Circa 1600: A Revolution of Style in Italian Painting [Reprint 2014 ed.] 9780674866065, 9780674866058

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CIRCA 1600

CIRCA 1600 A Revolution of Style in Italian Painting

S. J. Freedber 5or

THE BELKNAP PRESS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England

Copyright © 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

L i b r a r y o f Congress C a t a l o g i n g in P u b l i c a t i o n D a t a Frecdherg, S.J. (SydneyJoseph), 1914Circa 1600: a revolution of style in Italian painting. Three lectures given at Cornell University in May 1980. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Carracci, Annibale, 1560-1609. 2. Carracd, Lodovico, 1555-1619. 3. Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi da, 1573-1610. 4. Mannerism (Art)—Italy. I. Title. ND623.C38F7 759.5 82-1076 ISBN 0-674-13156-8 (cloth) AACR2 ISBN 0-674-13157-6 (paper)

Preface THE THREE LECTURES presented in this book were given at Cornell University in May 1980 under the auspices of the Preston H. Thomas Memorial Lecture Series, sponsored by the College of Architecture, Art & Planning, Cornell University. The lectures on Annibale and Ludovico Carracci are printed here as they were given, with only very minor editorial amendment. The Caravaggio lecture, delivered from extensive notes rather than a finished text, has here assumed a more polished form. My preserving the original lecture form is a considered choice, first because I believe that it is historically appropriate that the printed volume of a lecture series preserve as much as possible the event from which it came and which it purports to record; more important, the lecture form, which permits a maximum liberty of illustration, encourages a range and specificity of observation that a study written as an essay tends to limit or deny. The lecture form suits me particularly, since what I say about these artists derives almost altogether from my confrontation with the visual substance of their art. The publishers have recognized the essential role the illustrations played in the lectures and have virtually duplicated their original abundance. I hope the reader now may find that I have turned back on the illustrations some part of the illumination my study of the pictures has conveyed to me. Because no lecturer can hope that his audience will re-

main unchanged throughout a series, I felt it necessary, very summarily, occasionally to rehearse a point that I had touched on in a previous lecture. It may be an excess of historical conscience to retain these few places here, but they are surely not enough to bore or give offense. For the reader who may be interested in pursuing this subject further, I have appended a restricted bibiliography of writings available in English. I am obliged to friends who gave invaluable help in securing photographs for reproduction: Dr. Bernice Davidson, Mrs. Karen Einaudi, Professor Andrea Emiliani, Professor Kathleen Weil Garris, Laura Giles, Professor Donald Posner, M. Pierre Rosenberg, Mr. Alan Salz, and Mrs. Christine Lilly of the Fine Arts Library in the Fogg Museum. Miss Marilyn Perry, Executive Vice President of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, responded quickly and generously to a request for assistance from the Foundation that has allowed the book its color illustrations. I am especially grateful to her. Mrs. Maud Wilcox has once again made me feel welcome and at home at Harvard University Press, as has my editor, Ms. Katarina Rice, with whom it has been a rare satisfaction to have worked. 1 must express my great thanks to Professor Cohn Roe, whose interest brought these lectures into being, and to the Thomas family, whose generous sponsorship of the Preston Thomas Lectures gave them their public forum.

Contents I. Annibale Carracci II. Caravaggio

5i

III. Ludovico Carracci BIBLIOGRAPHY CREDITS INDEX

119 121

i

117

8i

I

P L A T E I.

Annibale Carracci, Crucifixion with Saints. Bologna, S. M . della Carità

ANNIBALE CARRACCI

A

BRIEF A N D EFFECTIVE WAY to understand

the nature of the change that the three artists of the Carracci family—Ludovico, the oldest, and his cousins Agostino and Annibale (the last one most decisively of all)—wrought in their contemporary art is to see what that art seemed Uke to the generation that followed the Carracci, for w h o m the revolution that Annibale principally made had come to have canonical authority. C o u n t Carlo Cesare Malvasia, writing in the mid-seventeenth century in his Felsina Pittrice, described the context of art before and close to the time of the Carracci thus: the followers of the great masters of the various Itahan schools had at that time departed f r o m their models, and "seeking another style and a different way of doing, fell into a weakness of drawing, not to say an incorrectness of it, into a flaccid and washed-out coloring, in sum into a certain manner [maniera] far f r o m verisimilitude, not to mention f r o m the truth itself, totally chimerical and ideal . . . these were Salviati (1), the Zuccari (2), Vasari (3), Andrea Vicentino, T o m m a s o Laureti, and among our painters in Bologna Sammachino (4), Sabbatini (5), Calvaert, Procaccini (6), and their Uke, who, abandoning the imitation of antique statuary, as well as of nature, founded their art wholly in their imagination, and worked in a careless and mannered way." Let us see h o w Annibale Carracci's great alteration in the history of Italian art began. Its first public act was the setting up in 1583 of an altar painting of a Crucifixion with Saints (plate I) in the Bolognese church of S. Niccolò (now transferred to the church of S. M. della Carità); when it was unveiled it brought d o w n on Annibale, its author, the censure of all his Bolognese Maniera colleagues. This is not a historical picture of the Crucifixion; its iconography defines it as a devotional and symbohc image of the event. But there is nothing whatever symbolic in its mode of representation. T h e scene conveys an instant effect of reality:

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1. Francesco Salviati, Caritas.

