Title

The Crucifixion of Saint Andrew

Caravaggio (Caravaggio (Italia), 1571 - Nápoles, 1610)

Generic classification

Object

Date

Century

Cultural context / style

Dimensions

Material

Technique

Iconography / Theme

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Current location

Inventory Number in Current Collection

Inscriptions / Marks

None

Object history

Principal among its paintings, The Cleveland Museum of Art displays a Crucifixion of St. Andrew by Caravaggio. The painting was acquired in 1976 thanks to the Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund bequest, after it was allowed to be exported by the Board of Qualification, Valuation and Export of Works of Historical or Artistic Importance, an episode that, if not singular in our country, is especially bleeding because it is an extraordinary painting and because it was sold in the last quarter of the twentieth century. It left Spain after a series of scientific errors that are not easy to understand and that perhaps were conditioned by unspeakable interests.

In 1672 the Italian art theorist Giovanni Pietro Bellori published in Rome Le vite de pittori, scvltori et architetti moderni, and in the biography of Caravaggio he relates (p. 214): "Il Conte di Benauente, che fù ViceRé di Napoli, portò ancora in Ispagna la Crocifissione di Santo Andrea...". The source is invaluable to know about the painting, but no less important is the information contained in the inventories of Juan Francisco Alfonso Pimentel y Herrera, X Count and VII Duke of Benavente. When the nobleman died in 1652 his belongings were appraised, among which was the aforementioned painting "Item a very large canvas painting of St. Andrew naked when they are putting him on the cross with three sayones and a woman with a woman with a evan molding, all appraised at one thousand and five hundred ducats. 16 U 500 [reales]". In the margin: "es de micael anjel caravacho orijinal" (Archivo Histórico Provincial de Valladolid. Leg. 1787, fol. 868 recto. Partially published by García Chico in his 1946 study of the painters, 395-396). The inventory was made "In the city of Valladolid on v[ein]te days of the month of February of one thousand and sixty-sixth and fifty-three years, the said appraisal of painting and things of the eve by the said appraisers", who were the painters Diego Valentín Díaz and Tomás de Peñasco, together with the cabinetmakers Juan de los Reyes and Juan Muñoz, an aspect of considerable importance for establishing the true appreciation of the visual arts, to which we will return.

The painting had been brought to Spain by the grandfather of the deceased, Juan Alfonso Pimentel, VIII Count and V Duke of Benavente (1576-1522), who was Viceroy of Naples between 1603 and 1610. A lover of the arts like few others, he managed to build up a splendid collection that included works by Caravaggio, with whom he must have had personal dealings during the painter's two periods in Naples. This is the viceroy to whom Bellori refers and who took to Spain the painting of the Crucifixion of St. Andrew, a San Genero (of which a copy is preserved in the M. J. Harris collection in New York) and a Lavatory, now lost (Simal 2002, 44), but there is another one in the inventories: "a holy bishop with the beheaded head with black molding of pine orijinal de caravacho, all in mill reales. 1 U 000", now disappeared.

On his return to Spain, the viceroy sent his belongings to the fortress of Benavente, where in 1611 the Martyrdom of St. Andrew is documented, as recorded in the inventory of "large paintings" in the fortress of Benavente: "Another original St. Andrew in linen and beadboard cornice" (Simal 2002, 189; Macioce 2023, 481). At an undetermined date it passed to the palace that the counts-dukes owned in Valladolid, the most outstanding civil building in the capital of the Pisuerga River (Urrea 1996, 41-45). It was there when the inventory of 1653 was made, and shortly after, before 1658, some paintings were cleaned and retouched, among which was the painting by Caravaggio, to which the frame was changed and the ebony frame "adereçó" (Simal 2002, 64).

