CARAVAGGIO

While in Messina, Caravaggio was contracted to paint four scenes of the Passion. If he finished any of them, nothing now survives. This nativity scene, Susinno says, was ordered by the Senate of Messina for the Capuchin church of Santa Maria degli Angeli. A Franciscan simplicity pervades it: in the wooden barn a donkey and an ox stand patiently at the back, there is straw on the floor and in a basket the Holy Family have a loaf of bread, the carpenter’s tools of Joseph and some pieces of cloth. Joseph (in red) introduces the shepherds, in brown and grey, to the young Virgin Mother, whose dress is a brighter red. Mary cuddles her baby peacefully and, apart from two haloes, only the bare-shouldered young man, who kneels with clasped hands, gives the moment of the child’s discovery a hint of its meaning. God became man as one of the poor. Ironically, for this canvas Caravaggio received 1000 scudi, the highest amount mentioned in any accounts of his career.

This paintings was always considered one of Caravaggio’s great masterpieces. He painted it for Marchese Giustiniani. The figure sets up a direct, special and privileged relationship with the viewer, with an immediate appeal that is truly extraordinary. One is bewildered by this painting, by the absolute freedom that the subject obviously enjoys, detaching himself from mere mortals who must obey the laws of nature. The figure is in the act of mocking the world with a complete impunity, a self-assurance that produce a mixture of astonishment and envy. The figure has a torso that recalls Michelangelo’s Victory.

The painting probably shows Earthly Love triumphant over the Virtues and Sciences, symbolized by the musical instruments, pen and book, compass and square, scepter, laurel, and armor at his feet.

Caravaggio’s Amor, a teenager with a gloating smile, “reigns” over a pile of weapons, instruments, a book (sheet music), drawing utensils, and a laurel wreath. He places his left knee lightly over these objects, while he holds a bunch of arrows in his right hand. Since the attributes of war, military glory, science and arts are scattered at Amor’s feet, the painting reminds the viewer of a Vanitas still-life. Some objects in this still-life are emphasized: pieces of a suit of armour, a lute and a violin with a bow. These may refer to Mars and Venus, who, according to some classical genealogies, including that of Virgil’s Aeneid I. 664, were the parents of the playful little winged deity Amor.

Thus in this painting the musical instruments represent Venus herself rather than either art in general or, through the association of fading melodies, transitoriness of human life. It is likely, of course, that the viewer of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries may have thought of all the previous connotations, too, since he was used to the multiple meanings of symbols.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 4 minutes):

Francesco Gasparini: The Meddlesome Cupid, aria

In order to understand the historical position of Caravaggio’s art, we have to be aware of his peerless and revolutionary handling of subject matter. This is true not only of his religious themes, but also of his secular themes. His Bacchus no longer appears to us like an ancient god, or the Olympian vision of the High Renaissance and Mannerism. Instead, Caravaggio paints a rather vulgar and effeminately preened youth, who turns his plump face towards us and offers us wine from a goblet held by pertly cocked fingers with grimy nails. This is not Bacchus himself, but some perfectly ordinary individual dressed up as Bacchus, who looks at us rather wearily and yet alertly.

On the one hand, by turning this heathen figure into a somewhat ambiguous purveyor of pleasures, Caravaggio is certainly the great realist he is always claimed to be. On the other hand, however, the sensual lyricism of his painting is so overwhelming that any suspicion of caricature or travesty would be inappropriate.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 2 minutes):

Franz Schubert: Drinking song from the 16th century D 847, quartet

Bacchus offers us wine from a goblet held by pertly cocked fingers with grimy nails.

The picture shows the glass carafe in the lower left corner.

Caravaggio is reported to have claimed that he put as much effort into painting a vase of flowers as he did into painting human figures. Such an attitude not only calls into question the hierarchy of pictorial genres that had prevailed since Alberti, but also marks the beginning of a tradition of European still-life painting that was to develop continuously from then on.

Whereas, until then, there had only been occasional cases of “pure” object paintings one by Carpaccio, a hunting trophy by Barbari and a message (1506) about one Antonio da Crevalcore, who is said to have made a “painting full of fruit” - from Caravaggio onwards, still-life was to be the most popular of genres. It is a response to the increase of private art collections and their demand for profane and virtuoso painting.

Caravaggio compensated for the apparent loss of contentual gravity in an astonishing way. The basket is at eye level and juts out over the edge of the table into the real space of the spectator.

In this formal exaggeration and with a viewpoint liberated from all attributive connotations, the otherwise trivial object takes on an unheard of monumentality that renders the secret lives of objects, the play of light on their surfaces and the variety of their textures worthy of such painting.

This is the most important painting that Caravaggio made in Malta. It is still in the Oratorio di San Giovanni (now St John Museum) in La Valletta. This is one of Caravaggio’s most extraordinary creations, for many it is his greatest masterpiece. It is characterized by a magical balance of all the parts. It is no accident that the artist brings back into the painting a precise reference to the setting, placing behind the figures, as a backdrop, the severe, sixteenth century architecture of the prison building, at the window of which, in a stroke of genius, two figures silently witness the scene (the commentators are thus drawn into the painting, and no longer projected, as in the Martyrdom of St Matthew, toward the outside).

This is a final compendium of Caravaggio’s art. Well-known figures return (the old woman, the youth, the nude ruffian, the bearded nobleman), as do Lombard elements. The technical means adhere to the deliberate, programmatic limitation to which Caravaggio adapts them; but amid these soft tones, these dark colours, is an impressive sense of drawing that the artist does not give up, and that is visible even through the synoptic glints of light of his late works. This eminently classical balance, which projects the event beyond contingency, unleashes a harsh drama that is even more effective to the extent that, having given up the “aesthetic of exclamation” forever, Caravaggio limits every external, excessive sign of emotional emphasis. The painter signed in the Baptist’s blood: “f (perhaps to understood as fecit rather than frater) michela…”. This is the seal he placed on what may well be his greatest masterpiece.

The painting, restored in Florence in the 1990s, is displayed in the in the Oratorio di San Giovanni Battista dei Cavalieri for which it was painted.

This picture is wrongly said by Mancini not to be one of Caravaggio’s earliest pictures, and since he also states that the picture was sold for less than Caravaggio expected, it must have been painted as a speculative venture.

One of the most effeminate of his boy models, with a rose in his hair, starts back in pain as his right-hand middle finger, which he has put into a cluster of fruit, is bitten by a lizard. The rose behind the ear, the cherries, the third finger and the lizard probably have sexual significance - the boy becomes aware, with a shock, of the pains of physical love. What was novel was not the theme so much as its dramatic treatment, evident in the boy’s foreshortened right shoulder, the contrasting gestures of his hands and the leftward sloping light. What lingers most in the memory is found in the foreground: the gleaming glass carafe containing a single overblown rose in water, together with its reflections.

Two almost identical examples of this composition exist (the other in the Longhini Collection, Florence). Their equally high quality suggests that Caravaggio himself painted them both.

Two almost identical examples of this composition exist (the other in the National Gallery, London). Their equally high quality suggests that Caravaggio himself painted them both.

Against a neutral background, a boy with a white rose behind his ear is standing behind a stone slab which leads diagonally into the picture. In his fright, his shirt has slipped down off his shoulder. While reaching for some fruit, which lies next to a vase containing orange blossom or jasmine, as well as a rose, he has been bitten by a lizard in his middle finger, which has given rise to ticklish erotic overtones.

To be able to paint light reflecting in glass is one of the hallmarks of a virtuoso still-life artist. Mystically-inclined interpreters see it as a suggestion of supernatural light. As his early biographers commented, Caravaggio’s painting of drapery, skin and objects manage without reflected light. This distinguished him from the Mannerist painters of the preceding generation. And it makes it all the more interesting to observe how unusually he renders the round crystal-vase in this picture - he flattens it. In so doing, he inverts the lighting of the whole picture, by concentrating the light areas on the left and the dark ones on the right.

This is probably a copy from a lost original. There are several other copies (e.g. in Hampton Court, in the Sabin collection, London) but all of these copies are derived from an original by Caravaggio. In none of them does the boy peel a pear, as sources indicate, but another fruit, perhaps a nectarine; the same fruit lies on the table before the boy. There is a remarkable resemblance between the facial types of these copies and those of the angel in the St Francis (Hartford) and the boy on the left in the Musicians at the Metropolitan Museum, New York.

One of the sure signs of an early painting by Caravaggio is the patent influence of northern Italian art. The boy with a fruit basket has analogies with a Fruit Seller by the Lombard painter Vincenzo Campi, painted about 1580, but Caravaggio is not content to follow the traditions on which he draws. Instead of the young women favoured by his predecessors, he has chosen a teenage boy; and he has brought his subject almost to the front of the picture plane, so that the boy seems to offer himself as well as the fruit to the spectator’s gaze. There is a sign of uncertainty in the awkward way that the boy’s long thick neck rises out of his shoulder blades, yet there is compensation in the poetic device which places his weary eyes partially in the shade.

Once again Caravaggio has used the diagonal ‘cellar’ light which was to become a hallmark of his style. Against a near-blank ground, attention is focused on the right side of the boy’s upper body, the classical drapery on his right arm and the marvellously realized fruit, displaying succulent peaches and bunches of grapes.

One of the sure signs of an early painting by Caravaggio is the patent influence of northern Italian art. The boy with a fruit basket has analogies with a Fruit Seller by the Lombard painter Vincenzo Campi, painted about 1580, but Caravaggio is not content to follow the traditions on which he draws. Instead of the young women favoured by his predecessors, he has chosen a teenage boy; and he has brought his subject almost to the front of the picture plane, so that the boy seems to offer himself as well as the fruit to the spectator’s gaze. There is a sign of uncertainty in the awkward way that the boy’s long thick neck rises out of his shoulder blades, yet there is compensation in the poetic device which places his weary eyes partially in the shade.

Once again Caravaggio has used the diagonal ‘cellar’ light which was to become a hallmark of his style. Against a near-blank ground, attention is focused on the right side of the boy’s upper body, the classical drapery on his right arm and the marvellously realized fruit, displaying succulent peaches and bunches of grapes.

Against a near-blank ground, attention is focused on the marvellously realized fruit, displaying succulent peaches and bunches of grapes.

Against a near-blank ground, attention is focused on the marvellously realized fruit, displaying succulent peaches and bunches of grapes.

St Lucy was a local saint of Syracuse, who had been denounced as a Christian by her former suitor and had died from her tortures in 304. Caravaggio may have worked in haste to produce a picture before the feast of St Lucy on 13 December. His Sicilian biographer states that he owed the commission to his friend Minniti, who may also have helped him paint it.

Originally Lucy’s head was severed from her body but later Caravaggio joined it and left just a slit in the front of her neck - perhaps recalling St Cecilia, whose still-intact body, with a gash in the nape of the neck, had been sculpted in 1600 by Maderno. A more local influence was the crypt of the Syracusan church where Lucy had been buried, for cavernous spaces dwarf the human actors.

The heavily-muscled grave-diggers emerge from murky shadows, the mourners are so much smaller that they seem placed some distance away, the officer directing operations beside the bishop is obscured and only the young man above the saint stands out poignantly in his red cloak. Characteristically, light imitates the action of the sun by falling from the right. The scene takes the viewer back to the age of the Church of the catacombs.

The painting was recently restored at the Istituto Centrale per il Restauro in Rome (all Caravaggio’s Sicilian paintings have come down to us in a poor state of preservation) and transferred from the Basilica di Santa Lucia al Sepolcro to the Bellomo Museum in Syracuse.

The saint is lying in dismal darkness on the bare floor of a bleak vault. She is being confirmed by a bishop and mourned by pious worshipers. Her dark eyesockets are allusions to her martyrdom (she sacrificed her eyes in her martyrdom).

The movement of these figures. who are sharply divided into two different halves of the picture, is conceived entirely in terms of the light coming from the left. In the process, the flagellation column, usually a decisive motif, appears as little more than a symbol of Christ, without having any effect on the pictorial space, which is immersed in the blackness of the background. Judging by the assistants rather than by Christ, this picture dates from the time of Caravaggio’s first stay in Naples.

The painting was destroyed in the Second World War, it is known to us today through extant black and white photographs. This was a wonderful composition that caught the instant in which Christ awakes the sleeping apostles. The construction of the scene descends toward the lower right corner. St Peter in particular is shown in a classical position (which has been called Carracci-like), with the containment that characterizes this moment in the artist’s career.

This painting addresses the subject of David and Goliath, which the artist repeatedly dealt with later in his career, with a perfect linearity of means and intelligence of iconographic invention. As in the early Renaissance, David is shown as the adolescent who triumphs not by his strength, but by his power of character and his faith. The oblique pose of the figure (David stands partly parallel to the picture plane) is constructed with admirable skill.

Caravaggio has a particular importance for Spain, for he originated the realist and ‘tenebrist’ style of painting that enjoyed such development and popularity there in the work of such artists as Ribera and Zurbar�n. This mature work demonstrates the fundamentals of his art: an emphatic solidity created by a harsh contrast of light and shade; the immediacy created by staging the action right in the foreground, and eliminating all superfluous space around it (conventionally, David would have been given room to stand up, so to speak); the elimination of decoration, such as colour or elegant posture, in order to concentrate on the drama alone.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 11 minutes):

Johann Kuhnau: The Fight between David and Goliath (No. 1 of the 6 Stories from the Bible illustrated in music)

The painting is one of the rare exceptions in the art of Caravaggio: it is painted on wood instead of canvas. Recent X-ray investigations showed that below the painting there is another representing Venus, Mars and Cupid, executed probably by one of the Mannerist painters. The attribution and the dating of the painting is debated.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 11 minutes):

Johann Kuhnau: The Fight between David and Goliath (No. 1 of the 6 Stories from the Bible illustrated in music)

Nobody knows which was Caravaggio’s last work. This painting, which was in the collection of Scipione Borghese as early as 1613, has been dated as early as 1605 and as late as 1609-10. Its melancholy would suit the gloomy thoughts of the artist’s final years. The subject matter recalls the Beheading of St John the Baptist in Valletta, but this time there is no brilliant colour and, as a small picture, it has an intimacy that was not evident in the grand public work.

