LACMA’s recent exhibition Bodies & Shadows: Caravaggio and his Legacy (November 11, 2012 – February 10, 2013) is admittedly not the first U.S. show to bring together works by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio and artists who emulated his style. 2010 marked the 400^th anniversary of Caravaggio’s death, and the art world exploded with monographs, biographies, and exhibitions about Caravaggio. There have been Caravaggio and Caravaggisti exhibitions every year since. And the fascination with Caravaggio –  the cult of Caravaggio – only grows. Indeed, the catalogue that accompanies LACMA’s exhibition admits people must think: Caravaggio again?

Yes, Caravaggio again.

Much about Caravaggio’s life, personality, and art is still being resolved. And yet, the LACMA exhibition is hardly as much about Caravaggio as it is about the overwhelming impact he had on seventeenth century art. The curators purposefully avoid the term “followers” to describe those who employed Caravaggesque features in their art, and this is for a few reasons. Unlike some of his famous contemporaries, Caravaggio never had an academy or pupils; by his death, his style was so popular that he scarcely needed it. He had a circle of artist friends in Rome, but their relationships were not of a master-student type. Each artist shown at Bodies & Shadows had something unique about their style and each, perhaps more importantly, had their own personalities and imagination. This might seem like an obvious statement, but with Caravaggio studies, some things need to simply be restated lest we begin to take terms like “Caravaggisti,” “Caravaggism,” “Caravaggesque,” for granted. As Bodies & Shadows demonstrates, artists took freedoms with Caravaggio’s style and emphasized artistic elements from their region and/or their own specialties.  (As I’ve written previously, I think this would have particularly annoyed Caravaggio – but that is another story.) The important idea is that Caravaggio sparked a change in art that spread across western Europe with incredible speed, no doubt helped by his sojourn in Naples, Malta, and Sicily. For whatever reason, Caravaggio’s humble figures and dramatic chiaroscuro resonated with artists and patrons, and suddenly, it became the major mode of artistic expression.

Caravaggio, St. Francis in Ecstasy (c. 1594/5)

There are particularly powerful moments in Bodies & Shadows. As a Caravaggio specialist, you can probably imagine my emotional state when as soon as I walked in there were two of my favorite Caravaggios, the Ecstasy of St. Francis and St. John the Baptist within my immediate line of sight. I think I burst into tears. I can’t quite articulate how important it is to see works of art in person. Everything about them is different. You connect with them. I literally got on my knees so that I could see Caravaggio’s “sketch” with the back of his brush on the St. John. I could see the wet in Peter’s eyes as he pointed to himself and denied he knew Christ. I made a face at the sickly greenish-yellow color of John the Baptist’s head on a platter – realizing for the first time why Salome might be turning away … because it’s a severed head, and it looks like one. Obviously I knew this before, but slides don’t do justice to Caravaggio’s mastery of color and detail. Gerrit van Honthorst’s Christ Crowned with Thorns coupled with Jan Janssens’ work of the same name offered equally powerful moments. I was mesmerized by these two paintings. Both combine Caravaggesque lighting with truly remarkable expressions that bring the viewer face to face with a tender and wince-inducing moment in Christ’s passion, leaving the viewer to contemplate which side they’re on.

Georges de la Tour, Mary Magdalene with the Smoking Flame (c. 1638-40), Detail.

These powerful moments are not confined to single works of art. There were knock-out moments where I could spend a long time going back and forth between paintings looking at the way the artist applied paint to create hair, or fingernails, or jewelry. The exhibition’s design makes it fairly easy to walk back and forth between paintings by a specific artist for comparison. There is exquisite beauty in the smallest of details in the paintings at Bodies & Shadows, such as the sheerness of Judith’s shawl in Valentine de Boulogne’s Judith or the way Georges de la Tour renders shadow on Mary Magdalene’s bare shoulder as a piece of her hair delicately rests on it.

