Chapter Three
Giuseppe Porzio
Caravaggio in Naples and the Madrid Ecce Homo
Michelangelo Merisi known as Caravaggio
Madonna della misericordia (Sette opere di misericordia), detail
Naples, church of Pio Monte della Misericordia
Chapter Three
Giuseppe Porzio
fig. 1
Aert Mytens
Crowning with Thorns
Stockholm, Nationalmuseum
It is unanimously agreed that Caravaggio’s descent to the South, and especially his Neapolitan sojourns, represents a chapter of primary importance for seventeenth-century European art. In fact, building on the profound cultural integration of the South with the Spanish imperial system, the ground-breaking force of the new vision proposed by the master was able to increase the international resonance of its impact. The works produced during this period, in which the artist continued to reflect on subjects deriving from sacred history — which for the painter were an almost exclusive field of interest — and to redefine the role of the spectator, therefore appear as inescapable terms for evaluating and understanding the transformations of figurative forms and typologies that occurred in the Mediterranean area between the first and second decade of the century. At the same time, they also provide the most suitable framework for contextualising the new Ecce Homo.1 It is therefore necessary to establish, once again, the crucial points of that brief and exceptional historical experience.2
When Caravaggio arrived in Naples, “già conosciuta [era] la sua maniera e ’l suo nome” (his manner and his name [were] already known). As we know, the painter arrived in the autumn of 1606, after the brief interlude spent in the Latium fiefs of the Colonna family following the infamous killing of Ranuccio Tomassoni on 28 May of that year, in a brawl that broke out during a match of “palla a corda.” It is to this “parenthesis” that the sources ascribe the “Christo in Emaus fra li due apostoli” (Christ at Emmaus with the two apostles) now in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan—purchased and brought to Rome by the banker Ottavio Costa, Caravaggio’s long-standing patron from the late sixteenth-century — and a “mezza figura di Maddalena” (half-figure of Magdalene) from which prototype— the subject of interminable disputes relating to attribution — innumerable copies and variations originated.3
However, that Caravaggio’s innovations were already known in Naples, as asserted by Giovan Pietro Bellori, is a fact that can be taken as a given, considering the geographical proximity and the artistic relations that had always existed between the two centres. These had recently found their most important channel in the work of the Sistine masters led by Giuseppe Cesari (born in Arpino — it should be remembered — and therefore qualifying as a Neapolitan subject) on the Carthusian monastery of San Martino, which began in 1589.4 For that matter, from the beginning of the seventeenth-century, Louis Finson and above all Tanzio da Varallo were active in the city — although their productions for this time remain unknown; both artists came from Rome, having been attracted to the city by the prospects of the Jubilee of 1600, and the latter moreover, coming from the workshop of Cavalier d’Arpino.5 The problem, therefore, is to understand what exactly was known of Caravaggio’s work in the Neapolitan area, and whether symptoms of a naturalistic “conversion” were already apparent before the master’s passage through the city. The earliest echo is to be found in a drawing of the Vocation of Saint Matthew, in the Museo di Capodimonte which a collector’s inscription ascribes to Belisario Corenzio. The drawing is a translation of the famous composition in the Contarelli Chapel (as is also inscribed on the reverse of the drawing), the variations of which in relation to the final model — according to Ferdinando Bologna — would indeed even document knowledge of the intermediate stages of the composition.6
fig. 2
Michelangelo Merisi known as Caravaggio
Madonna della misericordia (Sette opere di misericordia)
Naples, Church of Pio Monte della Misericordia
Regardless of its attribution to Corenzio, which is not a solid point of departure, this drawing is graphic evidence of an adaptation of the “manner” of Caravaggio’s painting, rather than an understanding of it; in short, something analogous to the mechanism with which Caravaggio’s treatment of light is translated into nocturnal artifice in the best known and still impressive Crowning with Thorns by Aert Mytens now in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm [fig. 1],7 begun in Naples and completed in Rome by 1601, the year of the Flemish artist’s death.
It is certain, however, that the more or less intelligent reception of Caravaggio’s innovations and their local application, which resulted in particularly crude interpretations, were made possible precisely by the widespread Northern background that had for decades already made an impression with its realism on the visual culture of the viceroyalty. This is demonstrated by the the examples of Carlo Sellitto and Filippo Vitale, who, having initially trained in the workshop of Loys Croys, an established master originally from Mechelen, were to become two of Caravaggio’s earliest and most radical followers in Naples.8
In any case, the first certain evidence of Caravaggio’s presence in the capital of the viceroyalty, dated 6 October 1606, is the receipt for a payment of 200 ducats for the execution of an altarpiece, which unfortunately has not come down to us, for Nicolò Radolovich, a merchant from Ragusa (Dubrovnik) who was on the rise in society and had become marquis of Polignano in 1604.9 The composition requested by the latter, as described in the “reason” for the payment as it appears in the receipt, is entirely in line with the iconographic devotional conventions of southern Italy. Yet, the substantial commitment involved in the commission, as indicated also by the considerable cost of the work, and the dynamic potential presented to the Lombard artist in the interpretation of the central nucleus, with the image of the Virgin and Child surrounded by choirs of angels and, in the lower register, between Saint Vitus (patron saint of Polignano) and Saint Nicholas of Bari, and the embrace of Saints Dominic and Francis, were already a prelude to the next, highly celebrated masterpiece for the church of the newly established Pio Monte della Misericordia, a lay association with charitable aims among the principal in the city, founded on the initiative of some of the young members of the aristocracy of the kingdom.10
The chronology of the Seven Acts of Mercy [fig. 2], an impressive illustration — in terms of its veracity and its synthetic qualities — of the charitable activities practised by the institution, is bound by a payment of 370 ducats in settlement of 400, paid on 9 January 1607 by Tiberio del Pezzo, governor of the Opera dei Morti with responsibility for the administration of the church.11 It is probable, however, that Caravaggio’s involvement was due to the mediation of Giovanni Battista Manso, the future Marquis of Villa, at the time deputy “alla fabrica della casa et chiesa” (of the buiding and the church) of the Monte di Pietà, as well as — as is known — an intimate of Giovanni Battista Marino, friend and admirer of the Lombard painter.12