The boy handles his trophy with disgust. ‘In that head [Caravaggio] wished to portray himself and in the boy he portrayed his Caravaggino,’ wrote Manilli in 1650. If Goliath’s head is indeed Caravaggio’s, there is an element of self disgust in this painting. The device recalls the way that Michelangelo, in the Last Judgment for the Sistine Chapel, placed an anguished face with features evidently his own onto the flayed body of St Bartholomew, but Caravaggio’s mood is closer to one of despair. As a witness to God’s light, Bartholomew takes his seat in heaven: Goliath, God’s enemy, is doomed to everlasting night.

Dirty silver, black and browns dominate the picture. The light shows David to look like a boy from the street, whose sword has just a drop of blood on it to show that, like Caravaggio once, he knows what it is to have just killed a man. Another drop of blood in the midst of the giant’s forehead confirms that he has been felled by a stone.

A decade later Cardinal Scipione commissioned a statue of David about to catapult a stone at Goliath. Bernini was far removed from the anxieties of the older master, and saw David’s action as joyful and exhilarating, a triumph of the human spirit expressing itself through the athletic exertions of a beautiful human body.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 11 minutes):

Johann Kuhnau: The Fight between David and Goliath (No. 1 of the 6 Stories from the Bible illustrated in music)

This painting offers in the head of the giant Goliath a last and painful self-portrait. The scarred, haggard head of Goliath with its vacant gaze speaks of the painter’s profound anxiety.

The attribution to Caravaggio is debated, however, most of the scholars accept it as an original Caravaggio in a bad state of preservation. The figure of Pilate is an assumed self-portrait of Caravaggio.

There is another version in the Museo Nazionale in Messina which is probably the work of a Sicilian follower of Caravaggio or a crude copy of an original Caravaggio.

The attribution to Caravaggio is debated, however, most of the scholars accept it as an original Caravaggio in a bad state of preservation. The figure of Pilate is an assumed self-portrait of Caravaggio.

There is another version in the Museo Nazionale in Messina which is probably the work of a Sicilian follower of Caravaggio or a crude copy of an original Caravaggio.

This major painting, which (like the Seven Works of Mercy) dates from Caravaggio’s first visit to Naples, is disquieting in its own special way. In May 1607 he was paid by Tommaso de’ Franchis for an altarpiece to hang in the family chapel in San Domenico, where it stayed till 1972.

The atmosphere is so dense that the pillar before which Christ is being whipped can hardly be made out, but the handling of paint is so fluent that the cruel action taking place has its own powerful rhythm. The viewer is caught up in the horror.

The near-naked Christ is being twisted into position by the torturer on the right while the torturer on the left tears at his hair. At the bottom left a third tormentor stoops to prepare his scourge.

The composition is derived from a mural painting by Sebastiano del Piombo, but its restricted palette of dismal colours gives it a grim force that few earlier paintings had equaled.

In Greek myth, Perseus used the severed snake-haired head of the Gorgon Medusa as a shield with which to turn his enemies to stone. By the sixteenth century Medusa was said to symbolize the triumph of reason over the senses; and this may have been why Cardinal Del Monte commissioned Caravaggio to paint Medusa as the figure on a ceremonial shield presented in 1601 to Ferdinand I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. The poet Marino claimed that it symbolized the Duke’s courage in defeating his enemies.

As a feat of perspective, the picture is remarkable, for out of the apparently concave surface of the shield - in fact convex- the Gorgon’s head seems to project into space, so that the blood round her neck appears to fall on the floor. In terms of its psychology, however, it is less successful. The boy who modelled the face (in preference to a girl) is more embarrassed than terrifying. For once Caravaggio cannot achieve an effect of horror; he was to find in the legends of the martyrs a more powerful stimulus to the dark side of his imagination than classical myth.

In 1603 money was given by the heirs of one Ermete Cavalletti for the decoration of the family chapel in the church of San Agostino, not far from the Piazza Navona, at the centre of Caravaggio’s Rome. By the end of 1604 Caravaggio’s Madonna di Loreto was installed in a spot where it has been ever since. In the winter of 1603-04 Caravaggio had been in Tolentino, not far from the shrine of Loreto, and he may have gone there to see the supposed Holy House of Nazareth.

On the altar of the chapel Annibale Carracci’s Assumption of the Virgin is placed, while Caravaggio painted the two lateral paintings, which depict The Crucifixion of St Peter and The Conversion of St Paul.

A whole book in the Bible is devoted to Judith, because as a woman she embodies the power of the people of Israel to defeat the enemy, though superior in numbers, by means of cunning and courage. She seeks out Holofernes in his tent, makes him drunk, then beheads him. The sight of their commander’s bloodstained head on the battlements of Bethulia puts the enemy to flight.

In the painting, Judith comes in with her maid - surprisingly and menacingly - from the right, against the direction of reading the picture. The general is lying naked on a white sheet. Paradoxically, his bed is distinguished by a magnificent red curtain, whose colour crowns the act of murder as well as the heroine’s triumph.

The first instance in which Caravaggio would chose such a highly dramatic subject, the Judith is an expression of an allegorical-moral contest in which Virtue overcomes Evil. In contrast to the elegant and distant beauty of the vexed Judith, the ferocity of the scene is concentrated in the inhuman scream and the body spasm of the giant Holofernes. Caravaggio has managed to render, with exceptional efficacy, the most dreaded moment in a man’s life: the passage from life to death. The upturned eyes of Holofernes indicate that he is not alive any more, yet signs of life still persist in the screaming mouth, the contracting body and the hand that still grips at the bed. The original bare breasts of Judith, which suggest that she has just left the bed, were later covered by the semi-transparent blouse.

The roughness of the details and the realistic precision with which the horrific decapitation is rendered (correct down to the tiniest details of anatomy and physiology) has led to the hypothesis that the painting was inspired by two highly publicized contemporary Roman executions; that of Giordano Bruno and above all of Beatrice Cenci in 1599.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 17 minutes):

Alessandro Scarlatti: La Giuditta, oratorio, Part I (excerpts)

Judith was painted directly from a model, as the suntan on her hands and face attests. The well turned-out blond woman with her full breasts, which remain visible through her white blouse, has rolled her sleeves up over her elbows. She stretches out her strong arm, but draws her head back, as if she were repulsed by blood. The Borghese David behaves in a similar fashion.

The detail shows the maid with an astonished expression.

This ceiling is the only mural painting of Caravaggio, executed in oils for the small ‘alchemy room’ of Cardinal del Monte situated in what is now a corridor of the Villa Boncompagni Ludovisi. Del Monte purchased the building in 1596.

On his eagle, Jupiter swoops down towards Neptune and Pluto, who are standing at the opposite edge of the ceiling, as if he were making the sky light up with a crystal ball. Any interpretation of the gathering of the gods, seen - unusually - from below, must shift between mythology, astrology, alchemy and even the Christian doctrine of salvation. An oddity in the artist’s work, this ceiling painting does not fit into any stylistic category.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 38 minutes):

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Symphony in C Major (Jupiter-Symphony) K 551

This ceiling is the only mural painting of Caravaggio, executed in oils for the small ‘alchemy room’ of Cardinal del Monte situated in what is now a corridor of the Villa Boncompagni Ludovisi. Del Monte purchased the building in 1596.