There is no subsequent news of the work until Xavier de Salas made known the existence of a painting by Caravaggio in February 1973 at a scientific meeting in Rome, although it was not published until the following year. The painting then belonged to the collector Juan Manuel Arnaiz and was exhibited in Seville on the occasion of the XXIII International Congress of Art History, between September and October 1973. The study in the catalog was in charge of Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez, who began the card with two questions: one referring to the author "Caravaggio (?)", and the other to the iconography, as he wondered if it was the martyrdom of St. Philip. Regarding the latter, he did not hesitate to declare that it was impossible for it to be St. Andrew, since the cross was not in a crosshair, "an irreplaceable and indispensable attribute in the iconography of the Saint". However, this is not exactly so, as Louis Réau, who insists that there is no reason for the use of a crux decussata, which in fact does not appear until the late Middle Ages, and that Jacopo da Voragine in his Golden Legend, in the thirteenth century, makes no reference to the cross in the shape of a cross. Although the usual from the assumption by the House of Burgundy of the form in X in its coat of arms, it will be that the cross that will end up being imposed in the representations of the martyrdom of St. Andrew, at the end of the 16th century the debate was hot, as Ann TZEUTSCHLER LURIE, curator of the museum of Cleveland, with the collaboration of Denis Mahon, in her extensive and documented study of the work in 1977, collected in her extensive and documented study of the work.

These authors, in turn, clarify that although the documentation says that there were three sayones and a woman, which does not correspond with the figures in the painting, since four men and a woman are counted, in an inventory of the same year made days before the previous one, on January 17, it is said: "Yten otro muy grande de pintura de san Andrés desnudo de quando le están puniendo en la cruz con tres sayones y una muger al pie, y la moldura de évano muy grande" (They have another very large painting of St. Andrew naked when he is being punished on the cross with three sayones and a woman at the foot, and the very large oval molding). The precision "at the foot" leaves out the thief who is on the ladder trying to untie the apostle. Untying him, but not tying him to the cross (which would be impossible in the position of the thief), because according to the tradition, which is recorded in the Golden Legend, the proconsul Aegeus, in Achaia, ordered to tie him to the cross instead of nailing him to it so that his torture would be prolonged. Fearing a popular riot of those affectionate to the apostle, the prefect ordered him to be untied, but the saint asked heaven not to allow him to be taken down alive from the cross. This moment is the one masterfully captured by Caravaggio: the thief's muscles are numb and he does not succeed in untying St. Andrew while Aegeus shows his surprise and the man whose face is visible remains astonished.

It is very difficult to bring to a painting the tension of the moment in which a supernatural force paralyzes the sayon, something within the reach of very few artists and that Caravaggio resolved with unsurpassed mastery. But the scene is infrequent in art and its meaning was soon changed to the more conventional "he is being punished on the cross". In any case, the painting made a fortune because there are three paintings that repeat the scene. In the Museum of Santa Cruz in Toledo there is a copy, which was badly damaged during the Spanish Civil War, in which Caravaggio's dramatic character is missing. Another known copy is the one in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon, perhaps by the painter Abraham Vinck, companion of Louis Finson, who we know had made a copy of the Crucifixion of St. Andrew.

These two painters are directly related to the third and most problematic copy, or version and therefore original by the painter, which since 2015 is preserved in London (Spier collection). It appeared in 1923 in the Enyedt Collection in Budapest, held to be the work of Ribera. It then passed to the Louis Ernst collection, also in Budapest until 1945, when it entered the Szépművészeti Múzeum, and in October 1953 it was acquired by Emmerich and Christa Back-Vega, Vienna. In 1963 it was auctioned by Galerie Fischer in Lucerne and in the 1980s it was acquired by a Swiss collector. Finally in 2015 it entered the Spier Collection in London (Pappi 2017, 8).

It does not matter for our interest whether the painting now in London is original or simply a copy of Caravaggio, something advocated by Longhi (1969, 35), Friedlaender (1955, reed. 1974, 210) or Bodart (1970, 136-139). Pappi argues that it is original, and that Bodart himself understood it this way in 2012 as well as other researchers, but there are questions that remain unclear. Although there are artists who have lavished themselves making several versions of a work, this is not the case with Caravaggio. In 1619 in Amsterdam, the merchant Pieter de With sold a Crucifixion of St. Andrew to François Seghers of Antwerp, represented by his agent Jacques van Nieulandt. De With said that he had bought the painting in 1617 at public auction at the house of Abraham Vinck, and that it belonged to the heirs of Louis Finson, a Flemish painter and follower of Caravaggio, who sold it as a work by Merisi (Pappi 2017, 6). Of course it must be ruled out that the painting traveled from Spain to Amsterdam, since there is documentation, contrary to what the author says, prior to 1653, since in 1611 it was in the Benavente fortress in Zamora, so that the work today in Cleveland seems undoubtedly to be the one carried by the Count-Duke of Benavente on his return from Naples.