From left to right
fig. 3
Giovanni Vincenzo Forl.,
Parable of the Good Samaritan
Naples, Church of Pio Monte della Misericordia
fig. 4
Louis Finson
Annunciation
Naples, Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte
From left to right
fig. 3
Giovanni Vincenzo Forl.,
Parable of the Good Samaritan
Naples, Church of Pio Monte della Misericordia
fig. 4
Louis Finson
Annunciation
Naples, Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte
fig. 5
Michelangelo Merisi known as Caravaggio
Madonna of the Rosary
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum
fig. 6
Giovan Battista Caracciolo known as Battistello Caracciolo,
Immaculate Conception with Saint Dominic and Saint Francesco di Paola
Naples, Church of Santa Maria della Stella
fig. 7
Michelangelo Merisi known as Caravaggio
Flagellation of Christ
Rouen, Musée des Beaux-Arts
fig. 8
Fabrizio Santafede
Flagellation of Christ
Location unknown
The impact of this supreme work on the Neapolitan figurative environment, and the mental limitations with which it was received, can be gaged immediately from one of the altarpieces executed for the remaining six altars of the edifice, namely the Parable of the Good Samaritan [fig. 3], which alludes to the “visitatione degl’infermi” (visitating of the sick), painted immediately afterwards in 1607 by “Giovan Vincenzo Forlì . . . napoletano, fra’ pittori di prima classe ne’ suoi tempi” (Giovan Vincenzo Forli . . . Neapolitan, one of the first-class painters of his time).13 This work is a good example of the attempt of an already fully-fledged, mature artist to adapt his painterly language— that of Corenzio and Bassano — to the novelty of the Seven Acts, from which he takes the most superficial and outwardly striking aspects (the three dimensional quality reinforced by the chiaroscuro, the rotational dynamic of the group with the Virgin and the angels, the imminence of the nude figure, brought to the very edge of the visual plane). At the end of April 1607, the Nola patrician Girolamo Mastrilli, who in 1612 would become Marquis of San Marzano, paid Caravaggio for a painting representing his eponymous saint, currently lost; the sum, 30 ducats in settlement of an unspecified amount, the advance payment of which had already been paid in cash, was at the same time turned over by the artist to Battistello Caracciolo.14
The hypothesis, put forward by Maria Cristina Terzaghi, is plausible: that the painting was destined for the residence, located in the seggio of Nido, which Mastrilli was fitting out around that time.15 But the most important piece of information is certainly the turning over of the sum to Caracciolo, which gives us a glimpse of Caravaggio’s professional relations with the local artistic milieu and explains the Neapolitan painter’s exceptionally early reception of the Lombard’s models through the direct contact between the artists: from the Madonna and Child in Glory in the Museo delle arti in Catanzaro (which shows knowledge of the “work in progress” of the Seven Acts), to the Immaculate Conception in Santa Maria della Stella in Naples [fig. 6], of 1607, which presupposes knowledge the final composition of the Pio Monte altarpiece, as well as the “pattern” of the Madonna of the Rosary in Vienna [fig. 5], which was on the market in the city — as will be seen later — in September of the same year.16
In the following May, a payment on account was made to the painter by Tommaso de Franchis, a member of an important family of jurists, for a work on an unspecified subject. On the basis of Bellori’s indication that it was painted for the “cappella de’ signori Di Franco” (chapel of the Di Franco family), and of the considerable sum involved — 250 ducats (of which 150 had already been received in cash), and to which must probably be added a supplement of 40 ducats and 9 grana17 — it would seem that this work was the Flagellation of Christ once in San Domenico Maggiore and now in Capodimonte. However, the discovery of this documentary supporting evidence did not exhaust the debate on the dating of the work. The high number of revisions and alterations revealed by the diagnostic investigations — notable, in particular, is the elimination in the final painting of the figure of a bystander, revealed by radiographic examinations in 1983 and variously interpreted as the portrait of the patron, as Saint Francis or even as a self-portrait — has in fact induced some scholars, in primis Bologna, to put forward a hypothesis which in my opinion is implausible — its execution in two stages, and to postpone its completion to Caravaggio’s return to Naples after his Sicilian sojourn, insisting, for example, on the similarities between the figure of the henchman to the right of Christ, and the gigantic grave-digger also on the right, in the Burial of Saint Lucy in Syracuse.18
Such typological correspondences, far from being useful indications of a creative dynamic such as Caravaggio’s, who constantly moves between innovation and repetition, can in any case be more appropriately brought into play for the other Flagellation, almost contemporary, but of a room-size format, in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen since 1955 [fig. 7]. The invenzione of this work hinges on the bold outstreched torsion of Christ’s torso to the left, and was taken up on several occasions — one is tempted to say “while still warm,” but with a Bassano-like luminism — by Fabrizio Santafede [fig. 8].19
From left to right
fig. 9
Michelangelo Merisi known as Caravaggio
Crucifixion of Saint Andrew
Cleveland (OH), The Cleveland Museum of Art
fig. 10
Giovan Battista Caracciolo
known as Battistello Caracciolo
Crucifixion of Christ
Naples, Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte
From left to right
fig. 9
Michelangelo Merisi known as Caravaggio
Crucifixion of Saint Andrew
Cleveland (OH), The Cleveland Museum of Art
fig. 10
Giovan Battista Caracciolo
known as Battistello Caracciolo
Crucifixion of Christ
Naples, Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte
fig. 11
Michelangelo Merisi known as Caravaggio
Crucifixion of Saint Andrew, detail
Cleveland (OH), The Cleveland Museum of Art
fig. 12
Michelangelo Merisi known as Caravaggio and collaborator
Judith beheading Holophernes, detail
Private collection
Towards the end of the master’s first Neapolitan period (he is referred to for the last time in the city on 3 July 1607),20 but also seeming to be looking forward towards the later works painted in Malta, is the sorrowful Crucifixion of Saint Andrew, now in the Cleveland Museum of Art21 [figs. 9, 11] also seems to have been painted.
It is thought, again based on Bellori’s report, that this work is the same as the one which the Viceroy Juan Alfonso Pimentel Enríquez, Count-Duke of Benavente, took with him to Spain in 1610, at the end of his Neapolitan mandate.22 This information, is in fact accurately reflected in the inventory of the family palace in Valladolid, drawn up between 1652 and 1653, which also records, under the name of Caravaggio, a “Santo obispo, la cabeza degollada” (bishop Saint, decapitated), whose effigy is possibly transmitted by the San Gennaro now in the Palmer Museum of Art.23 It remains to be clarified how the Crucifixion came to be in the viceroy’s possession, that is, whether commissioned directly, or purchased on the market.
