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Sadly when I was in Malta, I arrived too late to see Caravaggio's painting-- they had closed for the day.
Most of the comments below apply essentially to religious art-- when it comes to environmental art or the wonderful Chillida wind combs, location is everything, but somehow in a different way...
I believe that location is hugely important in art. While the fairly neutral space of a public gallery does place paintings in the context of the History of Art, itself valuable, seeing a religious painting in the place for which it was intended conveys so much more. This is in terms of information and of poetic feeling and atmosphere. The irony is that this is more art historically valid.
And importantly, as was mentioned earlier, galleries seldom reproduce the actual conditions of the original hanging, meaning that light effects can be wrong, or that they hang at the wrong height. Paintings, for instance some of the Mantegna works in London's National Gallery, that were intended as a frieze at a good height in a building are viewed instead at eye-level and look distorted as a result.
I think that one of the problems is that we are encouraged too often to look at religious paintings in particular as secular and art historical objects, avoiding the whole icky question of belief and function. Seeing a good Caravaggio in a church in Rome is so much more rewarding because of the effort you have made, the function it is still performing, the smell of incense, the sense of veneration... Whereas seeing one in a gallery it has been neutered, is somehow no longer alive in the same way. Even the Rothkos in Texas would lose something by being taken from a chapel and placed in a room in a museum. The context of religion, even if it is not one that I, as a fairly a-religious person, share, adds a whole wealth of poetry and information.
I like, when I see religious art either in or out of context, to try to imagine the awe with which people steeped in religion would have viewed the work at the period of execution. Caravaggio would have been the Peckinpah of his day, Raphael an image of infinite grace, the Wilton Diptych probably appeared almost Science Fiction amazing in Medieval England... I think that is the aspect of it that I, brought up as a Protestant if anything, was never taught, and which most museums neglect to emphasise. |
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