Dead man painting: the late work of Caravaggio
In the film Dead Man Walking, as Matthew Poncelet’s hope of reprieve from his death sentence diminishes, he comes under increasing pressure from Sister Prejean to confess to the crime for which he is being punished. Although the film is based on Sister Prejean’s campaign against the death penalty, it leaves open the interpretation that it is only the certainty of death that finally compels Matthew to confess his guilt.
Nigel Halliday
Walking round the National Gallery’s exhibition of late Caravaggio, I got the same sense of a man under sentence of death, forced to confront his own mortality.