As is the case with the Works of Mercy, the Cleveland painting is also notable for its iconographic singularity. First of all, the cross to which the martyr is bound is not the decussate cross, but the Latin one; furthermore, the scene depicts not the moment in which the apostle is hoisted up onto the cross, but a subsequent moment when the vain attempt was made to untie him in order to interrupt his tireless preaching.24 Once again it was Battistello, in the unadorned and disconsolate Crucifixion owned by the City of Naples (currently exhibited in the Museo di Capodimonte), who recorded the most immediate response, with the group of onlookers painted at half-length [fig. 10].25
The dating of the work between the spring and early summer of 1607, towards which more recent scholarship has inclined, is supported by the numerous cross-references to the Pio Monte canvas, as well as by the re-appearance of the old goitred woman in the maid-servant in the much discussed Judith beheading Holophernes that surfaced in Toulouse in 2016 [figs. 12, 13], most probably to be identified — with all the stylistic difficulties that the canvas poses — in the lost “Oliferno con Giuditta” (Holophernes with Judith) brought to the attention of Vincenzo I Gonzaga on the square in Naples in September of the same year by the painter Frans Pourbus.26
It is precisely the testimony of the Duke of Mantua’s agent that poses a question of extreme importance for the understanding of the interaction between Caravaggio and the artistic milieu of the capital of the Kingdom: as is well known, in fact together with the Judith, Pourbus also recalled a “Rosario . . . fatto per un’ancona” (Rosary . . . executed for an altarpiece), that is the famous altarpiece, the chronology and destination of which is still a matter of some debate, which now hangs in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
fig. 13
Michelangelo Merisi known as Caravaggio and collaborator
Judith beheading Holophernes
Private collection
These “doi quadri bellissimi di mano de M[ichel] Angelo da Carravaggio” (two very beautiful paintings by the hand of M[ichel] Angelo da Carravaggio), which—keep in mind—the duke’s other emissary in Naples, Ottavio Gentile, believed to have been executed in the city,27 would reappear exactly ten years later, on 19 September 1617, in Amsterdam. It is here, in fact, that Louis Finson willed to his partner Abraham Vinck his share in the co-ownership of “twee stucken schildereyen beyde van Michael Angel Crawats, d’een wesende een Rosarius en d’andere Judith en Holopharnis” (two paintings by Michelangelo Caravaggio, one a Rosary, the other Judith and Holophernes).28 It is unclear when and under what circumstances the two works came into the possession of the two artists, but if one adds to this the news of another Crucifixion of Saint Andrew from the same Finson inheritance, sold in Amsterdam in 1619 under the name of Caravaggio, as well as that of a copy of the Madonna of the Rosary assessed at the beginning of 1630, again in the Dutch capital, as the work of Finson himself,29 one can well understand the importance of the latter painter in particular in the dissemination of the Lombard master’s invenzioni, and especially those produced in Naples.
Quite apart from their quality, anything but sublime, even the two signed replicas by Finson of the “mezza figura di Maddalena” (half-figure of Magdalene) painted by Caravaggio in the Colonna fiefs — one in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Marseilles, the other, dated 1613, formerly in a private collection in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence and now in Malta30 — suggest that the artist already had access to Caravaggio’s original in Naples, while the artist was still alive. This probably by virtue of the privileged bond, suggested by the historical data available to date, that the two Flemings must have had with the Lombard genius even before his arrival in the Viceroyal capital, perhaps even to the point of offering him a foothold in their workshop in the city. The splendid David with the Head of Goliath in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna [fig. 14], painted by Caravaggio re-using a poplar panel, an unusual support for him, probably relates to this triangulation. X-radiographic studies have revealed an underlying composition with a Mars and Venus with Cupid that can be attributed to a Northern mannerist painter, precisely of the type of Finson or Vinck.31
The pair appear together for the first time in Naples in August 1605. On this occasion, Vinck passed on the payment he had received from Giovanni Francesco Orefice, former bishop of Acerno, for the painting of a Crucifix to a certain Aniello D’Aponte (De Ponte) for the rent of “certe case” (certain houses) rented to him together with Finson, perhaps the “poteca e quattro camere site alla piaza di Toledo” (a workshop [bottega] and four rooms located in Piazza di Toledo) (roughly today’s Piazza Carità) specified in a later payment in 1608 again to D’Aponte. While Vinck’s arrival in the city dates to the end of the sixteenth-century (his matrimonial processetto offers a fascinating and vivid picture of the social relations and extreme mobility of the local Dutch colony), Finson must have arrived in Naples from Rome, where he is documented in 1600 in the service of the Neapolitan-born cardinal Tommaso d’Avalos, before March 1605. It is probably also thanks to this reference that the Flemish artist soon became part of the Neapolitan milieu if, at that date, his patrons included Paolo Di Raimo from Sarnia, a knight of the Order of Malta, and Carlo Spinelli, Prince of Cariati. However, Vinck also could boast an impressive and significant carnet of clients from the beginning of the same crucial decade, such as for instance the De Franchis and Nicolò Radolovich, whose names are connected — as observed above — to two of the main commissions received in Naples by Caravaggio, as well as the great Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa.32
fig. 14
Michelangelo Merisi known as Caravaggio
David with the head of Goliath
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum
Of these “heroic” set of circumstances, however, only fragmentary figurative traces survive: in fact, nothing is currently known of the Neapolitan Vinck, just as the works by Finson recorded in local documents (mostly portraits, one of the acknowledged specialities of Flemish artists) have almost all disappeared. The few sure works that can be dated with certainty were all executed after Caravaggio’s death — among these are the now famous Four Elements, signed and dated in Naples in 1611,33 and the monumental and archaic Annunciation, 1612, formerly in the destroyed church of Saint Thomas Aquinas on the “strada Toledo,” now in Capodimonte34 [fig. 4], which in its upper register, with the Eternal Father surrounded by angels, pays homage to the Seven Acts of Mercy.
Caravaggio’s return to Naples in October 1609, after the interludes in Malta and Sicily, and his brief sojourn prior to his death which occurred on 18 July of the following year, in Porto Ercole where he had taken himself in an improbable and daring attempt to reach Rome, were no less charged with works and consequences.35
First and foremost, there is the problem of the lost canvases for the chapel of the Bergamasque Alfonso Fenaroli in Sant’Anna dei Lombardi, among which stood out, in a central position, a Resurrection of Christ, which is, of the three works, the one on which the sources have focused most of their attention.36 The hypothesis of their execution during Caravaggio’s second Neapolitan period — not all voices are in agreement — is based on the fact that the concession for the chapel dates back to 24 December 1607, and therefore the painter could not have painted them until his return from Sicily.37
The remarkable impression evoked by the principal painting as related in the descriptions of various ancient sources, because of its unconventional iconography and — as usual — its borderline decorum, has led scholars to find its reflections and derivations in almost all portrayals of the Resurrection produced in the Neapolitan area during the seventeenth-century, from Finson’s altarpiece in the church of Saint-Jean-de-Malte in Aix-en-Provence to Luca Giordano’s painting now in the archbishop’s palace in Naples.38 In fact, the most accurate description of the painting, all the more impartial because free from prejudice relating to its author, whom it seems to ignore, contradicts the making of such connections. In fact, in the mid eighteenth-century, Charles-Nicolas Cochin describes a gaunt Christ, marked by what he has suffered, who moves among his guards almost like an absconding thief;39 an image that is anything but triumphant, and one corroborated by the earlier testimonies of Luigi Scaramuccia and De Dominici, who has words of censure for this “Resurrezione del Signore, che quasi con ispavento esce dal suo sepolcro, idea bassa ed indecente al rappresentato” (Resurrection of the Lord, who almost fearfully exits his tomb, a low and indecent idea for the [one] represented).40 If we confine ourselves to Caravaggio’s close circle and to times relatively close to those of the original work, it is at most possible, following an intuition of Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco, to glimpse a reprise of this idea of the master’s in one of Battistello’s most powerful inventions, the Liberation of Saint Peter from Prison, painted in 1615, moreover picking up an unfulfilled commission from Sellitto, for the Pio Monte della Misericordia.41
Either side of the Fenaroli Resurrection, would have appeared a Saint Francis of Assisi and a Saint John the Baptist similarly dispersed;42 and also similarly, the various suggestions of echoes among contemporaries, for example in the work of Sellitto and Battistello, remain more or less suggestive hypotheses for the moment, but unverifiable.
