Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane (2 page)

59
.
St Jerome Writing
,
c.
1605, Galleria Borghese, Rome, Italy/The Bridgeman Art Library. Oil on canvas, 44.8 x 62.8 in. (113.8 x 159.5 cm).

60
.
St Francis in Meditation
,
c.
1603, Palazzo Barberini, Rome, Italy/The Bridgeman Art Library. Oil on canvas, 50.5 x 37.2 in. (128.2 x 94.4 cm).

61
.
St John the Baptist
,
c.
1604, Nelson Art Gallery, Kansas City, USA. Photo: Scala, Florence. Oil on canvas, 68 x 52 in. (172.7 x 132 cm).

62
.
The Madonna of the Rosary
,
c.
1603
–
4, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria. © Mondadori Electa/The Bridgeman Art Library. Oil on canvas, 143.5 x 98.2 in. (364.5 x 249.5 cm).

63
.
The Madonna of Loreto
, 1604, Cavalletti Chapel, Church Sant’Agostino, Rome, Italy. Photo: akg-images/Electa. Oil on canvas, 102.4 x 59.1 in. (260 x 150 cm).

64
.
The Madonna of the Palafrenieri
, 1605
–
6, Galleria Borghese/The Bridgeman Art Library. Oil on canvas, 115 x 83.1 in. (292 x 211 cm).

65
. The contract for
The Madonna of the Palafrenieri.
Archivio dell’Arciconfraternita di Sant’Anna dei Palafreneiri, Cod. 843 v.sch.n 62. As reproduced and cited in Maurizio Marini,
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio ‘pictor praestantissimus’
(second edition, Rome 1979), p. 56.

66
. View of Zagarolo. Photo: Arsetfuror.

67
.
The Supper at Emmaus
, 1606, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, Italy/The Bridgeman Art Library. Oil on canvas, 55.5 x 68.9 in. (141 x 175 cm).

68
.
David with the Head of Goliath
, 1606, Galleria Borghese, Rome, Italy/The Bridgeman Art Library. Oil on canvas, 49.2 x 39.8 in. (125 x 101 cm).

69
.
Sleeping Cupid
, 1608, Palazzo Pitti, Florence, Italy/The Bridgeman Art Library. Oil on canvas, 28.3 x 41.3 in. (72 x 105 cm).

70
.
The Seven Acts of Mercy
, 1606, Pio Monte della Misericordia, Naples, Italy/The Bridgeman Art Library. Oil on canvas, 153.5 x 102.4 in. (390 x 260 cm).

71
.
Roman Charity
(black and white photo, detail) by Pierino del Vaga (Pietro Buonaccorsi) (1501
–
47),
c.
1528
–
34, Palazzo Doria Pamphili, Genoa, Italy/Alinari/The Bridgeman Art Library. Oil on canvas.

72
.
The Flagellation
, 1607, Museo e Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte, Naples, Italy/The Bridgeman Art Library. Oil on canvas, 112.6 x 83.9 in. (286 x 213 cm).

73
.
The Crucifixion of St Andrew
, 1607, Cleveland Museum of Art. Leonard C. Hanna, Jr, Fund 1976.2. Oil on canvas, 79.7 x 60.1 in. (202.5 x 152.7 cm).

74
.
St Jerome Writing
, 1607, Co-Cathedral of St John, Valletta, Malta. Photo: Scala, Florence. Oil on canvas, 46.1 x 61.8 in. (117 x 157 cm).

75
.
Portrait of Fra Antonio Martelli
, 1607, Palazzo Pitti, Florence, Italy/The Bridgeman Art Library. Oil on canvas, 46.7 x 37.6 in. (118.5 x 95.5 cm).

76
.
Portrait of Alof de Wignacourt, with His Pageboy
, 1607, Louvre, Paris, France/Peter Willi/The Bridgeman Art Library. Oil on canvas, 76.4 x 52.8 in. (194 x 134 cm).

77
.
The Resurrection of Lazarus
, 1609, Museo Regionale, Messina, Sicily, Italy/ Lauros/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library. Oil on canvas, 149.6 x 108.3 in. (380 x 275 cm).

78
.
The Adoration of the Shepherds
, 1609, Museo Regionale, Messina, Sicily, Italy/Lauros/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library. Oil on canvas, 124 x 83 in. (314 x 211 cm).

