The Fortune Teller (first version, detail)
c. 1595
Oil on canvas, 115 × 150 cm
Musei Capitolini, Rome
In this painting, the Madonna and Child are dozing while Saint Joseph is patiently reading the musical score, and the long-eared donkey seems to be an attentive and privileged listener. This delightful work shows the passion of its author for music and his taste for humour and satire.
In the work of Caravaggio, melodic notes join the characteristic tinkle of the jester’s bells. If the painter adds some joke, even within the seriousness of drama or the majesty of history, legends, or religious mystery, it is to distract attention from its primary meaning.
Bacchus
c. 1596
Oil on canvas, 95 × 85 cm
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
The work of Caravaggio also has a subversive dimension that manifests itself through humorous inventions. His jokes were not the placid laughter of those who satisfy themselves with a limited well-being in terms of their destiny and their fellow human beings, but were more of a satirical outlet for an irritable personality, always on the edge of a nervous breakdown; for a rebel fighting without faltering against men, life’s setbacks, and school traditions. Each burst of laughter was a mocking grimace, a vengeful insult, more or less disguised, and perhaps simple scorn.
Bacchus (detail)
c. 1596
Oil on canvas, 95 × 85 cm
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
Here he mocked the ungenerous host, there he wrote a mordant verse against Giovanni Baglione, here again he mocked commissioners, whether it be the religious patrons of San Luigi dei Francesi or the brothers of Santa Maria della Scala. Elsewhere, he might utter some gratuitously coarse words directed not only against conformism, but also against religion and fashion. His work was intended to shock and irritate orthodoxy, the Academy and the socialites of the time, and secretly he rejoiced as he advanced.
Rest on the Flight to Egypt
1596–1597
Oil on canvas, 133.5 × 166.5 cm
Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome
This painter of earthly pleasures also knew how to be the champion of love. If certain paintings allow us to think that the painter admired gracious figures – for example the young blonde girl crying in The Entombment – the majority of his works attest to his predilection for strong and curvaceous figures. The young mother chosen as a model for the painting of Sant’Agostino is the perfect example of a beautiful woman whose sensuality embodies humanity.
Rest on the Flight to Egypt (detail)
1596–1597
Oil on canvas, 133.5 × 166.5 cm
Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome
Caravaggio, who was an advocate of amorous pleasure, had an instinctive devotion to all women and behaved as a gentleman towards them in his inner self. Throughout his life he showed great nobility when defending the weak or when amongst the young people with whom he mixed while training with arms or for affairs of the heart. If in him the innate male disposition to court women was in conflict with the demands of another type of sentiment, the latter largely took over.
Saint John the Baptist
c. 1597–1598
Oil on canvas, 169 × 112 cm
Museo Tesoro Catedralicio, Toledo
Indeed, throughout his life, the painter often chose a delicate representation of femininity which offered him great possibilities aesthetically, while it seems that in reality he preferred partners of his own sex, as attested in one of his best works, Amor Victorious, in which the tyrannical character of love is symbolised in an exalted manner.
Caravaggio was not a slave to his amorous activities and he mostly had the penchants of an honest young man. His work clearly shows that he did not undertake anything excessive in this domain.
Saint John the Baptist (detail)
c. 1597–1598
Oil on canvas, 169 × 112 cm
Museo Tesoro Catedralicio, Toledo
But the Naturalism praised and initiated by him has inspired certain temperaments to lean heavily towards sexual excess. Some examples can be found in the painting by the painter Simon Vouet, a disciple of Caravaggio, entitled The Temptation of Saint Francis, in the Church of San Lorenzo in Lucina, in which a prostitute is undressing near a bed in a whore house and is lifting her skirt as did the famous Caterina Sforza.
Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto
1597–1600
Ceiling painted in oil, 300 × 180 cm
Casino Boncompagni Ludovisi, Rome
She is watched by a priest who is violently tormented at the sight of such a spectacle, and Vouet represents the scene frankly. How many artists have since been inspired by this very audacious duo to represent the “temptation of the saints”, a very fashionable subject at the time. It is clear that Caravaggio, the father of pictorial verismo, never indulged in this type of sensual exuberance. His imagination did not lead him to the fantastical excess that one can see in the numerous depictions of the temptations of Saint Francis and Saint Anthony.
Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto (detail)
1597–1600
Ceiling painted in oil, 300 × 180 cm
Casino Boncompagni Ludovisi, Rome
If he sometimes portrayed a female sinner, he has always draped her arms and chest with a heavy shirt. It never occurred to him to represent Venus, Galatea, or Andromeda, any more than Salome performing a provocative dance or the scandalous Suzanne at her bath. Neither does he depict Lucretia or Cleopatra with naked breasts, an idea that nevertheless seduced Guido Reni.
Judith Beheading Holofernes
c. 1598
Oil on canvas, 145 × 195 cm
Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica di Palazzo Barberini, Rome
It is not his lack of technique in painting the nude that is responsible for this absence of nudity. We know how successfully he reproduced the lines and textures of the human body, of children and angels, going as far as rendering the quivering and tensed breast overflowing with maternal milk.
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