On his eagle, Jupiter swoops down towards Neptune and Pluto, who are standing at the opposite edge of the ceiling, as if he were making the sky light up with a crystal ball. Any interpretation of the gathering of the gods, seen - unusually - from below, must shift between mythology, astrology, alchemy and even the Christian doctrine of salvation. An oddity in the artist’s work, this ceiling painting does not fit into any stylistic category.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 38 minutes):

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Symphony in C Major (Jupiter-Symphony) K 551

This painting, mentioned in Del Monte’s inventory, shows a single lutanist singing a love song; and a related ‘carafe with flowers’ is also listed in the catalogue of the Del Monte sale. From the seventeenth century there have been uncertainties about the gender of the singer. Baglione and the Del Monte inventory call him a boy; Bellori, who knew only a copy, calls him a girl. There are reasons for this confusion. One is the Renaissance fascination with androgyny - the singer is not much older than Shakespeare’s Rosalind, who renamed herself Ganymede, and Viola, who renamed herself Cesario - and another is the Italian fashion for castrati. The lutanist, with parted lips, sings of love from the madrigal Voi sapete ch [‘io v’amo] (you know that [I love you]) by the Flemish composer Arcadelt. In front of him are a violin and bow which invite the spectator to take part in a duet with him; the fruit and the vegetables, and indeed the music itself, imply the harmony that should exist between lovers.

Among the early works this painting must count as a virtuoso performance. The glass carafe and its flowers are painted with assured mastery, and Caravaggio is also aware of the problems of perspective that lutes and violins could cause; and he spotlights the the solo player and his instruments so as to make them the main focus of attention, the carafe of flowers so that they are a secondary focus. One of his most talented followers, Orazio Gentileschi, was to paint a girl lutanist with a more beguiling sense of poetry, but without the sense of immediacy that was the hallmark of his master’s craft.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 2 minutes):

Francesco da Milano: Tre fantasie for lute

The open song book depicts the composition of Jacques (Jacob) Arcadelt, the bass voice of a popular madrigal Voi sapete ch [‘io v’amo] (you know that [I love you]). The inscription can be read as “Gallus” or “Bassus”.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 2 minutes):

Jacobus Gallus: Two motets

The present Madonna with the Serpent is generally called Madonna dei Palafrenieri.

It was in late 1605 that Caravaggio finally obtained a commission for St Peter’s. The papal grooms or palafrenieri invited him to paint an altarpiece for them, and in April 1606 it was exhibited in the basilica for a few days before being moved to the grooms’ church of Sant’Anna nearby. If the sympathy of Paul V had facilitated the commission, his nephew soon profited by it, for later in the year, just after the painter had left Rome for good, it was added to the Borghese collection.

Under the watchful gaze of St Anne, Jesus’s apocryphal grandmother, Mary helps a naked Christ Child to tread on a snake. The snake may be interpreted as Satan and indirectly as heresy, for Mary and Jesus are free of sin and its consequences, Mary as a virgin mother and by reason of her Immaculate Conception, Jesus as God made man - and they combine to crush the serpent under their feet.

This large iconographic canvas has a certain humanity thanks to Mary’s naturalness and the lack of inhibition with which Caravaggio depicts Christ naked (a fact that gave offence to some connoisseurs at the time, according to Bellori). Though their haloes are aligned, a dark gulf separates the pretty Mary from her ugly mother; and if the palafrenieri were willing to let Cardinal Scipione Borghese buy the picture so soon after they had received it and paid for it, it may have been because they disliked the unflattering depiction of their patroness.

The detail shows the head of the Madonna.

In its huge scale and multi-figured design the grandest of Caravaggio’s paintings, this may have been commissioned by the Duke of Modena in 1605 and undertaken in Naples. It was offered to the Duke of Mantua in 1607 and was bought by a consortium of Flemish artists, including Rubens, by whom it was offered to the Dominican church in Antwerp.

The theme is Dominican. St Dominic and his friars spread the devotion of the rosary; and here the Madonna, as Queen of Heaven, issues orders to the saint to her right, who clutches a rosary, and the Dominican St Peter Martyr to her left. Beside St Peter Martyr stands the most famous of Dominican theologians, St Thomas Aquinas.

Madonna, Child and saints form a heavenly triangle concealed from the classically costumed suppliants at the front, who kneel in prayer with arms outstretched to St Dominic, while a donor in modern ruff and doublet eyes the viewer. The column to the left and the curtain overhead add to the formality of the scene. Caravaggio achieves an elaborate ordering and interlocking of forms that heralds the typical Baroque altarpiece.

In the foreground at the left a woman and a small child with thick diaper can be seen.

Two older men and a youth in the centre are holding out their arms to receive rosaries from the hands of the Dominican Order’s founder.

In 1603 money was given by the heirs of one Ermete Cavalletti for the decoration of the family chapel in the church of San Agostino, not far from the Piazza Navona, at the centre of Caravaggio’s Rome. By the end of 1604 this painting was installed in a spot where it has been ever since. In the winter of 1603-04 Caravaggio had been in Tolentino, not far from the shrine of Loreto, and he may have gone there to see the supposed Holy House of Nazareth.

He has made simple devotion affecting. Two pilgrims - pellegrini in Italian - kneel in prayer before the statue beside a pillar, while the Madonna and Child, living to the eyes of faith, look down on them in quiet attention. (The painting is also called Madonna dei Pellegrini.) The woman has a ruckled bonnet and the dirty soles of the man’s feet are so close to the spectator that they cannot be avoided. The haloes on the sacred figures and their raised position remove them from our world, but their beauty contains no hint of arrogance - they gaze at the world with gentle sympathy.

Some have seen in this Madonna the latest woman in Caravaggio’s life Lena or Maddalena, over whom he had a fight. She is painted with love, but has only one rich passage in the left arm of her dress; elsewhere colour is toned down. Her craning neck was to be almost a mannerism in Caravaggio’s works of this period, but here the pose is convincing.

Discarded jewellery - a string of pearls, clasps, a jar (perhaps holding precious ointment) - lies on the floor.

The painting has an iconographically very unusual theme. It shows Martha reproaching Mary Magdalene for her vanity, a subject that we know through a series of copies. The painting at Detroit has recently been recognized as the original.

The religious theme is treated in a substantially profane manner. It is a pretext for making passages of highly intensive painting and for constructing an image that, seen in the context of the usual dichotomy of Caravaggio’s early years, is more of a genre scene than a religious one.

This picture and The Rest on the Flight into Egypt must have been painted around the same time, for the same girl sat for the Magdalene and the Madonna. On this occasion, however, there are none of the usual signs of a religious scene such as a halo. A young girl, seen from above, is seated on a low stool in one of Caravaggio’s favourite cave-like settings, with a triangle of light high up on the wall behind her. Discarded jewellery - a string of pearls, clasps, a jar (perhaps holding precious ointment) - lies on the floor. The girl’s hair is loose, as if it has just been washed. Her costume, consisting of a white-sleeved blouse, a yellow tunic and a flowery skirt, is rich. Bellori, who gives a careful description of this picture, which he came across in the collection of Prince Pamphilj, regards its title as an excuse; for him it is just a naturalistic portrayal of a pretty girl. This seems to show a willful failure to understand Caravaggio’s intention or the wishes of the man who commissioned it, Monsignor Petrignani. The repentant Mary Magdalene, like the repentant Peter, was a favourite subject of Counter-Reformation art and poetry, which valued the visible expression of the state of contrition ‘the gift of tears’. Caravaggio’s heroine is sobbing silently to herself and a single tear falls down her cheek. She is, as it were, poised between her past life of luxury and the simple life she will embrace as one of Christ’s most faithful followers. It is a sign of the painter’s skill that he makes this inner conflict moving at the same time as he makes its representation delectable.

