Caravaggio

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Caravaggio
Caravaggio

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, anavezet gwelloc'h evel Caravaggio, a zo ul livour italian ganet d'an 29 a viz gwengolo 1571 (da Ouel Mikael eta) e Milano, ha marvet d'an 18 a viz Gouhere 1610, er bloavezh end-eeun ma voe lazhet ar roue gall Herri IV.

Taolenn

[kemmañ] Un den, un arzour

Unan eus livourien ar skol "naturelouriezh" italian eo, enebet ouzh ar skol "manierista" a rene war ar XVIvet kantved. Adnevezet en deus an arz en e amzer ha kontet eo da vezañ unan eus ar c'hentañ arzourien barok.

Brudet eo al livour abalamour d'e arz evel d'e vuhez. Adalek 1600 e oa brudet e Roma evel un arzour dornet-kaer. Diwar neuze ne vankas ket al labour dezhañ. Nemet ar berzh a rae a save d'e benn.

Bet eo un den feuls, brusk, hoalus ha dañjerus, enebour d'an urzh, a veze armet, a ouie en em gannañ, hag a lazhas ouzhpenn un den. Kraouiet e voe meur a wech, peogwir e nac'he pourmen dizarm e straedoù Roma, goude ma oa difennet.

Ur pennad diwar e benn, e 1604, a ziskleir e zoare-bevañ tri bloaz a-raok, a gont "en devoa labouret e-pad pemzektez hag e oa aet da gantren, miz pe zaou, e gleze gantañ ouzh e gostez, ur mevel ouzh e heul, eus an eil sal-daéns d'eben, prest da glask kann pe tabut, ken ne veze ket aes kaout afer outañ ."[1]

E 1606 e rankas tec'hel eus Roma, pa oa klask warnañ abalamour m'en devoa lazhet un den en doa bet kann outañ.

E 1608 e oa enez Malta, ma'z eas en Urzh Malta, desket ma oa madik war ar relijion, met ne chomas nemet tri miz enni, taolet e voe er-maez anezhi dre m'en devoa lazhet ur c'hamarad eus an urzh.

Neuze ez eas da Naplez, e 1609, ma voe klasket e lazhañ, trawalc'h a enebourien en devoa evit se, hag ac'haleno da Sikilia, ma ne reas nemet gounit enebourien nevez ken na varvas e 1610.

Ilizoù nevez ha palezioù ec'hon a veze savet e Roma war-dro dibenn ar XVIvet ha deroù ar XVIIvet kantved, hag ezhomm a oa livadurioù. Edo an Iliz gant an Enepreform, ha klask a oa war-lerc'h ur gwir arz relijiel ac'h aje a-enep ar Brotestantiezh, hag evit se ne seblante ket dereat ken an doareoù-micher kozh (re ar Mannerismo), a bade abaoe kant vloaz, hag a gaved artifisiel.

Caravaggio a zegase nevezenti, gant e naturalouriezh (arz) naturalouriezh, un doare-ober savet diwar pizhsellout hag implij chiaroscuro, sklêrijenn ha teñvalijenn.

Brud ha levezon en doe Caravaggio en e vuhez. Hogen ankounac'haet e voe er c'hantvedoù war-lerch e varv. Ret e voe gortoz ken an XXvet kantved evit dizoleiñ pegen kreñv en doa levezonet arz ar C'hornôg. Koulskoude eo bras e levezon war an doare-livañ nevez a deuas war-lerc'h ar "mannerismo", ar "baroko". Andre Berne-Joffroy, sekretour Paul Valéry, a lavare diwar e benn: "Pezh a grog gant labour Caravaggio n'eo nemet al livouriezh vodern."[2]

[kemmañ] E vuhez

[kemmañ] E oad tener(1571-1592)

Sant Pêr staget ouzh ar groaz (Caravaggio), 1601. Eoullivadur, 230 x 175 cm. Cerasi Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo, Roma.
Sant Pêr staget ouzh ar groaz (Caravaggio), 1601. Eoullivadur, 230 x 175 cm. Cerasi Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo, Roma.

Ganet e oa Caravaggio e Milano,[3]. E dad, Fermo Merisi, a oa merour-ti ha kinkler-ti da Francesco Sforza, markiz Caravaggio. E vamm, Lucia Aratori, a oa perc'henned he zud er memes kornad .

In 1576 ez eas an tiegezh da chom da g-Caravaggio, ur gêr vihan eus proviñs Bergama, evit tec'hel rak ar vosenn a rae he reuz e kêr Milano. Eno e varvas e dad, Fermo, bloaz goude, e 1577.

Krediñ a reer eo e Caravaggio e kreskas ar bugel, met daremprediñ ar re Sforza a rae e dud atav hag an tiegezh Colonna ivez. Tost e oa an div familh vras-se an eil ouzh eben, dimezioù a oa bet etre o bugale, ha skoazell a gavo Caravaggio diganto. Ar re g-Colonna a oa tud c'halloudus e kêr Roma, hag e-kreiz ur rouedad tud a roas skoazell d'an arzour pa voe en diaezamant.

