Rogue and genius - Caravaggio

Caravaggio was a rogue. At least, that is the mild term to describe this irritating and flawed artist. Putting a list of his activities on paper would make you think we were describing a street thug and not one of the most remarkable painters of the 16th century. Here’s a typical account of him,

“Much of what we know about Caravaggio's life comes to us through police records and legal depositions. During his time in Rome, he insulted his fellow painters, quarrelled, fought, broke the law, defied the police and was subsequently imprisoned. He was sued for libel, arrested for carrying a weapon without a license, prosecuted for tossing a plate of artichokes in a waiter's face. He was accused of throwing stones at the police, attacking the house of two women, harassing a former landlady and wounding a prison guard.”

He got involved in street fights regularly and used the street characters such as prostitutes and beggars in his paintings regularly.  He even killed a man (over a wager on a tennis match!) and had to flee for his life. He grew up in a rough area and was shaped by the social life around him.  There is hardly any written work by him in existence.  He usually never even signed his work.  He earned money on the street selling paintings at one stage.

His work has grown in popularity especially in the last century. That is no mean feat, because he was hated by so many respected voices for 300 years after his death. In fact, he and his work were completely forgotten and overlooked for centuries. It highlights how even in the 16th century bad publicity can smother the best of artists.

Poussin, a leading painter of the classical French Baroque style, upon viewing Caravaggio's Death of the Virgin, cried: "I won't look at it, it's disgusting. That man was born to destroy the art of painting. Such a vulgar painting can only be the work of a vulgar man. The ugliness of his paintings will lead him to hell.”

Another Italian Baroque painter, Giovanni Baglioni was Caravaggio's direct competitor and arch-enemy. Although he himself was influenced by Caravaggio's style, Baglione virulently attacked Caravaggio's personal life as well as his artworks continually.  Following Caravaggio's death, Baglione maliciously authored a biography that criticised the artist's works and described Caravaggio as "a degenerate failure".

Even in the 19th Century, Caravaggio was getting attacked by the art critics.  John Ruskin, an opposer of the Baroque style described Caravaggio's paintings as filled with "horror and ugliness and filthiness of sin. " 

He became an artist forgotten and his works were even attributed to others.  It was not until fairly recently that there has been a resurgence of interest in this unlikely artist and his incredible work.  There are now a growing number of people who go on Caravaggio’s trails to visit each of his paintings wherever they exist in the world.  There is something incredibly powerful about his pieces and it is hard not to be touched by their potency.

He certainly didn't make life easy for himself and his actions undoubtedly lead to disgrace, exile and eventual death. I first discovered his work in St John's Co-Cathedral in Malta. 

In the opulent cathedral with its huge gold ornaments, aged gravestones underfoot and beautiful intricate tapestries, Caravaggio's painting of the beheading of Saint John the Baptist shines like the work of a real genius. Listening to the audio presentation of Caravaggio, as I walked around, they explained he was thrown out of the order of the Knights for his indiscretions. Perversely, his powerful painting easily outshines and outclasses everything else in the cathedral. 

This is no angelic representation of Saint John the Baptist's beheading. The violence is evident in the burly man forcing his blade across the Saints neck. The blood flows from the growing wound and boldly Caravaggio signs this painting in the blood running from the gaping wound. Of course he knew that John the Baptist had a real resonance for the Knights of Malta. They prayed before the precious gold plated relic, forearm of Saint John the Baptist, before heading off to sea during the crusades. The symbolism is especially potent because it was the right forearm which was used to anoint Christ. Caravaggio transformed what was a traditional interpretation,  a formal religious painting with the careful halo around the Saint’s head and angels ascending on all sides into a brutal realistic killing. You would believe that Caravaggio’s villain is indeed a murderous killer.  The act of this death is neither celestial or full of grace but ugly and horrific as indeed it would have been.  No wonder his work shocked and appalled those used to more restrained and artificial devices.

In his portrayal of the conversion of Saul on the road to Damascus Caravaggio also took a completely different tack from the common approach.  Remember that Saul had been a persecutor of the early Christians. He had hated Christians. He had made it his goal to capture, then bring Christians to public trial and execution. Saul was present when the first Christian martyr (named Stephen) was killed by an angry mob.

"... they all rushed at him (Stephen), dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul. . . . And Saul was there, giving approval to his death" (Acts 7.57 to 8:1).

After Stephen was martyred, Saul went door to door in Jerusalem finding people who believed that Jesus is the Messiah.

"Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off men and women and put them in prison" (Acts 8:3).

After putting these people in prison, Saul learned about their Christian friends in Damascus by somehow getting letters from the prisoners.

"I persecuted the followers of this Way to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them into prison, as also the high priest and all the Council can testify. I even obtained letters from them to their brothers in Damascus, and went there to bring these people as prisoners to Jerusalem to be punished" (Acts 22:4-5).

So Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus into Paul was a stunning transformation.  Caravaggio caught it perfectly in his painting,

“He has re imagined Saul's transformation into Paul as a night scene in which the saint writhes on the ground, his arms thrown open, blinded by a moment of illumination witnessed only by a muscular, exhausted-looking horse and a melancholy groom.”   

Who else but Caravaggio would picture such a scene as an inner struggle, eye’s closed with the light indicating where all the action takes place.  How Saul must have suffered when he realised exactly the extent of his previous deeds.  What a rendering of that instant of bringing oneself to account and immediate transformation.

In David’s beheading of Goliath, it is Caravaggio’s features that are on the face of the decapitated victim.  

Caravaggio's behaviour throughout his life became even more erratic and impulsive.  A reason for this decline could have been found recently. In 2010, a team of scientists who studied Caravaggio's remains discovered that his bones contained high levels of lead—levels high enough, they suspect, to have driven the painter mad. Lead poisoning is also suspected of having killed Francisco Goya and Vincent van Gogh.  Who knows?  But his pieces of art startle now even as they did in the 16th Century.  Check out the one nearest to you and experience this gifted artist at first hand.