Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane (79 page)

39.
Cointrel’s nephew and heir, François, took possession of Cobaert’s dull and stolid sculpture, eventually having it completed by another artist and placed in a chapel in
SS
Trinità dei Pellegrini, where he himself would eventually be buried.

40.
See Irving Lavin, ‘Divine Inspiration in Caravaggio’s Two St Matthews’,
Art Bulletin
, vol. 56, no. 1 (Mar. 1974), pp. 59–81.

41.
See Helen Langdon,
The Lives of Caravaggio
, p. 45 for Baglione’s remark, p. 66 for Bellori’s.

42.
Bellori’s bald statement that the
Doubting Thomas
was painted for ‘the Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani’ is supported by most of the available evidence. Giustiniani certainly owned the picture by 1606, because in the summer of that year he wrote a letter comparing his own, original
Doubting Thomas
by Caravaggio to a copy in Genoa. Baglione asserted that the
Doubting Thomas
was painted for Ciriaco Mattei, but this is probably a rare slip of the pen on his part. He may have confused the picture with
The Betrayal of Christ
, which certainly was painted for Ciriaco Mattei and which, oddly, Baglione does not mention at all. In summary, there is a remote possibility that the
Doubting Thomas
was painted for Ciriaco Mattei, then later acquired by Vincenzo Giustiniani. But the balance of probability favours a direct commission from Giustiniani himself. For a good analysis of the arguments and a precis of the relevant documents, see John T. Spike,
Caravaggio
,
CD
-
ROM
catalogue entry for
Doubting Thomas
.

43.
See Walter Friedlaender,
Caravaggio Studies
, p. 264.

44.
Inventory of 9 Feb. 1638; see John T. Spike,
Caravaggio
,
CD
-
ROM
catalogue entry for
Omnia vincit amor.

45.
The resemblance to Michelangelo’s
Victory
was first noted by Walter Friedlaender,
Caravaggio Studies
, p. 93.

46.
See Joachim von Sandrart,
L’Accademia Todesca della archittetura, scultura
e pittura
. . . (Nuremberg, 1675). Quoted by Robert Enggass, ‘L’Amore Giustiniani del Caravaggio’,
Palatino
, vol. 11 (1967), pp. 13–19. This translation is from John T. Spike,
Caravaggio
.

47.
The idea is advanced by Robert Enggass in the article cited in the previous note above. If this hypothesis is to be believed, Cupid does not trample the arts and sciences underfoot, but inspires them to flourish in the Giustiniani household. Such an interpretation is, however, flatly contradicted by the Giustiniani inventory of 1638, describing ‘Cupid disparaging the world’. It is also at odds with the purely visual evidence of the painting. In particular, the discarded shell of an empty suit of armour cannot possibly have been intended by the painter as a compliment to the military prowess of his patron. Nor can Caravaggio’s impishly provocative, full-frontally nude Cupid be plausibly transmuted into a Neoplatonic emblem of the Earthly Love that sparks man to Divine Creativity.

48.
For an earlier conversation inspired by a painting of Cupid between the Venetian collector Gabriel Vendramin and the connoisseur Anton Francesco Doni, see Catherine Whistler, ‘Titian’s
Triumph of Love
’,
Burlington Magazine
, vol. 151, no. 1,277 (Aug. 2009), n. 19, in which the author cites Doni’s
I marmi
(Venice, 1552), vol. 3, fols. 40–41: ‘
e fra l’altro mi mostrò un leone con un Cupido sopra. E qui discorremo molto della bella invenzione, e lodassi ultimamente in questo, che l’amore doma ogni gran ferocità e terribilità à persone
.’

49.
The Courtauld Galleries in London contain a particularly good example of two such chests in their original condition. As well as being embellished with complex narrative paintings about love, drawn from classical mythology, they are decorated with split pomegranates spilling their seeds, a kind of symbolic prayer for fertile married union.

50.
See Charles Dempsey, ‘“Et nos cedamus amori”: Observations on the Farnese Gallery’,
Art Bulletin
, vol. 50, no. 4 (Dec. 1968), pp. 363–74.