Regarding the authorship of the Cleveland painting, which by comparison with other sure works by Caravaggio must have been painted around 1607 (TZEUTSCHLER LURIE and Mahon), although some consider that he painted it at Easter 1610, when the viceroy of Naples visited the relics of St. Andrew in the crypt of the cathedral of Amalfi (Restaino 2012, 150). Perez Sanchez hesitated to ascribe it to Merisi, but he must not have seen the work when writing about it, as he mistakes the dimensions (he assigns 254 cm in height when in reality it is 202.5 cm) and says that it was made known by "a very deficient photograph by Dr. Salas", and ends his file wondering "perhaps the exhibition on this occasion will allow a more certain judgment". However, he recognizes that from an X-ray taken by the owner of the painting, "it could lead one to think of rectifications, not by a copyist, but by someone who invented the composition".

The painting was acquired by José Manuel Arnaiz Tejedor and it seems that it came into his hands from a Castilian convent that is not specified. The intermediary must have been the dealer Arcadio Torres, a name that can be deduced from a cryptic quote on the Cleveland Museum's website: "A. Tors." Torres was a well-known antiquarian established in Palencia who played a fundamental role in the sale of works of art, such as the panels by Juan de Flandes from the church of San Lázaro in Palencia or the apse of San Martín de Fuentidueña in Segovia (Martínez Ruiz 2021, 143-162).

If its evolution is not possible to specify in the light of current knowledge, we do know more about the process of the painting's departure from Spain. After Salas called attention to its existence and the exhibition in Seville, the work quickly became known. At the end of 1974 the painting was restored in Switzerland by Jan Dik, and in October of that year an article was published that emphasized Merisi's authorship, focusing both on the way the iconography was treated and the comparison with other documented works by the artist, together with the results of the X-radiography and the restoration. The pentimenti of the face of the proconsul and of the woman, who originally had her hands together under her chin, evidenced that it was an original (Nicolson 1974, 608).

Pérez Sánchez's study suffered from errors, especially his refusal to believe that it could be St. Andrew because of the shape of the cross, and from lack of information about the painting, which was not yet restored. However, after the intervention in Switzerland, it is striking that no Spanish art historian pronounced in favor of Caravaggio's authorship, when some foreigners were already saying so and when it was known that the counts-dukes of Benavente had the work in their palace in Valladolid in the mid-seventeenth century. It is not understood why the study was not revised with the new evidence despite the international echo that the work was having.

As a result, the owner, Arnaiz, requested permission to export the work. The Board of Qualification, Valuation and Export of Works of Historical or Artistic Importance, formed by Xavier de Salas, professor of Art History and director of the Prado Museum; José María de Azcárate, professor of Art History; Fernando Chueca Goitia, architect and professor of History of Architecture; Martín Almagro, professor of Archaeology and director of the National Archaeological Museum; M. Elena Gómez Moreno, professor of Archaeology and director of the National Archaeological Museum; M. Elena Gómez Moreno, professor of Archaeology and director of the National Archaeological Museum.ª Elena Gómez Moreno, director of the Museo Romántico; Joaquín de la Puente, deputy director of the Museo del Prado, and an undeclared official of the Ministry of Finance, examined the application. Incomprehensibly, the opinion was in favor of exporting the painting, which was valued at ten million pesetas (60,000 euros), although its price must have been much higher. It was bought by the Leggatt Brothers Company, an art dealer's house established in London between 1820 and 1992, which must have acted as an intermediary for the American museum, which did not make public the cost of the operation.

In April 1976 The Cleveland Museum of Art announced the acquisition of the painting, although the Spanish press did not report what had happened until a year later (EL PAÍS, June 10, 1977). The process had been very fast for the slowness with which the administration usually proceeds. It is true that there was no expert on Caravaggio on the Board, but it is no less true that they were prestigious art historians and that Xavier de Salas himself had made the painting known. Moreover, it should be noted that foreign researchers considered Caravaggio's authorship to be certain after the restoration. Why this was ignored and the decision was made to allow it to leave Spain is inexplicable from a scientific point of view. Moreover, it gives the impression that it was well known what was being done. Perez Sanchez less than a decade later referred to the Martyrdom of St. Andrew as "...shamefully exported a few years ago and today in Cleveland" (Perez Sanchez 1985, 48). It seems that the author of the text in the catalog of the Seville exhibition, and a great expert in Italian Baroque painting, was not consulted and preferred to base himself on his 1973 study, which he no doubt would have rectified in the light of the new research published immediately after the painting appeared.