Florence, Uffizi Gallery

persons w h o seem utterly ordinary, the nude Christ not excluded, are described to us with means that remarkably suggest the truth of their existence—heavy figures revealed by a power of light within a space, w h o convince us still more that they reproduce an ordinary truth because they have abjured altogether the effects of artifice, in appearance and in mode of action or expression, that were hitherto traditional to art and, a m o n g the contemporary Mannerists, were its prime currency. Never before this within the sixteenth century had an image been created with so minimal an intrusion of the processes of idealization, with such avoidance of the means of rhetoric, or with so blunt a confrontation with the simple truth.

Taddeo Zuccaro, Conversion of St. Paul. Rome, Doria Gallery 3. Giorgio Vasari, Stoning of St. Stephen. Vatican Gallery 4. Orazio Sammachini, Madonna Enthroned with Saints. Bologna, S. M. Maggiore 5. Lorenzo Sabbatini and Dionisio Calvaert, ΗοΙγ Family with St. Michael. Bologna, S. Giacomo Maggiore 6.

Ercole Procaccini, Conversion of St. Paul. Bologna, S. Giacomo Maggiore

T h e extraordinary novelty that is in this altarpiece may be related to tendencies of difference with the then reigning style of Mannerism that had manifested themselves in the years close to the m o m e n t of creation of this picture, but these are, most often, no more than tendencies, appearing only sporadically, and then in fragmentary elements only of a w o r k of painting: the interpretation of the theme of a symboHc Crucifixion by Annibale's older colleague among the artists of Bologna, Bartolommeo Passarotti, about 1575 (the picture, destroyed in World War II, was formerly in the Bolognese church of S. Giuseppe; 7), is typical in its intrusion of some incidents of sharply literal description, as in the faces and in parts of the anatomy, into an evidently artificial whole. M o r e rarely, in Florence particularly and to a lesser degree in Rome, there were some artists whose intention it was to reform the extravagances of contemporary Mannerism and make images which should more consistently assert an unornamented clarity of f o r m and simple legibihty of content.* Such, for example, is the character of the early works of a painter working in this reforming m o d e in Rome, Scipione Pulzone, in his Assumption of the Virgin (Rome, S. Silvestro al Quirinale, * It m a y be h e l p f u l t o t h e reader t o define t h e usage o f the t e r m s " M a n n e r i s m " and " M a n i e r a , " in b o t h their u p p e r - and l o w e r - c a s e f o r m s , w h i c h a p p l y t o t h e styles of art that prevailed in Italy u n t i l t h e events described here. L o w e r - c a s e maniera is, simply, the Itahan w o r d f o r " m a n n e r " or " s t y l e . " In t h e art of t h e m i d d l e years of the sixteenth Century in Italy, in C e n t r a l a n d N o r t h e r n Italy in particular, the n o t i o n of style b e c a m e a m a t t e r of self-conscious stress, achieving an artificial, indeed o f t e n m a n n e r e d , styhshness. U p p e r - c a s e " M a n i e r a " describes t h e collective character of art o f this kind a n d also d e n o t e s the p e r i o d itself L o w e r - c a s e " m a n n e r i s m " refers t o art w h i c h has traits similar t o those displayed in t h e M a n i e r a b u t w h i c h m a y appear in o t h e r p e r i o d s as well. U p p e r - c a s e " M a n n e r i s m , " h o w e v e r , applies o n l y t o t h e sixteenth century and includes n o t o n l y the fully achieved art o f the M a n i e r a b u t t h e p r i o r d e v e l o p m e n t s , succeeding the classical style of the H i g h R e naissance, o u t of w h i c h M a n i e r a came, as well as m a n y r e s e m b l i n g b u t b y n o m e a n s identical m o d e s o f artistic practice t h r o u g h o u t Italy f r o m t h e second quarter o f t h e sixteenth c e n t u r y t o its end.

