Which Work Of Art Shown Is By A Caravaggisti

Let us now appreciate, quickly, some other works by Caravaggio as there are many that we haven’t been able to mention. Caravaggio’s attributions are always difficult, since except for the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, he never signed his paintings. The dating represent yet another problem that must be resolved provisionally thanks to a mosaic of chronicles, contracts, old letters, and the monographs and studies by Caravaggio scholars.

Other famous paintings of his early period could be: a Portrait of Maffeo Barberini (ca. 1598, private collection); a Saint Catherine of Alexandria (ca. 1598, Madrid); Judith Beheading Holofernes (ca.1598, Rome); the Narcissus (ca. 1599, Rome); the Sacrifice of Isaac (1608, Florence); the Supper at Emmaus (1602, London); a John the Baptist (1602, Rome); Amor Victorious (1602, Berlin); and the moving Taking of Christ (ca. 1602-Dublin). Let’s appreciate, briefly, these works.

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Portrayed while still a young cleric, Maffeo Barberini, who later became Pope Urban VIII, is here in chiaroscuro against a neutral background. Caravaggio painted the lit sections against a dark background (left), and the sections in shadow against a light background (right).

In Saint Catherine of Alexandria, we see a single female figure in an undefined dark interior. The female figure appears to us with a dual character: one of a bold and noble woman (St. Catherine was a king’s daughter), the other with the plebeian pride air of Caravaggio’s model (that is Fillide Melandroni, a well known Roman prostitute Caravaggio had fallen in love with, and that he portrayed in several other paintings including Judith Beheading Holofernes). One of Caravaggio’s mastery with painting resided in the way he managed difficult compositions as this, where the main figure and objects completely fill the painting, by subtlety playing with diagonal lines. It is extraordinary to observe Caravaggio’s virtuosity in depicting the ample, decorated cloth, which in fact becomes an integral part of the composition and not just an individual, isolated element that would stand on its own. This fact is something his followers would not often succeed in doing (see examples below), as they frequently dealt with the single components of the painting individually, which caused adverse effects on the unity of the whole painting.

The figure of Judith (for whom a whole book in the Bible is devoted to) has embodied in art the power to defeat the enemy through cunning and courage, the same way Judith did by slaying Holofernes, the enemy of the people of Israel. In secrecy, she looked for Holofernes in his tent, made him drunk, then beheaded him. In this other version of the theme, Caravaggio makes Judith appear accompanied by her maid from the right. Holofernes is lying naked on a white sheet at the left of the composition. His bed seems to be covered by a lush canopy of a deep red curtain, a color that seems to crown the act of his murder. 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 triumphant Judith from previous masters (Donatello, Boticelli to name a few), Caravaggio here concentrated on the ferocity of the scene by portraying the scream and the body spasm of the giant Holofernes as well as in demonstrating emotion through his characters. It seems that Judith’s face shows both, determination and repulsion. Artists inspired by Caravaggio’s work, like Artemisia Gentileschi (see below) and others were deeply influenced by this painting, and although the may have surpassed Caravaggio’s depiction of physical realism, it seems to our eyes that none was able to match his depiction of Judith’s psychological ambivalence.

According to the poet Ovid in his Metamorphoses (3: 339-510), Narcissus is a handsome young man who falls in love with his own reflection. As he was unable to leave the sight of his image, he dies of his passion. The Narcissus by Caravaggio conveys a magical sense of atmosphere, melancholy, and introspection by the effective use of the infinite possibilities of light and shadow. Caravaggio’s Narcissus is an adolescent page wearing an elegant brocade doublet, he is leaning with both hands over what seems a small lake shore, while he gazes at his own distorted reflection on the water. The composition places Narcissus locked in a circle formed by him and his own reflection, surrounded by darkness, the immediate reality locked inside this self-regarding loop.

In the Sacrifice of Isaac, Caravaggio combined the horror of the scene with pastoral beauty. The action is placed right to the forefront of the painting, almost over our eyes. The old figure of Abraham, which reminisces of the figure of Caravaggio’s St. Matthew for the Contarelli chapel, is stopped in the act of cutting his son’s throat by an angel who with his right hand prevents him to follow up with the murder and with his left points to the substitute sacrificial victim. Caravaggio boldly directed the light so the viewer pans the painting from left to right: the light falls on the angel’s shoulder and left hand, then to the confused face of Abraham, on to the right shoulder and terrified face of Isaac with his look of agony at the viewer and a scream of horror, to finally stop in the head of the docile ram. In the distance to the top right corner of the painting is one of Caravaggio’s rare landscapes, possibly a view of the Alban hills surrounding Rome.

The realism with which Caravaggio treated religious subjects is evident in his other version of the Supper at Emmaus: the apostles look like laborers, Christ has a plump and slightly feminine face. His disciple Cleopas (to te right) wears the scallop shell of a pilgrim to distinguishing him from the other apostle -supposedly Luke- who wears torn clothes (left). Cleopas is surprised and opens wide his arms in a challenging perspective to draw. The standing waiter (?), with his face in half-darkness, seems to be oblivious to the event. The table at the inn is served with a meal that includes poultry, fruit, bread, drink (in itself, a wonderful still life) and we can see a basket of food teetering over the edge, as Caravaggio did it in an earlier painting. The moment of recognition of the resurrected Christ is highlighted by the light who falls sharply from the top left to illuminate the scene.

