One is tempted to define Caravaggio simply in opposition to the academic theories of technique in vogue at the time\u2014and certainly many of the most obvious ways in which he deviates from accepted stylistic tradition, most notably his insistence on painting directly from live models even when dealing with a complex multi-figure composition, do seem like a repudiation of the establishment. But to dismiss his stylistic novelty as merely an anti-academic response is unfair. In addition to rejecting the neoplatonic idealism of the high Renaissance theories of painting technique, and establishing in its place a humanist-naturalist worship of individuality, Caravaggio’s works, such as the depiction of \u201cThe Denial of St. Peter\u201d, prefigure post-modern concerns about the very nature of images and image making while it argues for a revolutionary conception of the role of beauty in art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Art theorists with which Caravaggio would have been familiar, including everyone from Leon Battista Alberti, who wrote a treatise, Della pittura<\/em>, in the fifteenth century to Giovanni Battista Agucchi,writing later in the very dawn of the seventeenth, had urged artists to consider the painted human figure as an instantiation of platonic ideals of beauty. In keeping with classical views on the visual experience of beauty, these Renaissance and Baroque art theorists, insisted that since no one individual produced by nature could possibly be more than a faint shadow of the beautiful, the artist who sought to create a beautiful work of art, ought use models only so far as to borrow bits and pieces from one or another. Citing Pliny, Alberti reminds us that \u201cDemetrius, an antique painter, failed to obtain the ultimate praise because he was much more careful to make things similar to the natural than to the lovely. For this reason,\u201d he cautions the would-be artist, \u201cit is useful to take from every beautiful body each one of the praised parts.\u201d1<\/a><\/sup> For Alberti, if we follow classical thought, and the correct academic tradition, it is obvious that artists should strive towards the platonic beautiful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But rather than idealized figures Caravaggio paints individuals which we can’t forget are people. If the serving woman in aforementioned \u201cDenial of St. Peter\u201d bears a superficial resemblance to the Salome in a painting he did of the beheaded St. John the Baptist circa the same era, it is hardly because Caravaggio was trying to portray a perfected beauty in the two women; far more likely is the explanation that he may very well have used the same model for the two paintings, executing them as he did during the same period of his life. And by depicting his figures in contemporary garb\u2014the soldier in \u201cThe Denial of St. Peter\u201d wears a helmet which clearly roots him in late fifteenth or early sixteenth century Italy\u2014Caravaggio further breaks down the imagined fiction of history. Indeed, the figures in his paintings are so nearly identifiable as individuals that they blur the line between history painting and portraiture. And this, more than the simple technical fact of his extreme realism, is Caravaggio’s real break with accepted artistic theory and practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We know from Caravaggio’s biographer, Giovanni Pietro Bellori, that at least some of his contemporaries were rather impressed by the extraordinary naturalism of his work. Art historians of the day also celebrated the ability to depict things realistically. Indeed, quite a lot of ink has been spilled over ‘nature as first teacher’ of art, so it was hardly merely the technique, extraordinary as it was for the era, of painting directly from live models which caused so many contemporary and modern critics alike to note Caravaggio’s break with accepted tradition. Rather, it was the way in which he used the live models that caused Bellori to bemoan that he failed to \u201creveal a more perfect and sublime level of deeper and truer beauty\u201d.2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n Rather than borrowing a hand from one model and a nose from another, Carvaggio arranged his models as in a tableau vivant and then painted the entire scene. Just as portraying the actors in a history painting in contemporary garb blurred the line between history painting and portraiture, so this technique of treating individuals as pieces in a still life, further blurred the definition of history painting. The same art theorists who were so concerned that artists go beyond nature to depict the beautiful had, understandably, compared different types of artwork and ranked them, privileging those such as history painting, which involved the painter in rendering that platonic essence of an idea, over still lives which involved what they saw as mere mechanical copying of the artist’s