In his great altar-piece for the Church of Santa Maria della Scala in Rome, Caravaggio used a more favourable light. From the possession of the Duke of Mantua, who acquired the piece, and in whose gallery it was kept until the beginning of the nineteenth century, this work came into the collection in the Louvre.[52] It depicts a subject rarely seen in Italian paintings: The Death of the Virgin. Whilst a recurrent theme in Nordic art, prior to Caravaggio’s work it was only seen in Italian art in a painting by Carpaccio, now in the Ferrara Gallery, and in another by Salvo d’Antonio as part of an altar-piece for the Cathedral in Messina. Caravaggio endowed his work with a great magnificence, without for one moment suppressing his talent for expressing grief and pain in the most energetic way. These apostles, who are mourning the Virgin, are rough, rustic fellows, and the holy woman, who is sitting on a wooden chair at the foot of the bed, is a maid of humble origin. They express their feelings in the natural manner of simple beings; without measure and without beauty. Their profound grief is completely honest in its representation. Caravaggio achieved this narrative art through the careful modelling of the figures, which, surpassing the expression of all his previous works, indicate the future evolution of his painting. Despite the apparent irrationality in the composition, for the first time in his work a spatial depth was achieved that seems conscious. The body of the Virgin, which has been laid diagonally from left to right, drawing the eye to the furthest planes of the painting, helps to create this sense of depth. This impact is reinforced by the young girl seated in the foreground, who, acting as a foil for this complex composition, highlights Caravaggio’s new insights into the determining factors in the composition of an image, despite their tentativeness at this stage. An enormous curtain, almost like a velarium, which stretches across the shaded upper part of the image, also gives a certain depth to the painting. Far from decorative in intention, as the Bolognese School used such a motif, the drapery lends the work an aura of great gravity. Its deep red, with variations of lighter and darker shades, makes the colour range of the lower parts, which are placed in bright light or chiaroscuro, livelier and more charming partially through the thick application of the pigments. The brethren of Santa Maria della Scala also refused The Death of the Virgin because, to represent the Virgin, the painter used the portrait of a courtesan. In addition, the “bloated” corpse of the Virgin was deemed “too human”, and the copper bowl full of vinegar for washing the body did not convince them. However, no less a painter than Peter Paul Rubens recognised the significance of the painting; he is said to have persuaded the Duke of Mantua to buy it.[53]
Yet at no time did Caravaggio abandon the manner of painting which he had developed, and he pursued with perseverance his search for original aesthetic concepts. Although he was obliged to rework all his canvases because of the religious reservations of his patrons, his artistic faith remained unaltered and his submission was only superficial.
At the beginning of the year 1600, when Giordano Bruno was tortured in Rome, Caravaggio’s manner was still being developed, and the first signs of his subversive attitude towards the religious institutions which then dominated the eternal city were already perceptible. During the Counter-Reformation, Pope Clement VIII, taken by a violent desire for order and repression, decided to “clean” the streets of Rome and undertook a series of measures against street gatherings, gaming, the carrying of weapons and prostitution. It was precisely during this period that Caravaggio painted the “profane” works which brought him renown and which he populated with people he had met in the streets. In this climate of religious repression, it is difficult to have a precise idea of the painter’s convictions, even more so as the pope had recently removed from a church an altarpiece on which a representation of Saint Catherine had offended him.
The Taking of Christ, 1602. Oil on canvas, 133.5 × 169.5 cm. National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.
Portrait of Maffeo Barberini, future Pope Urban VIII, 1598–1599. Oil on canvas, 124 × 90 cm. Private collection, Florence.
Nevertheless, the painter did not abandon his mission to renew the style of painting at the risk of going against the jurisdiction of the religious authorities. The work of this rationalist Naturalist expressed the mysteries and miracles of Christianity in the way that many artists have represented the gods of pagan classicism. The more important the transcendental content of the events and stories experienced by biblical characters, the less the painter had recourse to traditional religious symbols. The Penitent Magdalene painted in 1596–1597, one of his first religious works, illustrates Caravaggio’s pictorial choices. Far from the traditional representations which set Mary Magdalene in the desert, he places the young woman, not undressed but richly clothed, in a dark interior traversed by a ray of light, and places on the ground a small perfume bottle and next to it, as a symbol of the material wealth from which she will progressively turn away, some scattered jewellery. Contrary to the sculpture in wood by Donatello that one can see in the Bargello Museum in Florence, Caravaggio’s Magdalene is embodied by a young woman from a good family, who is living an interior experience, progressively possessed by divine grace. The painter, through his aesthetic choices, breaks decisively with earlier representations of the saint’s life. His later religious works are also imaginative and innovative, giving the saints a new face, representing unusual episodes in their lives and introducing unorthodox details into the scene.
Following a commission from Ciriaco Mattei, Caravaggio also painted the scene “when Our Lord walked to Emmaus”. From this quotation by Caravaggio’s biographer, one might think that the artist had depicted Christ’s encounter with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, but such a version has not been found amongst his surviving works. We do, however, have three versions depicting the moment when Christ makes himself known to the disciples in Emmaus. One painting which portrays this scene, found in the National Gallery in London was, according to information from the catalogue, created for Cardinal Scipione Borghese, and may in all likelihood be regarded as the original.[54] There is a copy which is probably in Milan, and another replica is in the church of Notre-Dame in Bruges;[55] the former is very similar to that from Caravaggio’s studio, the latter is assumed to be the hand of a Flemish successor. The London painting demonstrates a delightful sweetness regarding the presence of the figures. The phrase “passion leads to art” also belonged to the gospel of the Carracci,[56] but for them it was more a fancy for modelling the muscular physique than for the power of psychological expression. Here, the tone of the scene is reminiscent of the style of Caravaggio’s bambocciate, as the artist knew them. The painting depicts a group in a tavern, where the wine has clearly been flowing. Yet in other parts of the painting there is such nobility, a transcendence that shines through despite its material slant, and due solely to these shimmering, profane and supernatural creatures the piece has a special charm. The tavern’s landlord, who himself appears in the scene, gives a sense of reality to this image of the miraculous. At the same time, the colouring is so intense that for this reason alone it should be recognised as one of the most balanced and enticing works produced by Caravaggio, who otherwise favoured dark tones. The picture trade, based on fast production, which he had run together with Prosperino delle Grottesche shortly before, seems to have been of such importance to him that he had guaranteed a certain freshness of invention.[57]
The Supper at Emmaus is significant for the distance the painter allows himself to go: in the representation of Jesus appearing to the two disciples, Caravaggio chooses to humorously represent an innkeeper wearing his hat accompanied by a waitress, both of whom are dressed in seventeenth-century attire. This technique, which gives the scene a certain shift in time, had already been used by the painter in his first painting of Mary Magdalene.