fig. 15
Michelangelo Merisi known as Caravaggio
Martyrdom of Saint Ursula
Naples, Intesa Sanpaolo collection – Gallerie d’Italia
fig. 16
Michelangelo Merisi known as Caravaggio
Negation of Saint Peter
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The concluding climax of Caravaggio’s Neapolitan career, however, is the tragic Martyrdom of Saint Ursula [fig. 15], completed in May 1610, just over a month before his death, and now in the Gallerie d’Italia in Naples after a series of well-known complicated events: commissioned by Prince Marco Antonio Doria through Lanfranco Massa, his correspondent in Naples, it was very hurriedly sent to Genoa on 27 May 1610 shortly after leaving the painter’s studio while its varnish was still fresh (a circumstance that is at the root of its of its poor condition). The Saint Ursula returned to Naples again in the first half of the nineteenth-century, inherited by the Doria branch of the princes of Angri and then, about a century later, by the Romano Avezzano d’Eboli barons, to be finally purchased in 1972 by the then Banca Commerciale Italiana. The true authorship of the work and its fundamental historical position would only be definitively clarified by archival findings in 1980.43
As always in the Lombard painter’s late production, the episode of the saint’s martyrdom at the hands of the Hun king is concentrated, with supreme narrative conciseness and outside the bounds of the iconographic tradition, to its essential core and factual truth. Isolated from the execution of her virgin companions, the killing of Ursula, reduced almost to a common act of bloodshed, is represented in its culminating moment — as the violent and impulsive consequence of the woman’s final refusal of the barbarian’s offers — among the witnesses to the drama is the painter himself, on the right of the composition behind the saint.
Caravaggio’s artistic and existential epilogue is entrusted to a few other works destined to have important repercussions on Neapolitan naturalism, first and foremost in terms of success of their subjects: principally the Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist in the National Gallery in London (probably the “mezza figura di Herodiade con la testa di san Giovanni nel bacino” [the half-figure of Herodias with the head of Saint John in the basin] sent, according to Bellori, as a gift to the Grand Master of the Order of Malta to appease his wrath after the artist’s escape from the island),44 the Denial of Saint Peter in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York [figs. 16, 18] and the two Saint John the Baptist included among the “robbe” (things) shipped to Naples on the last voyage to Rome: the one in the Galleria Borghese,45 seated amidst the vegetation, and another, depicted lying down, known only through copies.46
fig. 17
Michelangelo Merisi known as Caravaggio
Ecce Homo, detail
Madrid, private collection
fig. 18
Michelangelo Merisi known as Caravaggio
Negation of Saint Peter, detail
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
fig. 19
Michelangelo Merisi known as Caravaggio
Ecce Homo
Madrid, private collection
fig. 20
Mario Minniti
Ecce Homo
Mdina, Cathedral Museum
And it is to this precise fraction of the artist’s life that the new Ecce Homo also seems to belong, although the exact chronology of its execution — unlike its authorship, which now, after restoration — appears incontrovertible and the provenance, reconstructed in most of its passages by Maria Cristina Terzaghi in this volume — cannot but be affected by the uncertainties that plague Caravaggio’s career as a whole, and not just its southern period.
It is paradoxical, in fact, that the acrimony, if not the relentlessness with which critics have applied themselves to every aspect of the artist’s existence, has ended up increasing rather than dispelling doubts, eroding even the traditional points of reference in defining the artistic development of the Lombard genius. And so, in the absence of documentary links, the connections between the Ecce Homo and Caravaggio’s other works can only have a guiding value and never an absolute one. For example, the exceptionally poetic idea of the young soldier’s face in shadow, drawn out from the darkness by the sparkle of his eyes [fig. 17], is also to be found in the servant in the Denial of Saint Peter today in New York [fig. 18]; although everything suggests that this moving detail belongs — as we have said — to the painter’s final phase, there is no lack of those who, like Marini and Spike, place the work around 1607.
Again, in terms of its setting and morphological details, the sorrowful image of Christ seems to all intents and purposes identical to that of the David in the Galleria Borghese — which would also make sense, given the typological relationship that Christian exegesis establishes between the two figures — but, as is well known, the dating of this iconic rendering is by no means straightforward: the prevailing view, and in my opinion the most solidly based, is that it is to be placed in the second Neapolitan sojourn, all the more so because in the screaming head of Goliath one can recognise the tragic face of Caravaggio after the disfigurement suffered in Naples at the Cerriglio tavern in October 1609. Recently, however, an alternative line of scholarship has been gaining ground, which tends to anticipate the execution of the David to the feverish moment of Caravaggio’s passage from Rome to Naples, emphasising its similarities with the Supper at Emmaus in the Brera.47
It should be emphasised, however, that the former hypothesis also seems to agree with the first references to the painting in the Borghese collection, which date back to 1613;48 furthermore, in 1610, Giulio Cesare Fontana commissioned Baldassarre Aloisi, then in Naples, to paint two copies of a David by Caravaggio,49 which in all likelihood is to be identified with the Borghese version of the theme.
fig. 21
Giovan Battista Caracciolo known as Battistello Caracciolo
Ecce Homo
Saint Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum
Similarly, one cannot underestimate the fact that in the inventory of the possessions of Viceroy García de Avellaneda y Haro, second Count of Castrillo, drawn up in Naples in 1657 and coinciding with the first reference to the work, the Salome was accompanied by the Salome from the Palacio Real in Madrid, a circumstance that could suggest a common genesis for the two masterpieces. Nevertheless, even this foothold is not secure, as the date of execution of the Palacio Real canvas oscillates, in the view of scholars, between the first and second Neapolitan phases.50
At present, it is difficult to discern any direct influence of the Madrid painting in the southern Italian context that might help settle the chronological question: the citation of the henchman behind Christ, and the less palpable one of Pilate in Mario Minniti’s Ecce Homo in the cathedral of Mdina [fig. 20], dated 1625,51 seem to imply a more or less direct knowledge of the master’s prototype [fig. 19] (the reference concerns above all the stolid expression of the two henchmen), but this work is too late to be a stanchion for the version under examination.
Battistello’s various versions of the subject, all of a horizontal format — the earliest, lost, transmitted by the crude copy in the sanctuary of Paola, a second in a private collection, a third in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg [fig. 21] and the last, the best known, in Capodimonte [fig. 22] — are related, if at all, with the compostion of another Ecce Homo by Caravaggio from the Messina period, known through various replicas, some of which have contended for the status of the original.52
In truth, the most profound and vital legacy of the Lombard master, and hence of a masterpiece such as the Ecce Homo, is to be found not so much in some more or less faithful excerpts from his creations, but more generally in his very special conception of the sacred, in which precisely in the truthfulness of the victim, in whom the reality of the human condition meets transcendental reality.
fig. 22
Giovan Battista Caracciolo known as Battistello Caracciolo
Ecce Homo
Naples, Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte
Endnotes 1–10
[1] This essay is a reelaboration of a chapter of my monograph on Carlo Sellitto (G. Porzio, Carlo Sellitto. 1580-1614, Naples 2019), to which reference will often be made for a more complete bibliography of the individual issues, updated of course to the date of publication.
