CARAVAGGIO, Featured Paintings in Detail (2)

CARAVAGGIO
Featured Paintings in Detail
(2)

CARAVAGGIO
Judith Beheading Holofernes
c. 1598
Oil on canvas, 145 x 195 cm
Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome

CARAVAGGIO
Judith Beheading Holofernes (detail)
c. 1598
Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome

CARAVAGGIO
St Jerome
c. 1606
Galleria Borghese, Rome

CARAVAGGIO
St Jerome (detail)
c. 1606

CARAVAGGIO
Rest on Flight to Egypt
1596-97
Oil on canvas, 133,5 x 166,5 cm
Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome

CARAVAGGIO
Rest on Flight to Egypt (detail)
1596-97
Oil on canvas, 133,5 x 166,5 cm
Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome

CARAVAGGIO
Boy with a Basket of Fruit
c. 1593

CARAVAGGIO
Boy with a Basket of Fruit (detail)
c. 1593

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CARAVAGGIO
Judith Beheading Holofernes
A whole book in the Bible is devoted to Judith, because as a woman she embodies the power of the people of Israel to defeat the enemy, though superior
in numbers, by means of cunning and courage. She seeks out Holofernes in his tent, makes him drunk, then beheads him. The sight of their
commander's bloodstained head on the battlements of Bethulia puts the enemy to flight.
In the painting, Judith comes in with her maid - surprisingly and menacingly - from the right, against the direction of reading the picture. The general is
lying naked on a white sheet. Paradoxically, his bed is distinguished by a magnificent red curtain, whose colour crowns the act of murder as well as the
heroine's triumph.
The first instance in which Caravaggio would chose such a highly dramatic subject, the Judith is an expression of an allegorical-moral contest in which
Virtue overcomes Evil. In contrast to the elegant and distant beauty of the vexed Judith, the ferocity of the scene is concentrated in the inhuman scream
and the body spasm of the giant Holofernes. Caravaggio has managed to render, with exceptional efficacy, the most dreaded moment in a man's life: the
passage from life to death. The upturned eyes of Holofernes indicate that he is not alive any more, yet signs of life still persist in the screaming mouth,
the contracting body and the hand that still grips at the bed. The original bare breasts of Judith, which suggest that she has just left the bed, were later
covered by the semi-transparent blouse.
The roughness of the details and the realistic precision with which the horrific decapitation is rendered (correct down to the tiniest details of anatomy
and physiology) has led to the hypothesis that the painting was inspired by two highly publicized contemporary Roman executions; that of Giordano
Bruno and above all of Beatrice Cenci in 1599.

CARAVAGGIO
St Jerome
Just as Protestants wished to translate the Bible into local languages to make the Word of God accessible to ordinary believers, so Catholics were keen
to justify the use of the standard Latin version, made by St Jerome in the late fourth century.
Jerome had been baptized by one pope, had been given his task as translator by another and had called St Peter the first bishop of Rome. Among the
Latin Fathers of the Church he was a powerful ally against modern heretics, who attacked the cult of the saints, restricted the use of Latin to the learned
and viewed the papacy as the whore of Babylon.
It was wholly appropriate that this image was bought by Scipione Borghese soon after he was made a cardinal in 1605 by his uncle, the new Pope Paul V.
In pre-Reformation days Jerome was shown with a pet lion and a cardinal's hat. Now Catholic reformers wished to pare religious art down to its
essentials, and the good-living cardinal, whose ample features were to be sculpted and caricatured by Bernini, acquired a painting that was as austere as
it was sombre.
The thin old man, whose face is reminiscent of the model who had been Abraham, Matthew and one of the Apostles with Thomas, sits reflecting on a
codex of the Bible while his right hand is poised to write. Whereas in the Renaissance, Antonello da Messina and Dürer had made him into a wealthy
scholar, Caravaggio reduces Jerome's possessions to a minimum. The text he holds open, a second closed one and a third kept open by a skull are
perched on a small table.
Harsh lighting emphasizes the sinewy muscles of his tired arms and the parallel between his bony head and the skull - man is born to die, but the Word of
God lives forever.

