In a twilit corner of the Gallerie d'Italia, a bombastic, fascistic building on the grungy Via Toledo in Naples, there hangs the last picture ever painted by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, enfant terrible of Renaissance art.
Painted here in Naples in 1610, shortly before he died, aged 38, The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula is as dramatic as any of Caravaggio's previous paintings – but there's something fatalistic about it; a feeling that the game of life is up. Fatally wounded, Saint Ursula gazes at the arrow in her chest with weary resignation, as if death will be a welcome release.
Behind her is Caravaggio – his last self-portrait – but while his previous self-portraits are energetic, here he looks distracted, disengaged and sickly.
A few weeks before,