Caravaggio (attributed), The Tooth Puller (c. 1608/9)

There was a problematic moment in the show, too. I suspect I’m not (and won’t be) the only person who will mention The Tooth Puller (c. 1608), a painting in LACMA’s own collection attributed to Caravaggio. I have a tense “relationship” with this painting. (You can see some of my thoughts here.) I haven’t decided, even after seeing the work in person, whether or not I think it’s from Caravaggio’s hand. Seeing it in person was immensely fulfilling, and I spent a lot of time in front of the painting talking with my husband and brother-in-law about the differences of the work to the other Caravaggios we had just seen. There are passages in the painting that seemed to me to be drastically and blatantly different from the way Caravaggio handled paint in the other works shown at the exhibition. On the other hand, the sinister, eerie quality of a painting that has some wonderfully Caravaggesque details lends support to a Caravaggio creation. I’ll address the painting in more depth in a follow up post, but for now, the words of Keith Christiansen best describe my current thoughts about the painting: “If Caravaggio connoisseurship contains a lesson, it is that this revolutionary master is too unpredictable in character to fit any tightly constructed scheme of evolution or expectation.” (“Caravaggio and “L’esempio davanti del naturale,“ Art Bulletin, 1986)

Bodies & Shadows brings together art by artists of many nationalities to make a point about Caravaggio’s legacy. His legacy began at home, in Italy, when his art was in such high demand that when he wasn’t in Rome, there was an artistic void that artists could only hope to fill. It spread, with his exile, to Naples, Malta, and Sicily, and from there, to Spain and beyond. We find his influence in France with artists like Valentin de Boulogne and in the Dutch world, particularly in Utrecht, where artists’ experiments and inventions within Caravaggism secured his legacy amongst Northern Baroque artists. Artists influenced directly or indirectly by Caravaggio appropriated his chiaroscuro, earth tones, and humble figures, and his style, if that is even the correct term, became an undeniable, yet sometimes subtle force in their own art.

I’ve started to think of Caravaggio as a self-made man. I think he was someone who, arriving in the bustling artistic hub of Rome at the age of 21, knew exactly what he wanted to do with his talents but struggled for years to get there. And when he finally did, his career took off to such a startling degree that perhaps even he wasn’t expecting it. I think he enjoyed the fame and the commissions that came with it, because he had been effectively working toward it his whole life. This might be a romantic, populist viewpoint of an artist who is already constantly and tirelessly popularized, but I also think it’s a human viewpoint more than anything else. The one thing Bodies & Shadows made explicitly clear to me is that Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, a man of unimaginable talent whose incredible skills of self-fashioning enabled him to become the most sought after artist in Rome, a man who created undeniably powerful works of art … was just a man. And yet, his legacy is so tremendous that he defies definition. He is simply Caravaggio.

~

Note: I urge you to see the show at LACMA before February 10^th, when it closes. I strongly recommend buying the catalogue that accompanies this exhibition, Caravaggio and his Legacy ($40 USD). If you miss the exhibition at LACMA and can make it out to the East Coast, you’ll have a chance to experience Caravaggio at the Wadsworth. Burst of Light: Caravaggio and his Legacy will be running from March 6 – June 13 of this year.

Tags: Art History, Bodies and Shadows, caravaggesque, Caravaggio, caravaggism, caravaggisti, Exhibition, LACMA

Birthday!

It’s that special day again, Caravaggio’s birthday. In last year’s birthday post, I asked my readers to weigh in about Caravaggio’s art, went over a brief biography of his life  (and some of the things his biographers and critics said of him), and talked about what the year held for Caravaggio studies.

This year, Caravaggio’s influence in the art historical world is just as strong. There will be several publications about Caravaggio this year: a forthcoming Art Bulletin article by David Stone, a book called Caravaggio: Reflections and Refractions (which includes more than a dozen essays on Caravaggio and the Caravaggisti, edited by Lorenzo Pericolo & David Stone), and Helen Langdon has a forthcoming publication called The Cardsharps published by the Kimbell art museum (which the painting calls home). There is also a Caravaggio-themed exhibition coming to LACMA in November, Bodies and Shadows: Caravaggio and His Legacy, which I am extremely excited about. Bodies and Shadows will have eight Caravaggios and 56 works in total from his followers. It will also be at the Wadsworth in 2013 if you can’t make it to Los Angeles.

I’m excited about what this year has in store for Caravaggio studies!

Feel free to peruse past Caravaggio-themed posts on Caravaggista.com in celebration:

Tags: Caravaggio

In this 2010 photo, visitors admire the portrait of Caravaggio by an unknown painter during the presentation to journalists of an exhibit dedicated to the Lombard painter titled: "Caravaggio in Rome", in Rome. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito file) via CBS

Yesterday,  the art world exploded with news that 100 new Caravaggio paintings and drawings had been discovered by a team of art historians in Milan at the Sforzesco Castle. The Castle is home to a collection of works from the studio of Milanese painter Simone Peterzano, who was teenage Caravaggio’s teacher for four years, from 1584 to 1588.

Art historians  Maurizio Bernardelli Curuz and Adriana Conconi Fedrigolli, who made the discovery, had been studying the Peterzano collection for two years. They are the first to attribute these works to Caravaggio. It is of importance that, as the Castle has said, all of these works have been readily visible and accessible for years, and that no such attribution has been made before despite the collection having been studied in the past:

The strangeness of the “discovery” sits with me, as well, and with many others across the web, who have commented varyingly that such a discovery would be “astonishing” and that the desire to publish the findings so quickly seems “premature” and “rushed.” The second I read the headline for this news, I was immediately skeptical. Caravaggios on such great scale? How did no one notice this before? Surely, with the growth of Caravaggio studies especially in the past couple decades, someone, somewhere, would have at the least entertained the idea.

Indeed, confusion about the discovery’s timing is a major contributor to apprehension about the research. Why, if these works have been in the castle’s collection for years, has no art historian or Caravaggio specialist ever hinted at these works’ creator? If these works had been discovered in 2010, some might attribute such a large scale find to the 400th anniversary of Caravaggio’s death – and the rush of scholarship and attributions and new discoveries that went along with that magnificent and flurried year for Caravaggio studies. But these works have been in the Castle’s collection for years.  The Castle’s administrators themselves were uncertain about the discovery and the rushed publication of the research:

The reason for the immediate eBook publication is indeed perplexing. Perhaps, however, the art historians wanted their research to be immediately accessible without waiting for the red tape and process that accompanies publication in academic journals. I’m not sure of the motives behind the quick publication, but skepticism is reaonable.

The largest and most pressing mystery is, of course, is the validity of the attributions. The news has been ablaze again today with debate over the accuracy and methodology of the research, and the scholarly community has begun expressing both doubt and excitement about this new theory. Art historians are divided. Even the Vatican has commented on the validity of the attributions, saying that the readiness to attribute such a large body of drawings to Caravaggio was greatly optimistic. For now, I am inclined to agree with art historian John T. Spike, who told the Telegraph today:

Dr. Spike has also noted via Facebook that one of the sketches is quite possibly of a sculpture that was not yet made (“make that ninety-nine” possible artworks! — put a smile on my face)!

Click to enlarge.

The debate has highlighted that there is still plenty of mystery surrounding Caravaggio’s life, and if these paintings and drawings prove authentic, they will open up a floodgate of new work that will be worth years of additional studies about Caravaggio’s art and life. If, however, these works are deemed as falsely attributed, they will have begun a fresh dialogue in the academic and art communities about Caravaggio, and hopefully new ideas will blossom about his early life based on this find and the discussion it has already begun to  ignite.

The findings have been released in a two-volume  eBook, available on Amazon. The ebook is formatted for Amazon Cloud Reader, Kindle for PC/Mac (iPad), and Kindle Fire and is available in multiple languages.

Have you been following this story? Do you think the paintings and sketches are of artistic importance, or do you agree with those, such as Dr. Claudio Strinati, who find the research “interesting but not important”?

Tags: Academia, Art History, Caravaggio, Debate, John T. Spike, Museums, News

Caravaggio, The Taking of Christ, detail of self portrait

In her biography of Caravaggio, Helen Langdon refers to Caravaggio’s “evangelical call to young artists,”¹ welcoming and encouraging them to pursue the way of his new and modern style. Historical documents paint a different picture, of a Caravaggio who fiercely guarded his style from imitators and frequently retaliated with violence or polemical paintings when artists copied his style or even received a commission he wanted. These two things, Caravaggio recruiting others to his new art, and Caravaggio’s protective nature, seem diametrically opposed. And yet, in art history, discussion abounds about Caravaggio the Leader, Caravaggio who consciously created this great movement of a new art, Caravaggio who welcomed others to emulate what he had created.

I don’t see Caravaggio as the conscious leader of a great movement. Perhaps this is an unconventional or unpopular viewpoint. There’s no denying that his art had an unprecedented  impact on the Roman art world,  but it’s difficult for me to subscribe to the idea that Caravaggio was willing to share his glory with others by allowing them to share in the style he had worked so hard to create. Rather, once Caravaggio’s art became “The Art” to have,  it behooved other artists to emulate him. His contemporaries would naturally be drawn to copy his style and to attempt to arrive at what made him great.

When twenty-one year old Caravaggio arrived in Rome in 1592, he, like many artists before him, arrived a poor man with big dreams. He had received an inheritance, but, for reasons we don’t know, this money was basically gone by the time he arrived in the Eternal City.² He began working for a priest, Pandolfo Pucci, an arrangement which may have been set up for Caravaggio by the powerful Colonna family. (Pucci was Pope Sixtus V’s sister’s steward, and when the pope died, she went to live in the Palazzo Colonna.) Caravaggio was unhappy in Pucci’s household and didn’t have the artistic freedom he desired. He was treated poorly (he complained his only food was salad and as such his nickname for Pucci was Monsignor Insalata) and during his stay he was made to paint copies of devotional pictures. When his patron was away, Caravaggio was “reduced to painting pictures for sale, of humble subjects beneath the dignity of Roman figure painters, and often the speciality of artists from Northern Europe.”³

Unfulfilled, Caravaggio left Pucci’s household and hopped between a number of Roman studios, including Lorenzo Siciliano’s studio where he met his lifelong friend, Mario Minniti. He and Mario still longed for more than what Rome’s studios placed them in, and, “[a]llies in hardship, both dissatisfied, spurred on by the spirit of emulation, they determined to win their independence and to aim higher and for some time (though it is not at all clear exactly when) they lived together.”⁴

Caravaggio continued to move between Rome’s studios and was consistently unhappy with their restrictive artistic environments. He needed to be independent, and attempting to make it in the large world of Roman art was difficult. Eventually, Caravaggio began working with an art dealer, Costantino Spata. Spata introduced Caravaggio and his art to the man who would become one of his most important patrons and help skyrocket Caravaggio to a life of fame and demand: Cardinal Francesco Del Monte. It was for Del Monte and his social circle that Caravaggio painted some of his most famous early works, lighthearted scenes of trickery and myth and music. Important as these early works were for Caravaggio (and are for us today), I must echo Walter Friedlaender’s sentiments from Caravaggio Studies:

These early  genre pictures were the catalyst that brought about Caravaggio’s truest talent: displaying devotional scenes with mesmerising quality. Caravaggio clearly continued to desire increasingly greater commissions for increasingly powerful patrons, most of whom were so thrilled with Caravaggio’s works that once they commissioned his art, they also became his lifelong advocates and protectors. I want to point out that though Caravaggio’s dedication to devotional scenes can be seen as a product of the time in which he lived, where churches and other religious organizations were commissioning artwork left and right, I also think his dedication to revolutionizing religious imagery was more than simply a quest for money, fame, or merely because he received continual commissions from princes of the Church. Plenty of patrons in Tridentine Italy were still commissioning mythological albeit moral scenes, and Caravaggio himself painted the rare mythological scene or two. Once Caravaggio found his niche, he didn’t turn back. He was a man dedicated to his art who continually rethought religious scenes and told these stories on a new and personal level.

Nowhere can his dedication to his art be seen better than in his inclusion of himself in many of his paintings. Caravaggio painted himself many times throughout his career, including multiple times as an observer in religious scenes. His portrait was a mark of pride in his work, a stamp, an immediate signifier that Michelangelo da Caravaggio made this. His inclusion of himself in religious scenes also has religious and artistic precedent⁶, but there’s one particular interpretation that I would like to focus on.

Caravaggio, The Taking of Christ, c. 1602

In Caravaggio’s Taking of Christ, Caravaggio can be seen  on the far right of the painting, holding up a lantern to illuminate the scene and looking at the activity before him with fascination. Inserting oneself into one’s paintings wasn’t unheard of and can be read as a sort of signature⁷; however, Caravaggio’s inclusion of himself within the painting is also in line with popular seventeenth century devotional practices. Just as Caravaggio placed himself in this scene of Christ’s Passion, so too should the faithful. This is part of Caravaggio’s genius: he, so prone to pop up in Roman streets and have violence follow, was now a participant in the Taking. But could the lantern that he holds up be more than just an object of illumination for the scene?

Langdon observes that in most representations of this scene, the lantern lies on the ground, dropped in the commotion.

Langdon suggests that Caravaggio’s lantern serves a greater purpose than illuminating the scene. His presence is an invitation for the next generation of artists to follow in his footsteps and embrace his style of unrelenting naturalism. The reading is clever and for that I admire it. I don’t, however, think this reading is the ideal analysis for this painting — and maybe it isn’t even correct. Regardless, it does raise the bigger question of Caravaggio the Leader.

As has been discussed, Caravaggio fiercely valued his independence and his reputation and spent several years building up his reputation in Rome, leaving studios when the work was not ambitious enough or was demeaning, until he came to a point where he had powerful patrons. Even after this, he continued to desire bigger and better commissions, evidenced by his pining for a Papal commission (which he finally, after years, received — an altarpiece that no longer hangs in the Vatican). He he wasn’t afraid to challenge visual traditions, rethink vision as a form of devotion, or portray events the way his mind thought them best seen. There are many examples of this, including Caravaggio’s Death of the Virgin, his first Raising of Lazarus in which he painted a decaying corpse from life (now destroyed by his own hand⁹), and his first St. Matthew and the Angel. Caravaggio created a new art which attracted a large following in Rome and abroad — and he was aware of the demand for and impact of his art.

He had always been wary of artists who got too close to him stylistically, but once he was one of Rome’s premiere artists, he became increasingly protective of his style. He did count Zuccaro and others among Rome’s famous pre-Baroque artists as “good” artists (whatever his motives), and at the same time he lashed out against those who arrived close to his style and his humble interpretations. His style set him apart. Why would he openly encourage others to copy him, when his style and interpretations were what set him apart in Rome’s competitive art world?

Caravaggio was clearly some type of leader. He was a leader in the sense that he forged a new artistic path and others followed, whether he liked it or not. He never founded a workshop or a school.¹⁰ He had many friends, and many more artists looked up to him. He certainly counted a number of the Roman Caravaggisti as his friends, and they frequently went to Rome’s taverns, borrowed props from each other, and sometimes got into trouble together. Caravaggio had great animosity toward a few of those who would infringe on his style, but with others, art together was playful competition. Perhaps Caravaggio didn’t feel threatened by some of these artists, knowing they didn’t have the connections he did to surpass him in greatness, or knowing that they dabbled in other modes of representation.¹¹ I’m not sure. Whatever his reasons for liking some Caravaggisti and despising others, I think what Caravaggio appreciated more than anything in his circle was good art. He counted very few of the artists in Rome as good artists, as Creighton E. Gilbert has said:

The trial Gilbert is referring to is the 1603 trial where Caravaggio was sued for libel by one of the Caravaggisti, Giovanni Baglione.¹³ Caravaggio’s testimony focused mostly on who created good art and less on defending his innocence. He also probably blatantly lied about being associated with his closest friends, also involved in the suit. The artists Caravaggio lists as good artists do not approach his style and were immensely popular, established Roman artists well before the time that Caravaggio came to Rome.

Guido Reni, Crucifixion of St. Peter, c. 1604-5

Some artists were clear threats, such as Annibale Carracci. No one posed a greater threat than Guido Reni. Reni, a Bolognese artist, was present in Rome by 1601 and had close ties with Cavalier d’Arpino (in whose studio a young Caravaggio spent some time in). d’Arpino had big plans for Reni, and it has been suggested that d’Arpino meant to provoke Caravaggio by bringing Reni to Rome.¹⁴ He promised Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini that Reni would “transform himself into Caravaggio and would paint the picture [of the Crucifixion of St. Peter] in Caravaggio’s dark and driven manner [quella maniera cacciata e scura].”¹⁵ And transform into Caravaggio he did. Reni used Caravaggio’s painting of the same subject as inspiration, which enraged Caravaggio to the point that he threatened Reni’s life, forcing Reni to flee Rome for some time.¹⁶ The skill that Reni displayed with his St. Peter — so immediately beloved for its lyricism — made him an imminent threat to everything Caravaggio had made for himself and of himself. This near-violent episode with Reni is met with some skepticism by scholars¹⁷, but its existence is important nonetheless in presenting a fairly tangible (if problematic) idea of what Caravaggio thought about plagiarism, and what Rome’s patrons thought of other artists’ abilities.

Perhaps it was the best thing for his fame, that,  in 1606, Caravaggio was forced to flee Rome and was welcomed and celebrated as a renowned artist in every place he went — Naples, Sicily, Malta. His art attracted and received an international audience during his exile, and true to his nature, Caravaggio was still protective as ever. His patrons longed for his presence back in Rome, and longed even more for his art. With Caravaggio’s departure, the artistic world in Rome had a void it needed filled, and Caravaggio wasn’t there to defend his art:

Alienated and unable to defend his art in person, Caravaggio’s powerful style was left undefended for Rome’s artists to profit from. What would Caravaggio have thought, coming back to his beloved Rome alive in the late summer of 1610, seeing his style plagiarised? How would his career have progressed? Would he be welcomed as an internationally famous star, or welcomed with trepidation and uncertainty about what to do next? I wonder if he would have been emotionally prepared for his homecoming. I wonder if he would have been welcomed with a lot of pomp, or if he would be forever branded as Caravaggio who murdered someone but was pardoned four years later — an unpredictable, unbalanced genius. And yet, when Caravaggio was in the South of Italy, his biographers there consistently described him as mad. Did leaving everything he had worked for — despite all his success in the south — drive him over the edge? If it did, I think he reached his breaking point physically and emotionally by the time he reached Port’Ercole and realized that the ship he was on had sailed off with his possessions. He needed the paintings on the boat to gift to Cardinal Nephew Scipione Borghese, thus procuring  a warm welcome and a pardon, and among them were some of his most personal works, including his Borghese David with the Head of Goliath which he probably completed earlier in 1610. One story says that Caravaggio chased after the boat — nearly 100km upstream — running in the hot beach, surrounded by nothing but rock and wave, desperate to get his paintings back, and in exerting all of his energy and health chasing the wind, Caravaggio died.

To his death, Caravaggio remained protective of his art. During his exile, his patrons continued to hope that maybe soon he would return to them, but he never did. Upon his return, his style would have responded again, as it had so effortlessly ebbed and flowed with the different regions he visited, responding to their wealth, spirituality, poverty, sickness, and crowds, and he perhaps would have continued into further greatness. Caravaggio didn’t have many material possessions (we know this from inventories taken of his belongings), but he did have one thing that he prized above all else and that was wholly his own: his art.

Caravaggio was a revolutionary and an innovator whose art breathed new life into the aesthetics and mechanics of Catholic devotion. He was not leader or a mentor who welcomed or recruited others to copy what was his. Caravaggio was simply a man “of a fantastic humor … bizarre”¹⁹ and above all, a good man and painter “who [could] perform well in his art and … paint well and imitate natural things well.”²⁰

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Tags: Art History, Artistic Intention, Baroque Art, Caravaggio, Rome, Sacred Art