Although nothing painted in the sixteenth century is as emotive as the statue in wood of the haggard saint carved by Donatello (c.1456-60), by the time Titian’s bare-breasted Magdalene of the 1530s (Palazzo Pitti, Florence) had become the more modest and affecting Magdalene of the 1560s, there had been a move in religious sensibility towards the humble and pathetic, a change which thirty years later Caravaggio could take for granted.

The attribution of this painting to Caravaggio has been discussed at length and it is still questioned by some scholars. There are no contemporary sources to refer to, and the attribution rests entirely on stylistic bases.

The theory that the picture is by Caravaggio might be confirmed by an export license dating to 1645, referring to a Narcissus by Caravaggio of similar measurements to our canvas. While it is difficult to propose with absolute certainty a secure connection between the document and the present canvas, several major Caravaggio scholars have reconsidered the issue, accepted the link between the license and the painting, and confirmed the autograph quality of the work.

Analysis of the details of execution (carried out as part of a recent restoration), stylistic comparison to other works of Caravaggio, and the iconographic innovativeness of the subject all lead to acceptance of the Narcissus as a work of Caravaggio. On the subject of invention, it suffices to mention the exceptional the double figure which - like a playing card - turns on the fulcrum of the highlit knee at the centre of the composition.

The work belongs to the years between 1597 and 1599, a transitional period of Caravaggio’s career that is still not entirely sorted out or fully understood. It is a moment in which Caravaggio tended towards a magical sense of atmosphere, suspense, and introspection: still strongly influenced by the Lombard style of Moretto and Savoldo, he is also testing the infinite possibilities of light and shadow. Dating from the same phase of Caravaggio’s career are the Lute Player, the Doria Magdalene, and above all the Thyssen St Catherine and Detroit Magdalene, with which our canvas has many connections and resonances.

The painting representing the Nativity was stolen in October 1969 from the church of San Lorenzo in Palermo, where it had been since it was made. The composition is less successful than in other cases; the contained and pensive atmosphere, however, shows that at this stage Caravaggio associated the idea of advent of Christ not with the joy of Redemption but with a future that was at best uncertain.

Under the roof of the stable in Bethlehem, whose side walls are disappearing into brownish darkness, shepherds and saints gathered to worship the newborn Christ-child in such a way that we can make out Archdeacon Lawrence on the left only after a second look, and viewers may well mistake St Francis for a shepherd. One figure, the patron, represents the church for which the picture was intended, and the other, the Order to which the church belongs. We cannot be entirely sure who Joseph, the foster-father, is.

The center of the picture is shared out between the figures who have come to worship. The naked Christ-child lies there on a bed of straw and some white drapery. Exhausted, the Holy Virgin is crouching on the ground behind him - wearing an unusually cut dress, which is falling from her right shoulder - looking at the child. The ox, which appears behind St Lawrence, is also looking in that direction. Above all this, an angel is flying down from heaven. In his left hand he is holding a banner on which the words of the gloria are written. His right hand is pointing upwards, as if, by also looking at the baby, he wanted to reassure the Christ-child that he really is the Son of God.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 16 minutes):

Arcangelo Corelli: Concerto grosso in g minor op. 6 No. 8 (Christmas Concerto)

Alof de Wignacourt (1547-1622) was the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta and the patron of Caravaggio during his stay on Malta in 1607-1608.

The still undeveloped features of this young cleric, who later became Pope Urban VIII (1623-1644) were portrayed as a much more distinguished figure by the skills of Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680). Here, the face appears in chiaroscuro against a neutral background in such a way that a wall appears to be screening off the figure from the left. In order to give the figure more ‘rilievo’, or more three-dimensionality, the lit sections are painted against a dark, and the sections in shadow against a light, background.

According to tradition the painting represents a courtesan, Phyllis (Fillida). The painting was destroyed in the Second World War.

A young woman, holding a bunch of flowers in front of her breast, appears against a dark neutral background. Her intense eyes are looking almost straight at the viewer, in dramatic lighting. Although the woman depicted is more likely to have been one of the artist’s model than a lady from an upper-class home, the painting soon found a place alongside the Berlin Cupid, and the first version of St Matthew in the magnificent Giustiniani collection in Rome.

Only very recently was this painting identified in the gallery’s storeroom, and related to a reference in Bellori’s book of 1672. The attribution to Caravaggio has found almost universal acceptance among Caravaggio scholars, even if the identity of the sitter is still disputed. Originally the portrait was considered to show Alof de Wignacourt, the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, the sitter is today generally identified with the Maltese knight Antonio Martelli. Martelli was a a Florentine who had joined the Order in as early as 1558 and took part in the heroic defence of Malta against the Turks in 1565. The portrait was painted during Caravaggio’s sojourn in Malta.

The sitter playfully rests his left hand on his sword in its sheath, whilst in his right hand he is holding a rosary. The artist subtly dramatizes the contradiction between piety and brutality by the lighting and the fact that his subject is averting his eyes from the viewer.

Giambattista Marino (1569-1625) was an Italian poet, founder of the school of Marinism (later Secentismo), which dominated 17th-century Italian poetry. Marino’s own work, praised throughout Europe, far surpassed that of his imitators, who carried his complicated word play and elaborate conceits and metaphors to such extremes that Marinism became a pejorative term. His work was translated all over Europe.

Bellori mentions Caravaggo’s portrait of Marino and emphasizes that it earned both painter and poet great fame, in particular in the literary academies. The impressive, half-length portrait shows the poet aged around 30, with delicate, still youthful features. He is seen at a slight angle and looks out at the viewer almost a little shyly with wide eyes.

The story of the Holy Family’s flight was one of the most popular apocryphal legends which survived the prohibitive decrees of the Council of Trent and often appeared in painting from the end of the sixteenth century. Caravaggio’s idyllic painting is an individualistic representation of this.

The artist ingeniously uses the figure of an angel playing the violin with his back to the viewer to divide the composition into two parts. On the right, before an autumnal river-front scene, we can see the sleeping Mary with a dozing infant in her left; on the left, a seated Joseph holding the musical score for the angel. The natural surroundings reminds the viewer of the Giorgionesque landscapes of the Cinquecento masters of Northern Italian painting, and it is fully imbued with a degree of nostalgia. Contrasting the unlikelihood of the event is the realistic effect of depiction, the accuracy of details, the trees, the leaves and stones, whereby the total impression becomes astonishingly authentic. The statue-like figure of the angel, with a white robe draped around him, is like a charmingly shaped musical motif, and it provides the basic tone for the composition. It is an interesting contradiction - and at the same time a good example for the adaptability of forms - that this figure of pure classical beauty is a direct descendant of Annibale Carracci’s Luxuria from the painting “The Choice of Heracles”.

