Velasquez in Dublin

In the summer, we spent ten days in Ireland, starting and ending with Dublin, where I went to the National Gallery of Ireland. I knew they had the extraordinary painting by Caravaggio, called The Taking of Christ. I saw it once at the National Gallery in London years ago and, along with his painting of the crown of thorns being forced onto Christ's head, which is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, it is my favourite of the paintings I've seen by Caravaggio. 

I told myself not to take any pictures, because it is pointless, but in the end I did take some, trying to somehow capture and take away something of the way the picture portrays Christ and Judas Iscariot at the moment of betrayal:

What I hadn't expected was how wonderful the rest of the collection is at the Dublin gallery. I will share some more of the pictures in future posts, but the painting that particularly struck me was this one, which is called Kitchen Maid with the Supper at Emmaus. It was painted in 1617-18 and the gallery claims it is Velasquez's earliest known work. 

What I love most about this picture is its perspective. Its subject is the supper at Emmaus, but you only realise that after looking at it closely. Thus, you find yourself in the same position as the young maid who is the central figure - suddenly aware that something is present that you weren't aware of at first glance . 

Here she is, in the midst of kitchen work, suddenly sensing something strange and startling nearby:

In the foreground, meticulously recorded in all their beautiful day-to-day reality, the things of the kitchen:

and behind them, sketched in without any attempt at sharp realism, the miraculous appearance of the resurrected Christ:

and the sweet, startled girl, like all of us, trying to make sense of it: