Caravaggio signed only one painting with the blood flowing from the cut throat of a condemned
man.
He has left us three self-portraits, one as a boy, pale and emaciated, eaten up by malaria.
One at the age of 30, as he witnesses a murder.
One in the last few years of his brief life as a scarred and decapitated giant.
From Milan to Rome, from Genoa to Naples, from Sicily to Malta, he frequented both the
halls of princely palaces and the prisons in an adventurous life that ended in drama.
But above all, in the two decades before and after the year 1600, he painted a series of
masterpieces that changed art history.
With Caravaggio, we are no longer spectators, but the eyewitnesses of action taking place
before our very eyes, action that involves us directly.
Milan 1571, this according to the most recent studies, is the time and place of the painter's
birth.
Despite the snake on the castle flags, the power of the Sforza Giutem has been broken.
After long battles, Spain prevails in the hands of Lombardy.
Milan becomes a colony of Charles V's empire and subsequently of his son, Philip II.
In the castle transformed into a severe barracks, the splendid court feasts organized by Leonardo
for Ludovico il Moro are a distant memory.
The bastions and the ramparts now seem to stand for military rule over the city.
Enclosed within the mighty circle of the Spanish walls, Milan is no longer a state capital,
but administered by a governor appointed in Madrid.
Caravaggio's real name was Michelangelo Merisi.
His father, Fermo Merisi, was responsible for administering the property of the Marquis
of Caravaggio, a town in the province of Bergamo.
And this explains the name that the painter was known by.
Several members of the Merisi family were priests and therefore involved in the influential
pastoral and religious activities of San Carlo Borromeo.
Remembering Sant'Ambrogio, Borromeo interprets the role of Archbishop of Milan both spiritually
and in terms of human energy.
Saint Carlo is deeply involved in the renewal of religious faith after the Council of Trent,
but is also politically active and opposed to Spain's governor.
The altar and pulpit of the cathedral, renovated according to the dictates of religious art
during the counter-reformation set out by Borromeo himself, are the moral and cultural
landmarks of the city.
Subsequently, in 1576, Saint Carlo Borromeo plays a distinguished role during the tragedy
of the plague.
This is a devastating scourge for Milan.
Tens of thousands of citizens die in one of the severest epidemics in history, and Caravaggio's
father is amongst them, leaving the young Michelangelo an orphan at the tender age of
five.
The plague emphasizes the severe moral tone of Milanese art and architecture in the late
Renaissance.
In the Sanctuary of St. Mary at San Celso, the young Caravaggio must have admired a work
by the artist Moretto of Brescia, depicting the fall of St. Paul, and dominated by a huge
piebald horse, with the saint lying on the ground alone and stupefied.
This painting, and in more general terms the whole production of the Brescia masters of
the mid-1500s, may help to explain the origins of Caravaggio's realism.
Caravaggio's training took place in the studio of a competent painter, Simone Peterzano.
Peterzano was involved in a large amount of decorative work on the churches of the late
Renaissance, and his narrative paintings were enlivened by bright colors originating from
the Veneto region.
Some of the most successful of these works are the frescoes in the choir of the Certosa
of Garignano, at the gates of Milan.
In all probability, Peterzano took the teenage apprentice Caravaggio to Venice with him,
to study and perfect his art during the 1580s.
However Milan itself was not lacking in important examples for a young painter's education.
In the Sanctuary of Santa Maria delle Grazie, a celebrated architectural monument, dating
from the time of the Sforza family, exhibited on one of the side altars, was one of the
greatest and most tragic of Tiziano's masterpieces, the Flagellation of Christ, which was taken
to the Louvre in Napoleonic times.
No other Renaissance painting bears a greater similarity to Caravaggio's religious scenes,
in its style, use of light, and sense of drama in human tragedy.
Caravaggio must have spent many days during his adolescence at the Dominican convent in
Santa Maria delle Grazie.
Apart from Tiziano's altar painting, the young artist also had the chance to study
Leonardo's Last Supper at length, and to use it as a tool beyond compare for the study
of emotions, expressions, sentiments, and movements of the soul.
Soon after his 18th birthday, around 1590, Caravaggio left Milan to go down to Rome.
He was never to return to his native city.
The Eternal City was experiencing a period of impressive building and urban development.
The Renovatio Urbis, set in motion by Pope Sisto V, required an army of sculptors, decorators,
and builders.
There were mighty works to be done, additions or renovations to ancient basilicas, the completion
of St. Peter's, the enormous effort of raising Egyptian obelisks in the main squares, a task
directed by Domenico Fontana, the architect from the canton Tiziano, who was a favorite
of Sisto V.
In his early years, Rome means famine rather than fame to Caravaggio.
The beginning is difficult, not to say off-putting, for the moment he lives far from the halls
and palaces.
