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Caravaggio'sDeaths
Philip Sohm
clear that it hurt your eyes... and made him wish with
passionate, urgent longing for the torch hanging from the
roof... for the closed room, the nocturnal atmosphere.... 2
Caravaggio's seicento biographers might have appreciated
the narrative poignancy of the scene in similar ways, just as
they probably believed in its historical veracity, but the persistence of the story can be explained in other ways. My thesis
is that Caravaggio's biographers adjusted their stories of his
death in order to characterize his life and personal style. His
death reveals for them the essence of his art. Art imitates life,
certainly, but so, too, does life imitate art, especially in biography, where fictional verisimilitude is used to attain the
higher goal of truth. An artist's biography can be documented and factual, and indeed some seicento art biographers pushed archival research much deeper into their writing than had previously been the norm. But biography is also
an artful construction of embellished or even invented "facts"
that explains why paintings look the way they do. In various
stories of Caravaggio's death, biography can be read as art
criticism.
Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz introduced to art history the
notion that early modern biographies elide the boundaries
between fact and fiction in order to conceptualize the category of artist and to mythologize individual artists.3 However,
just because a "narrative cell," to use Kris and Kurz's term for
the elemental building blocks of anecdote, borrows from a
fictional tradition does not necessarily mean that it, too, is
fictional. Paul Barolsky embraced their lesson, perhaps too
heartily, in his conviction that Giorgio Vasari's Le vite de' pii
eccellentipittori, scultori e architettoriis "a masterpiece of Renaissance fiction," and extended the typological reading of Vasari's biographies as a higher form of truth: "Vasari's tales are
never mere fiction, because such fictions tell us a great deal
about how Vasari imagined 'reality,' which is part of the
historical record. Knowing how to read Vasari, we come to
see just how much history is poetically embedded in his tall
tales."4 Kris and Kurz and Barolsky read biography primarily
as mythmaking where the literal truth is supplanted by a
higher, poetic truth about art and the artist as hero or, in
Caravaggio's case, antihero.
The stories of Caravaggio's death offer two corrective corollaries to their accounts: first, that historical truth can coexist with mythologized biography, and second, that biography
can shape interpretations of paintings and, inversely, that
paintings can shape biography.5 I am interested in the borderlands where fiction bleeds into fact in the afterlives of his
death, where the literary forms start to shape the biographical content. Scholars who aspire to document the singularity
of historical events often turn to biographies as reasonable
substitutes for more unbiased evidence. To say that they
450
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CARAVAGGIO'S
stead to look at the literary forms of biographical contentthe container instead of its contents-and
to examine "CaraDeaths"
as
one
means
to illuminate
(among many)
vaggio's
seicento understanding of his art.
Fictionalizing artists' lives can also make them conform to
and explain the visual evidence of their art. Artists may be the
creators of their work, in which "every painter paints himself," but biographers sometimes inverted the process and
created artists in the image of their work, as Vasari did with
the cowering Spinello and the murderous Andrea del Castagno. Vasari wants us to believe that art imitates life-that
because Spinello was mugged he therefore painted figures
shying away-but actually he often made life conform to art.
Castagno never murdered Domenico Veneziano, but as a
story it allowed Vasari to polemicize the artistic contest between Florence and Venice, to trace the genealogy of oil
painting, and to explain why Castagno painted in a "crude
and harsh" style.
The accounts of Caravaggio's death can be divided into two
categories: mythologizing poems and stories with little or no
claim to truth telling, and biographies whose authors believed (or wanted us to believe) in their historical accuracy.
The first category of texts, being obviously fictional, can be
more easily read as interpretations of art. Giambattista
Marino, writing at the time of Caravaggio's death, imagined
"Nature" and "Death" conspiring in "a cruel plot" against
Caravaggio because "Nature feared being surpassed by your
hand in every image" and Death resented how "your brush
returned to life... as many men as his scythe could cut
down."12 In other words, Caravaggio died because of his
artistic success as a naturalist. Caravaggio's friend and the
author of his epitaph, Marzio Milesi, wrote a sonnet likening
him to Icarus because both flew too high and were struck
down.13 Milesi might have had Icarus's hubris in mind, a
fitting model for Caravaggio's sometimes overbearing arrogance, but, given his intention to extol "this great genius," he
probably means Caravaggio's flight as one of artistic talent
and imagination. Without the high-flying wings of genius, he
would not have perished. Again, the same moral pertains:
artistic success leads to death. Caravaggio challenges Nature
and is, in turn, killed by her.
Joachim von Sandrart's story, published in 1675 but possibly recalling stories he heard in Rome from 1629 to 1635,
turns Caravaggio's death into a generational rite of passage
and artistic progress. One day Caravaggio challenged his
former employer to a duel in order to settle "an old quarrel."
The Cavaliere Giuseppe Cesare d'Arpino refused on the
grounds that it would be undignified for a nobleman to fight
someone beneath his station, a response that cut Caravaggio
deeper than any sword could. He sold his belongings and set
out for Malta in order to become a knight: "As soon as
Caravaggio was knighted, he hurried back to Rome with the
intention of settling his quarrel with d'Arpino. This haste,
however, resulted in a high fever and he arrived in Arpino
(the very birthplace of his adversary) as a sick man and died."
