A French cardinal, Matthieu Cointerel (1519-1585), known to Italians as Contarelli, bought a chapel in the church of the French community in Rome (San Luigi dei Francesi, ‘Saint Louis of the French’) in order to dedicate it to his patron saint: Matthew. Cointerel was named cardinal by Gregory XIII in 1583, and when he died two years later he left an endowment for the completion of the chapel. At first it was thought to decorate it with frescoes, later Jacob Cornelisz Cobaert was commissioned to create a group of sculptures that would have been placed on the main altar. In 1591, the Cavaliere d’Arpino (who had not yet achieved his title, one of Caravaggio’s patrons, and whom we met in the previous essay), was set to paint the chapel’s frescoes and executed only those in the vaults. For several years, as a consequence of succession problems, the works were interrupted.
Valentin de Boulogne, one of the art dealers in Rome and a frequent visitor to the Cavaliere d’Arpino workshop, took a deep interest in the work of Caravaggio, and over the years after learning first-hand of his artistic qualities, he got him a prestigious commission for one of the most fashionable churches in Rome at the time, San Luigi dei Francesi. Four centuries have already passed, and these magnificent paintings for San Luigi dei Francesi remain exactly in the same place where they were hung in the presence of Caravaggio and still arouse the admiration of visitors and pilgrims to the church today.
When Caravaggio began to paint for this commission at the end of 1597, he didn’t know that he would end up doing four canvases. The third will be rejected due to the way in which he represented the characters: it was a version of Saint Matthew and the Angel, which ended up in the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum in Berlin and was later destroyed in 1945 during the Second World War. The painting was curious because of the strongly volumetric, almost tangible element that it represented. Saint Matthew looks almost illiterate, with the appearance of a peasant, bare legs and dirty feet: a stubborn, strong, bald man who doesn’t manage to draw a sign if an angel doesn’t come to his aid; this last, a boy of about 10 or 13 years wrapped in his wings and guiding the saint’s hand.
In the second version —which was hung in the chapel— the scene is very different: to begin with, the composition is vertical and not almost square as in the first case, there is no physical contact between the Evangelist and the Angel who inspires him. The Saint —who has won a halo— is now an intelligent and opportunistic old man who takes advantage of the presence of the angel, who appears to him from above, to transcribe his words. This time Matthew is standing with one knee on a stool, listening and writing what the Angel tells him on a table.
The other two large canvases were even more demanding, at once different and complementary to each other. The Calling of Saint Matthew is a marvelous interior painting that innovated in all orders. We are in a closed room with a blind, frontal window. An almost square composition in which, on the one hand, the upper third remains empty. We already know that the main theme is that of an irresistible “call”; what is apparent, however, is a table inside a tax office around which five characters, dressed in the style of the time, are crowded; thus, we witness a scene taken from contemporary Roman life. Christ enters from the right with an outstretched hand—not peremptory but sensitive—pointing to Saint Matthew. But Christ is not alone: he is accompanied by Saint Peter, who was possibly included to balance the right part of the composition. Everything is bold and “modern” in the painting: the abandonment of the sacred conception is replaced here by a representation that is not only contemporary but even vulgar; it is also the preponderant role of light: a yellowish ray that comes from an invisible source and makes faces, doublets, and sleeves shine. Not for this reason the scene lacks the drama that constitutes the irruption of a sacred universe in the enclosed space of a gloomy and almost smelly tax office. The whole inspires a quality that we would now call “suspense.”
