LITMIR.BIZ

      Cupid, who is clearly identified by his wings and arrows, only serves to accentuate the sensuality that emanates from the figures. The fabrics draped over the musicians hide the essential parts, but the disordered cloth is equivocal in its nature, as is the lascivious gaze of the watching figure in the background.

      Over the years, the representation of nature in which Caravaggio excelled was replaced by other themes, as outbursts of violence and aggressiveness were taking more hold of his life and work. The painter essentially endeavoured to reproduce the emotions and passions of mankind, such as vice, crime, or human suffering, beyond any mere aesthetic effect.

      The recurrent themes of his work echoed his mood and, as a musical chord can be deconstructed, one could also deconstruct the themes of his paintings into notes: those of darkness, blood, scoundrels and gamblers, cheats and Bohemian thieves. These notes are accompanied by a background rhythm of subjects and musical episodes, while unrestrained bursts of comedy bring a discordant note into solemnly tragic or sacred events.

      Despite the naive character that had been attributed to him, we must underline the fact that Caravaggio’s personality traits attracted him towards an obscure style of painting (or “Tenebrism”), his works enlivened by a breath of Realism. The obscure depth of his work is filled with the intimate feelings of their creator. One cannot exclude the idea that his taste for strong contrast of shade and light may correspond to the use of a long-matured technique. This technique seeks to evoke in the spectator an emotion in harmony with the dramatic tonality of the representation, by imprinting upon the forms an energetic relief favourable to a realistic expression of his art. But the consistency of his style and the profusion of shade, despite some technical loopholes, suggest with reason the artist’s predilection for contrasting colours, reflecting his “brilliant and tormented” temperament, as Bellori recorded.

      During these formative years for his art, he produced numerous canvases. The work he carried out for the Contarelli chapel established his reputation and the prelates of Rome decided to entrust him with the creation of large religious paintings. It was not unusual for his commissioners, as princes and prelates engaged in a game of “cultural rivalry”, to order several versions of the same subject from the artist to enrich their collections with the same masterpieces; scenes of the Nativity, the Supper at Emmaus, Saint Jerome, David and Goliath, The Fortune Teller, The Cardsharps, and Mary Magdalene were all such subjects. He would borrow certain characters from one painting and place them in another composition, such as the old woman with her head in her hands in a gesture of terror, a figure that appears in both Burial of Saint Lucy and The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist. Another old woman seen in profile, reminding us of La Vecchia by his great influence Giorgione, is present both in The Tooth Puller and in Judith Beheading Holofernes.

      Penitent Magdalene, 1596–1597.

      Oil on canvas, 122.5 × 98.5 cm.

      Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome.

      Saint Catherine of Alexandria, c. 1598.

      Oil on canvas, 173 × 133 cm.

      Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.

      The painter could unknowingly also repeat the same pictorial gesture or, by simple predilection, favour a line, a form, a type of lighting, or a contrast he judged interesting. This led him to re-employ certain expressive details such as the very sensual incline of the neck of certain male and female figures, seen in such works as The Musicians and Rest on the Flight into Egypt, or the details of a flexed hand visible in the painting of Narcissus and The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist. Although these details have contributed to the definition of his style and allowed art historians to identify certain paintings as his work, the attribution of certain works, such as Ecce Homo and The Tooth Puller, still remains uncertain. Indeed, his very personal techniques, notably the incisions made in the thickness of the undercoats, the brown border which he left around his figures, the dark backgrounds that grew more and more refined, and the light delivered by a vertical or lateral source, creating highly-contrasting zones of light and shade, were not applied systematically by Caravaggio, while his successors sometimes used the same methods.

      Favouring realism over the idealisation of biblical characters, he went as far as placing Saint Matthew sitting astride a stool, turning his roughly-painted feet towards the spectator. He painted the swollen, obscene body of a drowned woman in his representation of The Death of the Virgin and he symbolised, it seems, Architecture as a figure with the appearance of a woman from Trastevere holding a compass, or even Mary Magdalene with the features of common woman wearing dishevelled clothes and with her plaits undone. All these attitudes can be interpreted as systematic executions of a naturalistic vision which was the goal of his art. He also painted The Conversion of Saint Paul, in which a horse occupies almost all the canvas, along with a representation of Saint John the Baptist as a child in the desert playing with a sheep, in which he refrains from giving even the least spiritual dimension to the work. In The Supper

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