The complete paintings of Caravaggio

118 Pages·1967·18.83 MB·English

by  Michael Kitson

CLASSICS OF THE WORLD'S GREAT ART
The Complete Paintings of
Caravaggio
ABRAMS
Michael Kitson
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The complete paintings of
Caravaggio
Michael Kitson
Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers New York
BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY
Classics of the
World's Great Art
Editor
Paolo Lecaldano
International Advisory Board
Gian Albertodell' Acqua
Andre Chastel
Douglas Cooper
Lorenz Eitner
Enrique Lafuente Ferrari
Bruno Molajoli
Carlo L. Ragghianti
Xavier de Salas
David Talbot Rice
Jacques Thuillier
Rudolf Wittkower
This series of books is
published in Italy by Rizzoli
Editore. in France by
Flammarion, in the United
Kingdom by Weidenfe/d and
Nicolson. in the United States
by Harry N. Abrams. Inc.,
in Spain by Editorial Noguer,
and in Switzerland by
Kunstkreis
Library of Congress Catalog
Card No. 69-16899
©
Copyright in Italy by
Rizzoli Editore, 1967
Printed and bound in Italy
This book depends for its choice 01
illustrations and for much of its docu-
mentary material on the Italian edition
by Angela Ottino della Chiesa. The
analyses, attributions and chronology
of the works, however, are those of the
present author.
Table of contents
Introduction 5
An outline of the artist's critical history 10
Note on Caravaggism 14
The paintings in colour 16
Bibliography 81
Outline Biography 82
Catalogue of Works 85
Indexes Subjects 112
Titles 112
Locations 112
Photographic sources Colour plates Aschien, Milan Emmer, Milan Meyer,
; ;
Vienna National Gallery, London Nimatallah, Milan
; , ;
Scala, Florence.
Black and white illustrations Alinari, Florence Archivio
: ;
Rizzoli, Milan Fogg Museum of Art, Cambridge, Mass
, ;
Kunsthistonsches Museum, Vienna Istituto Centraledi
;
Restauro, Rome Soprintendenza alle Gallene, Florence
; ;
Staatliche Museen, Berlin.

Introduction
The name of Caravaggio has passed down the (perhaps drawing on other, unrecorded statements
centuries as that of an enfant terrible, a prophet of by Caravaggio), reporting him as holding that all
realism and the creator of an aesthetic revolution. painting was worthless unless it was closely copied
He has been alternately villain and hero, sometimes from nature. They alleged that he worked directly
both at once. To his contemporaries he was a on the canvas without making preparatory drawings,
phenomenon, whom they feared, admired and did that he painted in a shuttered studio by the light
not quite understand. To the next generation he of a single lantern suspended from the ceiling (in
was a gifted painter but a dangerous influence order to produce the dark shadows penetrated by
who had undermined the established laws of art. shafts of light that characterise his work and that in
The eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries his opinion 'it required as much skill to paint a good
largely lost interest in him. To Ruskin he was the picture of flowers as one of figures.' Later in the
'black slave' of painting. In our own time, however, century it was added that he despised the art of
his reputation has risen higher than ever before. the past.
He has been called the first modern painter; he has No doubt some ofthese reports were over simplified
been set up as the original anti-academic and anti- or exaggerated. (That Caravaggio despised the art
idealist artist, the arch-rebel who first bravely of the past is unlikely since, during the lawsuit
sacrificed beauty for the sake of truth. mentioned above, he praised contemporary artists
Our age likes rebels, so long as they are safely who were devoted to the past, although his own use
dead. Yet there is a danger that Caravaggio's real of it was different from and less reverential than
quality as an artist may get lost between, on the theirs.) Still, even if we assume that much of what
one hand, the romance attaching to his name and, was said about Caravaggio was true, we are still
on the other, the minute speculations that have left with a one-sided account of his art. The reports
been heaped by scholars, often with little or no suggest that his aim was one of uncompromising
evidence, round the attribution and exact dating realism, and it is true that realism is an important
ofhis works. Caravaggio's is a compelling personality component of his style; textures, surface details
and his personality is relevant to his art. To the and psychological reactions are depicted with a
scholar his work does present baffling problems. rigorous clarity not seen in painting before. At the
But the key questions are: what did Caravaggio same time there is much in his work that cannot be
succeed in achieving as a painter? Why is he one explained as realistic and to which neither Caravaggio
of the handful of great Italian painters of the himself nor his early critics left any real clue.
