At 05:53 PM 10/24/96 -0400, Hank wrote:

>     The Washington Post gave it mixed reviews. Paul Richard in Style gave
>it a rave. In the Weekend section (tomorrow), I describe it as a
>well-mounted retrospective of an artist who started strong but finished
>rather weakly because of his excessive infatuation with Caravaggio.
>
>    It's a fascinating show, and besides, any excuse for visiting the
>National Gallery is a good one.

Hank, come on!  Sure La Tour is classified as a northern Carravigist
painter, but to say that he suffers from an infatuation with Caravaggio
seems to ignore the vast difference in style and purpose between the two.
It is not even clear that he saw any Caravaggios.  If there is an
infatuation, it is with an idea, not an image, this is the idea that light
and the absence thereof can be used to compose a painting.  But whereas
Caravaggio uses light to bring out the dynamics of human action and emotion,
La Tour uses light to model structure, underline stasis, express calm and
promote medidation.  Indeed, the penchant for interior scenes lit with a
single source of light, quite common among the northern Caravaggisti, has no
counterpart among the works of the Italian master.  If the privately
commissioned works (and some public ones) by Caravaggio contain hidden or
emblematic meanings that cater to the sophisticated homoerotic tastes of his
patrons, La Tour has none of that.  Instead, as, for example in the Berlin
St. Sebastian, the full force of developed counter-reformation stylistic
idiology has come into play.  The event from Saint Sebastian's life that is
portrayed, is the moment when he is taken down from the tree and tended to
by the nurse Irene. (?) La Tour poses it to make it consonant with and evoke
images of the life of Christ, here, the deposition.  La Tour may not be the
great master that Caravaggio was, but to pit one against the other forces
observers to misconstrue, I think, their separate and unique messages.

I, for one, intend to see this show.  Do you know the dates?  Will it be in
D.C. over Xmas?

Robt

==================================
Robert A. Baron
Museum Computer Consultant
P.O. Box 93, Larchmont, NY  10538
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