Every Friday we take a break from our regular blogging schedule to allow the authors an opportunity to feature a certain topic they are passionate about. In the past you’ve read about art, studying abroad, experiencing culture through food, and the great burger adventure. Through this and other future posts we hope you’ll enjoy reading, we hope to share with you our personalities, passions, and interests on a more personal level.
As part of our continuing desire to bring beauty into focus, From Texas to Beyond will periodically feature brilliant pieces of art that have influenced our lives. We are excited to showcase these universal works of beauty with you.
Today, we begin a two-part miniseries examining the Caravaggio painting from the National Gallery in London. As I mentioned in my first post in the Chasing Caravaggio Series, I am on a quest to view all of Caravaggio’s masterpieces firsthand. Thanks to a short layover at London Heathrow I found three more in the National Gallery.
As Rebekah discussed in her earlier post, The National Gallery owns countless magnificent pieces of art. While on a guided tour of the museum, I caught my first glimpse of the pieces I desired to see the most: all three Caravaggio paintings hung next to each other along a long wall. Once the tour concluded, we backtracked to Room 32.
Boy bitten by a Lizard
Caravaggio’s Boy bitten by a Lizard – Courtesy of Wikipedia
Enjoying the Caravaggio’s one at a time, I first viewed Boy bitten by a Lizard. I had previously seen a later version of Boy bitten by a Lizard (from the Fondazione Roberto Longhi) at the Kimbell Art Museum during a traveling exhibition. Caravaggio’s earlier version was just as good. This painting was one of the first the artist produced after arriving in Rome, sometime between 1595 and 1600. While straightforward at first glance, the piece is full of symbolism. If you listen to most contemporary commentaries on this piece of art, they will mention Caravaggio’s overt interest in young men. After reading more on the artist, it is hard to believe he did not love men. However, he definitely loved women as well. To me, Boy bitten by a Lizard seems to show that something as beautiful as fruit, a symbol of love, may end in unexpected pain, such as a bite from a hidden lizard.
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