The National Gallery in London is celebrating its bicentenary by lending twelve of its most famous paintings to various museums and galleries throughout the United Kingdom. One beneficiary is the Ulster Museum in Belfast, which starting on 10 May will showcase The Supper at Emmaus, a masterpiece by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.
At the same time, the Ulster Museum will also be receiving on loan from the National Gallery of Ireland another Caravaggio: The Taking of Christ. The Irish Jesuit Community, who owns this artwork, has agreed and supported this arrangement. This is one of the rare occasions during the past two centuries when these paintings have been reunited.
It is a fitting gesture to see these outstanding works of art united as an act of cooperation between London, Dublin and Belfast. These three cities have at times had a challenging relationship over the past two centuries, much like the truculent personality of Caravaggio himself.
The Mattei family commissioned both paintings, which hung in the Palazzo Mattei in Rome for two centuries. The Taking of Christ was eventually sold in 1802 to a Scottish art collector named William Hamilton Nisbet. By that time, the painting was attributed to Gerard Van Honthorst, a Dutch follower of Caravaggio.
In 1921, Marie Lee-Wilson, an Irish widow, purchased the painting from an auction house in Edinburgh. Marie was from a well-established Catholic family in County Cork. In 1914, she married Percival Lea-Wilson, an English Protestant from a minor aristocratic family in London. He served as an officer in the Royal Irish Constabulary and shortly after their wedding went to the Western Front during World War I.
In 1916, he suffered what was then referred to as “shell shock” and would today be typically diagnosed as PTSD. As a result, he was transferred to Dublin for less strenuous duties. However, when he returned home, the Easter Rising occurred and he was assigned to detain the insurgents who had surrendered in the General Post Office.
Doubtless, and perhaps owing to his vulnerable mental state, like many of his class at the time he perceived the rebellion as a betrayal of his colleagues still fighting on the Western Front.
There were serious accusations that Lea-Wilson maltreated and humiliated the prisoners placed in his charge, and Michael Collins and others took note of this. Four years later, while collecting his morning newspaper, Lea-Wilson was assassinated by Irish Republicans in retaliation.
His widow, Marie, never accepted the allegations against her husband. She commissioned a stained-glass window in his memory, created in 1922 by the well-known artist Harry Clarke at the local church to honour his memory.
Despite being in her thirties, Marie enrolled in Trinity College Dublin’s medical school, one of only three women in her year. She specialised as a paediatrician. Traumatised by grief, Marie received spiritual consolation and support from the Jesuit community in Lesson Street, Dublin.
To mark her appreciation for their care, she presented the community with the painting of The Taking of Christ, which she had bought some years before in Edinburgh, still attributed to Van Honthorst. It is easy to see how the anguished depiction of Christ would resonate with someone also experiencing sorrow.
The Jesuit fathers placed the painting in the community dining room, where it remained for nearly sixty years. In 1990, the Jesuit superior invited Sergio Benedetti, the senior conservator of the National Gallery of Ireland, to examine the paintings belonging to the community.
Benedetti particularly noticed the painting in the dining room despite it being darkened and discoloured by aged varnish. His first reaction was that it was an exceptional copy of a long-lost painting by Caravaggio. However, after extensive research and analysis by himself and other international experts, it was discovered that instead of being a copy, it was the original painting by Caravaggio himself.
The painting features seven figures, including what appears to be a self-portrait of Caravaggio holding a lantern. However, the actual luminescence of the scene comes from the opposite side of the picture and shines on the hands of Judas as he gives the kiss of betrayal to Jesus. The radiance also shines on Christ’s tightly joined hands, which express utmost trauma and anxiety in his abandonment to the suffering that awaits him.
The second painting, The Supper at Emmaus, depicts the evening of Easter Sunday. Two disciples are fleeing Jerusalem in fear, broken by the trauma of witnessing the violence of Christ’s crucifixion. In their grief, they also feel a betrayal of their ideals, as they had hoped that Jesus was the long-awaited messiah. Along the way, they meet a stranger who listens as they pour out their sorrow. As the evening draws near, they press him to join them for supper.
During supper, Jesus blesses and breaks the bread. Caravaggio’s painting portrays the moment when the disciples recognise the risen Christ’s presence as he breaks the bread. One of the disciples is shown with outstretched arms, amazed by this revelation and reminded of Jesus’ crucifixion.
The disciple’s hand seems to invade our space, bringing us into the scene and making the unfolding action more vivid and real. The other disciple grasps the chair to rise in astonishment at what he is witnessing. This frames the youthful, beardless figure of Christ as he serenely extends his hand in blessing over the broken bread and out to us, whom Caravaggio invites closer as observers of the scene.
As Christ blesses the broken bread, so his presence in the Eucharist enters into the frailty and brokenness of the life experience of all his followers.
Marie Lea-Wilson never married again. Instead, she devoted her life to being a paediatrician and taking care of other people’s children.
Despite her loss, she found comfort and professional strength in attending Mass every day, where she received the Eucharist. For, as with those weary travellers at Emmaus, Marie, in her life’s journey, recognised her risen saviour in the “breaking of bread”.
Photo: ‘The Taking of Christ’, 1602, by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610). On indefinite loan to the National Gallery of Ireland from the Jesuit Community, Leeson St., Dublin who acknowledge the kind generosity of the late Dr. Marie Lea-Wilson, 1992. Photo © National Gallery of Ireland.