visual experience. By portraying St. Peter, not as an idealized figure representative of the idea of St. Peter, but as a real person, a modern man, Caravaggio created a history painting which was simultaneously a portrait and still life. Moreover, it seems likely that he knew exactly what he was doing in upsetting the traditional hierarchy of types of images. Caravaggio has been famously quoted as, as reported by Vincenzo Giustiniani, as saying that \u201cit was as much work for him to make a good picture of flowers as one of figures\u201d.3<\/a><\/sup> By creating a history painting with as much emphasis on earthy realism as a still life would have, Caravaggio was challenging the idea that an artist could not have both a worthy concetto <\/em>for a painting and simultaneously portray reality as he saw it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Keith Christiansen makes a good argument that Caravaggio’s rather revolutionary technique of painting does not indicate that the artist believed that an accomplished artist need merely \u201cimitate natural objects well\u201d as has occasionally been claimed, but that he also \u201cknow his craft\u201d, a phrase Christiansen takes to mean that Caravaggio felt that good painting required technique in addition to the ability to render a photorealistic copy from nature.4<\/a><\/sup> Christiansen quotes an impromptu statement which Caravaggio made during the course of a libel suit to that effect, and makes a strong case, and yet he ignores a further clause in Caravaggio’s statement that indicates that in addition to imitating objects well, the good artist must \u201cknow how to paint\u201d.5<\/a><\/sup> While one perhaps ought not put too much weight on a single impromptu statement by the artist, Caravaggio’s work certainly seems to bear witness to this distinction between merely imitating objects and knowing how to paint, decorate or depict something as well as to the idea that his conception of what it is to know the artist’s craft involved both. Caravaggio’s insistence on painting before live models indicates the importance he placed on the former even as his insistence on portraying them in a unique visual idiom and painterly style bears witness to the latter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Painted images of the saints were in many ways an ideal example of the artist’s concetto <\/em>as an example of an instantiation of a platonic ideal in art. Rather than a living human being who sinned, was forgiven, lived and died, depictions of the catholic cults of the saints were intended \u201csalutary examples [to be] set before the eyes of the faithful\u201d.6<\/a><\/sup> The church was primarily concerned that a painting be a visual representation of abstract principles of forgiveness and piety. Saints were often depicted, not during any possibly historical moment, but as devotional objects; Caravaggio’s contemporary Jusepe de Ribera, for example, depicts St. Peter gazing heavenward, ruminating, the keys to the kingdom of heaven on view, lest the viewer have any doubts as to who he is seeing. In selecting the moment of St Peter’s denial of christ as his subject, rather than the more popular, for painters of the period, moment of his penitence, Caravaggio humanizes the saint, creating a plausible scene that might actually have happened. Using his painterly style of tenebrism, he emphasizes the drama of the moment, at the expense, it might have been argued, of that sublime deeper truth, the idea of Peter’s sainthood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Theorists both ancient and modern were concerned that an artist might take advantage of the public by creating a painting of great physical beauty which nonetheless lacked a significant idea. In his Treatise on Painting<\/em>, Agucchi notes that \u201cthings depicted and imitated from nature please the common people, who usually see them in this way and delight in the imitation of what they fully know\u201d7<\/a><\/sup> but that such an object might nonetheless be devoid of meaning. Certainly photo-realistic depictions do dazzle the senses in a unique way. And it cannot be denied that Caravaggio painted with a showy sort of realism. But his paintings are certainly not devoid of meaning. In the Denial of St. Peter, he arranges his figures carefully to include the viewer in the circle of action, and thereby draws attention to the idea of the gaze as central to the paintings’ design. There is no question that Caravaggio carefully planned the composition: Peter is a shadowy figure, arguably not even the focal point of the picture, while the maidservant meets the viewer’s eye, reminding him that he is looking at the very same thing the artist saw.