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During his lifetime, Caravaggio painted several versions of St. John the Baptist young. His John the Baptist hung in the Capitoline Museums in Rome is in itself a masterpiece of virtuosity evident in the rendering of the soft, caressing light and in the treatment of cloth, flesh and plants. We only barely identify this young boy as the Baptist thanks to the symbols alluding to Christ shown in the painting: the ram (sacrificial victim), and the grape-leaves (from whose red juice, alluding to the blood of Christ, brings life). Otherwise the main figure appears as a nude young boy with an ironic expression. The pose of the model seems to be based on one of Michelangelo’s Ignudi from the Sistine Chapel Ceiling. The young Baptist is shown half-reclining, one arm around a ram’s neck, his eyes turned to the viewer with a mischievous look. Here, we can’t see nothing that tells us that this is the portrait of a prophet ready to make his way into the wilderness to meditate, we don’t see the usual iconographic elements associated with him: no cross, no leather belt, but just a portion of camel’s skin lost in the voluminous folds of the red cloak (a signature of Caravaggio), and the ram. The presence of the ram itself is highly un-canonical as John the Baptist was associated with the lamb as a symbol of Christ as the ‘Lamb of God’. The ram, instead, was taken as a symbol of lust and/or sacrifice.

Amor Vincit Omnia (“Love conquers all”) has always been considered as one of Caravaggio’s great masterpieces. Amor is here depicted as a teenager with a glowing smile, he appears trampling over a pile of weapons, instruments, a book (sheet music), drawing utensils, and a laurel wreath. His left knee is placed lightly over these objects, while he holds a bunch of arrows in his right hand. As the attributes of war, military glory, science and arts are scattered at his feet, the painting reminds the viewer of a Vanitas still-life. Some particular objects in this still-life are emphasized: pieces of a suit of armor, a lute and a violin with a bow. These may refer to Mars and Venus, who, according to some classical genealogies among them Virgil’s Aeneid (I. 664), were the parents of the playful little winged Amor. The direct, frontal and open figure of the young winged boy stablishes a direct, special and close relationship with the viewer, that inexplicably produces an immediate appeal that is truly extraordinary. At the sight of this painting, the viewer is bewildered by it, by the absolute freedom that the subject obviously enjoys. It seems as if the main figure is in the act of mocking the world with a complete impunity, a self-assurance that produce a mixture of astonishment and envy.

In the close composition of the The Taking of Christ we see seven figures, from left to right: John, Jesus, Judas, three soldiers (the one farthest to the right barely visible), and a man holding a lantern to illuminate the scene. The scene is placed before a dark background, the setting can’t be identified. The main light source is not evident, but seems to come from the upper left; the lesser light source comes from the lantern held by the man at the right (believed to be a self-portrait of Caravaggio). Judas has just kissed Jesus to identify him for the soldiers that are taking him under arrest. At the far left, St. John is fleeing, his arms raised, his mouth open in horror as if asking for help, his cloak is flying and being pulled back by one of the soldiers. The flight of the terrified John contrasts with the entrance of the artist to the right who witness the scene raising up his lantern. The main figures (St. John, Jesus) are pushed to the left, the right-hand half of the painting is left to the soldiers, whose faces are mostly hidden. We see Judas vigorously embracing his master, emptied eyes and painful face, while the soldier’s hand reaches towards Jesus’ throat. Jesus, however, crosses his hands in a stoic gesture of resignation, which we can see well in front of him, while he seems to be rejecting the kiss by Judas. Seeing carefully, the heads of Jesus and St. John seem to visually meld together, and at the center of the canvas, in the foreground, it is prominent the arresting officer’s highly polished armor covering his left arm. The central group of figures, that is Jesus, Judas and the soldier with an outstretched arm, resembles a 1509 woodcut by Albrecht Dürer from his Small Passion series.

Let’s return to the artist and his work. Around the time before the paintings for the Contarelli chapel, Caravaggio’s first style departed a little in all directions, as if he was still looking for his main argument. We have already seen that there was thematic novelty in these paintings. On the other hand, when he painted scenes that took place outdoors he still depended on the influence of Venetian painting as far as the landscape is concerned, although his figurative effects were crude (see Sacrifice of Isaac above). He soon incorporated closed spaces (The Fortune Teller, Penitent Magdalene, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, The Taking of Christ) that are neutral and indeterminate; and some open spaces with very dark backgrounds (Narcissus, John the Baptist) that, with Caravaggio’s treatment of light, gave the formula so imitated and that has gone down in history under the name of “tenebrism*.” The color element can’t be taken for granted either, as it served to express his temperament, a color that he usually used saturated although in a muted range.