The Angel is playing a motet in honour of the Madonna, Quam pulchra es…, composed by Noël Bauldeweyn to the words of the Song of Songs (7,7) with the dialogue between Groom and Bride.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 3 minutes):

Noël Bauldeweyn: Quam pulchra es, motetta

The composition fans out from an exquisite angel who is playing music. Joseph is wearing clothes of earth-color and is holding a book of music, from which the angel is playing a violin solo, whilst the donkey’s large eyes peeps out from under the brown foliage.

The Angel is playing a motet in honour of the Madonna, Quam pulchra es…, composed by Noël Bauldewijn to the words of the Song of Songs (7,7) with the dialogue between Groom and Bride (understood in the painting not so much as Joseph and Mary, but as Jesus Christ and the Madonna, i.e. the church): “How fair and pleasant art thou, O love, for delights! This thy stature is like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes.” In the Gospel according to the pseudo-Matthew (20,1), significantly dedicated to the Flight into Egypt, the same metaphorical image of the palm tree laden with fruit returns.

The principal motif of Caravaggio’s Flight into Egypt is that of the music that can be heard on earth, considered by the Fathers of the Church to be a copy of music in heaven. The intermediary between these two worlds is the invisible sound, which in art takes the form of an Angel playing music, a divine messenger that stands at the border between material and spiritual reality. God communicates with men through Angels, who are his go-betweens: “[it is the] Angel who spoke to me,” says Zachariah and for Ezekiel, the Angel is “the man dressed in linen,” just as Caravaggio depicts him.

The composition fans out from an exquisite angel who is playing music. Joseph is wearing clothes of earth-color and is holding a book of music, from which the angel is playing a violin solo, whilst the donkey’s large eyes peeps out from under the brown foliage.

The Angel is playing a motet in honour of the Madonna, Quam pulchra es…, composed by Noël Bauldewijn to the words of the Song of Songs (7,7) with the dialogue between Groom and Bride (understood in the painting not so much as Joseph and Mary, but as Jesus Christ and the Madonna, i.e. the church): “How fair and pleasant art thou, O love, for delights! This thy stature is like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes.” In the Gospel according to the pseudo-Matthew (20,1), significantly dedicated to the Flight into Egypt, the same metaphorical image of the palm tree laden with fruit returns.

The principal motif of Caravaggio’s Flight into Egypt is that of the music that can be heard on earth, considered by the Fathers of the Church to be a copy of music in heaven. The intermediary between these two worlds is the invisible sound, which in art takes the form of an Angel playing music, a divine messenger that stands at the border between material and spiritual reality. God communicates with men through Angels, who are his go-betweens: “[it is the] Angel who spoke to me,” says Zachariah and for Ezekiel, the Angel is “the man dressed in linen,” just as Caravaggio depicts him.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 3 minutes):

Noël Bauldeweyn: Quam pulchra es, motetta

The golden section splits the composition into two parts: the left-hand one, with St Joseph, the donkey, and stones, is dedicated to earthly life, while the right-hand area, which includes the Madonna and Child among living plants, is devoted to the divine world.

On this detail we can see before an autumnal river-front scene the sleeping Mary with a dozing infant in her left.

The landscape has faded out. Against a dark background, the story is pieced together out of figures. As if he had clambered up the mountain behind father and son, the angel brings them the ram, and speaks to Abraham, who is already relaxing his grip on Isaac’s hair. Whether this colorful picture, with its rich lighting, was really painted by Caravaggio, is open to doubt.

This painting came to light in the 1980s. It was attributed to Caravaggio, but the attribution has yet to gain wide support. The painting’s figural style and pictorial execution are closely related to the St John the Baptist in Toledo, a work which is alternatively attributed to Bartolomeo Cavarozzi.

On his way back to Rome Caravaggio returned to Naples. This harsh late work has none of the beauty of some of the late Sicilian pictures, such as the altarpiece stolen from the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo, and it may reflect the assault Caravaggio endured in the Osteria del Cerriglio in the city. A sense of the tired mood of one aware of the pointlessness of a ruthless vendetta pervades the painting.

The Baptist has been executed for denouncing Salome’s mother Herodias over her illicit marriage with Herod. Caravaggio uses the device of planting two heads - Salome’s and her maid’s (or her mother’s) - so close together that they seem to grow out of one body as the contrasting stages of youth and age. This had been a trait of Leonardo’s, and the way that the head of St John is presented to the spectator recalls a picture by Leonardo’s pupil Luini, whose Salome also looks away from her victim. The executioner takes no joy in what he has been commanded to do. He feels only a stunned emotion in keeping with the sombre tones that Caravaggio adopts.

You can view other depictions of Salome with the Head of John the Baptist.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 15 minutes):

Richard Strauss: Salome, closing scene

This painting (which was earlier in the Casita del Principe, Escorial) was executed by Caravaggio to send to the Grand Master of Malta to appease him. It essentially follows the earlier version, today in London. The only slight change is in the pose of the executioner. And yet the two works are very obviously different. This later version rises out of an abyss of shadow. The executioner thoughtfully observes the result of his work, instead of lifting up the Baptist’s head with certainty.

You can view other depictions of Salome with the Head of John the Baptist.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 15 minutes):

Richard Strauss: Salome, closing scene

Among Caravaggio’s early works, this painting, in which the pose of the arm may recall his debt to the Persian Sibyl in a fresco by Peterzano, belongs to the small group which has always been seen as self-portraits. The livid colours of the subject’s face, his teasing smile and the mock seriousness of his mythological dignity all reinforce the attempt to undermine the lofty pretensions of Renaissance artistic traditions. Here is no god, just a sickly young man who may be suffering from the after-effects of a hangover. There is no mistaking the artist’s delight in the depiction of the fine peaches and black grapes on the slab, the white grapes in his hand and the vine leaves that crown his hair, but the artist is not content merely to demonstrate his superb technique: he wishes to play an intimate role and only the slab separates him from the viewer. His appearance is striking rather than handsome: he shows both that his face is unhealthy and that his right shoulder is not that of a bronzed Adonis, as convention required, but pale as in the case of any man who normally wears clothes.

When Caravaggio received his honorary knighthood, his presence on Malta was likened to that of Apelles on the island of Cos. This curiously sombre little picture is the only classical relic of Caravaggio’s time on Malta, to which an old inscription on the back of the canvas ascribes it. As the painting was in Florence by 1618, Caravaggio may have taken it with him when he fled.

The plump, solid figure is well articulated by the artist who had learnt in Rome all that he needed to know about human anatomy from antiquity and the Renaissance; and yet he is affectionately observed as though he were a mere mortal child asleep. In the darkness it is possible to make out his wings - he is not a young putto - and the quiver of arrows on which he sleeps, the bow with its broken string and the arrow, with a tinge of red, that he holds in his hand. In human affairs he plays a symbolic role.

Here Cupid is not in charge of fate. While forgetful Love sleeps on, lovers cannot cope with the clamorous demands of their passions, and they are lost. But even if Love has been vanquished in the past - his bowstring is broken - he has ammunition, the quiver and the arrows, with which he can fight again.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 4 minutes):

Francesco Gasparini: The Meddlesome Cupid, aria

The painting formerly belonged to Cardinal Del Monte, one of the artist’s patrons.