His place is in the cheap taverns, surrounded by the ruins of ancient civilization and the
rubble of new building work in the narrow alleys of a lesser Rome.
Cognitious and violent by nature, he soon starts to get into trouble with the law.
Caravaggio is not inspired by the classical models that Rome offers by the dozen.
Instead, he observes the life of the streets and the taverns, and depicts them with a deep
sense of belonging.
This is a break with his times, and one which closes the Renaissance.
The card sharpers trick an ingenuous young lad from a good family.
The smiling gypsy girl reads the palm of an innocent young man, while at the same time
slipping the ring off his finger.
Four young lads of easy virtue, encountered in a back alley somewhere, start a concert.
A curly-haired lad spends his fair adolescence carrying sumptuous baskets of fruit.
A pallid, bloodless youth, perhaps Caravaggio himself when he had malaria.
A plump boy with garlands of vine and leaves, dressed up as Bacchus, swirls the wine in
a broad glass, giving Caravaggio the opportunity to show his remarkable talent for the depiction
of reality.
Finally, around 1596 here, the first version of the Sapa in Emmaus, now to be found in
London, with the sudden surprise of the disciples before the revelations of the Christ, who
is an explicitly Leonardo-esque figure.
The table is decorated with another amazing basket of fruit, accompanying the roast chicken.
This is where the gates of the princely collectors are flung open to Caravaggio.
The Doria Pamphili Gallery in Rome has kept the appearance of a sumptuous baroque gallery.
At the age of 25, having been noticed by Cardinal del Monte, Caravaggio leaves the shadows of
the back alleys and enters the opulent world of aristocratic dealers and collectors.
Educated cardinals and art critics wonder about the new style of the young painter from
Lombardy, who paints some of his most poetic works during these few years.
The repose during the flight to Egypt, one of the few scenes painted by Caravaggio against
the background of nature, is suffused with the magic light of evening in a soft and delicate
mingling of colors.
The day is fading to the sound of the viola, played by the white angel, as St. Joseph holds
the music.
Even the winged viola player becomes a real-life character in this miraculous moment, where
the human and the divine meet.
The human and the divine meet again in the Magdalene.
Caravaggio is supposed to have used the girl from amongst the common people as his model,
transforming her into the penitent Mary Magdalene by the simple addition of jewelry scattered
on the ground.
1600 marks a clear break in Caravaggio's style.
Up till now the painter had produced almost exclusively medium-sized canvases, with few
figures and mainly on non-religious themes.
Now he has a completely new opportunity, that of creating the vast canvases for the Matteo
Contarelli chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi.
It is not an easy beginning.
The first version of St. Matthew and the Angel is refused, because the realism is considered
too brutal, and the artist has to produce a second, more elegant version, based on the
exchange of gestures and looks between the evangelist and the heavenly messenger.
In the scene of Matthew's calling, St. Matthew is seated at a long table in a bare room between
the debt collectors and the bodyguards.
Her ray of light cuts across the scene, dwelling on the bright uniforms of plumed young soldiers,
and on the greedy hands of the callous and grasping tax collectors.
Christ appears, partly covered by the figure of St. Peter.
One glance is enough, a finger raised, powerful and impelling, as in Michelangelo's frescoes
on the vault of the Sistine Chapel.
St. Matthew, like one of the apostles in Leonardo's Last Supper, responds to the summoning gesture,
pointing to himself, amazed and perplexed.
It is all extremely simple, frank, direct.
It has in it the power of truth that is impossible to resist.
The martyrdom of St. Matthew is depicted as a brutal execution, with an executioner bursting
into the church to run his sword through the priest, so that he tumbles down the steps
of the altar during the mass.
The murderer shouts, the fallen St. Matthew groans, a choirboy escapes, screaming.
The people draw back, run away.
An empty space forms around the martyr, and the darkness of horror descends.
From above, a solitary angel appears, holding out a branch of palm, which is the symbol
of martyrdom, and the saint's entry into heaven.
In the back, left-hand corner, a pale 30-year-old man can be seen.
It is Caravaggio, whose presence signifies his role as eyewitness to the event.
The canvases for San Luigi dei Francesi are a success.
From now onwards, Caravaggio is overwhelmed by requests for altarpieces.
For the beautiful and historical church of Sant'Agostino, he paints a supreme masterpiece,
the Madonna of the Pilgrims.
The painting is for the altar consecrated to the holy house of Loreto, and the artist
chooses an understated and poetically humble setting.
The Madonna is a woman of the common people, with dark hair, carrying the child and leaning
against the doorway.
On their knees, fearful and too overcome by emotion to be happy, are two elderly pilgrims.
Few other works of art can communicate this humble emotion, the intense inner light that
shines through their dusty ragged clothes down to the dirty soles of their bare feet.