CARAVAGGIO
Rest on Flight to Egypt
The story of the Holy Family's flight was one of the most popular apocryphal legends which survived the prohibitive decrees of the Council of Trent
and often appeared in painting from the end of the sixteenth century. Caravaggio's idyllic painting is an individualistic representation of this.
The artist ingeniously uses the figure of an angel playing the violin with his back to the viewer to divide the composition into two parts. On the right,
before an autumnal river-front scene, we can see the sleeping Mary with a dozing infant in her left; on the left, a seated Joseph holding the musical
score for the angel.
The natural surroundings reminds the viewer of the Giorgionesque landscapes of the Cinquecento masters of Northern Italian painting, and it is fully
imbued with a degree of nostalgia. Contrasting the unlikelihood of the event is the realistic effect of depiction, the accuracy of details, the trees, the
leaves and stones, whereby the total impression becomes astonishingly authentic.
The statue-like figure of the angel, with a white robe draped around him, is like a charmingly shaped musical motif, and it provides the basic tone for
the composition. It is an interesting contradiction - and at the same time a good example for the adaptability of forms - that this figure of pure classical
beauty is a direct descendant of Annibale Carracci's Luxuria from the painting "The Choice of Heracles".
It has not been clearly decided what was the textual source for the music-playing angel in the story of the flight into Egypt. Charming is Caravaggio's
decision to actively involve St Joseph in the music-making.

CARAVAGGIO, Michelangelo Merisi da
Caravaggio was a master Italian painter, father of the Baroque style, who led a tumultuous life that was cut
short his by his fighting and brawling.
As a child and art student, he trained in Milan under a teacher who had been taught by the great Italian
painter Titian himself, and who exposed him to the great works of Leonardo de Vinci and the Lombard
artists. He moved to Rome in 1592, after certain quarrels resulted in the wounding of a police officer. Rome
at the time was in a period if great expansion, and the many churches and palaces being built were all in
need of paintings to decorate the walls.
Caravaggio also moved to Rome during the Counter-Reformation, in which the Roman Catholic Church tried
to stem the rising tide of Protestantism, and was commissioning many works to elevate the social status of
the Church. He arrived in Rome starving and destitute, and immediately began working for Giuseppe Cesari,
the favorite painter of the Pope, and throughout the end of the 16th century his reputation as a great painter
grew.
His big break came in 1599, when he was commissioned to pain the Contarelli Chapel in Rome, which was
finished in 1600. after which he began receiving many commissions, both public and private. Some of his
works, being controversial in subject matter (his unacceptably vulgar realistic style) and models (one of his
favorite models for the Virgin Mary was a prostitute), and some of his works were returned to be painted over
or fixed. Others were returned entirely, but Caravaggio always had a public willing to snatch up any painting
he produced.

As a street brawler, his police records and court proceedings fill many pages. In 1606, he killed a
young man in a street fight and fled to Naples, where he was protected by the Colonna family. In
1608, he was arrested and put in jail for another brawl in Naples, but he managed to escape. In his
flight from the law, he traveled through Milan, Syracuse, Sicily, Palermo, Malta, and Messina,
continually receiving commissions.
He returned to Naples to live with the Colonna family and seek a pardon from the Pope, and in
1606, an assassination attempt was made of his life, leaving his face permanently disfigured. In
the summer of 1610, he took a boat from Naples to Rome, along with three paintings as an
offering of peace, seeking a pardon from the Pope. He never arrived at his destination, having
mysteriously died along the way. Although his artistic technique fathered the Baroque style, he
was quickly forgotten after his death. It was not until the 1920’s that his body of work began to be
fully received and appreciated.

CARAVAGGIO, Featured Paintings in Detail (2)

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CARAVAGGIO, Featured Paintings in Detail (2)