By contrast, the Martyrdom of Saint Matthew proposes a violent action instead of a contained one. A superb study of the human nude, the x-rays taken on the canvas allowed us to verify a series of earlier versions (the pentimenti, of the Italians) that demonstrate how, despite the speed of the execution, Caravaggio was a perfectly conscious artist and that in each case he tried to find the optimal formula even without making preparatory drawings. Caravaggio changed his mind several times during the course of painting the Martyrdom. The first sketch (on which the final version has been repainted) featured a large male character with his back turned to the axis of the composition; the Saint was on his feet and the henchmen rushed at him with their knives drawn. The painting we see today is very different: the center is occupied by the large nude of a hit man who faces us in broad daylight. The Saint lies horizontal on some steps. A series of curved lines depart from the significant knot of bodies formed by the main characters, a true centrifugal whirlwind that is never monotonous due to the contrasting effects of light and shadow. An angel supported by a robust cloud erupts from above to bring —opportunely— the palm of martyrdom. The foreshortenings are violent and arrogant: there is an unforgettable boy with his mouth open in a scream, terrified, a naked man’s back in the lower right corner, a group of elegant gentlemen (including a self-portrait of the painter), everything bathed in an ultra-earthly clarity, golden on bituminous backgrounds. If the Calling appealed to silence, in the Martyrdom the clash of weapons seems to be heard, of the running feet, of the great body that collapses.
The most plausible is that these last works were executed between 1599 and 1601 or 1602. By then, Caravaggio had other religious commissions of great responsibility. These are the paintings for the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo: the Crucifixion of Saint Peter and the Conversion on the Way to Damascus (also known as the Conversion of Saint Paul). Once again, Caravaggio was to renew what had been done with dignity and certain frigidity in the 15th and 16th centuries. He offered us a very close view of the episodes, putting us almost “on top” of the protagonists and their companions. In the case of the Crucifixion, we see an old man with a white beard with his hands and feet already nailed to the cross and represented at the very moment when three rough men with shaggy hair prepare to raise the cross to plant it inverted on the ground. The scene has all the brutality of a real event that surprised us around a corner. Although everything is sublimated and is resolved in the beauty of a blue cloth, in the impeccable drawings of arms, hands, feet… Dirty, vulgar feet, the likes of which no Italian had ever dared to paint to date, much less to represent a saintly scene. The executioners, as well, smell bad, so strong are our impression of life in the contemplation of this painting. By contrast, the white head of the Saint is imposed on us as a model of sensitivity, intelligence and sacredness.
The other painting is equally shocking, although in a different way: the audacity in this case is due, above all, to the presentation. The Conversion on the Way to Damascus is thus reduced to the portrait of a Gentile who has fallen to the ground with open arms and, more than anything, to the “portrait” of a magnificent horse, a bay horse spotted with white, which a groom holds by the reins. A prelate from the church of Santa Maria del Popolo seems to have asked Caravaggio in exasperation when he delivered the painting: “Why did you put the horse in the middle and Saint Paul on the ground!” To which the artist replied: “Because.” The prelate asked again: “Is the horse God?” Caravaggio replied: “No, but he is standing in the light of God.” In this painting, we cannot hear the celestial voice, but a very vivid light is almost its equivalent. This immediacy —both in time and space— pleased Caravaggio, an absolute master in his genre, and still disturbs us today. It will be necessary to imagine what could happen with the normal educated public of the time, accustomed to a respect that turned into boredom in the face of stereotyped conventions.
Because it is perhaps the moment for us to consider the great dilemma of that historical moment: on the one hand, the Bolognese Carracci; on the other, his rival Caravaggio. The painters of Bologna were to “systematize” the artistic achievements of the great Renaissance artists of the 1500’s, they were the true inventors of the new “classicism” and those who best accommodated themselves to the artistic dictates stipulated by the Council of Trent. Against that decorative art —in the best meaning of the term— that imposed the “ideal landscape” and figuration without compromise, a madman and violent like Caravaggio rose to his full stature. Without intending to, he would be one of the inventors of pictorial “baroque”, the antithesis of the innate classicism of Bologna. It seems incredible —and that is what makes Italy incomparable— but these two tendencies were contemporary, they were opposed, they had their faithful and their exalted, and what is even stranger: in an obscure way they complemented each other. If the entire 17th century was impressed by the work of the Carracci, there is no doubt to recognize that the greatest painters of the time —with the exception of Poussin and Vermeer— emerged in one way or another from the example of Caravaggio: Velázquez and Zurbarán in Spain; Rubens and Rembrandt in Northern Europe, Artemisia Gentileschi in Italy itself… Caravaggio was the “purge” of Mannerism, just as the Bolognese artists constituted the overcoming of it within coldness and composure.