Of course, the true human quality and the chiaroscuro of Caravaggio's work may seem
poles apart from aristocratic classicism, almost a luminous summing up of the entire
history of painting, from ancient times up to the Renaissance, and it was introduced
at the same time as the Bolognese Annibale Carracci, arrived in Rome around 1590.
But whilst Caravaggio struggled to make ends meet, Annibale went straight to the top.
Backed by his deserved fame as a painter and man of culture, he receives the most prestigious
of commissions for a painter for decoration of the majestic gallery in the Farnese Palace.
The loves and lives of the ancient gods unfold in the bright paintings, elegantly aristocratic,
but at the same time fluid, clear, and attractive.
Siberio Cerasi, owner of the chapel in the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo, has the
merit of bringing together two styles that are radically different.
Annibale Carracci paints the assumption over the altar, whilst Caravaggio is responsible
for the side panels.
Again, Caravaggio completely revolutionises the painting of religious themes.
The paintings depict, with no accompaniment by exalting angels, the culmination of the
lives of St Peter and Paul.
These are human dramas, deeply mystical, where they are most concrete and tangible.
As Paul does not fall from his horse on the road to Damascus at the head of a Roman legion,
the miracle happens in the shadows of a stable, watched by a single, elderly stable hand,
while the great horse fills the scene almost completely.
Even more stark and terrible is the crucifixion of St Peter, with his head hanging downwards.
No one watches the execution.
Three guards struggle to raise the cross, and Caravaggio almost seems to pity the unlucky
men for their hard and dirty work, whilst St Peter, his hands and feet pierced by long
nails, looks around him with a stupefied expression, in search of an impossible sign of help.
The crescendo continues, for the Church of Santa Maria in Vallicella, a true artist's
workshop for Baroque Rome, Caravaggio paints the monumental burial of Christ, today in
the Vatican galleries.
The figures merge to form a single mass of suffering, bringing to mind certain sculptures
from Northern Italy, or even the marble carvings of Michelangelo.
And there is also a work commissioned for the Basilica of St Peter's, a Madonna for
the footmen's altar.
Caravaggio gives a mystical theme, such as the victory of Christ and Mary over the devil,
a familiar, almost mundane tone.
Failing to grasp the subtle beauty of the work, the commissioners are embarrassed by
the nudity of the child, and the plainness of St Anne, who looks more like a toothless
old hag than the mother of Mary.
This is how the painting is first confined to the order of St Anne, and then sold to
Cardinal Borghese.
1606, two scandals unceremoniously end Caravaggio's career in Rome.
The artist is now 35 years old, and has become a point of reference for European artists
visiting Rome, such as Rubens.
For the clergy of Santa Maria della Scala, he paints the death of the Virgin.
It is a scene of dignified poverty and profound sentiment, set amongst poor people.
It causes a scandal.
It seems that Caravaggio used as his model for the Madonna the corpse of a prostitute
who had drowned in the Tiber, and this is why Mary appears livid, bloated, her ankles
bare.
The painting was indignantly refused, it was soon bought by Rubens, and is now in the Louvre.
Even more serious were the events of one May evening.
A silly argument over a foul during a football game develops into a duel between rival gangs.
Caravaggio is involved and is wounded, but in turn kills an adversary, the sergeant Ranuccio
Tommassoni.
Word spreads, Caravaggio is sought by the authorities, and manages to escape from Rome
with the help of the Colonna princes.
Tried in his absence, he is condemned to death.
In his paintings, Caravaggio has often depicted decapitations.
Now he knows that he could meet the same fate.
After a brief stay at Zagorolo, Caravaggio takes refuge in Naples, the painter whose
odyssey is just beginning, is torn by a burning desire to return to Rome, and the certainty
of the punishment that would await him.
His flight along the coasts of the Mediterranean is to last over four years.
Like Milan, Naples too is part of the Spanish dominions.
It was the most densely populated city in Europe, the scene of a bustling daily life,
and the spectacular setting for an explosion of Baroque architecture, painting, and decorative
arts.
Only a few of the works that Caravaggio painted in Naples have remained in their places of
origin.
The most striking of them is the complex altarpiece depicting the seven works of mercy, set in
the rich interior of the Pio Monte della Misericordia community.
Caravaggio has genially linked the various episodes in a single scene, which at first
sight might almost seem a picture of real everyday life in the Spanish quarters.
Created by two acrobatic angels, the Madonna smiles down on the scene below, which is particularly
full of movement due to the absence of a single central focus.
The original contract establishing the artist's fee at the huge sum of 470 ducats is still
conserved.
Another work that is characteristic of Caravaggio's first stay in Naples, which covered the whole
of 1607, is the Flagellation of Christ, created for the great church of San Domenico Maggiore.