Sandrart's version of Caravaggio's death took root only in
France. Roger de Piles has Caravaggio murder Ranuccio
Tomassoni as a surrogate for the Cavaliere d'Arpino before
challenging d'Arpino directly to a duel.14 And in 1832 Felix
DEATHS
451
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Bellori's Caravaggio, someone we might call Caravaggio Iscariot. When Bellori chose portraits for his Lives, by a still
unidentified artist, he or his amanuensis decided to include
such props as a book for Nicolas Poussin and a burin for
Agostino Carracci (Figs. 2, 3). Caravaggio's tool is a sword,
whose hilt he grasps (Fig. 4). It introduces readers to his
status as murderer and repeat offender attacking and threatening rivals, police, a notary, and many others, and to his
status as knight (and then excommunicant) of the order of
Malta. His furrowed brow, thicket of dark hair, bushy arched
eyebrows, and coarsened features, as well as the sidelong shift
of his eyes and their accusatory glare, give him a sinister air.
By comparison, the eleven other artists portrayed in the Lives
look positively friendly, or at least pensive and adherent to
codes of polite behavior. Bellori's suspicious and threatening
Caravaggio removes any vestige of innocence found in Ottavio Leoni's portrait of his friend (Biblioteca Marucelliana,
Florence; Fig. 5) designed, possibly, for a suspended series of
biographies, Gareggio pittorico, that Giulio Cesare Gigli was
writing in 1614-15.21 Leoni defined Caravaggio primarily
through his dark curly hair, beard, and eyebrows, much as
"Luca the barber" did when he described Caravaggio in court
as "a large young man, around twenty or twenty-five years,
with a thin black beard, black eyes with bushy eyebrows,
dressed in black, in a state of disarray, with threadbare black
hose, and a mass of black hair, long over his forehead."22
Unruly curly hair defined Caravaggio's appearance for Gigli
as well.23
Caravaggio Iscariot
Who was this Caravaggio who could destroy painting and
deserved to die miserably? Many different Caravaggios have
been proposed by art historians, and I do not plan to add
another one; instead, I would like to introduce you briefly to
CARAVAGGIO'S
DEATHS
453
analysis: if inner realities of character are projected outward-"all animate bodies are material portraits of their
souls"26-then the process must work in reverse, and the
inner reality therefore can be adduced by examining external
form. According to Camillo Baldi, inventor of graphology
and translator of the pseudo-Aristotelian Physiognomica (Bologna, 1621), physiognomy and style were closely related.27
Styles of handwriting are like faces, he tells us: each is different and yet beautiful; those differences are easier to observe
than to describe and explain; both express many things at
once.28 Physiognomic interpretations often suit the needs of
their inventors, but in Bellori's case the attributes and significations conform to contemporary stereotypes: men with
thick, dark, curly hair and arched eyebrows are disposed
toward anger.29
Dark in aspect, character, dress, and style, Caravaggio completed his public persona with his faithful companion, a black
dog named Crow (a bird that brings bad tidings).30 By comparison, Gigli's Caravaggio lacks the consistency of Bellori's
454
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seicento lives of Caravaggio. Great Renaissance artists (Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo, and Titian) were deemed to be
divine, saintly, and even Christ-like; Caravaggio, to the contrary, was dangerous and evil in both life and art. If Renaissance art historiography is an adaptation of hagiography,
wherein a new literary genre finds its themes in an ancient
form,32 then might there not be a place for a Judas figure?
When Bellori called the twelve artists of his Vite eleven
saints (santi) or venerables (venerabili)and one bad man (cattivo), it is clear that among these twelve apostles Caravaggio
played the role of Judas.33 He was also, to use another of
Bellori's metaphors, a "pernicious poison" who caused "great
CARAVAGGIO'S
Lost Baggage
I would now like to pose two questions: Why was Caravaggio
running after his belongings when he died? And why did he
die "under the merciless rays of the sun"? How can these
narrative motifs serve analogically as symptoms of his paintings? By chasing his belongings and by succumbing to the
sun, Caravaggio enacts his failures as an artist. Baldinucci
(1688) and Francesco Sussino (ca. 1724) followed Baglione's
version of the run in the sun: they mentioned the beach
(twice each) and sunstroke.41 Bellori also adopted Baglione's
version in most of its details, even borrowing key words and
expressions, and established it as canonical for over a century:42
DEATHS
455
tor, died young. Valentin de Boulogne, who went out drinking and smoking with his "gang"one summer night, became
so "enflamed"that on returning home he found it in flames.
After hours spent quelling the fire with cold water, "he succumbed to a fever so malign that in just a few days he expired
in the icy embrace of death."46Bartolomeo Manfredi,whose
paintings were often mistaken for Caravaggio's,"died young,
full of wickedness that consumed him in the end" and "at a
young age filled with evil."47Orazio Borgianni died from
greed, "struck down even before knowing it." Matteo da
Leccio brought death upon himself because, "seekingriches,
he became impoverished and ended his life miserably in
lands far away."48
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DEATHS
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6 Michelangelo da
Caravaggio, Calling of
Saint Matthew.Rome,
S. Luigi dei Francesi
(photo: Scala/Art
Resource, NY)
friendless," Caravaggio thus found himself in a hostile environment, fatally different from the one that he created for
himself in painting.