Spain, and particularly Castilla y León, because although it was never stated which one it was, it was said that it came from a Castilian convent, diminished its rich patrimony and in this case it was an exceptional work. In the inventory of February 20, 1653 made in the palace of the counts-dukes of Benavente in Valladolid, the painting, which is expressly said to be by "micael anjel caravacho orijinal", was valued at a very high amount for a painting at the time: "...un lienzo muy grande de pintura de san andrés [...] con moldura de évano, todo lo tasaron en mill y quinientos ducados" (a very large canvas of painting of St. Andrew [...] with a molding of ebony, all appraised at one thousand and five hundred ducats). If we compare this appraisal with Titian's painting of the Battle of Mühlberg (Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado), which was made in the post mortem inventory of Philip II half a century earlier, the difference is immense. Titian's composition was appraised at 200 ducats, and no other painting exceeded this amount (Zalama 2024, 22-27), while the Crucifixion of St. Andrew multiplied it by seven and a half times. It might be thought that the painting's estimate had risen rapidly, but it should be borne in mind that in the appraisal of the Caravaggio the "évano molding" was taken into account. Two painters and two cabinetmakers were involved in the inventory, since in the section the "appraisal of painting and ebony things" was carried out jointly.

This frame, which in another inventory a few days earlier had been detailed as "very large ebony molding", had a great deal of weight in the valuation of the painting. Other paintings without ebony framing did not receive the same appraisal, even recognizing that they were by Caravaggio. Thus, "a holy bishop with beheaded head with black pine molding, orijinal de caravacho, all at mill reales". 1000 reales (90.9 ducats), is even lower than the valuation of Titian's painting, since the beheaded saint had a pine molding, much less expensive. This is perfectly clear when examining the valuation of other paintings in the Benavente inventory. Thus, a painting by Ribera, "...otro lienzo muy grande de san Gerónimo con su moldura de évano, todo lo tasaron en quatrocientos ducados. 4 U 400 [reales]", and in the margin: "es de Jusepe de ribera, orijinal", or "otro lienco muy grande de la cena de nuestro señor con sus discípulos, orijinal [presumably by Ribera, since although he does not state it is the next entry], de la que está con una moldura de évano, lo tasaron todo en tres mill y quinientos reales. 3 U 500" (fol. 868r.). In contrast to these high amounts, paintings that did not have an ebony frame were valued much less, even if they were by Rubens: "Yten un lienco de pintura [...] de la ascensión de nuestro señor que es de rruvines, orixinal, con su moldura negra, le tasaron todo en doscientos ducados de vellón = volvieron a decir retasaban en dos mill y quinientos rreales. 2 U 500" (fol. 857v.).

The triumph of painting that Vasari foreshadowed in the 16th century had not yet culminated and it would be necessary to wait until the middle of the 18th century for it to show its primacy, a consideration that has reached our days (Zalama 2023, 41-55). However, there is no doubt that at the end of the twentieth century painting held the primacy of the visual arts, so the sale and export of the Crucifixion of St. Andrew was an unmitigated error, assuming, and it is much, that it was such and not something premeditated and interested.

Locations

• ca. 1607 - ca. 1610

  private collection

  Collection of viceroy of naples Juan Alfonso Pimentel, 8th Count and V Duque of Benavente, Nápoles (Italy) *

• ca. 1611 - pre. 1653

  castle

  Fortress od Count of Benavente (Benavente, Zamora), Benavente (Spain)

• pre. 1653

  palace

  Palace of Count of Benavente, Valladolid (Spain)

• pre. 1973 - ca. 1974

  private collection

  José Manuel Arnaiz Collection, Madrid (Spain) *

• ca. 1974 - ca. 1975

  dealer/antiquarian

  Leggatt Brothers, London (United Kingdom) *

• present

  museum

  Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland (United States)