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rather than merely a passive vehicle which might represent the beautiful, or some other idealized concept, we have every reason to think that Caravaggio saw his painting as a chance to create objects which might be beautiful in and of themselves. And so, by executing work in a beautiful way, rather than by treating his figures as instantiations of platonic beauty, Caravaggio argues for a different role of beauty in the execution of art, argues indeed that dazzling painterly realism is necessary to draw attention to the subject at hand. By creating a beautifully executed, dramatic work of art Caravaggio pays homage to both his subject matter and to the act of creation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bibliography: Italy in the Baroque: Selected Readings<\/em>, 426-435. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1995. Yale University Press, 1966.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Blunt, Anthony. \u201cThe Council of Trent and Religious Art.\u201d In Artistic Theory in Italy 1450-1600<\/em>, 103 136. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Christiansen, Keith. \u201cCaravaggio and L’esempio davant del naturale,\u201d The Art Bulletin <\/em>Vol. 68 No. 3 (1986): 421-445. Spike, John T. \u201cCaravaggio and The Origins of Roman Still Life Painting.\u201d Papers of the Muscarelle Museum of Art Vol. I<\/p>\n\n\n\n presented at The College of William & Mary, November 9 – 10, 2006. Hibbard, Howard. Caravaggio<\/em>, New York: Harper & Row, 1983.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wendt, Kristine. \u201cCaravaggio\u2019s Darkness: A Sinner\u2019s Reputation with a Saint\u2019s Heart.\u201d PhD diss., State University of New York at Buffalo, 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One is tempted to define Caravaggio simply in opposition to the academic theories of technique in vogue at the time\u2014and certainly many of the most obvious ways in which he deviates from accepted stylistic tradition, most notably his insistence on painting directly from live models even when dealing with a complex multi-figure composition, do seem […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"[{\"content\":\"Alberti, Leon Battista, On Painting<\/em>. Trans. John R. Spencer. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1966), 92.\",\"id\":\"d348cb40-22d7-48fe-828d-716a06cc3093\"},{\"content\":\"Bellori, G. P. quoted in Hibbard, Howard. Caravaggio<\/em>. (New York: Harper & Row, 1983) 358.\",\"id\":\"acb3b720-81d8-45f5-9dcc-8077687a00ae\"},{\"content\":\"Spike, John T. \u201cCaravaggio and The Origins of Roman Still Life Painting.\u201d (papers of the Muscarelle Museum of Art Vol. I presented at The College of William & Mary, November 9 - 10, 2006).\",\"id\":\"958fa5a4-4931-493a-8954-6151653583ea\"},{\"content\":\"Christiansen, Keith. \u201cCaravaggio and L'esempio davant del naturale,\u201d The Art Bulletin <\/em>Vol. 68 No. 3 (1986): 421.\",\"id\":\"b27d2276-ea59-4ddd-8267-a10bbcffc6bc\"},{\"content\":\"Ibid.\",\"id\":\"33a7f622-c32a-49b2-a1b9-b5dc28dec401\"},{\"content\":\"Blunt, Anthony. \u201cThe Council of Trent and Religious Art.\u201d In Artistic Theory in Italy 1450-1600 <\/em>(Oxford: Clarendon
\n\n\n\n
Agucchi, Giovanni Battista. \u201cThe Carracci\u201d from Treatise on Painting (ca. 1615)<\/em>, edited and translated by Brendan Dooley<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alberti, Leon Battista. On Painting<\/em>. Translated with introduction and notes by John R. Spencer. New Haven and London:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n
Press, 1940), 108. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
the Baroque: Selected Readings<\/em>, 426-435. (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1995), 429. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Press, 1940), 108.\",\"id\":\"4fb1c8f9-4e9a-47fd-917d-d3c064458b3f\"},{\"content\":\"Agucchi, Giovanni Battista. \u201cThe Carracci.\u201d From Treatise on Painting (ca. 1615)<\/em>, trans. by Brendan Dooley in Italy in<\/em>
the Baroque: Selected Readings<\/em>, 426-435. (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1995), 429.\",\"id\":\"48053ee2-245c-4130-95e5-dd177b52186c\"}]"},"categories":[12,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-history","category-theory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writing.pinxelate.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writing.pinxelate.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writing.pinxelate.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writing.pinxelate.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writing.pinxelate.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/writing.pinxelate.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9,"href":"https:\/\/writing.pinxelate.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions\/9"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writing.pinxelate.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writing.pinxelate.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writing.pinxelate.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}