The membrane that loosely separates art and life in physiognomic and other psychobiographic theories of style is
more permeable than ever here. It resembles in affect the
death of Francesco Borromini, who, preceding his suicide,
"twisted his mouth in a thousand horrible grimaces" and
"rolled his eyes," becoming like his allegedly distorted buildings.65 Borromini in his death throes did not literally resemble his buildings, but the architect and his architecture are
merged by means of an overlapping lexicon. Caravaggio
criticism often drew on metaphors of abnormal psychology
and unethical behavior in ways that loaded pictorial forms
with biographical content. His provocative art helped to inspire such art-world neologisms as shuttered (serrato),shatter
(fracasso), and sly and malicious or in the lingo of thieves
(furbesco), as if a new language had to be found to describe a
new and challenging art form. Caravaggio's tenebrism was
dangerous and subversive, an offensive weapon used to "destroy" art, to anticipate that powerful metaphor used by Poussin, Albani, and others against Caravaggio.
The leonine sun and the dark painter derive from Horace,
Quintilian, and others who oppose public-private, bright-
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CARAVAGGIO'S
DEATHS
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avowedly (but improbably) a copy after an original self-portrait. (Without further evidence, the designer will be called
"Thomassin.") Even without Falcone identifying Caravaggio
as a narcissistic painter or "Thomassin" depicting him absorbed in his mirror reflection, there is no lack of evidence
for such a diagnosis. According to Bellori, "Caravaggio did
not appreciate anyone but himself, calling himself a uniquely
faithful imitator of nature."89 Baglione's libel suit was based,
in part, on the belief that Caravaggio regarded his art as
unique and inimitable. According to him, Caravaggio "spoke
badly of the painters of the past, and also of the present, no
matter how distinguished they were, because he thought that
he alone had surpassed all the other artists in his profession."90 Despite Caravaggio's denial in court to this charge,
the evidence, both biographical and archival, supports Baglione. Narcissists were proud and arrogant, according to Tommaso Stigliani, just those qualities Baglione found in his
rival.91 When Caravaggio attacked Guido Reni for, allegedly,
"stealing my style," or when he locked Leonello Spada ("a
man after his own heart") in a room so that he could serve as
his model, Caravaggio was acting narcissistically.
Because narcissism is a universal and inevitable condition
that varies only in degree and kind, it cannot be limited to
these symptoms, nor do these symptoms always signal narcissism. However, with style, subject, and character converging
on morbidity, and with Caravaggio's repeated insertion of
himself into his paintings, a narcissistic profile emerges. His
habit of painting himself might have been motivated at first
by exigency, but by the time he painted the Betrayal of Christ
and David and Goliath (Galleria Borghese, Rome), he had
more personal motives, whose psychological origins can only
be guessed.92 One intriguing possibility proposed by Michael
Fried is that Caravaggio was showing himself in the act of
painting, simultaneously creating and regarding himself like
Narcissus at the pond.93 Many other early modern painters
engaged in automimesis, depicting themselves either as incidental observers of an event, as Caravaggio did in the Martyrdomof Saint Matthew (S. Luigi dei Francesi, Rome) and in
the Betrayal of Christ, or as principal characters, as in Sick
Bacchus (Galleria Borghese) or as Goliath in David and Goliath. However, Caravaggio did so with greater frequency, to a
degree that it personalized his art in ways that fascinate
scholars, artists, and novelists today. His art was deeply personal and recalled for Baldinucci the proverb concerning
automimesis:
One can pardon Caravaggio for his style. Whereas he
wanted to confirm in himself that proverb that says that
every painter paints himself since, if one observes the way
that he talked, one finds something of that mentioned
above. If we turn to the behavior of this person, we see
there an over-the-top extravagance. It is not an understatement to say that, wanting to nourish his arrogance especially after being granted the dignity of knighthood, he
dressed as a nobleman, but this did not change him since
he still behaved like a brute and was negligent in hygiene
and eating habits.94
Baldinucci's proverb that "every painter paints himself" began circulating in the circles of Cosimo de' Medici, Angelo
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7 Caravaggio, Burial of
Saint Lucy. Syracuse,
S. Lucia al Sepolcro
(photo: Scala/Art
Resource, NY)
Poliziano, and Leonardo, serving different functions for different writers. For Cosimo and Poliziano, it was a psychological projection of one's character onto the surrounding
world: "One would rather forget a hundred charities than
one insult and that the offender never forgives and that every
painter paints himself."95 Despite overwhelming evidence to
the contrary-one
hundred acts of kindness versus one insult-an "offender" will form his worldview around the exceptional, rather than the usual, because it matches his na-
CARAVAGGIO'S
often wondered at, for I have known some who, in all their
figures seem to have portrayed themselves from life, and
in them one may recognize the attitudes and manners of
their maker. If he is quick of speech and movement his
figures are similar in their quickness, and if the master is
devout his figures are the same with their necks bent, and
if the master is a good-for-nothing his figures seem laziness
itself portrayed from life. If the master is badly proportioned, his figures are the same. And if he is mad, his
narrative will show irrational figures, not attending to what
they are doing, who rather look about themselves, some
this way and some that, as if in a dream. And thus each
peculiarity in a painting has its prototype in the painter's
own peculiarity. I have often pondered the cause of this
defect and it seems to me that we may conclude that the
very soul which rules and governs each body directs our
judgment before it is our own. Therefore it has completed
the figure of a man in a way that it has judged looks good,
be it long, short, or snub-nosed. And in this way its height
and shape are determined, and this judgment is powerful
enough to move the arm of the painter and makes him
repeat himself and it seems to this soul that this is the true
way of representing a man and that those who do not do
as it does commit an error. If it finds someone who resembles the body it has composed, it delights in it and often
falls in love with it. And for this reason many fall in love
with and marry women who resemble them, and often the
children that are born to such people look like their
parents.96
His explanation, derived from Dante's theory of love that "we
love those who look like us," operates within the arena of
narcissistic love without, however, explicitly mentioning it by
name. At the time when Baldinucci applied the proverb to
Caravaggio, seicento art writers had used it to describe involuntary self-portraiture both of the artist's physical and psychological selves.97 It was always regarded as a personal or
artistic failure, with the interesting exception of women artists: "Do not wonder that she [Lavinia Fontana] paints so
beautifully because she paints herself being herself so beautiful."98 Baldinucci suggests, however, that Caravaggio's automimesis was not so much an autonomic reflex as a selffashioned artistic persona that played on his infamous public
misdeeds: "he wanted to confirm in himself the proverb that
Whereas other
says that every painter paints himself...."9
in
a
failure
of
themselves
recognition and
painters may paint
his
own nature" as
"driven
Baldinucci's
will,
by
Caravaggio,
Bellori noted, chose his course of action.