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B a r t o l o m m e o Passarotti, Crucifixion with Saints. F o r m e r l y B o l o g n a , S. G i u s e p p e (destroyed in W o r l d W a r II)

1585; 8), or, m o r e legibly, of the pictures of the p r i m e Florentine reformer, Santi di Tito, as in his Crucifixion (Florence, S. Croce; 9) of 1588. B u t it requires only the briefest c o n f r o n t a t i o n for us t o see that the n e a r - c o n t e m porary pictures of a Pulzone or a Santi are still, despite the quota they m a y s h o w of naturalism, b o u n d to a mentality of idealization and convey m o r e sense of an accomplishm e n t of art than they d o of the sense of a reahty. T h e w o r k s of these c o n t e m p o r a r y painters m a y constitute a ref o r m of style, b u t b y contrast Annibale's Crucifixion has achieved a revolution.

in the i m m e d i a t e t i m e and place of the Crucifixion of 1583. At the end of 1581 and into 1582, Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti, archbishop of Bologna, a distinguished and admired r e f o r m i n g c h u r c h m a n , had circulated a m o n g a limited g r o u p of intellectuals and clergy, mainly within Bologna, t w o chapters of a treatise on art, called Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane, together with an outline of the three further chapters he proposed to write but never did. T h e . segment of Paleotti's Discorso was printed but not in any n o r m a l sense " p u b h s h e d " ; it was circulated to sohcit criticism and c o m m e n t .

It is proper to inquire for native forces that m i g h t have generated this remarkable event in the y o u n g Annibale's art. W h a t w o u l d at first seem to be one of t h e m offers itself

M u c h of the content of the Discorso is conventional and C o u n t e r - R e f o r m a t i o n a l in tenor, but there are also in it views on the nature and role of art that at this m o m e n t

Scipione Pulzone, Assumption of the Virgin. R o m e , S. Silvestro al Quirinale 9.

Santi di Tito, Crucifixion. Florence, S. C r o c e

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seem a novelty. Conspicuous a m o n g them, for our p u r poses, are an appreciation of the imitation of nature in art and of the p o w e r of art to achieve direct and emotionally affecting communication. We k n o w enough about the distribution of the Discourse, both just before and after the date of its partial printing, to think it likely that Annibale, as well as his brother Agostino and his cousin Ludovico, might have had access to it, or at least knowledge of its contents indirectly. Could Paleotti's endorsement of an affective naturalism in art have been the causal agent of A n nibale's new style? This proposition, in my estimation, most likely yields a negative response. Paleotti's statements are insufficiently concrete to serve as guidelines for an artist's style, and they are made in a tone that is more declarative than hortatory. It is almost a psychological impossibility that Paleotti should have formulated in his mind a goal of style Uke the one Annibale in fact achieved, and that, in the years w h e n the Dî5Corio was being written, in the mid-1570s, the cardinal's visual imagination should have exceeded the s u m of his experience of art as he k n e w it then, well before the Crucifixion altar happened. Paleotti's sense of what art ought to be could reasonably be expected to have been aligned with the avant-garde of the mid-1570s—that is, with the earliest manifestations of the Reform movement, which I have sketchily described—but not to have outstripped it. That this was in fact the case is proved by Paleotti's o w n patronage, which went not to Annibale or even to Ludovico Carracci (who, as we shall see later, should have been more directly sympathetic to him), but to Bartolommeo Cesi (10), whose manner was at best a very approximate counterpart, and partly a reflection, of that of the Florentine reformer Santi di Tito, and w h o came in time, about a decade after the S. Niccolò Crucifixion, tentatively to accept some of the advanced ideas of the Carracci. The writings of Paleotti could not have been a causa efficiens for Annibale's revolutionary act of style;

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however, they could still have served as a kind of precipitate for it, for they fell on fallow g r o u n d — a n inclination in Annibale to confront ordinary reality and to imitate its look that was manifest before the Crucifixion and was d e m onstrated in areas of art to which Paleotti's doctrine was not addressed or which were even contradictory to it. There is signal evidence in Annibale's remarkable Dead Christ (11), n o w in Stuttgart, dated universally by art historians in 1582. T h e subject is rehgious, but it seems quite evident that the rehgious meaning of the image is not its primary one and may be no more than a pretext. T h e main sense that the w o r k conveys is of its ingenuity as a realistic study of an unidealized anatomy set arbitrarily, in a tour de force that obviously recollects the fifteenth-century painting of Mantegna, in an illusionist perspective. T h e mentality of the conception, contradictory to the pretext of subject matter, is that of a still-life painting or a piece of genre.

10. B a r t o l o m m e o Cesi, Annunciation. N e w York, private collection

11. Annibale Carracci, Dead

Christ.

Stuttgart, Gallery

12. Annibale Carracci Butcher's

Shop.