D'e 13 vloaz, e 1584, ez eas da Vilano zeskiñ ar vicher livour gant Simone Peterzano Simone Peterzano , a lavare bout diskibl da d-Tizian. Ober a reas anaoudegezh a dra sur gant teñzorioù arzel kêr Milano, gant Ar Goan Ziwezhañ livet gant Leonardo a dra sur, ha gant arz Lombardia dre vras, dezhañ un doare a roe talvoudegezh d'ar "sell didro hag an evezh ouzh ar munudoù naturel"[4], un arz a oa tostoc'h ouzh naturalouriezh Alamagn eget ouzh ar manierismo diouzh ar c'hiz e Roma.

Krediñ a reer e chomas ur pennad e Milano war-lerc'h echuet gantañ e bennad-diskibl, met marteze ez eas da Venezia hag e welas eno labour Giorgione, a voe lavaret goude ne rae nemet e varmouzañ, ha hini Tizian.

E 1589 e tistroas da g-Caravaggio betek marv e vamm, ken na voe rannet peadra an tiegezh en 1592. Neuze ez eas da Roma.

[kemmañ] Roma (1592-1600)

Paotrig gant ur banerad Frouezh (Caravaggio), c. 1593. Eoulivadur, 67 x 53 cm. Galleria Borghese, Roma.
Paotrig gant ur banerad Frouezh (Caravaggio), c. 1593. Eoulivadur, 67 x 53 cm. Galleria Borghese, Roma.

War-dro hanter 1592 e tegouezhas e Roma, “en e noazh hag en ezhomm bras ... hep annez na boued ... diarc'hant.”[5] Bod en doa kavet gant ur mignon d'e diegezh, an Aotrou eskob Pucci. Evitañ e live hage kopie taolennoù relijiel. Livañ a rae ivez e ti ar Marc'heg Arpino ma reas eno oberennoù kentañ eyaouankiz: ar paotrig e banerad frouezh pe Bakus yaouank klañv. Kaoz zo bet c'hoazh gant istorourien zo eus ur veaj da Venezia evit displegaén levezonioù veneziat war e arz, dreist-holl en daolenn diskuizh e-pad an dec'hadenn da Egipt, met netra sur n'eus bet prouet.


N'ouzer ket gwall vat petra a reas e-pad e vloavezhioù kentañ e Roma. Brud en doa da vezañ un den feuls, brusk, troet da glask kann, ret dezhañ tec'hel dirak al lezenn alies.

Un nebeud mizioù diwezhatoc'h e laboure evit al livour Giuseppe Cesari, e barr e vrud da neuze, livour muiañ karet ar pab Klemañs VIII, “o livañ bleunioù ha frouezh”[6]en e labouradeg. Eus ar mare-se ec'h anavezomp Paotr o peliat frouezh (e gentañ livadur anavezet), ur Paotr e banerad frouezh , ha Bakus Yaouank klañv , supposedly a self-portrait done during convalescence from a serious illness that ended his employment with Cesari. All three demonstrate the physical particularity — one aspect of his realism — for which Caravaggio was to become renowned: the fruit-basket-boy’s produce has been analysed by a professor of horticulture, who was able to identify individual cultivars right down to "... a large fig leaf with a prominent fungal scorch lesion resembling anthracnose (Glomerella cingulata)."[7]

Caravaggio a guitaas Cesari e miz Genver 1594, mennet ma oa da ober e dreuz e-unan. His fortunes were at their lowest ebb, yet it was now that he forged some extremely important friendships, with the painter Prospero Orsi, the architect Onorio Longhi, and the sixteen year old Sicilian artist Mario Minniti. Orsi, established in the profession, introduced him to influential collectors; Longhi, more balefully, introduced him to the world of Roman street-brawls; and Minniti served as a model and, years later, would be instrumental in helping Caravaggio to important commissions in Sicily.[8] The Fortune Teller, his first composition with more than one figure, shows Mario being cheated by a gypsy girl. The theme was quite new for Rome, and proved immensely influential over the next century and beyond. This, however, was in the future: at the time, Caravaggio sold it for practically nothing. The Cardsharps — showing another unsophisticated boy falling the victim of card cheats — is even more psychologically complex, and perhaps Caravaggio’s first true masterpiece. Like the Fortune Teller it was immensely popular, and over 50 copies survive. More importantly, it attracted the patronage of Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte, one of the leading connoisseurs in Rome. For Del Monte and his wealthy art-loving circle Caravaggio executed a number of intimate chamber-pieces — The Musicians, The Lute Player, a tipsy Bacchus, an allegorical but realistic Boy Bitten by a Lizard — featuring Minniti and other boy models.[9] The allegedly homoerotic ambience of these paintings has been the centre of considerable dispute amongst scholars and biographers since it was first raised in the later half of the 20th century.[10]

Skeudenn:The Cardsharps.jpg
The Cardsharps, c. 1594. Oil on canvas, 107 x 99 cm. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas.

The realism returned with Caravaggio’s first paintings on religious themes, and the emergence of remarkable spirituality. The first of these was the Penitent Magdalene, showing Mary Magdalene at the moment when she has turned from her life as a courtesan and sits weeping on the floor, her jewels scattered around her. “It seemed not a religious painting at all ... a girl sitting on a low wooden stool drying her hair ... Where was the repentance ... suffering ... promise of salvation?”[11] It was understated, in the Lombard manner, not histrionic in the Roman manner of the time. It was followed by others in the same style: Saint Catherine, Martha and Mary Magdalene, Judith Beheading Holofernes, a Sacrifice of Isaac, a Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy, and a Rest on the Flight into Egypt. The works, while viewed by a comparatively limited circle, increased Caravaggio's fame with both connoisseurs and his fellow-artists. But a true reputation would depend on public commissions, and for these it was necessary to look to the Church.

