon breeze and the sounds of Rome beyond, makes their experience richer. Caravaggio’s painted figures, looking exactly like people on the streets now, are part of real life.
David Masello is executive editor of Milieu magazine and a widely published essayist and poet.