Oxford, Christ Church Gallery

That the painter's first probings for reality are through the subject-instrument of genre is confirmed by a much larger and more ambitious work, explicitly a scene of genre, the Butcher's Shop (Oxford, Christ Church Gallery; 12), of the same year or at the latest early 1583. It serves to identify the region in which Annibale's inclination to such reality in genre started: within the school of Bologna, in the models of comparable subject matter in the art of his older, still Mannerist compatriot, Bartolommeo Passarotti (as for example in the National Gallery in Rome, ca. 1575; 13), which took their impetus in turn f r o m genre works, realistic in detail but in whole stylistic substance Mannerist, i m ported into Italy f r o m sixteenth-century Flanders, as in the work of Joachim Beuckelaer. Almost surely still in 1583, three versions of the theme of a Boy Drinking (one of t h e m at London, Art Market; 14), are directed to the most ordinary and intimate of human actions, and c o m p o u n d the wish to illustrate a c o m m o n h u m a n fact with a remarkable effect of still-life illusion: to achieve this end Annibale experiments with a technique—a mode of summary and textural brush w o r k — t h a t makes equivalence in paint for the optical sensations by which we apprehend appearances. A m o ment later, in 1583 or 1584, the Bean Eater (Rome, Galleria Colonna; 15), far more daring and assertive than the Boy Drinking, employs a more developed version of this optical technique to put us into forceful and immediate confrontation with this peasant presence, with the effect of an intrusion by us into his actuality, where we are neither welcome nor expected. T h e vocabulary of the S. Niccolò Crucifixion was, thus, present in Annibale's art before that painting; it came into the altarpiece f r o m a vocabulary he had developed in the realm of genre, which more appropriately had s u m m o n e d forth f r o m him an interest in the depiction of reality and the pictorial means by which it might be achieved. Genre must not be taken as a cause for Annibale's new natural-

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ism, however, but as an opening to it and a vehicle for exploring it. Phenomena of style within an artist's w o r k must not be measured by a rigid yardstick: within a style w e must apply the concept of modality, by which the manner of employing basic elements of a style may be altered, often with considerable flexibility, to accord with the artist's sense of the nature of his subject. T h e decoration that A n nibale undertook together with his cousin and his brother in the Palazzo Fava in Bologna in the same year as the Crucifixion of S. Niccolò (the work continued into 1584) began with a mythology, the story of Europa, painted in a frieze in the smaller one of t w o adjoining rooms; the larger r o o m was painted with a frieze of a more serious ancient tale, a mythology which pretends to the character of a history.

13. B a r t o l o m m e o Passarotti, Butcher's Shop. R o m e , N a t i o n a l Gallery (Palazzo Barberini)

14. Annibale Carraca, Boy Drinking. London, Art Market

15. Annibale Carracci, Bean Eater. Rome, Colonna Gallery

J [9]

T h e Carracci, Frieze with the History of Jason, B o l o g n a , Palazzo Fava, Sala di J a s o n e

part.

that o f j a s o n (16). There is no place in this pagan world for the sobriety and bluntness that Annibale had found for the Crucifixion: no less effectively natural than the religious picture, these works seek a different mode, and the modality is further distinguished between the purely mythological story of Europa and the Jason story that asserts it is a history. There can be no better way of showing what the novelty of Annibale's style is, beneath its modal inflections, than a comparison of his depiction oí Europa Mounting the Jovian Bull (17) with Veronese's interpretation of the same theme

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(18), painted in the Palazzo Ducale in Venice only a halfdozen years before. T h e formality of the Veronese, posed and artificial, is replaced in Annibale's picture by a seeming utter casualness. Veronese's careful suavities give way to a loose-limbed, loose-jointed grace of design, whose m o v e ment seems not to be imposed as pattern on the composition but to be instead a byproduct of the figures' natural, unposed actions; and as they open to the landscape, it no less than they makes up the picture's fabric. Barely idealized in appearance and in attitude, the actors exist within an environment of air and space that conveys the freshness

17.

Annibale Carracci, Europa Mounting the Bull, Bologna, Palazzo Fava, Sala di Europa

18.

Paolo Veronese, Europa Mounting the Bull. Venice, Palazzo Ducale, Sala del Antìcollegio

A n n i b a l e Carracci, Europa Leading the Bull. B o l o g n a , Palazzo Fava, Sala di E u r o p a

of a day in spring, and the w h o l e effect the image creates is of an instant verisimilitude. A n o t h e r scene in the E u r o p a story, Europa Leading the Bull (19), exerts a charm of t r u t h that m a y be still m o r e persuasive in the finely observed naturalness with w h i c h Annibale has characterized the m o v e m e n t of the animal as well as of the maidens: their grace is adulterated w i t h a small, sympathetically seen, and slightly f u n n y t o u c h of c o m m o n awkwardness.

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I have r e m a r k e d that the modality in Annibale's conception of the scenes he painted in the Jason frieze is different f r o m that in the E u r o p a r o o m . T h e — a s I have called i t — "historical" nature of the content of the Jason story asks for m o r e formality of design, and even a certain rhetoric of expression; and the large dimension of the space of this r o o m , refusing intimacy, w o u l d in itself suggest this. Just such qualities are at once perceptible in the Jason frieze by

