Caravaggio

by Andrew Graham-Dixon

  26. Ibid., p. 218; for a counter-example, see the very different, open-mouthed singers, accompanied by lutes and polyphonically hymning the infant Christ, in Piero della Francesca’s Nativity in the National Gallery, London.

  27. See Colin Slim, ‘Musical Inscriptions in Paintings by Caravaggio and His Followers’, in Music and Context, A. Shapiro (ed.) (Cambridge, Mass., 1995).

  28. See Keith Christiansen, A Caravaggio Rediscovered: The Lute Player, p. 90. The translation given is that of Louis E. Lord.

  29. The late seventeenth-century writer Pietro Paolo Bosca actually referred to it as a ‘tantalus’. See P. P. Bosca, De origine et statu Bibliothecae Ambrosianae (Milan, 1672), p. 126. Cited by John T. Spike, Caravaggio (New York, 2001), in his CD-ROM catalogue entry on the Basket of Fruit.

  30. Cited by John T. Spike, Caravaggio, in his CD-ROM catalogue entry on the Basket of Fruit.

  31. My thanks to Maurizio Calvesi for this observation.

  32. It is a fair assumption that the two pictures have the same history. So to trace one is, in effect, to trace both. The Rest on the Flight to Egypt is linked to Olimpia Aldobrandini by an inventory of her collection compiled in 1611, which mentions ‘A large painting of the Madonna’s Flight into Egypt in a frame’, albeit without naming the artist. The hypothesis that this is a reference to Caravaggio’s painting is strengthened by circumstantial evidence. An inventory of 1622, listing pictures in the Villa Aldobrandini in Frascati, mentions ‘A large painting on canvas of a Madonna embracing the child and a Saint Joseph … copy of Caravaggio’. The presence of this copy in one of the other residences of Olimpia Aldobrandini’s family suggests that the original was indeed in her possession. The inventory reference is cited in John T. Spike’s CD-ROM catalogue entry on The Rest on the Flight to Egypt.

  33. See Helen Langdon, The Lives of Caravaggio, p. 28.

  34. See Bernard Aikema, ‘Titian’s Mary Magdalen in the Palazzo Pitti: An Ambiguous Painting and Its Critics’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol. 57 (1994), p. 58.

  35. See Colin Slim, ‘Musical Inscriptions in Paintings by Caravaggio and His Followers’.

  36. See John T. Spike in his CD-ROM catalogue entry on the St Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy.

  37. See Helen Langdon, The Lives of Caravaggio, p. 63.

  38. St Bonaventure’s Legenda maior was one of the most readily available literary sources for painters working in the post-Tridentine period. It was the official biography of the saint, written in 1262. Bonaventure derived much of his information from the very first life of Francis, written by Thomas of Celano in c. 1230, just four years after the saint’s death. See Pamela Askew, ‘The Angelic Consolation of St Francis of Assisi in Post-Tridentine Italian Painting’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol. 32 (1969), pp. 280–386.

  39. Cited in Pamela M. Jones, ‘The Place of Poverty in Seicento Rome: Bare Feet, Humility and the Pilgrimage of Life in Caravaggio’s Madonna of Loreto (c. 1605–6) in the Church of S. Agostino’, in Altarpieces and Their Viewers in the Churches of Rome from Caravaggio to Guido Reni (Aldershot, 2008), p. 107.

  40. The Life of Teresa of Jesus: The Autobiography of St Teresa of Avila, E. Allison Peers (trs.) (New York, 2004), Chapter 29.

  41. Quoted in Radleigh Addington, The Idea of the Oratory (London, 1966), p. 3.

  42. This is a confident assertion based on comparisons with known portraits of Caravaggio, but not a documented fact.

  43. For the correspondence between Paravicino and Gualdo, see G. Cozzi, ‘Intorno al Cardinale Ottavio Paravicino, a Monsignor Paolo Gualdo e a Michelangelo da Caravaggio’, Rivista storica italiana, vol. 73 (1961), pp. 36–68. I am indebted to Opher Mansour, who allowed me to see his translations of, and commentaries on, these letters, in his unpublished doctoral thesis submitted to the Courtauld Institute: ‘Art, Offensive Images: Censure and Censorship in Rome under Clement VIII 1592–1605’ (London, 2003).

  44. It is often said that there is a hidden self-portrait reflected in the carafe – see, for example, Langdon, Caravaggio: A Life, p. 151. I have inspected the painting under high magnification and there is no such self-portrait in it.

  45. See Helen Langdon, The Lives of Caravaggio, p. 43.

  46. See n. 41 above.

  47. See Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, vol. 1, p. 629.

  48. See Helen Langdon, The Lives of Caravaggio, p. 93.

  49. He did so, perhaps, because there was an established connection between that particular artistic style and alchemy. See my comments on Francesco de’ Medici’s studiolo, on p. 159 above.