51.
See Helen Langdon,
The Lives of Caravaggio
, pp. 45–6.

52.
See Karel van Mander,
Het Schilderboek
(Haarlem, 1604), cited in Beverly Louise Brown, ‘The Black Wings of Envy: Competition, Rivalry and
Paragone
’, in
The Genius of Rome
, Royal Academy exhibition catalogue, p. 251.

53.
See Gianni Papi’s essay ‘Cecco del Caravaggio’, in
Come dipingeva il Caravaggio: atti della giornata di studio
, Mina Gregori (ed.) (Milan, 1996).

54.
This transcription was made from the original
MSS
of Symonds’s travel journal by John Gash, who published it in the
Burlington Magazine
, vol. 140, no. 1,138 (Jan. 1998), pp. 41–2.

55.
See Giorgio Vasari,
Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects
, vol. 2, p. 418.

56.
See Maryvelma Smith O’Neil’s entertainingly revisionist study,
Giovanni Baglione: Artistic Reputation in Baroque Rome
(Cambridge, 2002), p. 17. I am indebted to her lucid account of the libels and their consequences, although not convinced by her suggestion that Baglione was an injured innocent in the affair.

57.
These transcriptions of the poems are taken from Anthony Colantuono, ‘Caravaggio’s Literary Culture’, in
Caravaggio, Realism Rebellion, Reception
, Genevieve Warwick (ed.) (Newark, 2006), p. 58.

58.
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s verse play
The Cenci
was inspired by these events.

59.
See Maryvelma Smith O’Neil,
Giovanni Baglione: Artistic Reputation in Baroque Rome
, p. 13.

60.
The libel trial documents were first published in full in G. A. Dell’Acqua and M. Cinotti,
Il Caravaggio e il sue grandi opere da S. Luigi dei Francesi
(Milan, 1971), pp. 153–7. The translation offered here is by Don Var Green and can be found in full in Maryvelma Smith O’Neil,
Giovanni Baglione: Artistic Reputation in Baroque Rome
, pp. 337–62. I have made a couple of slight alterations, to match my own translation of the two poems at the centre of the case, and in one or two instances have preserved the original Italian usages.

61.
The document is printed in full in Maryvelma Smith O’Neil,
Giovanni Baglione: Artistic Reputation in Baroque Rome
, pp. 357–8.

62.
See Sandro Corradini,
Materiali per un processo
, document 26.

63.
See Maryvelma Smith O’Neil,
Giovanni Baglione: Artistic Reputation in Baroque Rome
, pp. 358–62.

64.
Salini added the detail about the punch in the chest in a slightly later piece of testimony; I have inserted it here for the sake of clarity.

65.
The document is reprinted in full in Maurizio Marini,
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio ‘pictor praestantissimus’
(second edition, Rome 1979), p. 472.

66.
See Tullio Lazzari,
Ascoli in prospettiva
(Ascoli, 1722), p. 40.

67.
The document is dated 6 June 1605. It is quoted, and photographically reproduced, in Maurizio Marini,
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio ‘pictor praestantissimus’
, p. 53.

68.
See Sandro Corradini,
Materiali per un processo
, document 57. The translation is from Catherine Puglisi,
Caravaggio
, p. 420.

69.
Nowadays many people have books they do not read, but books were so expensive in Caravaggio’s time that ownership of a volume can be taken as an indication of familiarity with its contents.

70.
See Helen Langdon,
Caravaggio: A Life
, p. 279.

71.
See Walter Friedlaender,
Caravaggio Studies
, p. 280.

72.
Ibid., p. 260.

73.
Ibid., p. 249.

74.
The translation is from ibid., p. 281; the fullest transcription of these documents is in G. A. Dell’Acqua and M. Cinotti,
Il Caravaggio e il sue grandi opere da S. Luigi dei Francesi
, p. 158.

