The Art of Italy in the Royal Collection: The Baroque
Until March 8 2009; The Queen’s Gallery, Edinburgh

Some years ago, when the Queen’s Gallery in Edinburgh was relatively new, the Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures told me that its small scale was best suited to “cabinet paintings”. Early shows tended to favour small works on paper, entry for one even covering a free magnifying glass.

With the gallery’s latest show, caution has finally been thrown to the wind. Masterpieces of the Baroque fill the walls, squeezed between ceiling and floor, fleshy drama and fiery passion at every turn.

The scene is set the moment you enter the gallery. Hitting you full on is Guido Reni’s orgasmic vision of Cleopatra holding a poisonous snake to her naked breast. The high contrast between her radiant flesh and the darkness behind is typically Baroque, as is the moment of high psychological drama.

Cleopatra shares the wall with two biblical seductresses: Judith dangling the freshly-severed head of her victim, her sword still raised, and Salome balancing the head of St John the Baptist on an ornamental platter. Judith’s warrior-like gait and Salome’s well-dressed poise are contrasting variations on a theme, each picture simultaneously a sumptuous visual banquet and a subtle exploration of character.

In the context of lusty female warriors, it’s worth pointing to the stunning self-portrait by Artemisia Gentileschi. Dynamic, confident, and thrusting, her pose is one of a woman at serious work, while playing on the idea of the female model as muse.

No exhibition of the Italian Baroque would be complete without Caravaggio, whose uncompromising naturalism made him enemies; he famously used a bloated corpse dragged from the river as the model for his Death Of The Virgin, a painting lost from the Royal Collection when Cromwell sold it for £170 (it’s now in the Louvre).

Until recently, it was thought that only copies of Caravaggios survived in the Royal Collection, but this exhibition debuts two newly-cleaned paintings which are now believed to be originals. The Calling Of Saints Peter and Andrew is not indisputably a Caravaggio, but Boy Peeling Fruit is typical of his style. A quiet moment is raised from the mundane to the sensuous with dramatic lighting, juicy fruit, and a bare-chested young man.

Annibale Carracci was known for his classicising take on the Baroque, but what really stands out in this show is his fluid brushwork. The broad spontaneity of his study, Head Of A Man, is extraordinary for the late 16th century, and would not look out of place in an Impressionist collection. His more finely finished devotional painting, Il Silenzio, puts all the elements of the Baroque style to use in an unusually gentle, intimate scene.

Perhaps the first name on any connoisseur’s lips in the context of the Italian Baroque is Bernini. Apart from two drawings, he is conspicuous by his absence in this show, and for once it’s not Cromwell’s fault. A celebrated Bernini bust perished in the Whitehall fire of 1698, leaving a large gap in the collection. This is not a comprehensive survey, but it’s without doubt a ravishing feast.

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 16.11.08