  50. Again, see n. 41 above. The resemblance to Ottavio Leoni’s portrait of Caravaggio is, in my opinion, incontrovertible in the Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto. The identification with Francis is a little less certain but I am still confident that the saint is a self-portrait.

  51. See Walter Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, p. 260.

  52. Sandro Corradini discovered the case. With Maurizio Marini, he subsequently published the transcripts in full, together with a useful interpretative essay. See Sandro Corradini and Maurizio Marini, ‘The Earliest Account of Caravaggio in Rome’, Burlington Magazine, vol. 40, no. 1,138 (Jan. 1998), pp. 25–8.

  53. The building still stands in Rome today. It is still a barber’s shop!

  54. See Helen Langdon, The Lives of Caravaggio, p. 92.

  55. See Fiora Bellini, ‘Tre documenti inediti per Michelangelo da Caravaggio’, Prospettiva, no. 65 (Jan. 1992), pp. 70–71.

  56. See Walter Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, pp. 263–5.

  57. See Francesco Susinno, Le vite de’ pittori messinesi e di altri che fiorirono in Messina, V. Martinelli (ed.) (Florence, 1960), p. 117.

  58. See Rudolf and Margot Wittkower, Born Under Saturn (New York, 1963), p. 198. Orazio Gentileschi eventually prospered in France and Genoa in the 1620s. He was called to London in 1626 to become a painter at the court of King Charles I, who rewarded him with a generous stipend.

  59. See G. P. Caffarelli, ‘Famiglie romane’, Biblioteca Angelica MS 1638, cc. 88r–v; cited (reliably) in Riccardo Bassani and Fiora Bellini, Caravaggio assassino (Rome, 1994), p. 13, n. 20.

  60. ASR, Tribunale criminale del Senatore (TCS), reg. 1438, testimony of Onorio Longhi, 4 May 1595, cc. 20v–22v.

  61. Ibid.

  62. Ibid., reg. 444, testimony of Margherita Fannella, 4 May 1595.

  63. Cited in Sandro Corradini, Materiali per un processo (Rome, 1993), document 15, 25–7 Oct., deposition by Stefano Longhi and others.

  64. Ibid.

  65. See Rudolf and Margot Wittkower, Born Under Saturn, p. 196.

  66. See L. Pascoli, Vite de’ pittori, scultori ed architetti moderni (Rome, 1730), vol. 2, pp. 512–13.

  67. See ASR, TCS, reg. 1438, testimony of Onorio Longhi, 4 May 1595, cc. 20v–22v.

  68. See Christopher Breward, ‘Fashioning the Modern Self: Clothing, Cavaliers and Identity in Van Dyck’s London’, in Van Dyck and Britain, Karen Hearn (ed.) (London, 2009), pp. 34–5.

  69. See Tommaso Garzoni, La piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo (Rome, 1996), pp. 1,263–83, for the following quotations.

  70. ASR, Tribunale del governatore (TCG), reg. 483, witness statement of Anna Bianchini, 22 Apr. 1594, c. 144v; cited (reliably) in Riccardo Bassani and Fiora Bellini, Caravaggio assassino, p. 74, n. 5.

  71. ASR, Archivio Sforza Cesarini, s. xii, b. 1b, filza 1, interrogationes et testes 1596–7, cc. n.n; cited (reliably) in Riccardo Bassani and Fiora Bellini, Caravaggio assassino, p. 53, n. 5.

  72. Inventories show that she owned a painting of the Magdalen repenting by Caravaggio. The banker Ottavio Costa also owned a version of the same subject. Scholarly opinion is divided about who originally owned the Detroit painting but the balance of evidence currently available favours Olimpia Aldobrandini.

  73. See Gregory Martin, Roma sancta, George Bruner Parks (ed.) (Rome, 1969), p. 143.

  74. For Ranuccio T
omassoni, see Riccardo Bassani and Fiora Bellini, Caravaggio assassino, pp. 55–73.

  75. For all the following testimonies see Sandro Corradini, Materiali per un processo, document 17.

  76. Such figures appear with great frequency in northern European genre painting, especially Dutch art. Her tough, harsh face was probably modelled on a male Roman portrait bust.

  77. See Carlo Cesare Malvasia, Le vite de’ pittori bolognese, edition of 1678 (Bologna, 1841), vol. 1, p. 344.

  78. His methods might be described as a kind of empirical Tintorettism, in the sense that they are the techniques a painter might evolve if he wanted to emulate Tintoretto but had never been trained in Tintoretto’s actual methods – which were rather different, and certainly involved drawing.