Here we see a single female figure in an interior devoid of architectural allusions. The image appears with a boldness and an immediacy that combine the nobility of the subject (St Catherine was a king’s daughter) with the almost plebeian pride of the model (no doubt a Roman woman of the people, who appears on other paintings of the artist, too). The breadth of conception and realization, and the perfect mastery of a very difficult composition (the figure and objects completely fill the painting, in a subtle play of diagonals) are striking. Caravaggio here chose a “grand” noble approach that heralds the great religious compositions he would soon do for San Luigi dei Francesi. The extraordinary virtuosity in the painting of the large, decorated cloth is absorbed as an integral part of the composition. This is something his followers would not often succeed in doing, for they frequently dealt with the single components of the painting individually, with adverse effects on the unity of the whole.

This is one of the artist’s first works. It has a perfectly Lombard air: the broad lines of the composition recall mannerist motives. But Caravaggio’s characteristic approach to reality is already at work, and his brushstroke shows a magic that could be obtained only by a thorough analysis of Venetian painting.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 33 minutes):

Michael Haydn: St Francis Mass

The angel comes from the same repertoire as the early pictures of boys. As Cupid, he is familiar from the New York Musicians. In the St Francis scene he forms part of an arrangement set against an almost black background, which may well have been painted direct from life and transmutes the spirit of pictures of boys into the sphere of sacred art.

The founder of the Franciscan Order was the first person to experience the miracle of stigmatization of his own body. In other words, he was marked out by Christ’s wounds. Here he is reduced to the ideal state of penance in the wilderness - a state equally valid for saints and pious people. Caravaggio shows no sign of reinterpreting the story unconventionally. His rather traditional approach may derive from the fact that the composition is probably a commission from the papal family. They owned the township known as Carpineto, from where an almost identical second version, stored at present in the Palazzo Venezia, Rome, originated. Stylistically, the painting is very closely related to the Brera Supper in Emmaus, which was probably painted in Latium.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 33 minutes):

Michael Haydn: St Francis Mass

This seems to be an unconventional composition, and depicts the saint front-on, near a tree trunk, bending over a book. Even so, the artist decides not to depict the joyous devotion to nature expressed in St Francis’s hymn to the sun. Once again, the artist has reduced the founder of the Franciscan Order to a simple, ritual model, latterly in the tradition of St Jerome.

The sole surviving example of the painting is in bad condition, but it is probably an authentic work by Caravaggio.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 33 minutes):

Michael Haydn: St Francis Mass

The suntan revealed in this upright picture on the old man’s face and hands, in contrast to the light colour on his arms and upper body, indicates that Caravaggio was again studying from a living model. Strong shadows disturb the structural features of the upper body. With only a piece of white drapery around his loins, and his Cardinal-red mantle slung across his legs, the old man has his left hand resting on his mantle, which also covers the table, whilst he is pensively stroking his beard with his right hand. Although his head is lowered, he is not looking at the skull in front of him. That said, the skull’s empty eye-sockets appear to be staring at him.

Just as Protestants wished to translate the Bible into local languages to make the Word of God accessible to ordinary believers, so Catholics were keen to justify the use of the standard Latin version, made by St Jerome in the late fourth century. Jerome had been baptized by one pope, had been given his task as translator by another and had called St Peter the first bishop of Rome. Among the Latin Fathers of the Church he was a powerful ally against modern heretics, who attacked the cult of the saints, restricted the use of Latin to the learned and viewed the papacy as the whore of Babylon. It was wholly appropriate that this image was bought by Scipione Borghese soon after he was made a cardinal in 1605 by his uncle, the new Pope Paul V.

In pre-Reformation days Jerome was shown with a pet lion and a cardinal’s hat. Now Catholic reformers wished to pare religious art down to its essentials, and the good-living cardinal, whose ample features were to be sculpted and caricatured by Bernini, acquired a painting that was as austere as it was sombre. The thin old man, whose face is reminiscent of the model who had been Abraham, Matthew and one of the Apostles with Thomas, sits reflecting on a codex of the Bible while his right hand is poised to write. Whereas in the Renaissance, Antonello da Messina and D�rer had made him into a wealthy scholar, Caravaggio reduces Jerome’s possessions to a minimum. The text he holds open, a second closed one and a third kept open by a skull are perched on a small table. Harsh lighting emphasizes the sinewy muscles of his tired arms and the parallel between his bony head and the skull - man is born to die, but the Word of God lives forever.

This picture of the holy scholar was made for Ippolito Malaspina, a Maltese knight whose coat of arms is on the wooden panel to the right. He was connected by marriage to Caravaggio’s patron Ottavio Costa and was a confidant of the Grand Master, who may have been used as the model for the saint (similarly Van Dyck was to use the sister of the Queen of England as model for the Madonna). The saint does indeed look like the knight in a recently discovered portrait by Caravaggio, who has been identified by some as Wignacourt himself.

The composition is planned in terms of triangles. One rises from the table to the saint’s head, another has its apex at the cardinal’s hat on the wall to the left, a third recedes to the bedstead at the back on the right. This simple design helps convey an idea of simplicity. St Jerome has no halo, his workbench is rudimentary, he does not own any folios, he has one candle to see by, a crucifix to meditate on, a stone to beat against his chest, and a skull to remind him of his mortality. He is partly naked because he lives an eremitical life in the desert of Judaea. A steady light shines on his torso and picks out the red cloak round his legs. The source of the light is outside the picture, and can be interpreted as Christ, Light of the World.

In around 1605 Caravaggio dealt with St John the Baptist in two splendid compositions, one in the Kansas City Gallery, the other in the Galleria Nazionale di Arte Antica in Rome. The former is laid out vertically, the latter horizontally. Both lend themselves to a modernistic reading aimed at pointing out a certain air between contempt and arrogance. In effect what we are dealing with here are splendid exercises in modeling the body through the play of light and shadow.

In the version now in Kansas City, the figure is set before a dense curtain of plants; in that in Rome, there is only the trunk of a cypress tree, on the left. Both are admirable feats of painting, and it is understandable that collectors competed with each other for the artist’s works. Caravaggio in turn knew how to make apparently uninteresting religious themes into paintings desirable even for his aristocratic patrons.

In around 1605 Caravaggio dealt with St John the Baptist in two splendid compositions, one in the Kansas City Gallery, the other in the Galleria Nazionale di Arte Antica in Rome. The former is laid out vertically, the latter horizontally. Both lend themselves to a modernistic reading aimed at pointing out a certain air between contempt and arrogance. In effect what we are dealing with here are splendid exercises in modeling the body through the play of light and shadow.

In the version now in Kansas City, the figure is set before a dense curtain of plants; in that in Rome, there is only the trunk of a cypress tree, on the left. Both are admirable feats of painting, and it is understandable that collectors competed with each other for the artist’s works. Caravaggio in turn knew how to make apparently uninteresting religious themes into paintings desirable even for his aristocratic patrons.

The painting was executed during the last days of Caravaggio’s stay in Naples, together with the Martyrdom of St Ursula.