Annibale Carracci, False Funeral of the Infant Jason. Bologna, Palazzo Fava, Sala di Jasone

c o m p a r i s o n w i t h that in the C a m e r i n o d ' E u r o p a . The False Funeral of the Infant Jason (20) illustrates t h e m : the attitudes of t h e figures h a v e a distinct m e a s u r e of styled deliberation, calculated t o be decorative in effect and in s o m e places also rhetorical; t h e c o m p o s i t i o n retains a l m o s t n o part of t h e casualness of the E u r o p a scenes, b u t is arranged o n an e x p h c i t and sequential a r m a t u r e , w h o s e r h y t h m i c m o v e m e n t extends that of the figures. T h e r e seems to be in such a s c h e m e as this at least a partial readmission into A n n i b a l e ' s aesthetic of s o m e ideas of the Maniera, and this is c o n firmed w h e n w e o b s e r v e t h e w a y in w h i c h h e has r h y t h m i -

cally m a n i p u l a t e d t h e shapes of the anatomies. Y e t so p o w erful is the essential n o v e l t y of Annibale's s t y l e — h i s n a t u r a l i s m — t h a t these inflections o n l y qualify it; t h e y cannot c o m p r o m i s e it. Physical existences are defined w i t h entire conviction b y a varied and w o n d e r f u l l y n u a n c e d light, and psychological responses are characterized w i t h a subtlety and liveness that are n e w in Annibale in this degree. A n o t h e r scene, t h e Battle in the Libyan Desert with Wild Beasts and Harpies (21), conveys a n o t h e r n e w d i m e n s i o n of Annibale's p o w e r t o e v o k e reality in t h e w a y in w h i c h t h e f i g h t i n g m e n — t h e H e r c u l e a n f i g u r e in t h e f o r e g r o u n d in

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A n n i b a l e C a r r a c a , Battle in the Libyan Desert with Wild Beasts and Harpies. B o l o g n a , Palazzo Fava, Sala di J a s o n e

particular (22)—demonstrate credible anatomies inhabited by an energy that, as the Hercules conspicuously displays it, radiates into the surrounding atmosphere. T h e Allegory of Truth and Time in H a m p t o n C o u r t (23) closely succeeds the painting of the Jason frieze. C o n t e m porary viewers would have seen in it not only an allegory but a poesia, a kind of subject matter for which not only Paleotti's Discorso but other Counter-Reformation tracts held flexible standards, allowing liberties in appearance and expression of the kind customary to Maniera. Here Annibale has again sought an appropriate modality, and he has readmitted f r o m the repertory of Maniera, more than in

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the Jason histories, ornamental values in design and a consonant poetic m o d e of feeling. But these readmitted qualities of Mannerism do not exist as overlays or as intrusions in the Allegory; they have been fused absolutely with Annibale's newly invented naturalism—into substances more sensuously assertive than in any preceding work, into surfaces more variously luminous and textured, while the rhythms that make ornament have been infused with the strongest pulse of energy. The revelation of so sensuous a physicality, so subtly and elegantly manipulated in the Allegory, is not in Annibale's native vein but is rather a response to his experience

23. A n n i b a l e Carracci, Allegory of Truth and Time. H a m p t o n C o u r t , R o y a l Collection. R e p r o d u c e d b y courtesy of H . M . the Q u e e n (copyright reserved) 22. A n n i b a l e Carracci, Battle in the Libyan Desert, B o l o g n a , Palazzo Fava, Sala di J a s o n e

detail.

o f Correggio. This is the likely first in a long series, essential to Annibale's history, o f creative exploitations o f past art that would simultaneously promote his progress in new directions and bind him to the mainstream o f continuity with the artistic past. T h e process is more obviously documented in Annibale's Baptism of Christ (24) in the B o l o g nese church o f S. Gregorio, which though commissioned in 1583 was not executed until the date it bears, 1585. T h e dependence on Correggio's models is explicit: on the motifs o f his cupola in Parma (25), and not only on the altarpieces that were then in Parma but on the vocabulary, touched with Mannerism, o f Correggio's Madonna of St. Sebastian (26), then in Modena. Annibale's adaptation o f the motifs signifies less, however, than his response to Correggio's handling o f surface, я sfumato that makes presence seem as i f it should be palpable, and which inspires in flesh a quasi-erotic magnetism, appealing to the visually experienced quality o f touch. Annibale's figures remain, however, more earthbound than Correggio's, affirming their actuality o f substance, and it is this weighing physicality o f Annibale's persons that moderates a borrowed Correggesque temper o f complex excitement in the whole design. It is not only a modahty but, beyond it, a measurable alteration o f style that shapes the Pietà with Saints (Parma, Gallery; 27) o f 1585: most immediately and visibly the residues o f Maniera in the presentation o f the forms have been very much diminished or almost altogether eliminated; though in terms that are more complex and sophisticated than in the S. Niccolò Crucifixion, this is a reprise o f that modality. Correggio's model (28) is operative on the creation o f this image, painted for Parma, in multiple ways, but—beyond the evident adaptations o f motifs and elements o f design—the most important may be the way in which the naturalism o f representation has been passed, as Annibale Carracd, Baptism of Christ. Bologna, S. Gregorio

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Parma, 26. Correggio, Madonna of St. Sebastian. Dresden, Gallery