79
.
A Knight of Malta being Defrocked
by Wolfgang Kilian (1581
–
1662)
, from C. von Osterhausen,
Eigentlicher und gründlicher
(Bericht, Augsburg, 1650), no. II. Photo: Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte. Engraving, 5 x 3 in. (12.7 x 7.5 cm).

80
.
The Beheading of St John
(detail), 1608, Co-Cathedral of St John, Valletta, Malta/The Bridgeman Art Library. Oil on canvas, 142.1 x 204.7 in. (361 x 520 cm).

81
.
St John the Baptist
, 1610, Galleria Borghese, Rome, Italy/The Bridgeman Art Library. Oil on canvas, 62.6 x 48.8 in. (159 x 124 cm).

82
.
The Adoration of the Shepherds
(black and white photo), 1609, Oratory of San Lorenzo, Palermo, Italy/Alinari/The Bridgeman Art Library. Stolen in 1969. Oil on canvas, 105.5 x 77.6 in. (268 x 197 cm).

83
.
The Burial of St Lucy
, 1608, Basilica di Santa Lucia al Sepolcro, Syracuse, Italy. Photo: Scala, Florence. Oil on canvas, 160.6 x 118.1 in. (408 x 300 cm).

84
.
The Denial of St Peter
, 1610, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA/Art Resource/Scala, Florence. Gift of Herman and Lila Shickman, and Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 1997. Oil on canvas, 37 x 49.4 in. (94 x 125.4 cm).

85
.
The Martyrdom of St Ursula
, 1610, Intesa Sanpaolo Collection, the Gallery of Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano, Naples. Oil on canvas, 56.3 x 70.9 in. (143 x 180 cm).

86
.
Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump
by Joseph Wright of Derby (1734
–
97), 1768, National Gallery, London, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library. Oil on canvas, 72 x 96 in. (182.9 x 243.9 cm).

87
.
The Raft of the Medusa
by Theodore Géricault (1791
–
1824), 1819, Louvre, Paris, France/The Bridgeman Art Library. Oil on canvas, 193.3 x 281.9 in. (491 x 716 cm).

88
. Still from
Mean Streets
, directed by Martin Scorsese (1942
–
), 1973, Taplin-Perry-Scorsese/The Kobal Collection.

Text illustration, p. 325: Sketch of Caravaggio’s sword and dagger made by the police officer who arrested him on the evening of 28 May 1605. As reproduced and cited in Maurizio Marini,
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio ‘pictor praestantissimus’
(second edition, Rome, 1979), p. 54.

1.
Portrait of Caravaggio
by Ottavio Leoni. A Roman barber named Luca described the painter just as he appears here: ‘a stocky young man, with a thin black beard, thick eyebrows and black eyes . . . dressed all in black’.

2. The
sacro monte
at Varallo, in modern Piedmont.

3. The sacro monte at Varallo, in modern Piedmont. In a series of chapels linked by mountain paths, polychrome figures play out stories from the Bible in vivid and often bloody
mises-en-scène

4.
The Lamentation
by Guido Mazzoni. Caravaggio was influenced by this intense form of realism. He knew Mazzoni’s work well and painted a picture for the Neapolitan church that housed this very sculpture.

5.
Mary Magdalen
by Donatello. Donatello’s disconcertingly lifelike sculptures may also have shaped Caravaggio’s imagination.

6.
Carlo Borromeo
(detail)by Carlo Dolci. Dour and ascetic, Borromeo was the dominant force in Milan during Caravaggio’s formative years. He would remain legendary in the city for centuries.

7.
The Adoration of the Shepherds
(detail) by Simone Peterzano. The young Caravaggio signed a contract of apprenticeship with Peterzano, but just what he learned from this feeble disciple of Titian is not clear.

8. The Farnese Gallery by Annibale Carracci (detail). For his Farnese patrons, Carracci daringly revived pagan and erotic mythology in Counter-Reformation Rome.

9.
Perseus and Andromeda
by Giuseppe Cesari. The young Caravaggio spent some unhappy months as an assistant to Cesari, who used him to paint fruit and flowers.

10.
Boy Peeling a Fruit.
This may be one of Caravaggio’s earliest surviving pictures. If so, it shows how little progress he had made as a painter by his early twenties.

11.
Boy with a Basket of Fruit:
‘a blushing, smooth-skinned adolescent, with dark curly hair and an expression of amorous intensity on his face’ who may represent the Groom in the biblical Song of Songs.

12.
Boy Bitten by a Lizard.
In the language of the Italian street the bitten finger represented the wounded phallus.