Earlier this year, the oil painting, which depicts a tortured Jesus Christ, was put up for sale at an auction in Spain. The target price at which the auction would start was 1,500 euros. But by then the Ansorena auction house had already received private offers of several million euros and major collectors had already sent representatives to Madrid to take a closer look at the canvas.
From Italy, one of the greatest recognized experts of Caravaggio’s work came to the Spanish capital to determine that this must be the Christ with the Crown of Thorns from the Neapolitan painting legend. That would raise the value to 50 million euros in one fell swoop. One day before the auction, the Ministry of Culture banned the canvas from going on sale, after an emergency meeting at a high level.
Cultural Heritage
On Wednesday, Madrid’s regional government formally recognized the work as a cultural heritage. “Elements such as the psychological representations of the characters, the realism of the faces, the luminous power that illuminates the body of Christ, the interplay of the three characters and the communication established with the observer make this a work of great artistic importance,” it said in a statement.
Originally, the painting was attributed to the studio of José de Ribera (1591-1652), a Spanish painter who worked in Rome and Naples. Wrongly, experts from the Prado museum in Madrid also suspect. “The information that has appeared in recent months and the studies carried out by experts strengthen the theory that it is the work of Caravaggio,” the Madrid regional government confirmed.
“When I saw the painting, I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Massimo Pulini, a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, told the British newspaper. The Guardian. In March he received an email to appraise the work. “I knew right away that this was a Caravaggio. It was like meeting someone on the street that you hadn’t seen in a long time. It’s hard to explain what happens at certain moments when you have such an impression in a millisecond. It is often a matter of instinct.”
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