The vine and Caravaggio: the clever use of light

“The taste of a food, always reveals the quality of a wine and exalts it. In turn, the qualities of a wine complete the pleasure of a food and spiritualize it.” These are the words of  Luigi Veronelli, an expert about Italian wines. He has contributed significantly to free the wine from the “prison” of the simple pleasures of the table. Today we treat the wine and its production with the respect that is due to the food, but also to the work of all human intelligence. We feel that a good glass of Super Tuscan wine while you eating or meditating, savoring every sip, can be the key of access to a deeper spirituality, a dimension where the senses and the intellect are more free and more acute.

Caravaggio: the wine and the light

It is therefore no coincidence that the famous painter, Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio, has entrusted to the figure of Bacchus, the task of setting on a canvas a moment of his life. Not a glory moment  but a moment of vulnerability. The painting, called Sick Bacchus, it’s kept at the Borghese Gallery in Rome. It seems Caravaggio painted it during convalescence from an illness or a serious injury; in it, through the use of mirrors, the artist managed to self-portrait. What we see in the picture? Certainly not the man indomitable, reckless and violent that we passed on the news! Here the artist describes himself suffering, thoughtful, holding a bunch with some rotten grapes crushed by now. Like to point out that life is imperfect, even when is a God as Bacchus who’s looking and living it. This painting is an early work by the artist when his talent was beginning to fulfill the promises of a prosperous life.

Vine art like a Caravaggio painting

It must have been the gift of Bacchus, the wine, to make Michelangelo Merisi so prescient? We’ll never know. Certainly we know that he became famous for the mastering of light and dark areas in his paintings. As well as the vine uses sunlight and darkness to create unforgettable wines, like some Chianti wines or Vernaccia di San Gimignano, so the genius of this artist was able to look into himself, turning those visions in the most exciting source of inspiration.