  79. See Walter Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, p. 264.

  80. See Helen Langdon, The Lives of Caravaggio, p. 64. The idea that Caravaggio also used some kind of lens or camera obscura is a red herring. Caravaggio had plenty of enemies who would have no doubt taken pleasure in exposing him as a cheat, but no such device is mentioned by any of the early writers. Nor does anything like it appear in the only known inventory of his possessions.

  81. Ibid., p. 33.

  PART FOUR: ROME, 1599–1606

  1. The document is reprinted and translated in Walter Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, p. 297.

  2. See Herwarth Röttgen, Il Caravaggio: ricerche e interpretazioni (Rome, 1974), pp. 20–21; the translation is from John T. Spike, Caravaggio. The contract in question is the one signed by Giuseppe Cesari on 27 May 1591. As Cesari’s successor, it seems highly probable that Caravaggio would have been made aware of Contarelli’s wishes.

  3. Quoted in Walter Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, p. 265.

  4. See Helen Langdon, The Lives of Caravaggio, p. 69.

  5. See for example Catherine Puglisi, Caravaggio (London, 1998), pp. 157–60.

  6. See G. Urbani, ‘Il restauro delle tele del Caravaggio in S. Luigi dei Francesi’, Bollettino dell’Istituto Centrale del Restauro, vol. 17 (1966).

  7. See Franca Trinchieri Camiz, ‘Death and Rebirth in Caravaggio’s Martyrdom of St Matthew’, Artibus et Historiae, vol. 11, no. 22 (1990), pp. 89–105.

  8. See E. Cecilia Voelker, Charles Borromeo’s ‘Instructiones fabricae et supellectilis ecclesiasticae’, translation with commentary, dissertation, Syracuse University, 1977, pp. 250–51.

  9. See Anti-Nicene Christian Library, Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to AD 325. Volume 9: The Writings of Tertullian, I, 25. Cited in ‘Death and Rebirth in Caravaggio’s Martyrdom of St Matthew’.

  10. Titian’s painting is lost, destroyed by fire, but its design can still be studied from prints.

  11. See Walter Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, p. 300.

  12. See, in particular, his thunderously inept contributions to the fresco cycle begun by Giorgio Vasari in the dome of Florence cathedral.

  13. See Helen Langdon, The Lives of Caravaggio, p. 45. The translation here gives ‘the style of Giorgione’, which I have changed to ‘idea’ because the Italian word Baglione used was pensiero.

  14. See Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, vol. 1, p. 641.

  15. San Luigi dei Francesi was open to such innovations from outside. When Caravaggio accepted his commission, it was already one of the few churches in Rome to have a great Venetian canvas – by Jacopo Bassano – above its high altar.

  16. See Helen Langdon, Caravaggio: A Life, p. 75.

  17. See Sandro Corradini, Materiali per un processo, document 21, 7 Feb. 1601.

  18. See Walter Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, pp. 269–70.

  19. All the material from the investigation of Onorio Longhi in Oct. 1600, discussed below, is from Sandro Corradini, Materiali per un processo, document 15.

  20. See above, p. 74.

  21. Ibid., document 16, 20 Jan., deposition by Stefano Longhi and others.

  22. Ibid., document 18.

  23. Cited in John T. Spike, Caravaggio, in his CD-ROM catalogue entries for The Conversion of St Paul and The Crucifixion of St Peter; and Walter Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, pp. 302–3.

  24. See Denis Mahon, ‘Egregius in Urbe Pictor: Caravaggio Revisited’, Burlington Magazine, vol. 93, no. 580 (July 1951), p. 226.

  25. Caravaggio was familiar with the place too. He had convalesced in the Hospital of Santa Maria Consolazione in 1592–3, after being kicked by a horse.

  26. Sixtus V; see Helen Langdon, Caravaggio: A Life, p. 181.

  27. Quoted in John T. Spike, Caravaggio, p. 106.

  28. See Helen Langdon, The Lives of Caravaggio, p. 88, where Bellori says that ‘Caravaggio did not use cinnabar reds or azure blues in his figures; and if he occasionally did use them, he toned them down, saying they were poisonous colours.’

  29. See Fiora Bellini, ‘Tre documenti per Michelangelo da Caravaggio’, pp. 70–71.

  30. See Helen Langdon, The Lives of Caravaggio, p. 91.

  31. See Charles Scribner III, ‘In Alia Effigie: Caravaggio’s London Supper at Emmaus’, Art Bulletin, vol. 59, no. 3 (Sept. 1977), pp. 375–82, for an illuminating account of the youthful Christ and his theological significance.

  32. The author’s name was Gaspare Celio, whose book was published in Naples in 1638. He described the picture as ‘a Pastor Friso, in oil, by Michelangelo da Caravaggio’. See the entry in John T. Spike, Caravaggio, CD-ROM catalogue entry no. 29.