[kemmañ] 'Brudetañ livour kêr Roma' (1600-1606)

The Calling of Saint Matthew. 1599-1600. Oil on canvas, 322 x 340 cm. Contarelli Chapel, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome. The beam of light, which enters the picture from the direction of a real window, expresses in the blink of an eye the conversion of St Matthew, the hinge on which his destiny will turn, with no flying angels, parting clouds or other artifacts.
The Calling of Saint Matthew. 1599-1600. Oil on canvas, 322 x 340 cm. Contarelli Chapel, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome. The beam of light, which enters the picture from the direction of a real window, expresses in the blink of an eye the conversion of St Matthew, the hinge on which his destiny will turn, with no flying angels, parting clouds or other artifacts.

In 1599, presumably through the influence of Del Monte, Caravaggio contracted to decorate the Contarelli Chapel in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi. The two works making up the commission, the Martyrdom of Saint Matthew and Calling of Saint Matthew, delivered in 1600, were an immediate sensation. Caravaggio’s tenebrism (a heightened chiaroscuro) brought high drama to his subjects, while his acutely observed realism brought a new level of emotional intensity. Opinion among Caravaggio’s artist peers was polarized. Some denounced him for various perceived failings, notably his insistence on painting from life, without drawings, but for the most part he was hailed as the saviour of art: "The painters then in Rome were greatly taken by this novelty, and the young ones particularly gathered around him, praised him as the unique imitator of nature, and looked on his work as miracles."[12]

Marv ar Werc'hez (detail). 1601 - 1606. Oil on canvas, 396 x 245 cm. Louvre, Paris.
Marv ar Werc'hez (detail). 1601 - 1606. Oil on canvas, 396 x 245 cm. Louvre, Paris.


Caravaggio went on to secure a string of prestigious commissions for religious works featuring violent struggles, grotesque decapitations, torture and death. For the most part each new painting increased his fame, but a few were rejected by the various bodies for whom they were intended, at least in their original forms, and had to be re-painted or find new buyers. The essence of the problem was that while Caravaggio’s dramatic intensity was appreciated, his realism was seen by some as unacceptably vulgar.[13] His first version of Saint Matthew and the Angel, featured the saint as a bald peasant with dirty legs attended by a lightly-clad over-familiar boy-angel, was rejected and had to be repainted as The Inspiration of Saint Matthew. Similarly, The Conversion of Saint Paul was rejected, and while another version of the same subject, the Conversion on the Way to Damascus, was accepted, it featured the saint’s horse’s haunches far more prominently than the saint himself, prompting this exchange between the artist and an exasperated official of Santa Maria del Popolo: “Why have you put a horse in the middle, and Saint Paul on the ground?” “Because!” “Is the horse God?” “No, but he stands in God’s light!”[14]

Other works included the deeply moving Entombment, the Madonna di Loreto (Madonna of the Pilgrims), the Grooms' Madonna, and the Death of the Virgin. The history of these last two paintings illustrate the reception given to some of Caravaggio's art, and the times in which he lived. The Grooms' Madonna, also known as Madonna dei palafrenieri, painted for a small altar in st.Peter's Basilica in Rome, remained there for just two days, and was then taken off. A cardinal's secretary wrote: "In this painting there are but vulgarity, sacrilege, impiousness and disgust...One would say it is a work made by a painter that can paint well, but of a dark spirit, and who has been for a lot of time far from God, from His adoration, and from any good thought...".Patrom:Fact The Death of the Virgin, then, commissioned in 1601 by a wealthy jurist for his private chapel in the new Carmelite church of Santa Maria della Scala, was rejected by the Carmelites in 1606. Caravaggio's contemporary Giulio Mancini records that it was rejected because Caravaggio had used a well-known prostitute as his model for the Virgin;[15] Giovanni Baglione, another contemporary, tells us it was because of Mary's bare legs:[16] a matter of decorum in either case. But Caravaggio scholar John Gash suggests that the problem for the Carmelites may have been theological rather than aesthetic, in that Caravaggio's version fails to assert the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary, the idea that the Mother of God did not die in any ordinary sense but was assumed into Heaven. The replacement altarpiece commissioned (from one of Caravaggio's most able followers, Carlo Saraceni), showed the Virgin not dead, as Caravaggio had painted her, but seated and dying; and even this was rejected, and replaced with a work which showed the Virgin not dying, but ascending into Heaven with choirs of angels. In any case, the rejection did not mean that Caravaggio or his paintings were out of favour. The Death of the Virgin was no sooner taken out of the church than it was purchased by the Duke of Mantua, on the advice of Rubens, and later acquired by Charles I of England before entering the French royal collection in 1671.

Amor Vincit Omnia. 1602 - 1603. Oil on canvas. 156 x 113 cm. Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. Caravaggio shows Cupid prevailing over all human endeavors: war, music, science, government.
Amor Vincit Omnia. 1602 - 1603. Oil on canvas. 156 x 113 cm. Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. Caravaggio shows Cupid prevailing over all human endeavors: war, music, science, government.