Falcone called Narciso alfonte a book on "a modern plague
of narcissism." His theme was simple and insistent: by indulging in self-contemplation and an absorption with material
things, mankind overlooks the spiritual and is unprepared
for death when it arrives swiftly and inevitably. What we
take to be reality-the sensory, material world-is nothing
more than "a self-admiration in the clear and transparent
spring."100 Natural historians like Pliny died, according to
Falcone, because they were so absorbed in nature that they
did not recognize their own looming mortality, and poets like
Torquato Tasso were so enraptured with their own verses that
they disregarded the world around them and stumbled upon
DEATHS
461
With the blank wall looming above Saint Lucy and her
mourners, they seem entombed. No angels and, as Bellori
observed of Caravaggio in general, no heavens: "He never
used clear blue air in his pictures.. . .105
Narcissus and Caravaggio also represented for Falcone the
failure of humanity to recognize spirituality because both
462
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CARAVAGGIO'S
DEATHS
463
Philip Sohm has written booksand articles on Italian art, architecture, criticism,and theory,1500-1800. This articleexploressome of
Notes
This article was first given as a lecture at the College Art Association Conference, New York, 2000, in a session organized by PerryChapman and Mariet
Westermann titled "Biographyas Art Criticism."I am grateful to them for
their helpful suggestions and for the use of "Biographyas Art Criticism"as a
title for the first section of this article. I am especially endebted to Richard
464
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Spear, David Stone, and MarcGotlieb for their careful, critical reading of the
text. Charles Dempsey, Catherine Puglisi, Kathleen Weil-GarrisBrandt, MartenJan Bok, WendyWalgate,and my son Matthewalso contributed important
material and observations.
1. Derek Jarman, DerekJarman'sCaravaggio:The CompleteFilm Scriptand
Commentaries
byDerekJarman(London: Thames and Hudson, 1986), 7.
2. Enzo Siciliano, "Morte di Caravaggio,"in Cuoree fantasmi (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1990), 165-74. I am endebted to Matthew Sohm for
finding this story.
3. Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz, Die Legendevom Kfunstler:
Ein geschichtlicher
Versuch(Vienna: Krystall, 1934); and with emendations by Kurz and an
introduction by E. H. Gombrich, translatedas Legend,Myth,and Magicin the
Imageof theArtist:A HistoricalExperiment(New Haven: Yale UniversityPress,
1979). For a discussion of this seminal work, see Catherine Soussloff, The
AbsoluteArtist: The Historiography
of a Concept(Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1997), 94-111.
4. Paul Barolsky,WhyMonaLisa Smilesand OtherTalesby Vasari(University
Park, Pa.: Penn State UniversityPress, 1991), 4; see also idem, Michelangelo's
Nose:A Mythand Its Maker(UniversityPark, Pa.: Penn State UniversityPress,
1990).
5. Kris and Kurz, 1979 (as in n. 3), 119, note that biographers sometimes
"attemptto drawconclusions about the circumstancesof the artist'slife from
his works,"but they set this hypothesis aside as "exceeding the scope of our
investigation."After I completed this article, David Stone shared with me a
fascinatingstudy that tries, successfully,to bridge the gap between the artist's
real life and biographical fictions by suggesting that Caravaggiowas the
inventor of his own myth;Stone, "InFiguraDiaboli:Self and Mythin Caravagin FromRometoEternity:Catholicism
and theArtsin Italy,
gio's Davidand Goliath,"
ca. 1550-1650, ed. P. M. Jones and T. Worcester (Leiden: Brill, 2002). The
reader should turn to this excellent work for a review of the scholarly
literature on Caravaggio'scharacter and its relation to seicento biographies.
CARAVAGGIO'S
DEATHS
465
principio dell'opere se stesso, con viso di Giuda Scarioto, come egl'era nella
presenza e ne' fatti."