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27. Annibale C a r r a c a , Pietà with Saints. Parma, Gallery

[18]

28. C o r r e g g i o , Pietà. P a r m a , Gallery

29. C o p y after C a r a v a g g i o , Repentant Magdalen. Marseilles, M u n i c i p a l M u s e u m

it were, t h r o u g h a C o r r e g g e s q u e sieve of moderating ideahty, to c o m e out at once sharpened in precision and in effect of existential truth. T h e n a t u r a h s m is, as well, m o r e controlled, referent even as it intensifies effects of t r u t h to a beauty that derives f r o m ideality. I wish to i n t r u d e here an observation that concerns a subject I shall treat of later. W h e n one observes the Repentant Magdalen of Caravaggio ( 2 9 ) — w h i c h survives to us only in the f o r m of c o p i e s — i n connection w i t h Annibale's Pietà, it w o u l d appear that C a r a v a g g i o based his conception of his t h e m e o n a m e m o r y of Annibale's s w o o n i n g Virgin. C a r a v a g g i o must, therefore, have c o m e to k n o w the early and revolutionary w o r k s of Annibale Carracci o n Caravaggio's w a y to R o m e , p r e s u m a b l y in 1592, before

Annibale's arrival there, and Caravaggio's first datable essays into naturalism (and genre) m a y well have been shaped by Annibale's precedents m o r e than b y C a r a v a g gio's native b a c k g r o u n d in Milan. T h e direction initiated in the Pietà comes rapidly to a clim a x in the Assunta (30), n o w in Dresden, of 1587. C o r r e g gio's precedent (31) is still very m u c h present and operative, but Annibale's n e w naturalizing strain n o w alters the C o r r e g g i o m o d e l with far m o r e radical effect than in the Pietà. T h e Apostles of the Assunta have been a c c o m m o dated to the popolano and the ordinary in p h y s i o g n o m i c types and in a n a t o m y ; and C o r r e g g i o ' s flamboyant m o d e of dramatic action has been changed into p o w e r f u l l y expressive and communicative, but naturally observed, postures and gestures. T h e r e is solidity of f o r m in place of C o r r e g g i o ' s diffusion of substance into atmosphere, and an intensification of the effect of presence m a d e by Annibale's close-packed density of persons. T h e y seem p o w e r f u l l y i m m i n e n t , compelling us to share in e m p a t h y their experience of a realized miracle.

Annibale Carracci, Assumption of the Virgin. Dresden, Gallery

[20]

N o t only C o r r e g g i o is apparent in this picture; in the m a n n e r and the t e m p e r of the naturalizing that departs f r o m Correggio, an experience of Titian, in his great altar of the same t h e m e in the church of Frari in Venice (32), is clear. C o m p a r e d with Correggio, Titian is m o r e literally descriptive and m o r e assertive of the density of substance; and beneath Titian's H i g h Renaissance idealization there is a similarity to Annibale's conception of the relation bet w e e n physical action and its meaning. B u t in this relationship to Titian, as positively as w i t h C o r r e g g i o , there is the urgent sense in Annibale's Assunta that w h a t he has depicted here is in a different realm f r o m that of the early sixteenth-century w o r k : this one means, w i t h a different assertiveness, immediacy, and conviction, to intersect our world. It intends, and is, a c o m m a n d i n g extension of our o w n existence. O n l y as the d r a m a of the event ascends within the picture, along with the eye that reads it, does the

31. Correggio, Assumption of the Virgin, detail, Apostles. Parma, D u o m o

32. Titian, Assumption of the Virgin. Venice, S. M. de' Frari

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quality of the image become less earthbound, touched with the ideal, appropriately distancing itself f r o m us. There is another major novelty of effect—the infusion of these densely material substances with an energy that not only expands beyond the Umits of their forms into their immediate context of space and atmosphere but is of such power as to convince us that even these densities can be levitated by this energy and propelled through space, as the Virgin is; the energy here expressed by forms transcends not only their limits but the limits of the picture. This is different f r o m Titian, the splendid energy of whose images is always internal to the picture. It is different also f r o m Correggio, in whose paintings energy can be vibrant and expansive beyond the limits of the work of art, pervasive beyond anything in Annibale, but does not carry weight: no matter h o w sensuously palpable Correggio's figures may seem to be, it is an optical "realization" of them that we perceive; there is not an apprehension, as in Annibale, of a substance and a mass. This distinction is a vital one, for it separates Correggio's proto-baroque f r o m Annibale's achievement, for the first time in the Assunta, of the bases of a genuine B a r o q u e — n o longer a protobaroque—style. Hardly had this remarkable affirmation of a n e w style been accomphshed when a moderating impulse was i m posed upon its aggressiveness and novelty, as if Annibale should have doubted his o w n daring. T h e moderating i m pulse is the result again of the new Venetian experience, in part f r o m the classicizing example of Titian, but more pressingly f r o m that of Veronese (33), less essentially classical and rather the practitioner of a cosmetically refined but brilHantly existential description. Veronese's descriptive efficiency appealed inevitably to Annibale, and his facile beautifying of f o r m was an easily accessible counterweight to the too assertive naturalism f r o m which, once achieved in the Dresden Assunta, Annibale thought better