seventeenth century? What remains unexplained is the role of imagina-
The second question is of a type that is never tion in Caravaggio's art. He was not a Chardin or
easy to answer. The first is harder to answer than Cezanne, able to find in categories of painting, such
might be suspected, if only because Caravaggio as still life, portraiture and landscape, in which the
himself left a conspicuous but incomplete clue to it. artist could work with the motive continuously in
In evidence given during an action against him for front of him, the stimulus necessary to express his
libel in 1603 he asserted: 'a good artist is one who vision; on the contrary. While it is true that he was
knows how to paint well and how to imitate natural crucially involved with still life at an early stage of
objects well.' Contemporary critics amplified this his career, he was an indifferent portrait painter and
5
INTRODUCTION
barely touched landscape even as a background to flowers, carafes or musical instruments, seem to have
his figure compositions. Essentially he was an artist been developed out of the paintings of still lives and
in the great tradition of Italian figure painting. He heads which hack artists sold cheaply in the Roman
painted altarpieces and easel pictures, the latter with streets, and it was with such artists that Caravaggio
both religious and secular subjects, as his Renaissance first associated in Rome. Yet the earliest examples
predecessors had done (although he did not attempt of such works that we know (PI. i and 1-4) already
frescoes) This was in keeping with the tastes and the show remarkable individuality. They are technically
.
conditions of patronage of his time. To create such very skilled in some parts - the still life; and very
works it was necessary to be able to reconstruct long amateurish in other parts - the anatomy ofthe figure.
past or legendary events. The painter had to conceive At the same time they display complete personal
compositions which could not be copied from groups assurance. The influences Caravaggio drew upon,
of models posed in the studio (X-rays show that chiefly in north Italian painting, have been so
Caravaggio had trouble with composition and adroitly concealed that it is impossible to specify
frequently changed his mind on the canvas). Such exactly which artists he used.
paintings, if they were to succeed, had to stir the From the start he exhibits a limpid manner, a
emotions of the spectator. In short, a leap from the seeming candour. The figures and objects in his
imitation of nature into the realms of imagination small early canvases are seen against warm neutral
and invention was necessary. No doubt Caravaggio grounds under a diffused, often silvery light. The
would not have denied any of this. Yet he appears poses are precisely held yet tentative, the outlines
to have had no articulate theory or settled procedure are delicate and economical, the forms unaccentuated
concerning these matters and positively to have and soft, the colours luminous and clear. The
rejected past traditions ofposing and composition - in painting is smooth, compact and terse without any
which he was particularly original. Only with regard display of expressive 'handling', (this is also true of
to lighting (another very original feature) do the most of Caravaggio's later work). The intense whites
early critics have much to say, although they do not and velvety blacks are positive colours, not neutral
analyse it and only one of them, Giulio Mancini, light and shade. Bloom lies on the fruit, the wood-
noticed that it was not realistic. grain is visible on the surface of a table or lute, the
We
are thus faced at the outset with a paradox; music on the sheets is legible. Following upon more
We
not the last in discussing Caravaggio. are well than a century of sophisticated representation in
informed about what is fundamental but also in a Italian painting, upon a tradition in which all the
sense peripheral to his art - his realistic treatment resources of perspective, foreshortening and anatomi-
ofaccessories and details. But regarding the questions cal knowledge had been exploited, in which subjects
that matter when we look at his paintings - how and compositions had become ever more complex,
Caravaggio dealt with action, composition and this is elemental painting. Yet, though simple, these
lighting and what emotional content his work is early works of Caravaggio are not naive in the way
meant to convey - we are left without aid from that primitive paintings are naive. Without wishing
contemporary sources. To resolve these questions we to load them with too much significance, we may
have only his paintings on which to rely; perhaps detect in them a new combination of contrasting
even Caravaggio himself, if one asked him, would qualities. In both manner and matter they are at
have been unable to give a clear answer. once innocent and knowing, direct and secretive,
It is probably true, though some modern authori- tentative and poised. In mood they have something
ties have denied it, that Caravaggio was trained as a ofthe melancholic preciosity oflate sixteenth-century
still-life painter. If true, this is significant, for still life Italian madrigals or Elizabethan love lyrics. Stylisti-
is an art in which it is possible for the painter to cally they retain strong traces ofMannerism, although
execute each brushstroke with the object placed in this is partly disguised by their correspondingly
front of him, and Caravaggio's later stress on the Mannerist subject matter, so that we read their style
importance ofworking from nature and his emphasis as a function, rather than as a quality in itself.