41. Baldinucci's six-volume work was published in Florence by Santi Franchi in 1686, Piero Martini in 1688, Giuseppe Manni in 1702, and G. G. Tartini
in 1728. Baldinucci, 687.
42. Bellori, 228-29. Francois-Bernard Lepicie, Catalogue raisonne des tableaux
466
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facciasi il giumento ben conscere per quel che gli &, tutto che ben sellato e
bardato, e con freno d'oro abbellito sia."
54. Ibid., 690: "Perdonisi al Caravaggio questo suo modo d'usare il pennello; mentre egli volle awerare in se medesimo quel proverbio che dice, che
ogni pittore dipigne se stesso, merc& che se s'osserva il modo, che egli uso nel
conversare, si trova tale, quale sopra accennammo; se ci voltiamo al portamento di sua persona lo veggiamo stravagante quanto altro mai, e poco e il
dire, che egli volendo pascere sua burbanza, particolarmente dopo la conseguita dignita di cavaliere, vestivasi di nobile drapperia, n& mutavasela mai, sin
tanto non se la vedeva cascare in terra a brano a brano...." Sussino, 109:
"Tutto che si vedesse Michelagnolo colla croce in petto, non solo non Pasci6
la torbidezza del suo naturale, anzi vie piu lascio acciecarsi dalla pazzia di
stimarsi cavaliere nato."
55. G. B. Agucchi, Trattato, ca. 1606-10, in Denis Mahon, Studies in Seicento
Art and Theory (London: Warburg Institute, 1947), 256-57: "E fra questi il
Caravaggio eccellentissimo nel colorire si dee comparare a Demetrio, perche
ha lasciato indietro l'Idea della bellezza, disposto di seguire del tutto la
similitudine."
56.. Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Teaching and Sayings of Famous Philosophers,ed.
and trans. R. D. Hicks (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1925),
8.33-39. Heraclitus's belief in the humors led him to treat his dropsy by
burying himself in cow dung and baking in the sun, with fatal results (9.4).
57. Piero Valeriano, De litteratorum infelicitate (Venice: Iacobum Sarzinam,
1620), vol. 1, 36, quoted in Julia Haig Gaisser, Piero Valeriano on the Ill Fortune
of Learned Men: A Renaissance Humanist and His World (Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press, 1999), 123.
58. Paolo Giovio, Gli elogia della uomini illustri ..., in Opere, ed. Renzo
Meregazzi (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato, 1972),
vol. 8, 86. The student quoted by Giovio is Marcantonio dalla Torre.
59. Giovanni Francesco Loredano and Pietro Michieli, I Cimiterio:Epitafi
giocosi (Venice: Guerigli, 1674). In addition to the famous (Pliny, 34, Seneca,
59), they include character types: "D'un Avaro. Epitafo I. S'en giace qui tra
questi marmi unita/D'un Avaro crudel l'alma meschina/Che pianse quando
Morte hebbe vicina/La spesa del Sepolcro, e non la vita."
60. Vasari, vol. 4, 54. Girolamo Tiraboschi, Biblioteca modeneseo notizie della
vita e delle operedegli scritori natii degli stati del serenissimosignoreDuca di Modena
(Modena: Societa Tipografica, 1786), vol. 6, pt. 2, 297, cites Vasari's story of
Correggio's death as an example of the error-ridden Vite:How, he asks, could
Correggio die from heatstroke if his journey occurred in February, a few
weeks before his death on March 5?
61. Baglione, 27 (quoted in n. 20 above).
62. Baldinucci, 681, describes Caravaggio's cellar light as "a light that
entered from a ground-level window into a cellar": "Onde gran fatto non fu,
che il Caravaggio in quel tempo alcune sue opere desse fuori assai lontane da
quel modo, che e' tenne poi, tanto cariche di scuri, che coloro, che vollero
maliziosamente awilire il suo pennello, usarono di dire, ch'egli era solito
imitare i suoi naturali a quel lume, che porgon le finestre dal pian di terra alle
cantine." For Baldinucci's conclusion that "it seems fitting that Caravaggio
died in a public place, alone and friendless in the open air," see 688-89.
63. Bellori, 218: "N6 cessavano [the older painters] di sgridare il Caravaggio
e la sua maniera, divolgando ch'egli non sapeva uscir fuori dalle cantine...."
And on 217: "E s'inoltro egli tanto in questo suo modo di operare, che non
faceva mai uscire all'aperto del sole alcuna delle sue figure, ma trovo una
maniera di campirle entro l'aria bruna d'una camera rinchiusa, pigliando un
lume alto che scendeva a piombo sopra la parte principale del corpo, e
lasciando il rimanente in ombra a fine di recar forza con veemenza di chiaro
e di scuro."
64. Bellori, 229: "Non si trova per6 che egli usasse cinabri ne azzurri nelle
sue figure; e se pure tal volta li avesse adoperati, li ammorzava, dicendo
ch'erano il veleno delle tinte; non diro dell'aria turchina e chiara, che egli
non colori mai nell'istorie, anzi uso sempre il campo e '1 fondo nero."
65. Lione Pascoli, Vite de' pittori, scultori ed architetti moderni, 2 vols. (Rome,
1730-36); reprint, ed. Valentino Martinelli (Perugia: Electa Editori Umbri,
1992), 401: "Torceva in mille orride guise la bocca, stralunava di quando in
quando spaventevolmente gli occhi ..."