One secular piece from these years is Amor Victorious, painted in 1602 for Vincenzo Giustiniani, a member of Del Monte’s circle. The model was named in a memoir of the early 17th century as "Cecco", the diminutive for Francesco. He is possibly Francesco Boneri, identified with an artist active in the period 1610-1625 and known as Cecco del Caravaggio ('Caravaggio's Cecco'),[17] carrying a bow and arrows and trampling symbols of the warlike and peaceful arts and sciences underfoot. He is unclothed, and it is difficult to accept this grinning urchin as the Roman god Cupid – as difficult as it was to accept Caravaggio’s other semi-clad adolescents as the various angels he painted in his canvases, wearing much the same stage-prop wings. The point, however, is the intense yet ambiguous reality of the work: it is simultaneously Cupid and Cecco, as Caravaggio’s Virgins were simultaneously the Mother of Christ and the Roman courtesans who modeled for them.

[kemmañ] Harlu ha marv (1606-1610)

E 1606, war-lerc'h marv Tomassoni, e tec'has da zomani Colonna erc'hreisteiz da Roma, hag ac'haleno da Naplez e-lec'h m'edo Costanza Colonna Sforza, intañvez Francesco Sforza, o chom en ur palez mavoe degemeret evel mab an hini en doa bet karg e ti he fried. Ur breur he doa Costanza, Ascanio e anv, ha hennezh a oa kardinal-gwarezour rouantelezh Naplez, hag ur breur all dezhi, Marzio, a oa kuzulier besroue Spagn,

and a sister was married into the important Neapolitan Carafa family - connections which might help explain the cornucopia of major commissions which fell into Caravaggio's lap in that city. Costanza's son Fabrizio Sforza Colonna, Knight of Malta and general of the Order's galleys, appears to have facilitated his arrival in the island in 1607 and his escape the next year, and he stayed in Costanza's Neapolitan palazzo on his return there in 1609. These connections are treated in most biographies and studies - see, for example, Catherine Puglisi, "Caravaggio", p.258, for a brief outline. Helen Langdon, "Caravaggio: A Life", ch.12 and 15, and Peter Robb, "M", pp.398ff and 459ff, give a fuller account.</ref>
The Denial of Saint Peter, c. 1610. Oil on canvas, 94 x 125 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In the chiaroscuro a woman points two fingers at Peter while a soldier points a third. Caravaggio tells the story of Peter denying Christ three times with this symbolism.
The Denial of Saint Peter, c. 1610. Oil on canvas, 94 x 125 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In the chiaroscuro a woman points two fingers at Peter while a soldier points a third. Caravaggio tells the story of Peter denying Christ three times with this symbolism.

Caravaggio led a tumultuous life. He was notorious for brawling, even in a time and place when such behavior was commonplace, and the transcripts of his police records and trial proceedings fill several pages. On 29 May 1606, he killed, possibly unintentionally, a young man named Ranuccio Tomassoni.[18] Previously his high-placed patrons had protected him from the consequences of his escapades, but this time they could do nothing. Caravaggio, outlawed, fled to Naples. There, outside the jurisdiction of the Roman authorities and protected by the Colonna family, the most famous painter in Rome became the most famous in Naples. His connections with the Colonnas led to a stream of important church commissions, including the Madonna of the Rosary, and The Seven Works of Mercy.

Despite his success in Naples, after only a few months in the city Caravaggio left for Malta, the headquarters of the Knights of Malta, presumably hoping that the patronage of Alof de Wignacourt, Grand Master of the Knights, could help him secure a pardon for Tomassoni's death. De Wignacourt proved so impressed at having the famous artist as official painter to the Order that he inducted him as a knight, and the early biographer Bellori records that the artist was well pleased with his success. Major works from his Malta period include a huge Beheading of Saint John the Baptist (the only painting to which he put his signature) and a Portrait of Alof de Wignacourt and his Page, as well as portraits of other leading knights. Yet by late August of 1608 he was arrested and imprisoned. The circumstances surrounding this abrupt change of fortune have long been a matter of speculation, but recent investigation has revealed it to have been the result of yet another brawl, during which the door of a house was battered down and a knight seriously wounded.[19] By December he had been expelled from the Order "as a foul and rotten member."[20]

The Raising of Lazarus (1609), Museo Regionale Uffici, Messina.
The Raising of Lazarus (1609), Museo Regionale Uffici, Messina.

Before the expulsion Caravaggio had escaped to Sicily and the company of his old friend Mario Minniti, who was now married and living in Syracuse. Together they set off on what amounted to a triumphal tour from Syracuse to Messina and on to the island capital, PalermoPatrom:Note. In each city Caravaggio continued to win prestigious and well-paid commissions. Among other works from this period are a Burial of St. Lucy, a The Raising of Lazarus, and an Adoration of the Shepherds. His style continued to evolve, showing now friezes of figures isolated against vast empty backgrounds. "His great Sicilian altarpieces isolate their shadowy, pitifully poor figures in vast areas of darkness; they suggest the desperate fears and frailty of man, and at the same time convey, with a new yet desolate tenderness, the beauty of humility and of the meek, who shall inherit the earth."[21] Contemporary reports depict a man whose behaviour was becoming increasingly bizarre, sleeping fully armed and in his clothes, ripping up a painting at a slight word of criticism, mocking the local painters.[22]

After only nine months in Sicily Caravaggio returned to Naples. According to his earliest biographer he was being pursued by enemies while in Sicily and felt it safest to place himself under the protection of the Colonnas until he could secure his pardon from the pope (now Paul V) and return to Rome.[23] In Naples he painted The Denial of Saint Peter, a final John the Baptist (Borghese), and, his last picture, The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula. His style continued to evolve — Saint Ursula is caught in a moment of highest action and drama, as the arrow fired by the king of the Huns strikes her in the breast, unlike earlier paintings which had all the immobility of the posed models. The brushwork was much freer and more impressionistic. Had Caravaggio lived, something new would have come.