on the difficulty of painting flowers may have been It has been said that some or even almost all of
derived from his training in Lombardy. His early these figures are idealized portraits of the painter.
works, mainly half-length figures of boys with fruit, This is clearly wrong since the earliest of them was
INTRODUCTION
executed when Caravaggio was nineteen or twenty, adoption of very dark shadows surrounding and
whereas the boys represented are barely adolescent partly cutting into forms illuminated by a harsh
and we know what Caravaggio looked like - swarthy, beam of light. Each of these interests, though new
heavy-featured and with a beard (PI. xxxi and 40) for Caravaggio, was a traditional preoccupation of
- at 26. Yet it is not hard to see how the mistake Italian artists. It will be convenient to treat each in
arose. The early paintings have the silvered, slightly turn, showing how he developed them during his
withdrawn and atmospheric look of images seen in career and exploited them in profoundly original
a seventeenth-century mirror, while the expressions ways.
in the eyes have more than a hint of Narcissism. Action in his mature and late periods Caravaggio
:
It is perhaps true, as Longhi has suggested, that chose dramatic, often violent, events. Renaissance
Caravaggio used a mirror, sometimes tilted (PI. xm), artists had done something similar. They had intro-
to aid his invention, as if to 'try out' reality in a duced, as a standard feature ofthe painter's repertory,
readymade rectangular frame; but this is not to say the depiction of a moment of revelation or decision
that he habitually depicted his own features. The in human affairs, or the sudden intervention of the
self-regarding gaze of the figures also has a non- supernatural, with spectators looking on in wonder
autobiographical explanation. These are surely eroti- or fear. What Caravaggio did was to intensify and
cally appealing boys painted by an artist of homo- sharpen these crises. He placed them in spare but
sexual inclinations for patrons of similar tastes. His real settings, stripped them of nobility and decorative
last and most extravagant work in this vein — attractiveness and forced them upon the observer's
Victorious Love (46), painted about 1602 - is blatantly attention by locating the figures in the front plane
designed with this in view. of the picture and closing off the background with a
It is curious and interesting that Caravaggio wall of darkness. The Calling ofSt Matthew (PL xxiv)
followed up this early series of boys, sometimes thinly takes place at a gamblers' table in the shadowed
disguised as Bacchus - less often he depicted girls courtyard of a Roman palace. St Peter is crucified
disguised as saints (Pis. xm, xv) - with two further (PI. xxxvij alone on a blackened hillside, uncom-
series of partly naked single figures in his middle and forted by visions of heaven even his executioners,
;
later years (he died when only 37). The first of these their faces hidden, are merely doing a job, indifferent
later series represents the young St John the Baptist to their victim's fate. David contemplates the severed
and runs from about 1598 to 1606. The second, head of Goliath (PI. xlvii) not in triumph but in
beginning about 1602-04 and ending in 1608, only disgust.
two years before the artist's death, represents St This last painting, like many others by Caravaggio,
Jerome writing with a skull beside him as a reminder is struck diagonally across by the highlight on a
of death. Adolescence, early manhood, old age: sword-blade. The sword seems to play an almost
there is a progressive increase in seriousness and a autobiographical role in Caravaggio's iconograph\.
change from the secular to the religious in these connecting his life and his art. He is recorded as
three groups. However, from 1598 onwards, single sometimes walking the streets with a page carrying
figures were only a sideline for Caravaggio; his main a drawn sword in front of him and he was often
tasks were now great altarpieces and other subject involved in fights, one of which (in 1606) ended in
paintings. a murder and his subsequent flight from Rome. In his
The transition from Caravaggio's early to his paintings the sword holds the eye, mesmerized, at the
mature style took place fairly rapidly, probably focus of the action. Now it is a duelling rapier, red-
about 1597-99, and thereafter his development tipped (PI. xv), now a scimitar (26), now a heavy
followed a more gradual evolution. The Sacrifice of executioner's blade (Pis. xxv, xlvii, lvi In the
.
Isaac (PI. x), Judith beheading Holofernes (26) and - most horrifying example - The Beheading ofJohn the
assuming it is by Caravaggio - Narcissus (PI. xn) Baptist (PI. lvi) - the two-handed weapon lies on the
typify this transitional phase. Three new interests ground while the observer's eye is focused on the
appear in these works for the first time in Caravaggio's knife drawn by the executioner to sever the head.
art: action, the expression of emotion, and the In Caravaggio's art there is much action but little
modelling of forms in relief, with which we may movement, as unfriendly seventeenth-century critics
associate the most obvious development of all - the pointed out. In his last paintings there is scarcely even
INTRODUCTION
an attempt at suggesting movement. Yet this The modelling of forms in relief: the doctrine that
limitation may be regarded nowadays as a merit, in it was the artist's duty to represent forms in three-
so far as it removes a distraction for the eye, a quality dimensional relief by means of shadows may also
potentially softening the harshness of the subject. have reached Caravaggio indirectly from Leonardo.
