have read Baronius’s
Roman Martyrology
.
At some time during the second half of 1603, he painted
The Sacrifice of Abraham
for Monsignor—soon to be Cardinal—Maffei Barberini. In this alarmingly violent picture, now at the Uffizi, a tough young angel is telling Abraham to spare his shrieking son as he raises his knife to cut the boy’s throat. What was so revolutionary was to show Abraham as savagely cruel and Isaac as struggling desperately, instead of piously submissive. It has been argued recently that, in what is very far from being a naturalistic rendering of the story of the sacrifice, Abraham symbolizes God’s wrath and Isaac mankind atoning for the sin of Adam, while the angel is Christ interceding, and Abraham’s obedience to God is meant to stress the Catholic doctrine of justification by works.
Caravaggio also painted Monsignor Barberini’s portrait, now in a privatecollection at Florence. He depicts a suave, cultivated senior bureaucrat, one of the handful of men who governed Rome and Roman Catholicism. In 1623 Barberini would be elected pope, taking the name “Urban VIII.” Del Monte may have introduced the artist to the Monsignor, who was a member of the Accademia degli Insensati.
Most of Caravaggio’s many other portraits have been lost, although some may await discovery. Among them were those of his friend Onorio Longhi, Onorio’s wife, Caterina, and members of the Crescenzi family. One especially interesting sitter was the Cavaliere Marino, who had been generally acknowledged, since Tasso’s death, as Italy’s greatest living poet. Marino’s praise for the Medusa shield prompted del Monte to give it to Grand Duke Ferdinand, while he introduced Caravaggio to the Crescenzi. Another sitter was Cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani.
During the 1990s a small portrait at the Uffizi of the Vatican librarian, Cardinal Baronius, has sometimes been attributed to Caravaggio, but that has not received general acceptance. If he really did paint Baronius, it would certainly confirm the impression that his sitters were beginning to include an imposing selection of the most influential men in Counter-Reformation Rome. The greatest church historian of his day, a man who had been one of Filippo Neri’s first followers, the Oratorian Baronius was Pope Clement’s confessor, spiritual adviser, and closest friend.
Caravaggio’s friendship with the two Giustiniani brothers continued to flourish. For Vincenzo, he painted an
Amor Vincit Omnia
, a laughing Cupid. The German artist Joachim von Sandrart, who long after Caravaggio was dead spent ten industrious years at the Palazzo Giustiniani recording the marchese’s cherished collection in drawings, recounts how “this picture was displayed in a room together with a hundred and twenty others by famous artists, but at my suggestion it was covered with a dark green curtain and only shown when the others had been seen, because it made all the rest seem inferior.” Post-Freudian critics have tended to exaggerate the Cupid’s homoerotic quality.
By now, Caravaggio had become an almost exclusively religious painter, with very little time for secular subjects. Whether by accident or design, he had made himself the Counter-Reformation’s foremost champion on canvas. Even so, if one is to judge from his private life, he was a most unlikely apostle of orthodoxy.
XVII
The Swordsman, 1600–1606
I n Flanders, Carel van Mander heard strange rumors about Caravaggio from friends in Rome. In 1603 he wrote that Caravaggio was doing “wonderful things,” having risen from obscurity by sheer ability, determination, and hard work, but “after working for a week or two, he wanders round for as long as two months on end, with his rapier by his side and followed by his servant, strolling from one tennis court to another, always ready to fight a duel or start a brawl, so that it is seldom very comfortable to be in his company.”
A recent book,
Caravaggio assassino
(1994), claims
Roman Martyrology
.
At some time during the second half of 1603, he painted
The Sacrifice of Abraham
for Monsignor—soon to be Cardinal—Maffei Barberini. In this alarmingly violent picture, now at the Uffizi, a tough young angel is telling Abraham to spare his shrieking son as he raises his knife to cut the boy’s throat. What was so revolutionary was to show Abraham as savagely cruel and Isaac as struggling desperately, instead of piously submissive. It has been argued recently that, in what is very far from being a naturalistic rendering of the story of the sacrifice, Abraham symbolizes God’s wrath and Isaac mankind atoning for the sin of Adam, while the angel is Christ interceding, and Abraham’s obedience to God is meant to stress the Catholic doctrine of justification by works.
Caravaggio also painted Monsignor Barberini’s portrait, now in a privatecollection at Florence. He depicts a suave, cultivated senior bureaucrat, one of the handful of men who governed Rome and Roman Catholicism. In 1623 Barberini would be elected pope, taking the name “Urban VIII.” Del Monte may have introduced the artist to the Monsignor, who was a member of the Accademia degli Insensati.
Most of Caravaggio’s many other portraits have been lost, although some may await discovery. Among them were those of his friend Onorio Longhi, Onorio’s wife, Caterina, and members of the Crescenzi family. One especially interesting sitter was the Cavaliere Marino, who had been generally acknowledged, since Tasso’s death, as Italy’s greatest living poet. Marino’s praise for the Medusa shield prompted del Monte to give it to Grand Duke Ferdinand, while he introduced Caravaggio to the Crescenzi. Another sitter was Cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani.
During the 1990s a small portrait at the Uffizi of the Vatican librarian, Cardinal Baronius, has sometimes been attributed to Caravaggio, but that has not received general acceptance. If he really did paint Baronius, it would certainly confirm the impression that his sitters were beginning to include an imposing selection of the most influential men in Counter-Reformation Rome. The greatest church historian of his day, a man who had been one of Filippo Neri’s first followers, the Oratorian Baronius was Pope Clement’s confessor, spiritual adviser, and closest friend.
Caravaggio’s friendship with the two Giustiniani brothers continued to flourish. For Vincenzo, he painted an
Amor Vincit Omnia
, a laughing Cupid. The German artist Joachim von Sandrart, who long after Caravaggio was dead spent ten industrious years at the Palazzo Giustiniani recording the marchese’s cherished collection in drawings, recounts how “this picture was displayed in a room together with a hundred and twenty others by famous artists, but at my suggestion it was covered with a dark green curtain and only shown when the others had been seen, because it made all the rest seem inferior.” Post-Freudian critics have tended to exaggerate the Cupid’s homoerotic quality.
By now, Caravaggio had become an almost exclusively religious painter, with very little time for secular subjects. Whether by accident or design, he had made himself the Counter-Reformation’s foremost champion on canvas. Even so, if one is to judge from his private life, he was a most unlikely apostle of orthodoxy.
XVII
The Swordsman, 1600–1606
I n Flanders, Carel van Mander heard strange rumors about Caravaggio from friends in Rome. In 1603 he wrote that Caravaggio was doing “wonderful things,” having risen from obscurity by sheer ability, determination, and hard work, but “after working for a week or two, he wanders round for as long as two months on end, with his rapier by his side and followed by his servant, strolling from one tennis court to another, always ready to fight a duel or start a brawl, so that it is seldom very comfortable to be in his company.”
A recent book,
Caravaggio assassino
(1994), claims
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