Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane (77 page)

23.
See
Giulio
Mancini,
Considerazioni sulla pittura
, vol. 1 (Rome, 1956), pp. 226–7.

24.
Ibid., p. 226.

25.
See Helen Langdon,
The Lives of Caravaggio
, p. 41. I am grateful to John
T. Spi
ke for the suggestion – very plausible, I think – that the picture is a nocturne.

26.
See for example the entries in
Caravaggio–Rembrandt
, Rijksmueum exhibition catalogue (Amsterdam, 2006), and
The Age of Caravaggio
, Royal Academy exhibition catalogue
.

27.
See Pliny,
Natural History
, Book 35, 64–6.

28.
I am indebted to Maurizio Calvesi for this suggestion, made to me i
n co
nversation in September 2001. See Maurizio Calvesi,
Le realtà del
Caravaggio
, and for an English language version of his interpretation see his
Caravaggio
(Florence, 1998), pp. 26–7.

29.
The rabbi’s name was Akiva. See Carl W. Ernst,
Interpreting the Song of Songs: The Paradox of Spiritual and Sensual Love
for a helpful guide through the theological intricacies of the centuries-long tradition of exegesis (www.unc.edu/-cernst/articles/sosintro.htm, 28 Oct. 2008).

30.
St Teresa of Avila, ‘Meditation on the Song of Songs’,
The Collected Works of St Teresa of Avila
, vol. 2, Kieran Kavanaugh,
OCD
, and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD (trs.) (Washington, DC, 1980).

31.
See Helen Langdon,
The Lives of Caravaggio
, p. 28.

32.
Ibid., p. 49.

33.
Ibid., p. 41.

34.
It was painted on a light grey ground like a number of Caravaggio’s earliest works, whereas the National Gallery picture was painted on a warmish ground, which accords with the painter’s practice from around 1596.

35.
All quotations from Sandrart taken from the translation given in Walter Friedlaender,
Caravaggio Studies
, pp. 263–6.

36.
See Giorgio Vasari,
Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects
, Gaston du C. de Vere (trs.), David Ekserdjian (ed.), vol. 1 (London, 1996), p. 860.

37.
Cited in Peter Burke,
The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy
(Cambridge, 1987), p. 98.

38.
See Helen Langdon,
The Lives of Caravaggio
, p. 42.

39.
See Helen Langdon,
Caravaggio: A Life
, p. 78. Langdon writes (and lectures) particularly well about Caravaggio’s pictures of rogues. The idea that the cardsharps are rather like wasps in human clothing – see below – I owe to her.

40.
See Helen Langdon,
The Lives of Caravaggio
, p. 42.

41.
Mancini, cited in Howard Hibbard,
Caravaggio
(London, 1983), p. 350 (he was writing about the later version, a picture that he particularly loved, but his remarks are equally applicable to the painting owned by del Monte).

42.
Cited in Todd P. Olson, ‘The Street has Its Masters: Caravaggio and the Socially Marginal’, in
Caravaggio: Realism, Rebellion, Deception
, Genevieve Warwick (ed.) (Delaware, 2006), p. 76.

43.
The quotations reprinted here have been extracted from the essay ‘Perceiving a Counter-Culture’, in Peter Burke,
The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy
, pp. 63–75. My summary of the different types of beggar is an abridged version of Burke’s.

44.
Ibid., pp. 65–71. My discussion of poverty, religion and politics throughout this section of the book owes a great deal to Burke’s lucid analysis.

45.
See Antonio Maria Cospi,
Il giudice criminalista
, pp. 374–7.

46.
Ibid.

47.
Cited in John F. Moffitt, ‘Caravaggio and the Gypsies’,
Paragone
, vol. 53 (2002), p. 141.

48.
Cited in D. J. Gordon, ‘Gypsies as Emblems of Comedy and Poverty’,
Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society
, vol. 23 (1944), pp. 39–42.

