Pickle and Caravaggio

After all of the stress of recent weeks we had a weekend away in Dublin. The weather wasn’t good but it didn’t seem to matter. We wandered the streets in the cold and damp, managing to escape the rainstorms. There were two main highlights: a new Indian restaurant in Camden Street called Pickle and the ‘Beyond Caravaggio’ exhibition at the National Gallery. Both of these experiences were filled with drama and intensity.

I’d lived in Birmingham and Manchester for many years and was used to eating good quality Indian food. These areas had substantial communities from the Indian sub-continent and this meant that they offered a range of authentic eating places. Many were small Indian cafes whose windows were stacked with brightly coloured sweets. There was normally only one curry on the menu. Indeed there was rarely a menu, just the dish of the day, usually a vegetable curry dominated by whatever produce was going cheap in the market at the time. In these cafes, set in the grimy streets of the inner city, the majority of the customers would be from the Indian sub-continent. In more affluent suburbs and in the city centre there would be more upmarket restaurants which would cater for the British customer, but amongst these there would always be some that produced good quality and authentic Indian food.

Coming to live and work in Belfast I was very disappointed to find that there was a very small community from the Indian sub-continent here and consequently very little choice in the Indian restaurants. The only one that I found which produced good quality food was the oddly named Lolita in Stranmillis, which unfortunately closed a few years ago. Sadly I’d not found a good Indian restaurant in Dublin either. But I’d heard that a new one called Pickle was good and was keen to try it. We were not disappointed.

We had the early evening menu, two courses for €22. I had Seek Kebab and Chicken Tikka, two items you would find on most menus. But the aromas and tastes of these dishes were extraordinary. The chef is from northern India. He grinds and mixes his own spices and it shows. As I drank in the flavours, I was back in Saleem’s in Balsall Heath where as a student I had first tasted those intensely rich and heady spices. I was almost expecting to find the dodgy jukebox in the corner filled with Bollywood anthems. But Pickle is squarely aimed at an upmarket customer and is more discreet in its style. On the a la carte menu, which we will be going back for, most of the main courses are over €20. As we left we noticed a plaque in the foyer which showed that Pickle had been chosen as the best Indian restaurant in Ireland.

Richness, drama and intensity also mark out the paintings of Caravaggio. The exhibition, on tour from the National Gallery in London, displays the huge impact that he had on other artists during his short life (1571-1610). There were only four Caravaggios on show. This confirms how highly valued and closely guarded his work continues to be. They included the iconic ‘Boy Bitten by a Lizard’ and the ‘Supper at Emmaus’. The remainder of the exhibition featured paintings by his contemporaries who were seeking to emulate and utilise his powerful new style. Some achieved this so successfully that for many years their paintings were actually thought to be by Caravaggio himself.

What I love about Caravaggio is the extremely skilful composition of each of his pieces. The paintings are intense and dramatic, the human figures are in close up and every gesture connects you to another part of the scene that is realised in an intensity of light and dark paint (called chiaroscuro). Apparently he worked using sketches of live models who posed each figure in the drama, which he then put together into the final rich and powerful composition. You look at the whole painting and then your gaze is slowly taken around and across it by the shape of the bodies, the gestures of the figures and the play of light and darkness.

My favourite piece by Caravaggio is a triptych in the church of San Luigi dei Franchesi in Rome. On three walls of a chapel are displayed episodes from the life of St Matthew. The left wall appears to be a scene in a tavern; it is in fact at a tax collectors. Men are sitting around a table, lit from a window to the right. There is a complex interplay of gestures and sightlines. A bearded man has entered the room and points towards a young man in a feathered hat, brightly lit at the centre of a canvas. Jesus has chosen the disciple to follow him.  On the right wall an assassin in loincloth with rippling muscles is about to thrust a sword into the supine saint, who lifts up his arms in protest. Smartly clothed men look on almost impassively, whilst a young boy turns away in terror. The sightlines, gestures and chiaroscuro of these two pieces on opposite walls interact extremely powerfully and dramatically. The centrepiece is the least interesting, depicting the saint with a halo and an angel above. Apparently it is the second version. The first was rejected because it was considered too radical. The saint and the angel were depicted intertwined around his writing of the gospel. This picture hung in a museum in Berlin but was destroyed during the Second World War.

This triptych, painted in 1600, was Caravaggio’s first major commission and made his name. After that he became patronised by a rich Cardinal and painted many of the great works on religious themes that he is now known for. Unfortunately, you cannot transport a chapel in Rome to an exhibition in Dublin.

The Crucifixion of St Peter