[2] It is impossible, and would be unjust to the complexity of the issues involved, if I were to compress the immense quantity of critical literature which has accumulated on Caravaggio into the space of a footnote; therefore, since we can be but partial, we will limit ourselves—for the purposes of this study—to indicating only the essential references, especially those of a documentary nature, on which the assertions contained in the text are based. For archival sources, we refer you—for the sake of practicality—to the very recent re-edition of Stefania Macioce’s collection of sources, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Documenti, fonti e inventari 1513-1848, 3rd updated ed., Rome 2023; for the paintings referred to, except in special instances, it is sufficient to refer to the main monographs on Caravaggio: M. Cinotti, “Michelangelo Merisi detto il Caravaggio,” critical essay by G. A. Dell’Acqua, in I pittori bergamaschi dal XIII al XIX secolo. Il Seicento, I, Bergamo 1983, 203–641; M. Marini, Caravaggio “pictor praestantissimus”, 4th ed., Rome 2005; F. Bologna, L’incredulità del Caravaggio e l’esperienza delle “cose naturali”, 2nd expanded edition, Turin 2006; S. Schütze, Caravaggio. The Complete Works, Köln 2009; J. Th. Spike, with assistance from M. K. Spike, Caravaggio, 2nd ed., New York – London 2010; S. Ebert-Schifferer, Caravaggio. The Artist and His Work, Los Angeles (CA) 2012; R. Vodret, Caravaggio: 1571-1610, Cinisello Balsamo (Milan) 2021.
[3] For the quotations, G. P. Bellori, Le vite de’ pittori, scultori et architetti moderni, Rome 1672, 208 (bilingual critical edition: Le vite de’ pittori scultori ed architetti moderni | Die Lebensbeschreibungen der modernen Maler, Bildhauer und Architekten, edited by E. Oy-Marra, T. Weddigen, A. Brug, V: Vita di Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio | Das Leben des Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, transl. by V. von Rosen, edited, commentary and essay by V. von Rosen, translation and commentary with the collaboration of A. Brug, I. Franconi, Göttingen 2018, 36–39). From a letter by Fabio Masetti, Cesare d’Este’s agent, Duke of Modena and Reggio, sent on 23 September 1606 to the ducal secretary Giovanni Battista Laderchi (Macioce, Michelangelo Merisi, 233, doc. 747), it appears that Caravaggio was still in Paliano at that date. A detailed examination of Caravaggio’s sojourn in Lazio as a prelude to his move to Naples can be found in M.C. Terzaghi, “In fuga. Caravaggio tra Roma e Napoli | On the Run: Caravaggio between Rome and Naples,” in Caravaggio. La Cena in Emmaus di Brera e il David con la testa di Golia della Galleria Borghese | Caravaggio. The Brera Supper at Emmaus and David with the Head of Goliath from the Galleria Borghese, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera, 21 June – 25 September 2022), edited by L. Lodi, Venice 2022, 69–87. As for the Magdalen, it seems to me that none of the renditions so far proposed as originals has the quality to stand out over the other replicas as the indisputable autograph version. For a comparison between the most widely recognized examples, see Caravage à Rome. Amis et ennemis, exhibition catalogue (Paris, Musée Jacquemart-André, 21 September 2018 – 28 January 2019), edited by F. Cappelletti, M. C. Terzaghi, P. Curie, Brussels 2018, 178–179, cat. 30 (entry by L. Scanu), and 180–181, cat. 31 (entry by M. Gregori); the latter version is accompanied by a note that would attest to its provisional presence at the residence of the marquise Costanza Colonna in Chiaia, pending its final destination, Cardinal Borghese (Macioce, Michelangelo Merisi, 286, doc. 891A). See G. Berra, Il viaggio della marchesa di Caravaggio Costanza Colonna da Genova a Napoli a bordo di una galera maltese. Lettere inedite, Heidelberg 2021 (accessible online: https://books.ub.uni- heidelberg.de/arthistoricum/catalog/book/877).
[4] The clarification of Cavalier d’Arpino’s origins is a necessity already noted by C. Tutini, De’ pittori, scultori, architetti, miniatori et ricamatori napolitani e regnicoli [ms., ca. 1664–1666], edited by L. Giuliano, presentation by F. Caglioti, Matera 2021, 17, 39, and later by B. De Dominici, Vite de’ pittori, scultori ed architetti napoletani . . ., II, Naples 1742, 260. 28 June 1589 is the date on which the contract was signed between the Carthusians and the master (Archivio di Stato di Napoli [henceforth: ASNa], Corporazioni religiose soppresse, 2142, c. 780r-v), published in N. F. Faraglia, “Notizie di alcuni artisti che lavorarono nella chiesa di S. Martino e nel Tesoro di S. Gennaro,” Archivio storico per le province napoletane X, 1885: 455–456, doc. I.
[5] For Finson in Rome, see F. Spina, “Louis Finson e la Giuditta. Novità sulla presenza del pittore fiammingo nella Roma di Caravaggio,” in Caravaggio e Artemisia: la sfida di Giuditta. Violenza e seduzione nella pittura tra Cinque e Seicento, catalogue of the exhibition (Rome, Palazzo Barberini, 26 November 2021 – 27 March 2022), edited by M. C. Terzaghi, Rome 2021, 81–84; for his presence in Naples, Porzio Carlo Sellitto, 29–30.
[6] Inv. Gabinetto disegni e stampe 992; Porzio, Carlo Sellitto, 25 and 31, note 5.
[7] Inv. NM 755; G. Cavalli-Björkman, Dutch and Flemish Paintings, I: c. 1400-c. 1660, Stockholm 1986, 100, no. 49. On the painting’s apparent Caravaggism, see the classic reading by G. Previtali, La pittura a Napoli tra Cinquecento e Seicento, Naples 1991, 31–36.
[8] Cf. G. Porzio, “Alle origini del naturalismo meridionale. Un contributo per Loys Croys e gli esordi di Carlo Sellitto,” Bollettino d’arte VII, 50 (2001): 119–124.
[9] Macioce, Michelangelo Merisi, 234, doc. 751; for Caravaggio’s subsequent handling of the money, cf. ibid., 235–236, docs. 755–756. On the patron, see in particular A. E. Denunzio, “Per due committenti di Caravaggio a Napoli: Nicolò Radolovich e il viceré VIII conte-duca di Benavente (1603-1610),” in España y Nápoles. Coleccionismo y mecenazgo virreinales en el siglo XVII, edited by J. L. Colomer, Madrid 2009, 175–179.