75.
G. A. Dell’Acqua and M. Cinotti,
Il Caravaggio e il sue grandi opere da S. Luigi dei Francesi
, p. 158.

76.
See Walter Friedlaender,
Caravaggio Studies
, p. 281.

77.
These officials were drawn from the lay population and elected to their posts by the noble families of the city. Hence they reflected the factionalism and competing dynastic ambitions that existed at the highest level of Roman society. During the so-called Vacant See, the interregnum between one pope’s death and another’s election – but only at that time – the
caporioni
were allowed to act as judges in the districts under their control. Trouble often ensued during these periods. See Laurie Nussdorfer, ‘The Politics of Space in Early Modern Rome’,
Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome
, vol. 42 (1997), pp. 161–86.

78.
All this testimony is in Sandro Corradini,
Materiali per un processo
, document 41.

79.
Ibid., document 47.

80.
See Walter Friedlaender,
Caravaggio Studies
, p. 282.

81.
The term ‘house-scorning’ was coined by Elizabeth S. Cohen. The discussion that follows is heavily indebted to her pioneering work in the field of seventeenth-century social history, especially the essay ‘Honour and Gender in the Streets of Early Modern Rome’,
Journal of Interdisciplinary History
, vol. 22, no. 4 (Spring 1992), pp. 597–625.

82.
Louis Richeome,
The Pilgrime of Loreto
, facsimile of the 1629 edition,
English Recusant Literature 1558–1640
, vol. 285, D. M. Rogers (ed.) (London, 1976), p. 33.

83.
Thousands of pilgrims visited Loreto every year and their experience was carefully orchestrated. The pilgrimage diaries of the Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini, founded by Filippo Neri and supported by the patrons who paid for Caravaggio’s
Madonna of Loreto
, the Cavalletti family, contain much information about the structure of a visit to Loreto. They strongly suggest that the painter wanted his picture to evoke an actual pilgrimage.

84.
The placement of Caravaggio’s works within the geography of Rome has received relatively scant consideration. Pamela Jones’s essay, ‘The Place of Poverty in Seicento Rome’, included in
Altarpieces and Their Viewers
, contains a penetrating analysis of the significance of the geographical locations of some of Caravaggio’s works.

85.
See Helen Langdon,
The Lives of Caravaggio
, p. 90.

86.
Ibid., p. 46.

87.
See Walter Friedlaender,
Caravaggio Studies
, p. 284.

88.
See G. A. Dell’Acqua and M. Cinotti,
Il Caravaggio e il sue grandi opere da S. Luigi dei Francesi
, p. 158.

89.
It was left out of later editions.

90.
See Jacob Hess, ‘Nuovo Contributo alla vita del Caravaggio’,
Bolletino d’Arte
, anno 26, ser. 3 (July 1932), pp. 42–4.

91.
Rome’s criminal archives include a report written by the constable who arrested her. See Sandro Corradini,
Materiali per un processo
, document 38.

92.
If this is so (which is certainly possible), he would have been using the phrase in the same straightforward sense as the one-eyed Bolognese corporal, possibly called Paulo Aldato, who appears to say something similar in a later criminal action involving Caravaggio. Aldato (if that was his name) is reported as saying that he wanted to visit ‘
una sua puttana
’ – one of his prostitutes
– on a street nearby. There is no implication that Aldato was a pimp. See Sandro Corradini,
Materiali per un processo
, document 101.

93.
He would later claim that he had tried to challenge Pasqualone to a fair and open fight, but probably only to put his own actions in a better light.

94.
See Sandro Corradini,
Materiali per un processo
, documents 48–52, 54.

95.
Giuliana Marcolini, ‘Cesare d’Este, Caravaggio, e Annibale Carracci: una duca, due pittori e una
committenza
“a mal termine” ’, in
Sovrane passioni: studi sul collezionismo estense
, Jadranka Bentini (ed.) (Milan, 1998), pp. 23–4. Ruggieri’s letter reporting Caravaggio’s riposte was dated 2 Mar. 1605.

96.
Had it not been for the discovery of Masetti’s correspondence, the details of Caravaggio’s trip to Genoa would have remained unknown. See Sandro Corradini,
Materiali per un processo
, document 53.