After his paintings for San Luigi dei Francesi, let’s say that, practically, his style was complete and we are only amazed at the variations that Caravaggio allowed himself. We notice a very theatrical arrangement in his great paintings of Valletta, Syracuse, Messina. The scenes are of great drama and are made to impress the viewer: large empty spaces in warm darkness, the scene portrayed in all its pathos at an angle or at the bottom. Wisely, in these vast compositions, Caravaggio lowered the color, made it more diffuse and the episodes appeared in a vague, more “impressionistic” and less contrasted clarity than he did in his earlier works.

According to art historian Pierre Francastel (“Le réalisme de Caravage“, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, July 1938), Caravaggio can be seen as the last great authentically religious painter of Italian art since, as Francastel said: “The deep torment of the Renaissance had been the conciliation of humanism and religion. When this great conflict was resolved, at the time of the Council of Trent, due to a compromise between religion reduced to dogma and humanism reduced to method, there will no longer be room for a popular and true religious art.”

The enormous impact that Caravaggio produced not only on art but on the mentality of his time necessarily had to be imitated even if only as a recipe. But just as the relatives and followers of the Carracci formed a group and school, the artists influenced by Caravaggio were so different from each other that it is difficult to agree on their number and quality.

Let’s consider some Caravaggisti, stylistic followers of Caravaggio that were important in Italy (in other essays we will see other artists influenced by him outside of Italy): Orazio Gentileschi (1563-1639), Orazio Borgianni (1574-1616), Carlo Saraceni (1579-1620), Bartolomeo Manfredi (1582-1622), Valentin de Boulogne, simply called Valentine (1591-1632), Giovanni Battista Caracciolo (1578-1635), Giovanni Serodine (1600-1630), and the great Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-ca. 1656).

Let’s try to characterize them quickly. We can start with the oldest, that is, Orazio Gentileschi. Born in Tuscany, son of a goldsmith, this painter arrived in Rome at a very young age and began working with the Mannerists. And although he began painting a fresco in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, he soon left that method to devote himself to oil painting, an indispensable vehicle for putting into execution the luministic principles that interested Caravaggio himself. The influence of the latter can be seen in his works from the first years of the 17th century. All in all, Gentileschi never lost his typically Tuscan qualities as an artist: pure and hard line reminiscent of Bronzino, light and cold color that avoided great contrasts. He was therefore not a “tenebrist” nor was he interested—like other followers of Caravaggio—in chromatic intensity or intense movement.

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Borgianni, an enemy of Caravaggio and—unlike him—a fan of ancient art, lived for a long time in Madrid where he was able to learn about El Greco‘s work. An artist difficult to classify, on the one hand he was a magnificent draftsman who took pleasure in daring foreshortenings. On the other hand, he never reached the “brutalism” of Caravaggio and even, at times, surrounded his figures in a trembling halo of darkness that made him seem advanced for his time.

Saraceni was originally from Venice and had arrived in Rome shortly after 1600. Unlike the others, he was a true fan of Caravaggio although he did not always copy him effectively. Sometimes—as in the Judith with the Head of Holofernes (Vienna)—the imitation is almost perfect: the types are “seen” without ideality, the clearly drawn forms advance before the deep darkness that overcomes them.

Manfredi was the great conscious imitator of Caravaggio, to the point that many of his works have been considered originals of the master. However, Manfredi exaggerated the harsh aspect of Caravaggism, neglecting, instead, its virtues. He was the most effective artist in transmitting the master’s legacy to the next generation, particularly to painters from France and the Netherlands who came to Italy.

Valentin de Boulogne was the son of an Italian; he was born in France and remained in his country until he was 23 years old, when he went to work in Rome. He was an artist capable of rising from the simple themes of genre painting to paintings with religious content. His great canvases that remain in Italy or those in the Louvre, attest to the talent of this great orchestrator of the masses, of this colorist who had a predilection for somber tones. He was, among the painters directly influenced by Caravaggio, the one who extended the unmistakable mark of the great innovator over time.

Caracciolo, better known as Battistello, began his artistic activity at the time of Caravaggio’s stay in Naples, where he was born. If at first he copied the art of the Lombard painter, he soon had to imitate him only in design and plastic conception, since the fresco, to which he dedicated himself, doesn’t favor the lighting technique at all.

Serodine was a painter born in Ascona, on Lake Maggiore (present-day Switzerland). He soon went to Rome, where he was going to die very young. Giovanni Baglione in his writings (“Lives of Painters, Sculptors, Architects and Engravers, active from 1572-1642“, 1642), said that Serodine was one of those who most wanted to imitate Caravaggio. However, his fringed technique is reminiscent of Borgianni’s and today some of his works seem to us an unlikely foretaste of the 19th century Impressionism.

Finally, a daughter of Gentileschi—Artemisia—was a cultured and “international” painter: she was born in Rome; she traveled to London but lived and died in Naples. She was an excellent and gifted artist, and although she was generally delicate and fine, she was sometimes capable—as in Judith Beheading Holofernes (Florence)—of great strength and cruelty.

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Tenebrism: (From the Italian ‘tenebroso’ , meaning ‘darkened and obscuring’). A term used to describe a certain type of painting in which significant details are illuminated by highlights which are contrasted with a predominantly dark setting. The late paintings of Caravaggio and those of many of his followers are often described as tenebrist.

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