Caravaggio's poised stillness is strange and curiously Beginning with The Sacrifice of Isaac and Judith and
compelling. It is impossible to deduce the positions Holofernes, darkness rapidly closes in on Caravaggio's
of his figures before and after the event depicted. forms and, by The Calling and Martyrdom ofSt Matthew
In a technical sense this was an awkwardness and (Pis. xxiv-xxxiii) of 599-1600, the tenebroso manner
1
sprang from his lack of training in conventional for which he became famous had been fully developed.
drawing. As his critics would have put it, he was His use of shadows was much harsher and more
unable to translate an action or figure group into extreme than Leonardo's; nevertheless it may have
a conception. His imagination conjured up these originated in the same purpose, namely that of
things ready-made and placed them 'there' in front making the illuminated parts look as rounded as
of him. His compositions have no rhythms, only lines possible. However, it goes further than this. It
offeree. The contours of his figures are taut; along becomes an end in itself, not merely a means to
the frontier where light and shadow meet there is an end. Contrary to what some seventeenth-century
tension, as ifeach were trying to crowd out the other. critics (though not Mancini, who was more per-
A composition by Caravaggio is new because it has ceptive) implied, the effect is not 'true to nature'.
no formula to fall back upon. Because the action is It was said that Caravaggio painted in a shuttered
not released in movement, the effect is one of fierce room with a single light suspended from the ceiling.
concentration. Whether or not this is true, the result lacks the
The expression of emotion with this as with other half-shadows, reflected lights and sensation of dimly
:
traditional preoccupations which Caravaggio treated perceived space that an actual lantern would create,
in new ways, he may have remembered a saying, and in Rembrandt's art does create. In Caravaggio's
perhaps still current in Milan when he was a boy paintings the light, often entering from one side,
and recently revived there by the critic, Lomazzo, of isolates parts of the forms in livid brilliance in an
the greatest artist to work for long in that city, almost arbitrary fashion. Other parts are lost in the
Leonardo da Vinci 'that figure is most admirable shadow that fills the background, although these
:
which best expresses the passions of the mind.' parts are not quite united with it, as on close inspec-
Caravaggio's first attempts at violent expression and tion their edges can just be seen. This shadow is
gesture occur in the early Boy bitten by a Lizard (4) thick, impenetrable, airless; 'absence, darkness,
and The Card-Sharpers (15) but it was only from the death; things which are not' (to quote John Donne's
late 590s onwards that the rendering of pain, Nocturnal upon S. Lucies day) it is space-denying, not
1 ;
disgust, wonder, horror, grief and fear became a space-creating. By the way it bites into the illuminated
constant feature of his art. In their more exaggerated forms it helps to clarify the composition. In the late
forms (Pis. x, xix) these expressions seem to us works, from The Madonna of the Serpent (59) of 1605
overdone but the intensity with which they are onwards, the darkness occupies an increasing area
painted saves them from caricature. Action in of the picture. In The Burial of St Lucy and The
Caravaggio is reinforced by the urgency of human Raising of Lazarus (87, 88) it occupies the whole
reaction. Hands point and gesticulate, faces peer upper half of the canvas, leaving the figures as if at
closely at what is going on, no-one in Caravaggio's the bottom of a well. (Curiously, in a few of these
paintings remains stoically unmoved. The most works, especially the Messina Adoration of the Shep-
poignant gestures are hands covering faces in grief herds, 89, Caravaggio begins to create depth once
(Pis. xxxix, lvi, lix). In his latest works Caravaggio more and to provide a defined, though simple
seems to revert to a method of rendering emotion setting, as if he were already pointing the way
older than Leonardo's, and The Beheading ofJohn the towards the Caravaggism of his followers.)
Baptist, Tlie Burial ofSt Lucy (PI. lix) and The Raising This darkness, and the lit, fragmented forms to
ofLazarus (PI. lx) remind us - surely it can only be which it acts as a foil, is far too positive to be a
coincidence? - of the late, expressionist bronze merely realistic device. Its effect is highly dramatic.
reliefs of Donatello. It creates mood. It forces attention on the few forms
8