49.
Ibid.

50.
See John F. Moffitt, ‘Caravaggio and the Gypsies’, p. 134.

51.
Giuseppe Pavoni, Diário, 1589, pp. 29–30, cited in Kenneth Richards and Laura Richards,
The Commedia dell’Arte: A Documentary History
(Oxford, 1990), p. 74.

52.
Ibid., p. 60.

53.
Tommaso Garzoni, quoted in ibid., pp. 221–2.

PART THREE: ROME, 1595–9

1.
See Helen Langdon,
The Lives of Caravaggio
, p. 42.

2.
See Creighton Gilbert,
Caravaggio and His Two Cardinals
(Pennsylvania, 1995), p. 116.

3.
See Helen Langdon,
Caravaggio: A Life
, p. 79.

4.
See Zbgniew Wazbinski,
Il Cardinale Francesco Maria del Monte 1549–1626
(Florence, 1994), p. 77, cited in Helen Langdon,
Caravaggio: A Life
, p. 81.

5.
Decorated with languorous, graceful figures and a flying putto, it is now one of the treasures of the British Museum.

6.
He might have appreciated the French Romantic painter Delacroix’s slashing cut through that particular Gordian knot: the observation that a painter’s every brushstroke necessarily incorporated the act of drawing.

7.
See Helen Langdon,
Caravaggio: A Life
, p. 96.

8.
For del Monte, Mancini, health care and alchemy, see Silvia De Renzi, ‘“A Fountain for the Thirsty” and a Bank for the Pope: Charity, Conflicts and Medical Careers at the Hospital of Santo Spirito in Seventeenth-Century Rome’, in
Health Care and Poor Relief in Counter-Reformation Europe
, Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham and Jon Arrizabalaga (eds.) (London, 1999), pp. 102–31.

9.
De Renzi’s scholarly study of the hospital (see above) concludes, ambiguously, that ‘Reasons to apply for a job at the Santo Spirito could be various: a somewhat difficult-to-detect religious and moral commitment, and the more evident search for a prestigious position, were interwoven.’

10.
See Creighton Gilbert,
Caravaggio and His Two Cardinals
, p. 205.

11.
Ibid. Gilbert has done all scholars of Caravaggio and del Monte a service by so thoroughly exposing Amayden’s untrustworthiness as a biographer.

12.
The
letter in question was discovered in the Florentine State Archives by the scholar Franca Trinchieri Camiz, who published it for the first time in 1991. See Franca Trinchieri Camiz, ‘Music and Painting in Cardinal del Monte’s Household’,
Metropolitan Museum Journal
, no. 26 (Hartford, 1991).

13.
See Franca Trinchieri Camiz, ‘La “musica” nei quadri di Caravaggio’,
Carav
aggio. Nuove riflessioni, Quaderni di Palazzo Venezia
, vol. 6 (Rome, 1991).

14.
See Keith Christiansen,
A Caravaggio Rediscovered: The Lute Player
(New York, 1990).

15.
See Franca Trinchieri Camiz, ‘La “musica” nei quadri di Caravaggio’.

16.
See Claude V. Palisca, ‘Musical Asides in the Diplomatic Correspondence of Emilio de’ Cavalieri’,
Musical Quarterly
, vol. 49, no. 3 (July 1963), p. 346.

17.
See
Keith Christiansen,
A Caravaggio Rediscovered: The Lute Player
, p. 26.

18.
See the entry on Emilio de’ Cavalieri in
The Grove Dictionary of Music
(Oxford, 2003).

19.
See Zbgniew Wazbinski,
Il Cardinale Francesco Maria del Monte
, pp. 137–8.

20.
See Creighton Gilbert,
Caravaggio and His Two Cardinals
, p. 116.

21.
See Keith Christiansen,
A Caravaggio Rediscovered: The Lute Player
, p. 46.

22.
See Helen Langdon,
The Lives of Caravaggio
, p. 63.

23.
See Keith Christiansen,
A Caravaggio Rediscovered: The Lute Player
, p. 32.

24.
See Franca Trinchieri Camiz, ‘Music and Painting in Cardinal del Monte’s Household’, p. 220.

25.
As Franca Trinchieri Camiz remarks, in ‘Music and Painting in Cardinal del Monte’s Household’: ‘the voice was well suited for solo performance because of its greater capacity for proper phrasing, which allowed the expression of the strong emotions in fashion during this period’(p. 221).