66. Tacitus, Dialogus 34-35. For the contrast of open public orations given
in sunlight and closed private orations given in academia's shadows, see
Wesley Trimpi, "The Meaning of Horace's Ut Pictura Poesis," Journal of the
Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 36 (1973): 1-31; and idem, "Horace's Ut
Pictura Poesis:The Argument for Stylistic Decorum," Traditio 34 (1978): 29 -72.
67. Malvasia, vol. 2, 9: "Che tante maraviglie, disse Annibale ivi presente?
Parvi egli questo un nuovo effetto della novita? Io vi dico, che tutti quei che
con non piu veduta, e da essi loro inventata maniera usciran fuore, incontreranno sempre la stessa sorte, e non minore la loda. Saprei ben io,
soggiuns'egli, un altro modo per far gran colpo, anzi da vincere e mortificare
costui: a quel colorito fiero vorrei contrapporne uno affatto tenero: prende
egli un lume serrato e cadente? E io lo vorrei aperto, e in faccia: cuopre quegli
le difficolta dell'arte fra l'ombre della notte? Ed io a un chiaro lume di mezzo
giorno vorrei scoprire i piu dotti ed eruditi ricerchi." This passage had an
afterlife with Guido Reni's paintings substituted for Annibale's challenge,
notably, in writings by Anton Francesco Ghiselli, Anton Maria Salvini, Pellegrino Antonio Orlandi, and Francesco Algarotti. Ghiselli (1685-1724) seems
to be the originator; see Giovanna Perini, "Biographical Anecdotes and
Historical Truth: An Example from Malvasia's 'Life of Guido Reni,"' Studi
CARAVAGGIO'S
DEATHS
467
Secenteschi
31 (1990): 150. For Algarotti, see n. 73 below. Two further adaptations not noted by Perini can be added here. Antoine Coypel paraphrased
the quote in his series of lectures "Sur l'esthetique du peintre" for the
de l'Academie
Acad6mie Royale (1712-19); see A. Merot, ed., Les conferences
Royalede Peintureet de Sculptureau XVIIesiecle (Paris: Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, 1996), 412. And Salvini, Prosetoscanerecitatedal
della Crusca:Parte seconda(Florence: Stamperia di
medesimonell'Accademia
S.A.R.per i Guiducci, 1735), 152-53, adapts it thus: "Sonoci piuimaniere, e
tutte, benche diversissimetra loro, pure posseggono le loro bellezze particolari. Dopo tanti, e tanti Pittori famosissimi si trovo un Guido, che abbandonando la maniera del suo Maestro, si diede di fare le sue pitture come a
sfolgorante lume di piazza. Altri, come un Caravaggio,mostr6 maniera di
forza."
68. For Algarottion Caravaggioand his use of Cicero, see nn. 71, 73 below.
For Zuccaro on Caravaggio,see Baglione, 137.
69. Scaramuccia(as in n. 51), 77. Bellori, 231, might be his source: "... restando [i pittori] ne gli errori e nelle tenebre; finche Annibale Carraccivenne
ad illuminare le menti ed a restituire la bellezza all'imitazione."
70. For Annibale's letter to Lodovico (Apr. 28, 1580), see GiovannaPerini,
ed., Gli scrittideiCarracci(Bologna: Nuova Alfi, 1990), 152. For a discussion of
the variousversionsof Carraccias a faker, as told by Agucchi, MarcoBoschini,
and Malvasia,see Philip Sohm, Stylein theArt Theoryof EarlyModernItaly(New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 37-39. For Carracci'sclaim that
painters speak with their hands, see Agucchi, cited in Mahon (as in n. 55),
254; and CharlesDempsey, AnnibaleCarracciand theBeginningsof BaroqueStyle
(Gliickstadt:J. J. Augustin, 1977), 1-3.
71. Francesco Algarotti, Saggio sopral'Accademiadi Franciache e in Roma
(Livorno, 1763), cited in Saggi, ed. G. Da Pozzo (Bari: Laterza, 1961), 22,
observed that GiambattistaPiazzetta's "severe and harsh style [stile severoe
aspro]"followed Caravaggio,who sought to shutter the light [cercavadi serrare
il lume]."
72. Malvasia,vol. 2, 9, described Caravaggio'stenebrism as "violent and
impetuous,"creating "aclash"of chiaroscuro:"Tantoappunto seppe eseguire
in poco tempo l'ardito, che con quella stessa pazienza, con che prima se
passaggio a dipinger fiori, datosi a ritrar gli uomini ad un lume violento e
strabocchevole,il fracassodi questo gran chiaroscuro, e la facilita di un puro
naturale, confacevole ad ogni piu mediocre intendimento, fermo tutti sulle
prime." For Caravaggio's"dark and hunted style [quella manieracacciatae
scura],"see ibid., 13.
