Taking of Christ Taken

I'm sorry to report here that a copy of Caravaggio's The Taking of Christ (alternately known as The Kiss of Judas) was stolen from the Museum of Western and Eastern Art in Odessa, Ukraine, sometime between the evening of Tuesday, July 30 and the morning of Thursday, August 1, 2008. Sorrier still, another thing to report is that the delicate 400+ year old canvas was cut from its frame. (Crazy as it surely sounds, the first thing that runs through my head whenever news of an art theft comes along is, "I wonder if the thieves handled the piece gently?" It's a stupid thing to wonder, because trained art conservators do not typically perpetrate b&e maneuvers.)

The Museum's loss would be much worse had this version of The Taking of Christ been of Caravaggio's hand--and here we run into an interesting story. You see, there are around 12 versions of The Taking of Christ, but only one is the autograph (originally and wholly of the artist's hand) copy. The image seen here is of the Real Deal. It was discovered in an Irish Jesuit residence in the 1930s, and authenticated in the 1990s. Caravaggio painted it himself.

The painting stolen from Odessa is a contemporary copy, one of many by Caravaggio's Italian workshop and followers (notably in the Dutch city of Utrecht). An astute businessman, Caravaggio was never shy about copying his own work; if something sold well he painted it over and over, often with help from assistants--he was the original ROI guy. Now, the Odessa version of The Taking of Christ *was* previously authenticated, back in 1956, by art experts in the former U.S.S.R. After the Iron Curtain came down and the painting was open to viewing by other Caravaggio experts, though, the authentication didn't hold up. Still, it's definitely very old and full of techniques we expect from the Bad Boy of the Baroque. I hope the Museum gets its painting back, especially once the thieves realize it's not worth $200 million or so.

Image credit:

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (Italian, 1571-1610)
The Taking of Christ, 1602
Oil on canvas
135.5 x 169.5 cm
Society of Jesus of Ireland, on loan to
the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin