“Caravaggio,” is a lavish art book just released by SilvanaEditoriale publishers with pristine print transfers of the artist’s painting and an illustrative study of his work vis-à-vis artwork of his baroque era contemporaries.
The prints are accompanied by Italian art historian Rosella Vodret’s bio-history of the man, his aesthetics and with new revelations about his turbulent life. The second half of the book is comprised of art scholar Claudio Falcucci’s technical and forensic information about the paintings, which is an invaluable record.
All the prints are from Caravaggio’s scientifically authenticated canvasses (there have been many counterfeits) that involved X-rays, period verification of the period verification of materials he used, as well as analysis of his painting signatories- paint potions and subtleties that can’t be copied with precision.
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, aka Caravaggio’s legend is rife with lore, rumor, vanishings, scandals, violence, prison, drinking, lustiness and all around rabble-rousing, as Vodret chronicles that it was also the life of a feral art classicist who changed his medium.
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was born 1571 in Milan. His father, an architect, moved his family in 1576 to escape the bubonic plague that was spreading in Milan. He died a year later. Caravaggio’s mother was left raising five children and living in poverty until her death in 1584. That same year her artist son started a contracted apprenticeship at age 13 to Milanese master Simone Peterzano.
He was already painting with refined technique when he arrived in Rome in 1597 at 17 years old just as the Vatican preparing for the 1600 Jubilee year bringing artists looking for commissions pouring into Rome. Vodret’s text also paints a cultural and political portrait of Rome as well.
Caravaggio lived a short life, the true circumstances of his death still largely a Rashomon saga depending on who was telling it. Some claims that he was murdered, or from a sudden illness, varying reports about where he perished when he was traveling back to Rome after being exiled, then pardoned for his crimes by a pope he had painted just a year earlier.
His vivid figurative imagery showed people, interiors, villagers, architecture and still lives. The refinement and dramatic enhancement of light and shadow (chiaroscuro) became his innovative aesthetic, called tenebrism. His dramatic depiction of religious and mythic history and themes became his most sought after paintings. By the Jubilee year, Caravaggio was at the height of his fame and success. He was sought after as an artist by aristocracy and the Vatican.
Because of Caravaggio’s equally dramatic life, peppered with violent confrontations, money woes and legal hassles prompting him to flee Rome for stretches at a time. There were run-ins with the law for carrying swords without a permit, throwing food at waiters, stones at police, to fighting in a street brawl, with led to his murder conviction.
Caravaggio frequently lived in desperation. His feral social life came to a head in 1606 when he became involved in an arranged stand-off among rivals that turned into a street brawl among eight participants—some friends, some known enemies. The melee was rumored to be ignited by a fight over a woman and a gambling debt. The gambling debt was to be settled in an arranged duel between Caravaggio’s rival Ranuccio Tomassoni (also known to be a pimp). Caravaggio wounded him in the femoral artery (perhaps deliberately close to the groin) and Ranuccio quickly bled out. Caravaggio once again fled Rome. He was, along with the other survivors, convicted in abstensia. Vodret sifts through all of the facts, the lore, and rampant rumors that circulated throughout his life.
Curiously though, Vodret’s chapter titled ‘Was Caravaggio homosexual,’ has a dismissive tone and quickly covers the subject. The author reporting on biographical ‘hypotheses’ and speculation rather than definitive evidence, which strikes as unconvincing compared to the other in-depth reportage in the book. In contrast though, Vodret admirably writes lengthy profiles of many of the female prostitutes who modeled for Caravaggio, some of whom had affairs with the artist.
Same-sex relations was a mortal sin condemned by the church and civil laws of the that era, when ‘sodomites’ could be imprisoned, tortured, and burned at the stake. Despite the risks, not only was it common for there to be consensual sex between men, Vodret writes around the possibility that Caravaggio was one of them. There is little mention of the fact that many of his canvasses are populated with scantily clad or nude males, but not female—commenting about the painting’s obvious eroticism, but pointedly avoiding the word homoeroticism.
But, despite that missed opportunity to set the record straight or queer, Caravaggio’s life fascinates. His notoriety and even his artwork faded into history, his painting even ignored in the art world, but there was a revival of interest in his work at the turn of the 20th century. There have been many narratives of the inescapably dramatic events of the artist’s life and time. Caravaggio’s life, like his paintings, is full stunning figurative beauty and unblinking violence, passion, light and shadow in shadows. As stunning dramatic and mysterious now as they were in fateful time.