26.
Ibid., p. 218; for a counter-example, see the very different, open-mouthed singers, accompanied by lutes and polyphonically hymning the infant Christ, in Piero della Francesca’s
Nativity
in the National Gallery, London.

27.
See Colin Slim, ‘Musical Inscriptions in Paintings by Caravaggio and His Followers’, in
Music and Context
, A. Shapiro (ed.) (Cambridge, Mass., 1995).

28.
See Keith Christiansen,
A Caravaggio Rediscovered: The Lute Player
, p. 90. The translation given is that of Louis E. Lord.

29.
The late seventeenth-century writer Pietro Paolo Bosca actually referred to it as a ‘tantalus’. See P. P. Bosca,
De origine et statu Bibliothecae Ambrosianae
(Milan, 1672), p. 126. Cited by John T. Spike,
Caravaggio
(New York, 2001), in his
CD
-
ROM
catalogue entry on the
Basket of Fruit
.

30.
Cited by John T. Spike,
Caravaggio
, in his
CD
-
ROM
catalogue entry on the
Basket of Fruit
.

31.
My thanks to Maurizio Calvesi for this observation.

32.
It is a fair assumption that the two pictures have the same history. So to trace one is, in effect, to trace both.
The Rest on the Flight to Egypt
is linked to Olimpia Aldobrandini by an inventory of her collection compiled in 1611, which mentions ‘A large painting of the Madonna’s Flight into Egypt in a frame’, albeit without naming the artist. The hypothesis that this is a reference to Caravaggio’s painting is strengthened by circumstantial evidence. An inventory of 1622, listing pictures in the Villa Aldobrandini in Frascati, mentions ‘A large painting on canvas of a Madonna embracing the child and a Saint Joseph . . . copy of Caravaggio’. The presence of this copy in one of the other residences of Olimpia Aldobrandini’s family suggests that the original was indeed in her possession. The inventory reference is cited in John T. Spike’s
CD
-
ROM
catalogue entry on
The Rest on the Flight to Egypt
.

33.
See Helen Langdon,
The Lives of Caravaggio
, p. 28.

34.
See Bernard Aikema, ‘Titian’s
Mary Magdalen
in the Palazzo Pitti: An Ambiguous Painting and Its Critics’,
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes
, vol. 57 (1994), p. 58.

35.
See Colin Slim, ‘Musical Inscriptions in Paintings by Caravaggio and His Followers’.

36.
See John T. Spike in his
CD
-
ROM
catalogue entry on the
St Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy
.

37.
See Helen Langdon,
The Lives of Caravaggio
, p. 63.

38.
St Bonaventure’s
Legenda maior
was one of the most readily available literary sources for painters working in the post-Tridentine period. It was the official biography of the saint, written in 1262. Bonaventure derived much of his information from the very first life of Francis, written by Thomas of Celano in
c
. 1230, just four years after the saint’s death. See Pamela Askew, ‘The Angelic Consolation of St Francis of Assisi in Post-Tridentine Italian Painting’,
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes
, vol. 32 (1969), pp. 280–386.

39.
Cited in Pamela M. Jones, ‘The Place of Poverty in Seicento Rome: Bare Feet, Humility and the Pilgrimage of Life in Caravaggio’s
Madonna of Loreto
(
c
. 1605–6) in the Church of S. Agostino’, in
Altarpieces and Their Viewers in the Churches of Rome from Caravaggio to Guido Reni
(Aldershot, 2008), p. 107.

40.
The Life of Teresa of Jesus: The Autobiography of St Teresa of Avila
, E. Allison Peers (trs.) (New York, 2004), Chapter 29.

41.
Quoted in Radleigh Addington,
The Idea of the Oratory
(London, 1966), p. 3.

42.
This is a confident assertion based on comparisons with known portraits of Caravaggio, but not a documented fact.