In Naples an attempt was made on his life, by persons unknown. At first it was reported in Rome that the "famous artist" Caravaggio was dead, but then it was learned that he was alive, but seriously disfigured in the face. He painted a Salome with the Head of John the Baptist (Madrid), showing his own head on a platter, and sent it to de Wignacourt as a plea for forgiveness. Perhaps at this time he painted also a David with the Head of Goliath, showing the young David with a strangely sorrowful expression gazing on the wounded head of the giant, which is again Caravaggio's. This painting he may have sent to the unscrupulous art-loving cardinal-nephew Scipione Borghese, who had the power to grant or withhold pardons.[24]

In the summer of 1610 he took a boat northwards to receive the pardon, which seemed imminent thanks to his powerful Roman friends. With him were three last paintings, gifts for Cardinal Scipione.[25] What happened next is the subject of much confusion and conjecture. The bare facts are that on 28 July an anonymous avviso (private newsletter) from Rome to the ducal court of Urbino reported that Caravaggio was dead. Three days later another avviso said that he had died of fever. These were the earliest, brief accounts of his death, which later underwent much elaboration. No body was found.[26] A poet friend of the artist later gave 18 July as the date of death, and a recent researcher claims to have discovered a death notice showing that the artist died on that day of a fever in Porto Ercole,[27] near Grosseto in Tuscany.

[kemmañ] Caravaggio the artist

[kemmañ] The birth of Baroque

The Taking of Christ,  1602. National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin. Caravaggio's application of the chiaroscuro technique shows through on the faces and armour notwithstanding the lack of a visible shaft of light.
The Taking of Christ, 1602. National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin. Caravaggio's application of the chiaroscuro technique shows through on the faces and armour notwithstanding the lack of a visible shaft of light.

Caravaggio “put the oscuro (shadows) into chiaroscuro.”[28] Chiaroscuro was practiced long before he came on the scene, but it was Caravaggio who made the technique definitive, darkening the shadows and transfixing the subject in a blinding shaft of light. With this went the acute observation of physical and psychological reality which formed the ground both for his immense popularity and for his frequent problems with his religious commissions. He worked at great speed, from live models, scoring basic guides directly onto the canvas with the end of the brush handle. The approach was anathema to the skilled artists of his day, who decried his refusal to work from drawings and to idealise his figures. Yet the models were basic to his realism. Some have been identified, including Mario Minniti and Francesco Boneri, both fellow-artists, Mario appearing as various figures in the early secular works, the young Francesco as a succession of angels, Baptists and Davids in the later canvasses. His female models include Fillide Melandroni, Anna Bianchini, and Maddalena Antognetti (the "Lena" mentioned in court documents of the "artichoke" case[29] as Caravaggio's concubine), all well-known prostitutes, who appear as female religious figures including the Virgin and various saints.[30] Caravaggio himself appears in several paintings, his final self-portrait being as the witness on the far right to the Martyrdom of Saint Ursula.[31]

Supper at Emmaus, 1601. Oil on canvas, 139 x 195 cm. National Gallery, London.
Supper at Emmaus, 1601. Oil on canvas, 139 x 195 cm. National Gallery, London.

Caravaggio had a noteworthy ability to express in one scene of unsurpassed vividness the passing of a crucial moment. The Supper at Emmaus depicts the recognition of Christ by his disciples: a moment before he is a fellow traveler, mourning the passing of the Messiah, as he never ceases to be to the inn-keeper’s eyes, the second after, he is the Saviour. In The Calling of St Matthew, the hand of the Saint points to himself as if he were saying “who, me?”, while his eyes, fixed upon the figure of Christ, have already said, “Yes, I will follow you”. With The Resurrection of Lazarus, he goes a step further, giving us a glimpse of the actual physical process of resurrection. The body of Lazarus is still in the throes of rigor mortis, but his hand, facing and recognizing that of Christ, is alive. Other major Baroque artists would travel the same path, for example Bernini, fascinated with themes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

[kemmañ] The Caravaggisti

Judith Beheading Holofernes 1598-1599. Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome.
Judith Beheading Holofernes 1598-1599. Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome.

The installation of the St. Matthew paintings in the Contarelli Chapel had an immediate impact among the younger artists in Rome, and Caravaggism became the cutting edge for every ambitious young painter. The first Caravaggisti included Giovanni Baglione (although his Caravaggio phase was short-lived) and Orazio Gentileschi. In the next generation there were Carlo Saraceni, Bartolomeo Manfredi and Orazio Borgianni. Gentileschi, despite being considerably older, was the only one of these artists to live much beyond 1620, and ended up as court painter to Charles I in England. His daughter Artemisia Gentileschi was also close to Caravaggio, and one of the most gifted of the movement. Yet in Rome and in Italy it was not Caravaggio, but the influence of Annibale Carraci, blending elements from the High Renaissance and Lombard realism, which ultimately triumphed.