[10] For an interpretation of the foundation of the institute in relation to artistic patronage: L. Gazzara, “Una lettura interpretativa sulla fondazione del Pio Monte della Misericordia in relazione alla sua committenza artistica,” Napoli nobilissima V, IV (2003): 51–67; on the church building in relation to Merisi’s altarpiece: Ead., “Caravaggio nella prima cappella del Pio Monte della Misericordia,” in Caravaggio Napoli, exhibition catalogue (Naples, Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, 12 April – 14 July 2019), edited by M. C. Terzaghi, Milan 2019, 60–69; for a broader historical-economic framework of the institution in the context of the Neapolitan seventeenth-century: D. Casanova, “Fluent ad eum omnes gentes.” Il Monte delle Sette opere della misericordia di Napoli nel Seicento, Bologna 2008.
Endnotes 11–20
[11] Macioce, Michelangelo Merisi, 242–243, docs. 774–775. On the duties of the “deputato de’ Morti”: Gazzara, “Una lettura interpretativa,” 53.
[12] Ibid., 52–54. The literature on the relations between Caravaggio and Marino is extensive. Suffice it to recall that according to Bellori (Le vite de’ pittori, 1672, 205; ed. 2018, 26–29), it was precisely the poet’s goodwill towards the painter that favoured Caravaggio and resulted in his receiving the commission for the cycle of paintings for the Contarelli chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi.
[13] C. De Lellis, Aggiunta alla Napoli sacra dell’Engenio [ms., ca. 1654–1688], I, Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III, ms. X.B.20, c. 237r. On the altarpiece, see now C. Restaino, in Pio Monte della Misericordia. Il patrimonio storico e artistico, edited by P. D’Alconzo, L. P. Rocco di Torrepadula, with the collaboration of L. Gazzara, I, Naples 2020, 127–130, cat. I.1.2.
[14] Macioce, Michelangelo Merisi, 247, doc. 785A. It is possible that it is to this work that the ode Ad un ritratto di San Geronimo, dipinto dal Caravaggio refers to; it is placed by the Beneventan Orazio Comite, member of the Academia degli Incauti, at the end of his dramatic (“dragmatico”) poem La notte overo il nascimento di Christo, printed in Naples in 1616 for Lazzaro Scoriggio and dedicated to sister Antonia Avitabile, “monica nel real monisterio di Santa Chiara” (nun in the monastery of Santa Chiara) and probably a relative of the painter Girolamo (O. Comite, La notte overo il nascimento di Christo, Naples 1616, 42–43). According to the poem, which as far as I am aware is unknown to the literature on Caravaggio, the subject of the painting seems to centre on the saint’s hearing of the trumpet of Judgement (“Quella tromba di Dio, | che senza strepitar s’imprime a i cori, | questa, ch’il mondo udio | da le fredde contrate a i lidi Mori, | e dipinta verace, | che spira e accende amor con santa face | questo lume celeste | che Geronimo ha nome e divo splende | che di porpora veste . . .”) (That trumpet of God, which without ringing is impressed on our hearts, | That trumpet, which the world hears, from the cold bounds to the Moorish shores, and painted true, which inspires and kindles love with a holy face, this celestial light, which is named Jerome and which shines with divinity, clothed in purple . . .); in all likelihood it is to this prototype that the problematic Saint Jerome from the Worcester Art Museum (inv. 1960.13) is related; the work is considered to be an autograph work by Caravaggio by some scholars (for instance Marini, Caravaggio “pictor praestantissimus”, 555–557, cat. 100).
[15] M. C. Terzaghi, “Caravaggio a Napoli: un percorso,” in Caravaggio Napoli, 39.
[16] On the relations between the Catanzaro canvas and the initial composition of the Seven Acts (visible in the the X-radiographic documentation), V. Pacelli, Caravaggio. Le Sette opere di misericordia, 2nd ed., Salerno 1993, 77–79; see also A. Iommelli, in Caravaggio Napoli, 120–121, cat. 4. The relations between the altarpiece in Santa Maria della Stella and the Vienna Rosary were already highlighted by R. Longhi, “Battistello,” L’arte XVIII (1915): 70–71.
[17] Macioce, Michelangelo Merisi, 248–249, docs. 788, 793. For the quotation by Bellori: Le vite de’ pittori, 1672, 209; ed. 2018, 40–43.
[18] Bologna, L’incredulità del Caravaggio, 336, cat. 74.
[19] For Santafede’s many derivations from Caravaggio’s Flagellation with half-figures see P. Leone de Castris, Pittura del Cinquecento a Napoli. 1573-1606. L’ultima maniera, Naples 1991, 265, 281, note 50, and 279; Porzio, Carlo Sellitto, 27, 31, note 22, and 51, fig. 25; A. Iommelli, in Caravaggio Napoli, 142–143, cat. 9. As for the Rouen masterpiece, the recent proposal by F. Cappelletti, “La Flagellation de Rouen: nouveauté et contexte,” in Caravage. La Flagellation du Christ, exhibition catalogue (Rouen, Musée des Beaux-Arts, 28 October 2022 – 27 February 2023), edited by D. Bakhuÿs, Cinisello Balsamo (Milan) 2022, in particular 37–38, setting it back in the context of the painter’s last Roman works.
[20] This is the date of a letter sent to the Duke of Mantua by his agent Ottavio Gentile, who intended to make use of Caravaggio’s availability for an evaluation of Matteo di Capua’s collection held in Vico Equense in view of a possible purchase: “però intanto io li andarò a vedere [i quadri del principe di Conca] et condurrò meco Michael Angelo Caravaggio, che vostra altezza ultimamente à comprato in Roma et havisarrò il suo parere” (in the meantime, however, I will go and see [the Prince of Conca’s paintings] and will take with me Michael Angelo Caravaggio, [works by] whom Your Highness recently bought in Rome, and I will tell you his opinion) (Macioce, Michelangelo Merisi, 251, doc. 799). In actual fact, since everything suggests that Caravaggio’s journey to Malta followed the documented route taken by the five galleys belonging to Fabrizio Sforza Colonna, son of the marquises of Caravaggio, assiduous protectors of the master, and that therefore the artist had already embarked for the island around 25 June (A. E. Denunzio, “Aggiunte e qualche ipotesi per i soggiorni napoletani di Caravaggio,” in Caravaggio. L’ultimo tempo. 1606-1610, exhibition catalogue [Naples, Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, 23 October 2004 – 23 January 2005], Naples 2014, 48–51) to arrive there on the following 12 July (cf. B. Dal Pozzo, Historia della sacra religione militare di S. Giovanni gerosolimitano detta di Malta, I, Verona 1703, 521–522), it is likely that Gentile was not informed of Caravaggio’s actual presence in Naples. In any case, the painter’s presence is attested in Malta on 13 July 1607, according to the first of the depositions given on the occasion of a trial for bigamy, which took place between the 22nd and 27th of the same month, found by John Azzopardi among the papers of the Holy Office kept in the Mdina cathedral archives (Macioce, Michelangelo Merisi, 252–253, doc. 801). On the troubled Maltese period: K. Sciberras, “Malta in Late Caravaggio. A Chronology for the Final Years,” in K. Sciberras, D. M. Stone, Caravaggio. Art, Knighthood, and Malta, Valletta 2006, 107–124.