A comparison can be made between the young St John in the Galleria Borghese in Rome and the paintings of the same subject in Kansas City and in the Galleria Nazionale di Arte Antica in Rome. The Borghese St John is the most soberly thoughtful. The body is delicate and the expression is dreamy, so much so as to suggest a considerable distance in time from the other two.

The attribution of this painting to Caravaggio is debated. The figural type and pictorial execution find few parallels in Caravaggio’s oeuvre. On stylistic ground, the attribution to Bartolomeo Cavarozzi is also suggested in the literature.

A much debated painting. St John seems to draw the bouquet of flower in his right hand away from the lamb to keep him from nibbling on it.

This painting exists in two versions, both of which are probably by Caravaggio (who frequently copied his own paintings). Both versions are in Rome, the other in the Galleria Doria Pamphilj.

The image is a masterpiece of virtuosity whose appeal lies in its soft, caressing light and velvety rendering of cloth, flesh, and plants. The figure is identifiable as St John only virtue of the symbols of Christ displayed in the painting: the ram (sacrificial victim), and the grape-leaves (from whose red juice, akin to the blood of Christ, springs life); otherwise the iconographical subject (the simple, immediately apparent image) appears as a nude youth with an ironic, if not allusive, expression. Its cultivated content and its destination for an aristocratic patron are underscored by the artist’s explicit use of a great figurative source of the past: Michelangelo’s Ignudi from the Sistine Ceiling. But whereas Michelangelo created abstract and ideal figures with cold lights and a merely theoretical plasticism, Caravaggio models his figure on the careful observation of nature, achieving an image of perfect realism.

This painting exists in two versions, both of which are probably by Caravaggio (who frequently copied his own paintings). Both versions are in Rome, the other in the Galleria Doria Pamphilj.

The image is a masterpiece of virtuosity whose appeal lies in its soft, caressing light and velvety rendering of cloth, flesh, and plants. The figure is identifiable as St John only virtue of the symbols of Christ displayed in the painting: the ram (sacrificial victim), and the grape-leaves (from whose red juice, akin to the blood of Christ, springs life); otherwise the iconographical subject (the simple, immediately apparent image) appears as a nude youth with an ironic, if not allusive, expression. Its cultivated content and its destination for an aristocratic patron are underscored by the artist’s explicit use of a great figurative source of the past: Michelangelo’s Ignudi from the Sistine Ceiling. But whereas Michelangelo created abstract and ideal figures with cold lights and a merely theoretical plasticism, Caravaggio models his figure on the careful observation of nature, achieving an image of perfect realism.

In this picture the totally naked boy sits leaning far back, like one of the ‘ignudi’ who adorn Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling. Here, he is propping his left elbow on some white drapery, has straightened out his left leg behind him, and is supporting his bent right leg by gripping the toes. A magnificent piece of red fabric provides pictorial ornament, at the bottom on the left. The Baptist’s body is so firmly embedded in the yielding hide of his coarse garment that the energetically black contours from his upper thigh to his back stand out in a clear flow of lines. With his right arm, the boy is reaching for a ram which has suddenly materialized from the depth of the picture. Its nose and mouth are nearly touching the smiling boy’s cheek.

Caravaggio clearly based the figure on Michelangelo’s example, though he painted it according to his own principles of working direct from a living model. The figure does not reveal the great Florentine’s feeling for musculature, but the vigorous contouring of his back shows his influence. Caravaggio is likely to have used a study here. With great skill and his instinct for dynamic action, Caravaggio has placed the carefully built-up body in such a way that the figure’s left elbow almost bumps against the edge of the picture. Otherwise, however, the figure is completely free. This enables the apparition in the light to develop dynamically from top left towards the right.

This painting does not fit into the artist’s series of other St John the Baptist paintings. Only a few experts accept it as a genuine Caravaggio. Its colors are muted. A Banner with writing on it, which is wound around the unusually well-defined Jacob’s staff on the ground, has an inscription which, although the artist twists it skilfully, can easily be read as: AGNUS DEI, the lamb of God. This painting possibly represents a late phase of the artist’s creative work.

The picture shows the first version of the St Matthew and the Angel, executed for the Contarelli Chapel in the San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome. This painting was rejected, and the artist made another one which still stands over the altar today. The first version of the St Matthew and the Angel was purchased by Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani and then ended up in Berlin, where it was destroyed in the Second World War; no color reproduction exists.

The slow-witted figure of St Matthew, who is naked below below his knees and elbows, and dressed in an ordinary cowl, acquires no real dignity even though the mantle laid over his folding-chair. With his eyes wide open, and with heavy hands, he peers into the thick volumes on his knee. It is not easy to believe he can write. His angel has the greatest difficulty in leading his untrained hand to put the word of God into letters, which are far too big. In doing so, the angel inclines his charming figure, whose shape can clearly be seen beneath his light garment. And so can his androgynous face and long locks of hair, in contrast to the rough bald skull of St Matthew. Against the almost black background, which has been trimmed on the left and at the top, we see the exquisite white of his enormous wings.

The attribution of this still-life to Caravaggio is doubtful.

From a thematic point of view, large scale still-lifes in the Galleria Borghese are similar to outstanding early works by Caravaggio, but they lack the brilliance and the concentration on individual objects. This painting and another are usually attributed to Caravaggio. Because it is rather unconvincing to attribute such work to Caravaggio, some scholars distinguish this Caravaggesque painter of still-lifes from the master by naming him - after a splendid example of the genre - the Painter of the Still-Life in the Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 2 minutes):

Franz Schubert: Blumenlied (Flower Song) D 431

The gospel according to St Luke (24:13-32) tells of the meeting of two disciples with the resurrected Christ. It is only during the meal that his companions recognize him in the way he blesses and breaks the bread. But with that, the vision of Christ vanishes. In the gospel according to St Mark (16:12) he is said to have appeared to them “in an other form” which is why Caravaggio did not paint him with a beard at the age of his crucifixion, but as a youth.

The host seems interested but somewhat confused at the surprise and emotion shown by the disciples. The light falling sharply from the top left to illuminate the scene has all the suddenness of the moment of recognition. It captures the climax of the story, the moment at which seeing becomes recognizing. In other words, the lighting in the painting is not merely illumination, but also an allegory. It models the objects, makes them visible to the eye and is at the same time a spiritual portrayal of the revelation, the vision, that will be gone in an instant.

Caravaggio has offset the transience of this fleeting moment in the tranquillity of his still life on the table. On the surfaces of the glasses, crockery, bread and fruit, poultry and vine leaves, he unfurls all the sensual magic of textural portrayal in a manner hitherto unprecedented in Italian painting.

The realism with which Caravaggio treated even religious subjects - apostles who look like labourers, the plump and slightly feminine figure of Christ - met with the vehement disapproval of the clergy.

This later version of the subject is more restrained in colour and action than that in the National Gallery, London, less symbolic, more reverential. Instead of sumptuous still-life, we see only bread, a bowl, a tin plate, and a jug. The gestures of surprise are much the same though differently distributed.

An elderly innkeeper and an elderly maid wait anxiously on the three men who have arrived in the small village. The disciple to the left turns his face away towards Christ, the one on the right is seen in three-quarter profile. This time, instead of recoiling ftom Christ, they len forward in his direction, as with a tranquil gesture he blesses the bread.