[22]

P a o l o Veronese, Marriage of St. Catherine. Venice, A c a d e m y

to withdraw. T h e Madonna of St. Matthew of 1588 (also in Dresden; 34) is a demonstration of Annibale's retreat f r o m a position that may have seemed polemical—achieved, we must remember, in only four years since his first public work in S. N i c c o l ò — a n d of compromise with the chronologically very near perpetuation in Venetian art of the classical ideal. (Veronese, we must recall, died only in this year.) The measure of change f r o m the ambitions of the

34. Annibale Carracci, Madonna of St. Matthew. Dresden, Gallery

[23]

A n n i b a l e Carracci, S. Ludovico B o l o g n a , Gallery

[24]

Altar.

Assunta is considerable: not just of a modality determined b y the devotional, as contrasted to the Assunta's dramatic, subject but, m o r e essential, achieving a tonality of expression and a m o d e of order not unlike that in Veronese and a moderating ideality of f o r m s and appearances that in principle at least resembles his. B u t n o matter h o w dehberate Annibale's Veronesian restraints m a y be, the visual and plastic actuality of presence that Annibale has conquered for art in a n e w degree i n f o r m s the mechanisms of restraint, and the painting is, in its differently controlled way, only a httle less c o m m a n d i n g an affirmation of actuahty than the Assunta. Annibale's was t o o keen and t o o u n d o g m a t i c an intelligence to be b o u n d , in this still early stage of his development, to a fixed and single credo. W h a t he was dealing w i t h was, after all, ideas of his o w n invention, or the ideas of prior great painters that he had recreated to his o w n ends. In the years immediately succeeding the Dresden Assunta and the St. Matthew altar each of the distinct tendencies w e saw in them, and which w e m a y n o w properly term respectively a b a r o q u e tendency and a classicizing one, were manifest in Annibale's art; the baroque d o m i nant, but altered, partly in its superficial complexion and partly in its essence, by elements of classicizing kind. T h e S. Ludovico Altar (Bologna, Gallery; 35), of which the most likely date is 1589-90, is conceived u p o n a scheme of contrapuntal orderings of f o r m , grave in substance and of a slow dignity in m o v e m e n t , that suggest antecedents f r o m the classical H i g h Renaissance such as the w o r k s of Fra B a r t o l o m m e o , w h i c h Annibale is not likely to have k n o w n ; or, given the picture's chiaroscuro and textural opulence of surface, s o m e m o n u m e n t a l altar scheme of T i tian's (such as the 5. Niccolò Altar in the Vatican; 36). Still m o r e than the antecedent Matthew altar this one d e m o n strates the proposition, vital to Annibale's f u t u r e art, that the conviction inspired in the spectator of the truth of the

Titian, S. Niccolò Vadean Gallery

Altar.

37. Annibale Carracci, S. Ludovico Altar, detail. Parma, Gallery

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existence that the artist paints depends not on literal mimesis or such a recreation in paint o f ordinary reaHty as is in the Apostles o f the Assunta but on the recreation with the painter's brush and color o f those optical sensations through which we visually apprehend the world (37). These optical effects that denote substances existing in a complexly lit, atmospheric space, which Annibale deduced first from Correggio and then, as in this painting, significantly reinforced from Titian, have here been applied with such convincing effect that Annibale no longer needs to call upon devices o f literal descriptive truth: the popolano types and the repertory of genre are not now required, and Annibale may readmit from the vocabulary o f the sixteenth century's classical tradition notions o f ideality o f feature and expression in the countenance, o f harmony and plenitude o f shape o f body, o f dehberated, rhythmed grace in attitude and gesture, and of suavities o f managed drapery. Yet none o f this artifice, here so beautifully accompHshed and so calculatedly beautiful in effect, diminishes the power o f verisimilitude that is in the whole image; it only demonstrates that the existence it so convincingly describes is of a higher order. It is this existential power that, despite the accumulation in this altar o f classicizing idea and device, affirms that its style is not retrospective, but in its essence o f the new way o f Annibale's so recent invention. In the St. Luke Altar (Paris, Louvre; 38), dated 1592, the classicizing ideality o f appearances and attitudes is in some ways still more apparent: the rhetoric o f posture in the Luke seems magnified from what we might find in a Titian or a Raphael. Yet, to contrast this painting with the work o f Raphael that could just possibly have inspired it (remember that the Sistine Madonna (39) was at that time in Piacenza, in North Italy, not far from Annibale's native Bologna) is to realize how the classical elements o f Annibale's painting are an inflection o f its meaning rather than Annibale Carracci, St. Luke Altar. Paris, Louvre

[26]