Caravaggio’s brief stay in Naples produced a notable school of Neapolitan Caravaggisti, including Battistello Caracciolo and Carlo Sellitto. The Caravaggisti movement there ended with a terrible outbreak of plague in 1656, but the Spanish connection – Naples was a possession of Spain – was instrumental in forming the important Spanish branch of his influence.

A group of Catholic artists from Utrecht, the "Utrecht Caravaggisti", travelled to Rome as students in the first years of the 17th century and were profoundly influenced by the work of Caravaggio, as Bellori describes. On their return to the north this trend had a short-lived but influential flowering in the 1620s among painters like Hendrick ter Brugghen, Gerrit van Honthorst, Andries Both and Dirck van Baburen. In the following generation the affects of Caravaggio, although attenuated, are to be seen in the work of Rubens (who purchased one of his paintings for the Gonzaga of Mantua and painted a copy of the Entombment of Christ), Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Velazquez, the last of whom presumably saw his work during his various sojourns in Italy.

[kemmañ] Marv hag adc'hanedigezh brud un arzour

Beziadur Jezuz (1602-1603). Pinacoteca Vaticana.
Beziadur Jezuz (1602-1603). Pinacoteca Vaticana.

Brud Caravaggio ne chomas ket war-lerc'h e varv. An doareoù nevez degaset gantañ a voe implijet en doare "baroco", nemet ma voe implijet e g-chiaroscuro e voe dilezet e wirvoud psikologek.

Levezoniñ a reas doare-livañ e geneil Orazio Gentileschi, ha hini e verc'h Artemisia Gentileschi, hag a-bell hini ar C'hallaoued Georges de La Tour ha Simon Vouet, ha hini ar spagnol Giuseppe Ribera.

Yet within a few decades his works were being ascribed to less scandalous artists, or simply overlooked. The Baroque, to which he contributed so much, had moved on, and fashions had changed, but perhaps more pertinantly Caravaggio never established a workshop as the Carraci's did, and thus had no school to spread his techniques. Nor did he ever set out his underlying philosophical approiach to art, the psychological realism which can only be deduced from his surviving work. Thus his reputation was doubly vulnerable to the critical demolition-jobs done by two of his earliest biographers, Giovanni Baglione, a rival painter with a personal vendetta, and the influential 17th century critic Giovan Bellori, who had not known him but was under the influence of the French Classicist Poussin, who had not known him either but hated his work.[32]

In the 1920s art critic Roberto Longhi brought Caravaggio's name once more to public attention, and placed him in the European tradition: “Ribera, Vermeer, La Tour and Rembrandt could never have existed without him. And the art of Delacroix, Courbet and Manet would have been utterly different.”[33] The influential Bernard Berenson agreed: “With the exception of Michaelangelo, no other Italian painter exercised so great an influence.”[34]

[kemmañ] Modern tradition

Dibennadur sant Yann Vadezour , 1608. Oratory of the co-Cathedral of St John, Valletta.
Dibennadur sant Yann Vadezour , 1608. Oratory of the co-Cathedral of St John, Valletta.

Many large museums of art, for example those in Detroit and New York, contain rooms where dozens of paintings by as many artists display the characteristic look of the work of Caravaggio — nighttime setting, dramatic lighting, ordinary people used as models, honest description from nature. In modern times, painters like the Norwegian Odd Nerdrum and the Hungarian Tibor Csernus make no secret of their attempts to emulate and update him, and the contemporary American artist Doug Ohlson pays homage to Caravaggio's influence on his own work. Filmmaker Derek Jarman turned to the Caravaggio legend when creating his movie Caravaggio; and Dutch art forger Han van Meegeren used genuine Caravaggios when creating his ersatz Old Masters.

Only about 50 works by Caravaggio survive. One, The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew, was recently authenticated and restored. It had been in storage in Hampton Court, mislabeled as a copy. At least a couple of his paintings have been or may have been lost in recent times. Richard Francis Burton writes of a "picture of St. Rosario (in the museum of the Grand Duke of Tuscany), showing a circle of thirty men turpiter ligati" which is not known to have survived. Also, a painting of an Angel was destroyed during the bombing of Dresden, though there are black and white photographs of the work.

[kemmañ] Chronology of major works

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Dafar ouzhpenn a-fed an tem-mañ a vez kavet e-barzh Wiki.Commons

