Caravaggio - Annunciation - ca.1608/10
Conversation
You read Teju Cole’s magnificent essay in the NYT Magazine? I had made a similar pilgrimage to see as many Caravaggios as I could find on the Italian mainland, but that essay made me want to do it all over again, and to see the paintings with the benefit of TC’s insight.
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I haven't read the essay, but guess what? I did the same pilgrimage! I got sidetracked as I usually at one point, but I did see every single one in Rome!
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I think the paintings in the French Church are my favorites of all. Before the age of mass tourism—which might be over now, mercifully—it wasn’t unusual to be utterly alone with those paintings, dropping coin after coin into the device that turned on the lights.
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I did mine in 88, I think. Right after the Derek Jarman film.
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That was a golden age for travel, at least where recent decades are concerned. Everywhere I went felt virtually empty, and the paintings as well as the cities were so much more evocative. Over the last ten years, so many places have become unbearably crowded...

