Suddenly Seeing: “The Conversion of Paul on the Way to Damascus” by Caravaggio
“He would have been a great film-maker, there’s no doubt about it. I thought, I can use this too...”
--Martin Scorsese on Caravaggio’s influence on “Taxi Driver.”
1601. The Cerasi Chapel of Santa Maria del Popolo. Rome
The artist must have felt this one in his bones. After all, he was now being recognized in Rome as an “outstanding painter of the city” for his magnificent St. Matthew paintings. Particularly “The Calling of St. Matthew,” where the artist deftly and dramatically depicts the sudden shining of divine grace into the life of a sinner. It was commissioned by a French cardinal, Matthieu Cointerel, for his commemorative chapel.
The Calling of St. Matthew,” 1599-1600, Contarelli Chapel, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome.
Caravaggio’s skillful ability to portray such inexplicable shining was now in demand by yet another rich patron, Tiberio Cerasi, who commissioned from the artist the two side panels for his burial chapel in the Santa Maria del Popolo . The altar painting would go to Caravaggio’s talented rival, Annibale Carracci, who had become widely famous for his ceiling in the magnificent Palazzo Farnese. The Cerasi Chapel project was shaping up to be a contest between the two most famous painters in Rome.
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The Cerasi Chapel
Carracci was fifteen years older than Caravaggio at that time. He had seen Caravaggio’s work in the Francesi church and might have assumed that his rival would repeat the style that won him so much renown. Carracci decided to double down on what were his strengths when depicting the Virgin’s assumption. His altarpiece glories in the pure, sweet style and softened colors of the High Renaissance and without any hint of the real world. Centrally placed, it should have taken pre-eminence in the presentation as a whole. Instead, it seems to our eyes to be distinctly retrograde, rather airless, and with a politely posed cast of characters. The Virgin’s feet on the heads of winged cherubini border on the faintly ridiculous. Her face, as described by one critic, is that of an “ecstatic doll.”
Caravaggio’s painting opposite the conversione is “The Martyrdom of St. Peter.” The pairing of paintings depicting the two saints was not unusual. Both were revered in Rome and regarded as the founders of the Apostolic See. The stories of their lives often appeared together, but Paul’s conversion was usually presented with a scene of Peter receiving the keys to the kingdom of heaven from Christ.
However, there was a notable precedent for the combination in the Cerasi Chapel: Michelangelo’s late frescoes (1542-1549) in the Pauline Chapel (next to the Sistine) in the Vatican
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Moreover, placing them together can be theologically justified in that both are mystical deaths: Paul dies to the world to be reborn in Christ and Peter literally dies to meet his rewards in heaven. And in fact, the cruciform gesture of Paul is echoed in the physical execution of Peter (as is that of the Virgin in the altarpiece).
Caravaggio had not originally painted this version of the Conversion. His earlier -- and very much inferior -- effort was rejected by Cerasi.
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The Conversion of St. Paul. 1600/1601.
It is not hard to see why this version was rejected: its composition is crowded and confusing, a clutter. This is an older, out of shape Paul with an oddly reddish beard. Not the clean faced young and muscular Roman soldier vanquished by the light of Christ. A young angel and shadowy bearded Christ swoop down and are injected awkwardly into the picture, removing the mystical nature of what has happened. The man (Paul’s retainer?) in the absurdly elaborate plumed helmet seems irrelevant, brandishing a sword to no one in particular. The little window of the countryside detracts from the drama and again, we wonder why it is there in the first place.
Paul’s skewbald horse is another marvel of this work. By portraying such a coloration the artist has achieved a high note of illumination of the horse’s mane to accentuate the drama of the scene and has also provided materiality (especially in roundness of the workhorse’s belly) to the picture’s worldliness. Pablo Picasso, in crafting his masterpiece “Guernica,” told Salvadore Dali that he wanted the horse at the center of the painting to have the same presence as Caravaggio’s: “I want it to be so realistic...that you can smell the sweat.”
At the time of Caravaggio’s arrival in Rome, the Church was in the full throttle of the Counter Reformation. Shaken by the successes of Luther’s Reformation efforts in the north of Europe, the Church had to do something. And that would be both the stick of brutal repression of heresy as well as the carrot of art, splendidly and indulgently lavished with rich (and costly) ultramarine blue in particular. It was art that appealed to the masses who largely were unable to read and had to rely on pictorial representation of their faith to get them through their lives with that faith intact. What Luther had railed against, the Roman Catholic Church had decided to celebrate even more intensely.
This was an opportunity but also a challenge to Caravaggio. While he was a genius at portraying the suffering of the saints and what he believed was the real glory of the martyrs, it was also in the face of the Church’s new decree of decorum in each religious art work. As biographer Peter Robb says
“The trouble was that decorum didn’t occur in nature. A painter who worked only from life was pretty soon going to run into serious difficulties. Caravaggio duly did.”
But Caravaggio was determined to portray the truths about the followers of Christ: they were neither rich nor splendid and often died brutal deaths, and he painted them in scenes expressed in an aggressively harsh piety, using earth colors such as ochre and umber, carbon black, lead white and verdigris. He must have intended such an ascetic extreme. Even when he used the more brilliant vermilions and blues, he generally toned them down.
Caravaggio clearly had no use for such pretty idealizations as Carracci’s Assumption. This led him to take the cleverest parting shot possible for future generations of viewers who would visit the Chapel: his positioning of the rump of Paul’s proletarian carthorse pointedly aimed right at Carracci’s altarpiece.
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I haven't made it to Italy at all, yet, but, soon I hope....soon.
Especially after reading "The Agony and the Ecstasy" last summer....
But, I'm an Art Historian, which means I'm not exactly wealthy, and travel funds for professional development are not as available as they were for previous generations of college professors.....
For an engineer, though, he's been very patient and tolerant of how our vacations have been conducted.
We've toyed with the idea of trying to claim trips as tax deductions, but we've always chickened out because we're afraid of looking like we're trying to "pull a fast one".
But, maybe we should take another look at that....
Definitely on my bucket list!!!
I'd like a week in Florence and its surroundings, if possible....
It was in a wonderful exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Art of a huge collection owned by the Habsburgs. It's really impressive in person, and really large.
You would do an art thread soon! I was going to pm you to see if I'd missed one along the way!
Yay, some good reading!
Cher
Part of what makes DU great.