Endnotes 21–30
[21] The dating of the painting to the painter’s first stay in Naples is the one commonly supported by scholarship; however, given the debate surrounding the stylistic data alone, the hypothesis of a correlation between the painting and the viceroy’s visit to the relics of Saint Andrew in the crypt of Amalfi cathedral at Easter 1610 is certainly suggestive: C. Restaino, “Potere politico e affermazione tridentina nella decorazione seicentesca delle “regie cappelle” di San Matteo a Salerno e Sant’Andrea ad Amalfi,” in Tesori del Regno. L’ornamentazione delle cripte delle cattedrali di Salerno e Amalfi nel XVII secolo, edited by C. Restaino, G. Zampino, Naples 2012, 150. No credit should be given to the publishing and exhibition campaign of recent years aimed at promoting as the original of the composition the wooden copy formerly owned by Back-Vega and now in the Spier collection. For a presentation of the Cleveland canvas after the recent restoration: E. E. Benay, Exporting Caravaggio: The Crucifixion of Saint Andrew, London 2018, in particular 105–138 for the conservation treatment, technical surveys and comparison with other replicas. On the limits (and abuse) of the technical analysis carried out in particular to accredit the autograph nature of the former Back-Vega version, and the claim to the primacy of connoisseurship: R. E. Spear, “Caravaggio’s Crucifixion of St Andrew and the Problem of Autograph Replicas,” The Burlington Magazine CLX, 1383 (2018): 454–461.
[22] Bellori, Le vite de’ pittori, 1672, 214; ed. 2018, 60–63.
[23] See The Getty Provenance Index®, Archival Inventories, doc. E-86, nos. 10 and 13. The “Santo obispo . . . original de Carabacho” (bishop Saint . . . original by Carabacho) is also present in the earliest inventory of the “pinturas grandes” (large paintings) of the Fortaleza of Benavente, dated 1611, which also includes an “otro [quadro] ques q[uand]o los pies lavò n[ost] ro S[ign]or a sus discipulos, orig[ina]l de Carabayo” (another [painting] of when our Lord washed the feet of his disciples, original by Carabayo), not otherwise known (M. Simal López, Los Condes-Duques de Benavente en el siglo XVII. Patronos y coleccionistas en su villa solariega, Benavente 2002, doc. 10, 190, no. 36, and 193, no. 164).
[24] The main source for the episode is Iacopo da Varazze, Legenda aurea (Jacobus de Varagine, Golden Legend) II, 146 (critical text and commentary by G. P. Maggioni, Italian translation coordinated by F. Stella, I, Florence 2007, 38–39).
[25] The findings were first picked up by V. Pacelli, “Caracciolo Studies,” The Burlington Magazine CXX, 905 (1978): 493–494.
[26] Macioce, Michelangelo Merisi, 258, doc. 816. After so much superfluous clamour, which also fed the press and the proprietors also, for evidently commercial reasons, with a clear head it seems to me that for the Toulouse canvas, which alternates passages of very high quality with others that are extremely dry and forced, one can argue at least a partial intervention by the artist himself; thus, it is probably an original completed in the workshop of Finson and Vinck. On the painting, see Caravaggio. Judith and Holofernes, catalogue of the auction sale (Toulouse, 27 June 2019), Paris 2019.
[27] Thus Gentile’s letter to Vincent I of 15 September 1607: “[Pourbus] ha visto ancora qualche cosa di buono di Michel Angelo Caravaggio che ha fatto qui, che si venderanno” ([Pourbus] has seen some good things by Michel Angelo Caravaggio that he has done here, which will be sold) (Macioce, Michelangelo Merisi, 257–258, doc. 815).
[28] Ibid., 306, doc. 966.
[29] Ibid., 321, doc. 1026.
[30] For the Marseille version and the one in a private collection, see now the entries by A. Iommelli and K. Sciberras, in Caravaggio Napoli, 210–214, cat. 26, 214–215, cat. 27. Both works differ from their model in the normalising presence of iconographic attributes, reduced in the prototype to token traces of the wilderness of the setting (foliage, brambles), according to the conciseness typical of Merisi’s sacred painting: the skull under the forearm and—in the Marseille canvas—the cross surmounted by a crown of thorns that meets the gaze of the delirious saint.
Endnotes 31–40
[31] For the most complete documentation on the painting: W. Prohaska, G. Swoboda, Caravaggio und der internationale Caravaggismus. Sammlungskatalog der Gemäldegalerie: Rom I, Milan – Vienna 2010, 86–99.
[32] For all this information see Porzio, Carlo Sellitto, 27–28, with all the appropriate references to documentation and bibliography, to be integrated however with Spina’s essay on Finson’s presence in Rome cited in note 5. As for Vinck, the testimony of Giacomo Di Castro, a painter-merchant who had trained with Battistello Caracciolo, also fits into this framework. In a letter of 22 July 1673 to Antonio Ruffo, Prince of Scaletta, he recalled him as a very close friend (“amicissimo”) of the Lombard master (V. Ruffo, “Galleria Ruffo nel secolo XVII in Messina [con lettere di pittori ed altri documenti inediti],” Bollettino d’arte X/5 (1916): 306).
[33] Houston (TX), The Museum of Fine Arts, Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, inv. BF.2018.1. See Porzio Carlo Sellitto, 28.
[34] Inv. Q 669; G. Porzio, in Museo e gallerie nazionali di Capodimonte. Le collezioni borboniche e postunitarie, IV: Dipinti dal XVII al XVIII secolo. Scuole italiane ed europee, under the scientific direction of N. Spinosa, Milan 2016, 86–87, cat. 160. The source, an “aviso”, that is a dispatch sent to the Duke of Urbino Francesco Maria II Della Rovere by his correspondents in Rome (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Mss., Urb. lat. 1077, c. 529r; Macioce, Michelangelo Merisi, 278, doc. 878), is to date the earliest evidence of the painter’s return to Naples. If we take into account the time taken to transmit information between the two centres, Longhi (“Michelangelo Merisi [Caravaggio]. Regesto,” in Mostra del Caravaggio e dei caravaggeschi. Catalogo, exhibition catalogue [Milan, Palazzo Reale, April-June 1951], 2nd ed. updated and revised, Florence 1951, 11) held that the foul deed (from which Caravaggio emerged severely disfigured, as related by Giovanni Baglione [Le vite de’ pittori, scultori et architetti dal pontificato di Gregorio XIII del 1572 in fino a’ tempi di papa Urbano ottavo nel 1642, Rome 1642, 138] and by Bellori [Le vite de’ pittori, 1672, 211; ed. 2018, 50–51]) had taken place around 20 October. As for the master’s death, about which much (indeed much too much) has been speculated, the date is reported in two epitaphs composed for the occasion by his jurist friend Marzio Milesi (Macioce, Michelangelo Merisi, 343, doc. F2/17–18).
[36] At the local level, particular mention should be made of C. Celano, Notitie del bello, dell’antico, e del curioso della città di Napoli. . . Day Three, Naples 1692, 9–10.