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[kemmañ] Footnotes

  1. Hervez Floris Claes van Dijk, a veve e Roma e 1601 d'ar c'houlz ma laboure Caravaggio eno, meneget e John Gash, "Caravaggio", p.13. Kavet e vo ar meneg kentañ a se e Het Schilder-Boek, gant Carl (or Karel) van Mander, eus 1604, troet en e hed el levr "Caravaggio" gant Howard Hibbard. The first reference to Caravaggio in a contemporary document from Rome is the listing of his name, with that of Prospero Orsi as his partner, as an 'assistente' in a procession in October 1594 in honour of St. Luke (see H. Waga "Vita nota e ignota dei virtuosi al Pantheon" Rome 1992, Appendix I, pp.219 and 220ff). The earliest informative account of his life in the city is a court transcript dated 11 July 1597 where Caravaggio and Prospero Orsi were witnesses to a crime near San Luigi de' Francesi. (See "The earliest account of Caravaggio in Rome" Sandro Corradini and Maurizio Marini, The Burlington Magazine, pp.25-28).
  2. Meneget gant Gilles Lambert, en e levr "Caravaggio", p.8.
  3. Testeniekaet gant kavadenn ar baperenn-vadeziant eus parrez Santo Stefano in Brolo, e Milano, hervez L'Unità, February 26 2007.
  4. Rosa Giorgi, "Caravaggio: Master of light and dark - his life in paintings", p.12.
  5. Meneget hepmui e levr Robb, p.35, diazezet war skridoù Mancini, Baglione ha Bellori, a lavar o-zri e vevas e vloavezhioù kentañ e Roma er baourentez (menegoù izeloc'h).
  6. Giovanni Pietro Bellori, Le Vite de' pittori, scultori, et architetti moderni, 1672: "Michele a voe ret dezhañ mont da selvij ar Marc'heg Giuseppe d'Arpino, a roe dezhañ da labour livañ bleunioù ha frouezh en un doare ken tost d'ar wirionez ma voe tizhet ganto ar gened a geromp kement hiriv."
  7. Caravaggio's Fruit: A Mirror on Baroque Horticulture (Jules Janick, Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana)
  8. Catherine Puglisi, "Caravaggio", p.79. Longhi was with Caravaggio on the night of the fatal brawl with Tomassoni; Robb, "M", p.341, believes that Minniti was as well.
  9. The critic Robert Hughes memorably described Caravaggio's boys as "overripe bits of rough trade, with yearning mouths and hair like black ice cream."
  10. Donald Posner's "Caravaggio's Early Homo-erotic Works" (Art Quarterly 24 (1971), pp.301-26) was the first to broach the subject of Caravaggio's sexuality and its relationship to his art. The gay biographers and commentators generally take a homoerotic content for granted, but the subject is complex. For a perceptive and well-sourced discussion, see Brian Tovar's "Sins Against Nature:: Homoeroticism and the epistemology of Caravaggio" For an opposing viewpoint, see Maurizio Calvesi's "Caravaggio" (ArtDossier 1986, in Italian). Calvesi argues that the early work reflects the Del Monte's taste rather than Caravaggio's, in the era before the advent of the modern concept of self-expression.
  11. Robb, p.79. Robb is drawing on Bellori, who praises Caravaggio's "true" colours but finds the naturalism offensive: "He (Caravaggio) was satisfied with [the] invention of nature without further exercising his brain."
  12. Bellori. The passage continues: "[The younger painters] outdid each other in copying him, undressing their models and raising their lights; and rather than setting out to learn from study and instruction, each readily found in the streets or squares of Rome both masters and models for copying nature."
  13. For an outline of the Counter-Reformation Church's policy on decorum in art, see Giorgi, p.80. For a more detailed discussion, see Gash, p.8ff; and for a discussion of the part played by notions of decorum in the rejection of "St Matthew and the Angel" and "Death of the Virgin", see Puglisi, pp.179-188.
  14. Quoted without attribution in Lambert, p.66.
  15. Mancini: "Thus one can understand how badly some modern artists paint, such as those who, wishing to portray the Virgin Our Lady, depict some dirty prostitute from the Ortaccio, as Michelangelo da Caravaggio did in the Death of the Virgin in that painting for the Madonna della Scala, which for that very reason those good fathers rejected it, and perhaps that poor man suffered so much trouble in his lifetime."
  16. Baglione: "For the [church of] Madonna della Scala in Trastevere he painted the death of the Madonna, but because he had portrayed the Madonna with little decorum, swollen and with bare legs, it was taken away, and the Duke of Mantua bought it and placed it in his most noble gallery."
  17. While Gianni Papi's identification of Cecco del Caravaggio as Francesco Boneri is widely accepted, the evidence connecting Boneri to Caravaggio's servant and model in the early 1600s is circumstantial. See Robb, pp193-196.
  18. The circumstances of the brawl and the death of Ranuccio Tomassoni remain mysterious. Several contemporary avvisi referred to a quarrel over a gambling debt and a tennis game, and this explanation has become established in the popular imagination. But recent scholarship has made it clear that more was involved. Good modern accounts are to be found in Peter Robb's "M" and Helen Langdon's "Caravaggio: A Life". An interesting theory relating the death to Renaissance notions of honour and symbolic wounding has been advanced by art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon. [1]
  19. The discovery of the evidence for this brawl was reported by Dr Keith Sciberras of the University of Malta, in "Frater Michael Angelus in tumultu: the cause of Caravaggio’s imprisonment in Malta", The Burlington Magazine, CXLV, April 2002, pp.229-232, and "Riflessioni su Malta al tempo del Caravaggio", Paragone Arte, Anno LII N.629, July 2002, pp.3-20. Sciberras' findings are summarised online at Caravaggio.com.
  20. This was the formal phrase used in all such cases. The senior knights of the Order convened on 1 December 1608 and, after verifying that the accused had failed to appear although summoned four times, voted unanimously to expel their putridum et foetidum ex-brother. Caravaggio was expelled, not for his crime, but for having left Malta without permission (i.e., escaping).
  21. Langdon, p.365.
  22. Caravaggio displayed bizarre behaviour from very early in his career. Mancini describes him as "extremely crazy", a letter of Del Monte notes his strangeness, and Mario Minniti's 1724 biographer says that Mario left Caravaggio because of his behaviour. The strangeness seems to have increased after Malta. Susinno's early 18th century Le vite de' pittori Messinesi, "Lives of the Painters of Messina", provides several colourful anecdotes of Caravaggio's erratic behaviour in Sicily, and these are reproduced in modern full-length biographies such as Langdon and Robb. Bellori writes of Caravaggio's "fear" driving him from city to city across the island and finally, "feeling that it was no longer safe to remain," to Naples. Baglione says Caravaggio was being "chased by his enemy," but like Bellori does not say who this enemy was.
  23. Baglione says that Caravaggio in Naples had "given up all hope of revenge" against his unnamed enemy.
  24. According to a 17th century writer the painting the head of Goliath is a self-portrait of the artist, while David is il suo Caravaggino, "his little Caravaggio". This phrase is obscure, but it has been interpreted as meaning either that the boy is a youthful self-portrait, or, more commonly, that this is the Cecco who modelled for the Amor Vincit. The sword-blade carries an abbreviated inscription which has been interpreted as meaning Humility Conquers Pride. Attributed to a date in Caravaggio's late Roman period by Bellori, the recent tendency is to see it as a product on Caravaggio's second Neapolitan period. (See Gash, p.125).
  25. A letter from the Bishop of Caserta in Naples to Cardinal Scipione Borghese in Rome, dated 29 July 1610, informs the Cardinal that the Marchesa of Caravaggio is holding two John the Baptists and a Magdalene which were intended for Borghese. These were presumably the price of Caravaggio's pardon from Borghese's uncle, the pope.
  26. The avvisi placed Caravaggio's death at Porto Ercole while on his way from Naples to Rome. The letter from the Bishop of Caserta to Scipione Borghese on 29 July, one day after the first avviso, says that Caravaggio died "not in Procida but at Porto Ercole." The bishop goes on to deny an earlier (lost) report that Caravaggio had died in Procida, and to say that instead Caravaggio's boat had stopped in Palo, where he had been imprisoned; the had boat returned to Naples, and Caravaggio had bought his release and gone on to Porto Ercole, "perhaps walking," where he died. None of these are intelligible as landing places for a man on his way to Rome: Procida is an island near Naples, Palo was a garrison in the marshes near the mouth of the Tiber but not well connected to the city — Rome's port was at Civitavecchia, a little further north — and Porto Ercole lay a further hundred kilometres north of, and away from, Rome. See Robb, "M", p.473ff.
  27. Patrom:Cite newsThere seems to be no later confirmation of this report.
  28. Lambert, p.11.
  29. Much of the documentary evidence for Caravaggio's life in Rome comes from court records; the "artichoke" case refers to an occasion when the artist threw a dish of hot artichokes at a waiter.
  30. Robb, passim, makes a fairly exhaustive attempt to identify models and relate them to individual canvases.
  31. Caravaggio's self-portraits run from the Sick Bacchus at the beginning of his career to the head of Goliath in the David with the Head of Goliath in Rome's Borghese Gallery. Previous artists had included self-portraits as onlookers to the action, but Caravaggio's innovation was to include himself as a participant.
  32. Also see criticism by fellow Italian Vincenzo Carducci (living in Spain) who nearly bemoans Caravaggio as an "Antichrist" of painting with "monstrous" talents of deception.
  33. Roberto Longhi, quoted in Lambert, op. cit., p.15
  34. Bernard Berenson, in Lambert, op. cit., p.8