Let’s go back to Caravaggio’s life and artworks. We have left the painter at the beginning of the 17th century, after the great commissions for San Luigi dei Francesi and Santa Maria del Popolo. A Flemish treatise writer, Karel van Mander, in his monumental Book of Painters (1604), when speaking of Caravaggio, described his disorderly conduct and confessed that, ‘despite his talent, he is a person with whom it is difficult to befriend’. Around 1604-1606 scholars place the painting of the Madonna of Loreto (Chiesa diSant’Agostino). In 1604 the great canvas of the Entombment of Christ was placed in the church of Santa Maria in Vallicella (today hangs in the Vatican Museums). However, not a year goes by that doesn’t bring up a shady affair or a serious encounter of Caravaggio with the police.
In 1605 he served a prison sentence. After coming out of prison, he wounded a man, escaped from Rome and took refuge in Genoa. He later returned and reconciled with his victim. That life of violence didn’t prevent him from continuing to paint. Around 1604 he began the Death of the Virgin (Louvre) the largest altar painted by Caravaggio, which will be completed in 1606. The final destination of the painting was the Discalced Carmelite nuns of Santa Maria della Scala. As the setting for the painting, Caravaggio chose a rented room, divided by the large red curtains that hang from the wooden beams of the ceiling and bared of any furniture except a simple bed, a chair and a basin. The Carmelites, as was to be expected, rejected the painting. There were rumors that the artist chose a prostitute as a model; on the other hand, the body of the Virgin suggested a disease and the bowl with vinegar in the foreground, ready to cleanse the body as it used to be done with ordinary people, was clearly seen as an offense against sacred and traditional iconography of the scene and of the Marian doctrines of the church. However, the young Rubens (an admirer of the artistic qualities of Caravaggio) during one of his trips bought it for his Italian patron, the Duke of Mantua. Cardinal Borghese acquired some other paintings with which Caravaggio has had difficulties: for example, the so-called Madonna di Palafrenieri (Galleria Borghese) which was to have gone to the Vatican, as well as the Saint Jerome and the David (both at the Galleria Borghese).
The protection of Prince Colonna brought Caravaggio several commissions, one of which would be key to his position in the high artistic spheres of the time. Cardinal Scipione Borghese persuaded his uncle, Pope Paul V, that despite his reputation, Caravaggio should be commissioned a painting of the Madonna for St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. Let us understand that painting for the largest church in Christendom was the dream of every artist in Rome. The commission consisted of a painting for the altar of the Palafrenieri (the altar of the Archconfraternity of the Papal Grooms), whom Paul V held in high esteem. The Cardinals reluctantly agreed and Caravaggio received this commission and, as was his custom, delivered the canvas in a matter of days. The result was interpreted as a complete disaster by the Cardinals. It seems as if Caravaggio, when faced with these important, ambitious commissions, was impelled to execute the most brutal (and honest) interpretations that his genius created. Despite the fact that Caravaggio knew that the painting was linked to the symbol of the Immaculate Conception, the predominant tone in its canvas is totally plebeian. He represented Saint Anne as an old gypsy, the Virgin has her skirt rolled up as if she were a washerwoman, and Christ, no longer a baby, appears totally naked as on the day of his birth… An ordinary family that finds itself on the brink of a stable (of the Palafrenieri, the Ostlers), to chase a harmless snake… Caravaggio here, again, put everything at risk. With the rejection of the Madonna dei Palafrenieri, the doors of St. Peter’s and of any other official commission were closed to him. Scipione Borghese bought the painting for his personal collection, and to this day it hangs on the walls of the Galleria Borghese in Rome. This was the last painting executed by Caravaggio during his period in Rome.