73. Francesco Algarotti, Trattatodellapittura (Venice, 1756; rev. ed. Bologna, 1762), cited in Da Pozzo (as in n. 72), 109: "GuidoReni, che men6 vita
lieta e splendida, diede alle sue opere gaita e vaghezza,parve innamorato del
lume aperto; e del lume serrato, in contrario, Michelangelo da Caravaggio,
burbero nelle maniere e selvatico."In a footnote to this observation,Algarotti
quoted Cicero (Orator9) as his source.
von GiovanniBattista
74. Giovanni Battista Passeri, Die Kuinstlerbiographien
Passeri,ed. J. Hess (Leipzig: H. Keller, 1934), 83. Passeri describes Caravaggio's response to the Manneristsas having "salliedforth"against them (giving
this a militaryspin with his choice of "uscitofuora")with vigor or vehemence
("empito"). Elsewhere (347) he describes Caravaggio'sstyle as "gagliardae
vigorosa."
75. Malvasia,vol. 2, 75.
76. Bellori, 205 ("he did not know how to leave the cellar [non sapevauscir
fuori dallecantine]");Baldinucci, 681.
svelataa' dilettanti,Bassano,
77. GiovanniBattistaVolpato, La veritapittoresca
Biblioteca Comunale ms 31 A 25, fols. 151, 204, 214-15, 257; and Elia
Bordignon Favero,GiovanniBattistaVolpatocriticoepittore(Treviso:De Longhi,
1994), 411, 414-15, 412, 420-21. For a discussion of the technique and optics
of the lumeserratoas applied to Bassano'spaintings, see Favero, 68-73.
78. Agucchi, cited in Mahon (as in n. 55), 257.
79. Antonio Pigafetta,Viaggioattornoal mondo,ed. MariarosaMasoero(Rovereto: Longo, 1987), 101 (writtenin the 1520s):"Loteneno in casa cinque o sei
giorni con queste cerimonie (credo sia onto de canfora); poi lo sepelisseno
con la medesima casa, serata con chiodi de legno, in uno legno coperto e
circundato de legni."PietroAretino, Levitedeisanti:SantaCaterinavergine;San
Tommasod'Aquino,ed. F. Santin (Rome: Bonacci, 1977), 114. Antonio Allegri,
Rimee prose(Venice, 1605; reprint, Amsterdam, 1754), 148.
80. Pellegrino Antonio Orlandi, Abecedario
pittorico(Bologna: Pisari, 1704),
"...'. introdusse a dipingere in pubblico con quel gran
286, s.v. "Caravaggio":
tingere di macchia, e furbesco, che non lasciava trovare conto del buon
contorno."See also Malvasia,vol. 2, 67-68. Orlandi, 203, adapted this passage
for his entry on Donducci.
81. Sussino, 113 (in reference to Caravaggio's "tingere di macchia,
furbesco").
toscanodell'artedeldisegno(Florence:Santi
82. Filippo Baldinucci, Vocabolario
fourth definition: "?[Emacchia significa
Franchi, 1681), 86, s.v. "macchia";
bosco folto & orrido, e tal'ora semplice siepe. Lat. Vepretum.
I E di qua, come
che in tali macchie si nascondano, e fiere e ladroni a fare furtivamenteloro
Sohm (as in n. 70), 146-53. For forests described as "so closed off that one
cannot pass, blocked by the many trees [tantoserratichenon vi si pubpassareper
l'impedimento
deglispessiarbori],"where the "shuttered"effect involves darkness, seclusion, and implied dangers, see Giovanni Battista Ramusio [Vespucci], Navigazionie viaggi,ed. MaricaMilanesi (Turin:Einaudi, 1978), vol. 1,
676.
83. Stone (as in n. 5).
84. Baldinucci, 690 (as quoted in n. 94); discussed by Stone (as in n. 5).
85. Federico Zuccaro, quoted in Baglione, 137: "Purvenendovi a vederla
Federico Zucchero, mentre io era presente, disse, Che rumore e questo? e
guardando il tutto diligentemente, soggiunse, Io non ci vedo altro, che il
pensiero di Giorgione...."
86. Sandro Benedetti, "Caravaggio's'Taking of Christ,' a Masterpiece Rediscovered,"BurlingtonMagazine135 (1993): 731-41.
87. Roberto Longhi, "Un originale del Caravaggioa Rouen e il problema
delle copie caravaggesche,"Paragone11 (Jan. 1960): 26-36.
88. For the proposal of the lantern carrieras a Diogenes figure, without the
argument introduced here, see MaurizioMarini,"Caravaggioe il naturalismo
ed.
internazionale,"in Storiadell'arteitaliana,parte2: Dal Medioevoal Novecento,
Federico Zeri (Turin: Einaudi, 1981), 368.
89. Bellori, 230: "il Caravaggionon apprezzavaaltri che se stesso, chiamandosi egli fido, unico imitatore della natura...."
90. Baglione, 138: "ed usciva tal'hora a dir male di tutti li pittori passati, e
presenti per insigni, che si fussero; poiche a lui parea d'haver solo con le sue
opere avanzatitutti gli altri della sua professione."
91. Tommaso Stigliani, Lettere(Rome: Manelfi, 1664), 132-33, letter to
Paolo Giordano Orsini, May 15, 1636; Baglione, 138.
92. For two alternativeinterpretationsto traditionaliconographies such as
that by KristinHermann Fiore, "I Bacchinomalatoautoritrattodel Caravaggio
ed altre figure bacchiche degli artisti,"Quademidi PalazzoVenezia6 (1989):
95-134; and Avigdor Poseq, "Caravaggio'sSelf-Portraitas the Beheaded Goliath," Konsthistorisk
Tidskrift59 (1990): 169-82 (with a summary of earlier
literature), see Michael Fried, "Thoughtson Caravaggio,"CriticalInquiry24
Secrets(Cam(1997): 13-56; and Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit, Caravaggio's
bridge, Mass.:MIT Press, 1998).