[kemmañ] Menegoù

[kemmañ] Primary sources

The main primary sources for Caravaggio's life are:

  • Giulio Mancini's comments on Caravggio in Considerazioni sulla pittura, c.1617-1621
  • Giovanni Baglione's Le vite de' pittori, 1642
  • Giovanni Pietro Bellori's Le Vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti moderni, 1672

All have been reprinted in Howard Hibbard's "Caravaggio" and in the appendices to Catherine Puglisi's "Caravaggio", while Baglione's biography is available online (see External links section).

[kemmañ] Secondary sources

  • John Spike, with assistance from Michèle Kahn Spike, Caravaggio with Catalogue of Paintings on CD-ROM, Abbeville Press, New York (2001) ISBN 978-0-7892-0639-8
  • John Gash, Caravaggio, Chaucer Press, (2004) ISBN 1904449220)
  • Rosa Giorgi, Caravaggio: Master of light and dark - his life in paintings, Dorling Kindersley (1999) ISBN 978-0-7894-4138-6
  • Howard Hibbard, Caravaggio (1983) ISBN 978-0-06-433322-1
  • Helen Langdon, Caravaggio: A Life, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999 (original UK edition 1998) ISBN 978-0-374-11894-5
  • Gilles Lambert, Caravaggio, Taschen, (2000) ISBN 978-3-8228-6305-3
  • Alfred Moir, The Italian Followers of Caravaggio, Harvard University Press (1967) (ISBN not available)
  • Catherine Puglisi, Caravaggio, Phaidon (1998) ISBN 978-0-7148-3966-0
  • Peter Robb, M, Duffy & Snellgrove, 2003 amended edition (original edition 1998) ISBN 978-1-876631-79-6
  • Maurizio Calvesi, Caravaggio, Art Dossier 1986, Giunti Editori (1986) (ISBN not available)
  • Walter Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1955.

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