That year of 1606 will be definitive in the life of the painter. Caravaggio returned to his nocturnal escapades, and soon found himself involved in a heated argument, but this time it ended up in murder. A court sergeant seemed to have questioned him in the middle of the night and as a consequence received a fatal blow to the head. Caravaggio went to prison, where he was interrogated and fiercely tortured. His friends then helped him escape. Two guards were bribed with the complicity of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, and Caravaggio was able to get out of jail, but now he was on the “wanted” list. Sometime later, on May 29, 1606, during a gambling night, Caravaggio accused his opponent of cheating. A fight then ensued and Caravaggio fatally wounded the other man with his sword, he died that same night. Caravaggio was also injured, but was able to escape. A pamphlet from May 31 issued by the city announced that Michelangelo Merisi, a painter from Caravaggio, was sentenced to death and ‘banished’, which meant that any member of the Court could carry out the sentence at any time without further ado. Terrified, Caravaggio looked for his protectors, but many were traveling or sick, others were already tired of his wanderings. Caravaggio fled Rome, at night and in disguise, but this time he took refuge in the house of Marzio Colonna, brother-in-law of the Marquis of Caravaggio, in what was the Paliano in Latium. In need of money, he painted a Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy for his protector (private collection) and a Supper at Emmaus (Pinacoteca di Brera) and with the proceeds from the sale he continued on his way to Naples.
While his influential friends went to Rome to obtain a pardon, Caravaggio continued painting tirelessly. He thus finished a Resurrection of Christ and a Saint Francis receiving the stigmata (both lost), the Seven Works of Mercy (Church of Pio Monte de la Misericordia) and a Flagellation of Christ (Museo di Capodimonte). Around the same time, the Madonna of the Rosary (Kunsthistorisches Museum) and a Judith Beheading Holofernes (Collection of J. Tomilson Hill) went on sale, all in Naples.
In 1608 there were traces of the presence of Caravaggio on the island of Malta, where he seemed to paint two portraits: one of the Master Alof de Wignacourt (Louvre) and the other of Fra Antonio Martelli (Palazzo Pitti). From that stay also came: a Sleeping Cupid (Palazzo Pitti), a Saint Jerome Writing and a great Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, both in the Oratory of St. John’s Co-Cathedral, in Valletta, Malta. All these works must have been elements of Caravaggio to be named Knight of the Order of Malta. But once he succeeded, news of his Roman trial arrived on the island: he was arrested, escaped and, in doing so, was excluded from the Order that had just admitted him. His destiny took him this time to Syracuse, where he was going to paint a Burial of Saint Lucy (church of Santa Lucia al Sepolcro). A little later — already in 1609 — we still find him in Sicily, but this time in Messina where he executed another large painting of the Raising of Lazarus (Museo Regionaledi Messina). Although he is moving away, it seems that even in Messina he feared the revenge of the Maltese: the next stage in his flight will be Palermo. With the fame that he already has as a painter, he immediately finds employment and it is there that he painted, for the Oratory of Saint Lawrence in Palermo, a Nativity which was stolen in 1969.
His restlessness is going to take him back to Naples, with such bad luck that he was attacked there, seriously wounded at the door of the German inn of Ceriglio. His case was so serious that rumors spread in Rome about his death. In reality, he spent the first months of 1610 recovering, while his friends in Rome, especially Cardinal Gonzaga, interceded for him. In July of that year he embarked on a small boat that took him to Porto Ercole, a Spanish garrison on the very border of the Papal States. Arrested by mistake, he missed his boat and persisted, recklessly, in staying all day on the beach under the relentless heat of that summer, still weak from his wounds. He was found seriously ill on the beach and transferred to the Porto Ercole hospital, where he died alone and abandoned on July 18, 1610, before reaching 37 years of a fruitful but stormy life. Without having heard of his death, the pardon from Rome had been awarded to him too late, a few days later, by Pope Paul V.