[37] W. Prohaska, “Carlo Sellitto,” The Burlington Magazine CXVII, 862 (1975): 3, footnote 9; the current shelfmark of the document is ASNa, Archivi notarili, Archivi dei notai del XVII secolo, Giovanni Bernardino De Giuliano, 800/2, cc. 361r-363v.
[38] See, for example, V. Pacelli, L’ultimo Caravaggio 1606-1610. Il giallo della morte: omicidio di Stato?, Todi (Perugia) 2002, 67–68.
[39] Ch.-N. Cochin, Voyage pittoresque d’Italie, ou Recueil de notes sur les ouvrages de peinture et de sculpture, qu’on voit dans les principales villes d’Italie, Paris 1756, 132.
[40] L. P. Scaramuccia, Le finezze de’ pennelli italiani ammirate e studiate da Girupeno sotto la scorta e disciplina del genio di Raffaello d’Urbino, Pavia 1674, 75–76; De Dominici, Vite de’ pittori, II, Naples 1743, 275. Scaramuccia’s account, contained in an itinerary among the places of art of the Peninsula conducted under the imaginary guidance of the genius of Raphael and therefore informed, right from the title, by pro-classicist positions not far-removed from those of the Neapolitan biographer, is truly remarkable and deserves to be cited in full: “In questo mezzo Aniello [Falcone] venne in parere di far noto alli due forestieri alcune cose di Michel’Angelo da Caravaggio, che con occasione del suo passaggio a Malta trattenendosi alcun tempo in Napoli lasciò del suo pennello, ed una di queste si fu una tavola d’altare situata nella chiesa di Sant’Anna de Lombardi, ov’è la Resurretione di Christo . . .; e quando osservarono il Christo, non come d’ordinario far si suole, agile e trionfante per l’aria; ma con quella sua fierissima maniera di colorire, con un piede dentro, e l’altro fuori del sepolcro posando in terra, restarono per simile stravaganza con qualche apprensione . . .” (At this point, Aniello [Falcone] decided to make known to the two foreigners certain works by Michel’Angelo da Caravaggio, who on the occasion of his passage to Malta, while remaining for a time in Naples, left by his brush, and one of these was an altarpiece situated in the church of Sant’Anna de Lombardi, where is the ‘Resurrection of Christ’ . . .; and when they observed the figure of Christ, not [depicted] as is usually done, agile and triumphant in the air; but [executed] with that fierce manner of painting, with one foot inside, and the other outside the sepulchre, resting on the ground, they were left stunned because of this eccentricity. . .)
Endnotes 41–50
[41] The painting, initially commissioned from Carlo Sellitto, was then executed, after the latter’s death, by Battistello for the sum of one hundred ducats (Porzio, Carlo Sellitto, 33, footnote 52, with reference to the relevant documentation). The hypothesis of seeing in the work a reflection of the Fenaroli Resurrection was proposed by M. Fagiolo dell’Arco, Le “Opere di misericordia”: Contributo alla poetica del Caravaggio, Milan 1969, 71, who, however, identifies this in the group of the sleeping soldiers; I wonder if the echo might not rather be recognized in the motion of flight of the two main figures.
[42] The Saint Francis is first explicitly described in a seventeenth- century postilla to codex P of Giulio Mancini’s Considerazioni sulla pittura ([circa 1619–1621], 340). For the subject of the other painting: Cochin, Voyage pittoresque, 133, and with a wealth of detail, T. Puccini, [Diario napoletano] [ms., 1783], edited by R. Viale, CD-ROM attached to E. Spalletti, R. Viale, Tommaso Puccini (1749-1811). Conoscitore delle arti e direttore degli Uffizi, Florence 2014, 103 (“una Resurrezione di Cristo assai ignobile, ma piena d’effetto, e due quadretti ai lati, in uno dei quali un San Giovanni sedente con la scodella, che è bellissimo, vivo. Opere del Caravaggio” [a Resurrection of Christ lacking all nobility, but very striking, and two small paintings alongside, in one of which Saint John sits with a bowl, a most beautiful [work], full of life. Works by Caravaggio]). For the dispersal of the works of art in Sant’Anna dei Lombardi see the important contribution by F. M. Giani, “Il Martirio di san Pietro di Carlo Sellitto da Sant’Anna dei Lombardi a Napoli all’Ospedale Sant’Anna a Como,” Prospettiva 184 (2021): 83–88, in particular 83.
[43] V. Pacelli, F. Bologna, “Caravaggio, 1610: la ‘Sant’Orsola confitta dal Tiranno’ per Marcantonio Doria,” Prospettiva 23 (1980): 24–45.
[44] Bellori, Le vite de’ pittori, 1672, 211; ed. 2018, 50–51. For the earliest identification of the painting, R. Longhi, “Un’opera estrema del Caravaggio,” Paragone. Arte IX, 111 (1959): 21–32.
[45] It is the fundamental Borghese Baptist, mentioned in the correspondence between Cardinal Scipione and the bishop of Caserta Deodato Gentile, apostolic nuncio to Naples (Macioce, Michelangelo Merisi, 285–286, doc. 891), that is the model for one of Battistello’s earliest creations, known through a copy: G. Porzio, “Ricerche battistelliane,” Paragone. Arte 96, 733 (2011): 66, footnote 1); the detail of the ram is instead cited in every detail in the Sacrifice of Isaac by the anonymous Master of Resina (Bologna, L’incredulità del Caravaggio, 344).
[46] Of this composition, which seems to have had a non- negligible impact on Neapolitan naturalists, two replicas in a private collection contend—erroneously, in my opinion—for the title of the autograph version; one formerly in Munich, the other in Malta (for the latter see: Caravaggio, ultimo approdo. Un artista in fuga tra incompiuti e repliche, exhibition catalogue [Ragusa, Chiesa della Badia, 13 May – 15 October 2022], edited by P. Carofano, Pontedera 2022).
[47] See in this regard G. Papi, in Cecco del Caravaggio. L’allievo modello, exhibition catalogue (Bergamo, Accademia Carrara, 28 January 2023 – 4 June 2023), edited by G. Papi, Milan 2023, 92–95, cat. 2; the hypothesis of an earlier date rests in the first instance on the recognition, in the David, of the features of Caravaggio’s young companion, Francesco (Cecco) Boneri. For the question of Caravaggio’s “Colonna style”, that is, circumscribed to the period of his retreat to the Colonna’s Latium fiefs, see Terzaghi, “In fuga,” 87–89.
[48] Macioce, Michelangelo Merisi, 295, doc. 923, 346–347, doc. F10.
[49] Ibid., 287, doc. 896.
[50] For the Madrid Salome and the anticipation of its date of execution to 1607, see the extensive entry by M.C. Terzaghi, in Da Caravaggio a Bernini. Capolavori del Seicento italiano nelle collezioni reali di Spagna, exhibition catalogue (Rome, Scuderie del Quirinale, 13 April – 31 July 2017), edited by G. Redín Michaus, Milan 2017, 126–133, cat. 5; in support of the more secure dating of the work to the painter’s second sojourn in Naples, the connections with the Saint Ursula of 1610 continue, however, to seem to me hard to ignore.
Endnotes 51–52