Perhaps this tragic circle of guards, setting upon Christ, who is tied to a pillar and sculpted
by shadows, contains old memories of Tiziano's altarpiece, which Caravaggio saw as a young
boy in Milan.
After producing this latest masterpiece, the artist sets sail.
A prestigious stay awaits him, but yet again, one that is to end dramatically.
Caravaggio lands in Malta, the island of the knights.
Driven out of Rhodes, which was taken by the Turks at the beginning of the 16th century,
the knights of St. John transform Malta into an impressive stronghold.
Unconquerable fortresses and colossal bastions defend an island that is never to be attacked
and give the capital, La Valletta, its special appearance.
The sons of the great noble families of Europe, the Maltese knights form a unique cultural,
religious, and military elite.
Caravaggio fits perfectly into the Maltese community.
He paints the knights and the grandmaster, Alof de Vignacourt.
Honors are confirmed upon him.
And on the 14th of July, 1608, he is admitted to the order.
At the heart of Maltese society stands the cathedral of St. John in La Valletta, sumptuously
decorated and transformed into a magnificent burial place for the knights.
Caravaggio's first painting for the cathedral is a powerful scent Gerolimo modeled in light.
Then for one of the side chapels comes his greatest work, the decapitation of St. John
the Baptist.
The scene is set in the early morning with a pale light filtering through into a squalid
prison courtyard.
St. John has fallen to the ground, his neck severed by the sword.
At the height of horror is that the execution has not been completely successful and the
executioner, following the orders of an officer, is preparing to deal the fatal blow.
Two horrified women prepare for the pious task of recomposing the corpse while two fellow
prisoners peer out of a window.
The painting is a cry of anguish against violence.
Caravaggio, who we must remember, had been condemned to death for murder, has identified
himself with the figure of St. John to such an extent that he traces his signature in
the blood that flows from the wound.
Events once again turn against him.
The knights come to know of Caravaggio's previous convictions and expel him from the order as
a fetid and rotten member, the order reads, and throw him into prison.
Caravaggio, who has by now a wide experience of jails, manages to escape and sets sail
again, this time for Sicily.
Caravaggio's route through Sicily runs through Palermo, Messina, and Syracuse.
In this phase, his art undergoes a further change and becomes even more tense and dramatic,
with vast open spaces that threaten his figures.
The stay in Syracuse is particularly inspiring.
Caravaggio visits the archaeological remains of the Greek city and is struck by the Latamie,
the great caves opening behind the Greek amphitheater.
Near the Latamie is the Church of St. Lucia, for which Caravaggio paints a great and heartfelt
altarpiece, the Burial of St. Lucia, which seems to be set in the very caves of Syracuse.
All the figures are crowded into the lower part of the canvas.
The corpse of the saint is right against the bottom edge.
The whole of the upper part of the painting is an immense, mysterious, open space, towering
and threatening, like a silent destiny above the heads of men.
Caravaggio spends about one year in Sicily.
Setting sail from Messina, he returns to Naples on the 20th of October, 1609.
Caravaggio's second stay in Naples is marked by some beautiful works and by new misadventures.
Amongst his masterpieces are the Martyrdom of Sant'Ursula, a key work for understanding
the mixture of brutality and stupefaction, blood and sadness that characterises all his
later works.
The artist is waiting for a pardon from the pope.
For the moment, however, he cannot return to Rome directly from Naples.
He will have to pass through the ports of the Grossetto area, which is a Spanish protectorate.
Meanwhile, the fights continue.
In a tavern brawl, Caravaggio is wounded and disfigured.
Perhaps it is the very wound received in Naples that reappears on the forehead of Goliath
in his last macabre self-portrait.
In his David, with the head of Goliath, a raw and bitter loneliness can be felt.
The only trace of pity seems to come from the killer himself, who holds the defeated
giant's severed head.
Prison from the pope seems to be imminent.
Caravaggio moves on to Porto Ercole, in the garrison state, and here fate turns its back
on him for the last time.
It is ironic he, the brawler, the murderer, is put into prison, but wrongfully, due to
a case of mistaken identity.
Caravaggio stays in prison only two days, but also just long enough for him to miss
the ship to Rome, on which all his worldly belongings have already been loaded.
This is the last act in the adventurous life of a genius.
Described by a contemporary of his, beside himself with anger, he hurried desperately
along the beach under the burning rays of the sun, looking out to sea and trying to
catch sight of the ship that bore his belongings.
Finally, he came to a spot on the beach where he lay down with the fever, and within a few
days, without a single helping hand, died miserably, just as miserably as he had lived.
Caravaggio died at the age of 39 on the June of La Feniglia.
It was the 18th of July, 1610.
1932.
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