93. Fried (as in n. 92).
94. Baldinucci, 690: "Perdonisial Caravaggioquesto suo modo d'usare il
pennello; mentre egli volle awerare in se medesimo quel proverbio che dice,
che ogni pittore dipigne se stesso, merce che se s'osservail modo, che egli us6
nel conversare, si trova tale, quale sopra accennammo; se ci voltiamo al
portamento di sua persona lo veggiamo stravagantequanto altro mai, e poco
e il dire, che egli volendo pascere sua burbanza, particolarmente dopo la
conseguita dignita di cavaliere,vestivasidi nobile drapperia, ne mutavasela
mai, sin tanto non se la vedeva cascare in terra a brano a brano, se
l'osserveremo in quello, in che fino gl'istessi bruti pare che premano
alquanto, che e il tener netto il proprio corpo, ed il nutrirsi, lo vedremo
difettoso, trovandosiche egli nel primo fu negligentissimo, e nel secondo non
meno."
95. Martin Kemp, "'Ogni Dipintore Dipinge Se': A Neoplatonic Echo in
Leonardo's Art Theory?"in CulturalAspectsof theItalianRenaissance:
Essaysin
Honour of Paul OskarKristelle;,ed. Cecil Clough (Manchester: Manchester
UniversityPress, 1976), 311-23; Frank Z6llner, "'Ogni Pittore Dipinge Se':
Leonardo da Vinci and Automimesis,"'in Kinstler ibersichin seinemWerk:
derBibliothek
Internationales
Hertziana,ed. MatthiasWinner (WeinSymposium
heim: VCH Acta Humaniora, 1992), 137-60; and for a discussion in relation
to Caravaggiobiographies, see Stone (as in n. 5).
96. Leonardo da Vinci, TreatiseonPainting,ed. Philip McMahon (Princeton:
Princeton UniversityPress, 1956), 86; and Kemp (as in n. 95). Savonarola
wrote that paintersalwayscapture their unique and stable concetto;
Savonarola,
PredichesopraEzechiele,ed. Roberto Ridolfi (Rome: Belardetti, 1955), vol. 1,
343, predica xxvi, quoted in Ronald Steinberg, Fra GirolamoSavonarola,FlorentineArt, and RenaissanceHistoriography
(Athens, Ohio: Universityof Ohio
Press, 1977), 48.
97. Because Kemp's and Z6llner's articles do not cover the 17th century, it
maybe useful to reviewsome of the sources.As a physician,Giulio Mancini (as
in n. 39), vol. 1, 107, introduced a new medical explanation, based on his
reading of Hippocrates, of why painters reproduce their corporeal features.
In a letter of January4, 1633, Claudio Achillini wrote to Giacomo Gaufrido
(with Guido Reni in mind) that "drawingand coloring figures by a natural
instinct, painters draw and color themselves, or at least figures that closely
resemble themselves, and do so without proper diligence or advice [i pittori,
figure, dissegnano,e coloriscono
per un'instintodi natura, dissegnando,e colorendo
senza propriaindustria,6 consiglio,se medesimi,6 almenofigure in gran parte
The letter is published in G. B. Manzini, ed., In
somigliantia se medesimi.]"
nate a gloriad'un rattod'Helena
trionfodelpennello:Raccoltad'alcunecompositioni
di Guido(Bologna:G. A. Magri,1633), 46. Malvasia,vol. 2, 136. "Becauseevery
painter portrayshimself, having a melancholic nature, he had a particular
talent for sad things;contraryto Correggiowhose figures are alwayslaughing,
malefizi, dicesi, fare che che sia alla macchia, per farlo nascosamente, furtivamente; cosi delli Stampatori, Monetieri, o Falsatori di monete, che senza
alcuna autorita del pubblico stampano o lavorano, dicesi stampare, o batter
monete alla macchia. Anche appresso i Pittori usasi questo termine ne' ritratti
ch'essi fanno, senza avere avanti l'oggetto, dicendo ritrarre alla macchia,
owero questo ritratto e fatto alla macchia." For a discussion of macchia, see
Tiarini's are crying and grieving .... [Perche ogni pittoreritrae se stesso, essendo egli
[Alessandro Tiarini] di natura malinconico, ebbeun genio particolare alle cose meste;
onde al contrario del Correggioche sempreridenti, piangenti e addolorateci se vederele
sue figure il Tiarini....]"
Salvator Rosa, Satire sulla pittura, lines 224-26,
utilized it satirically: "Other painters only study animals, and without looking
at themselves in the mirror, they portray them accurately and naturally [Altri
468
ART BULLETIN
SEPTEMBER
2002
VOLUME
LXXXIV
NUMBER
This is an interesting article, it does not, as I had hoped, discuss the movie, but rather deals with the question of how an artist's
biography represents or relates to his (or her) artistic practice.
It will be useful in class to raise questions about how viewer's relate to works of art based on what they know or think about the person
who made it.
Also it is interesting to understand that in his day Caravaggio's naturalism was frowned upon because of its crudeness. this is
interestingly represented in the film although his crassness and mean-spiritedness seems overblown.