  33. See Conrad Rudolph and Steven F. Ostrow, ‘Isaac Laughing: Caravaggio, Non-Traditional Imagery and Traditional Identification’, Art History, vol. 24, no. 5 (Nov. 2001), pp. 646–81. The article advances the theory that the painter meant to depict Isaac instead of St John. It also contains a very good summary of the hard documentary evidence that disproves its own argument.

  34. ‘Un quadro di San Gio: Battista col suo Agnello di mano del Caravaggio’, cited in ibid., p. 649.

  35. He described it as ‘di San Giovanni Battista del Caravaggio’; cited in ibid.

  36. See Helen Langdon, The Lives of Caravaggio, p. 72.

  37. See Sergio Benedetti, ‘Caravaggio’s Taking of Christ: A Masterpiece Rediscovered’, Burlington Magazine, vol. 135, no. 1,088 (Nov. 1993), p. 740.

  38. See Niccolò Lorini del Monte, Elogii delle piu principali S. Donne del sagro calendario, e martirologio romano (Florence, 1617), p. 316. My attention was called to this passage by Pamela M. Jones’s enlightening study of the pauperist context of Caravaggio’s Rome in her book Altarpieces and Their Viewers in the Churches of Rome from Caravaggio to Guido Reni; see pp. 75ff. in particular.

  39. Cointrel’s nephew and heir, François, took possession of Cobaert’s dull and stolid sculpture, eventually having it completed by another artist and placed in a chapel in SS Trinità dei Pellegrini, where he himself would eventually be buried.

  40. See Irving Lavin, ‘Divine Inspiration in Caravaggio’s Two St Matthews’, Art Bulletin, vol. 56, no. 1 (Mar. 1974), pp. 59–81.

  41. See Helen Langdon, The Lives of Caravaggio, p. 45 for Baglione’s remark, p. 66 for Bellori’s.

  42. Bellori’s bald statement that the Doubting Thomas was painted for ‘the Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani’ is supported by most of the available evidence. Giustiniani certainly owned the picture by 1606, because in the summer of that year he wrote a letter comparing his own, original Doubting Thomas by Caravaggio to a copy in Genoa. Baglione asserted that the Doubting Thomas was painted for Ciriaco Mattei, but this is probably a rare slip of the pen on his part. He may have confused the picture with The Betrayal of Christ, which certainly was painted for Ciriaco Mattei and which, oddly, Baglione does not mention at all. In summary, there is a remote possibility that the Doubting Thomas was painted for Ciriaco Mattei, then later acquired by Vincenzo Giustiniani. But the balance of probability favours a direct commission from Giustiniani himself. For a good analysis of the arguments and a precis of the relevant documents, see John T. Spike, Caravaggio, CD-ROM catalogue entry
for Doubting Thomas.

  43. See Walter Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, p. 264.

  44. Inventory of 9 Feb. 1638; see John T. Spike, Caravaggio, CD-ROM catalogue entry for Omnia vincit amor.

  45. The resemblance to Michelangelo’s Victory was first noted by Walter Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, p. 93.

  46. See Joachim von Sandrart, L’Accademia Todesca della archittetura, scultura e pittura … (Nuremberg, 1675). Quoted by Robert Enggass, ‘L’Amore Giustiniani del Caravaggio’, Palatino, vol. 11 (1967), pp. 13–19. This translation is from John T. Spike, Caravaggio.

  47. The idea is advanced by Robert Enggass in the article cited in the previous note above. If this hypothesis is to be believed, Cupid does not trample the arts and sciences underfoot, but inspires them to flourish in the Giustiniani household. Such an interpretation is, however, flatly contradicted by the Giustiniani inventory of 1638, describing ‘Cupid disparaging the world’. It is also at odds with the purely visual evidence of the painting. In particular, the discarded shell of an empty suit of armour cannot possibly have been intended by the painter as a compliment to the military prowess of his patron. Nor can Caravaggio’s impishly provocative, full-frontally nude Cupid be plausibly transmuted into a Neoplatonic emblem of the Earthly Love that sparks man to Divine Creativity.

  48. For an earlier conversation inspired by a painting of Cupid between the Venetian collector Gabriel Vendramin and the connoisseur Anton Francesco Doni, see Catherine Whistler, ‘Titian’s Triumph of Love’, Burlington Magazine, vol. 151, no. 1,277 (Aug. 2009), n. 19, in which the author cites Doni’s I marmi (Venice, 1552), vol. 3, fols. 40–41: ‘e fra l’altro mi mostrò un leone con un Cupido sopra. E qui discorremo molto della bella invenzione, e lodassi ultimamente in questo, che l’amore doma ogni gran ferocità e terribilità à persone.’

  49. The Courtauld Galleries in London contain a particularly good example of two such chests in their original condition. As well as being embellished with complex narrative paintings about love, drawn from classical mythology, they are decorated with split pomegranates spilling their seeds, a kind of symbolic prayer for fertile married union.