39, Raphael, Sistine Madonna. Dresden, Gallery 40. Annibale Carracci, Assumption of the Virgin. Bologna, Gallery

[27]

its motive power or its substance. T h e sense that underlies this picture is a reprise, with the altering accent o f the classical experience that has intervened, o f the baroque intention o f the Assunta: contrast with the Raphael demonstrates how the pictorial elements in the earlier painting that are comparable have been translated into the language and mentality o f a Baroque. We need not elaborate the relation o f this altar to the Assunta in its density o f realized substance, its vitahty o f action, or its forcing nearness to us; these qualities in the St. Luke Altar are, however, all intensified—in scale, in nearness (to which this work adds, beyond the Assunta, devices o f psychological communication), in the fluency and velocity o f discharge o f energy from forms, in the pervasive vibration that has been infused into the light, and above all in the magnifying o f the means by which Annibale creates effects o f optical verisimilitude.

Annibale Carracci, Paris, Louvre

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Resurrection.

T h e version o f the Assunta painted in 1592 (40), in the gallery in Bologna, extrapolates still farther from the Dresden version o f the theme in the direction o f a Baroque. In it the demonstration o f an energy is intensified into the simile o f an explosion. Substance is multiplied in a sheerly quantitative sense, and its existence is asserted almost violently in a golden brilliance that blazes from the heaven into which the Virgin ascends, its divine light replacing that o f nature. More than in the Dresden Assunta, the style o f this altar moved into an extreme position, and it demanded pause and reconsideration. Within the next year, 1593, Annibale had determined what the solution o f his probings in baroque experiment and classicizing restraint ought to be: the solution not compromised between the two but dialectic, coercing them into a working fusion. His way o f treating a theme essentially similar to the Assunta, the Resurrection of Christ (Paris, Louvre; 41), manifests the power o f mind that evolved this solution. T h e energy o f the action is intense, but it is disciplined into order and perfectly controlled. T h e forms of

the actors, n o less p o w e r f u l l y existential than before, h a v e been given t h e plastic lucidity of elements of statuary, and their anatomies c o n f o r m to t h e idealizing tradition that h a d c o m e dov\'n f r o m t h e classic masters, referring eventually to Raphael and Michelangelo. T h e figures are distributed in a scansion of m e a s u r e d intervals, allowing each, w i t h i n the linkages of t h e design, its effect of an identity. T h e design itself is an instantly discernible g e o m e t r i c order, d e t e r mined b y t w o intersecting circular shapes; diagonal i m pulses of r h y t h m and direction m a k e surface o r n a m e n t and spatial direction f o r this design b u t d o n o t diminish its legibility or its integrity. A n assertion in this year of A n n i b a l e ' s n e w decisiveness of classicizing will is in simpler, and perhaps o n this acc o u n t still m o r e positive, f o r m in his Madonna with St. John Evangelist and St. Catherine (Bologna, Gallery; 42). Its structure is a l m o s t starthngly reactionary: simple, m o n u mental, and nearly symmetrical, the figures f r a m e d and s u p p o r t e d b y an architecture, and t h o u g h t h e figures are g r a n d in scale and of an almost o p u l e n t physicality, their actions are contained and gentle and disposed in a c o m p o sitional contrapposto. T h e w h o l e i m a g e c o n v e y s the sense of a calculated, m e a s u r e d and evidently idealized beauty, o n one h a n d recalling the character of Raphael's or T i t i a n ' s m o s t self-consciously classicizing altar paintings, and o n the other m a k i n g a critique, f r o m w h a t is evidently a n e w p o i n t of view, of t h e painting b y C o r r e g g i o , the Madonna of St. George (43), t h e n in M o d e n a ( n o w in Dresden), w h i c h served as Annibale's i m m e d i a t e model. A n n i b a l e " c o r r e c t s " the o v e r a n i m a t e d altar of C o r r e g g i o in every possible respect precisely in a classicizing sense; and this exercise, in w h i c h he reshapes t h e p r o t o - b a r o q u e art of his first great stylistic m e n t o r i n t o a m o d e of classicism, has t h e m e a n i n g of a m a n i f e s t o and m a r k s the finally decisive choice b e t w e e n t h e alternatives that Annibale himself h a d o p e n e d up, of p u r s u i t o f the possibilities of a b a r o q u e style or t h e constraint of the n e w l y discovered resources of that

42. A n n i b a l e Carracci, Madonna with St. John Evangelist and St. Catherine. B o l o g n a , Gallery

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style into the aesthetic—and, it should be observed, at the same time the e t h i c — s y s t e m s of classicism. I speak advisedly of constraining the resources of a b a r o q u e style i n t o the aesthetic systems of a classicism: w h a t Annibale has defined in this picture, and less obviously in the Resurrection altar of the same year, is not a resurrection of the classical style of the H i g h Renaissance, despite the references to it and dependence o n it that were essential to Annibale's f o r mation of this present style. This present accompHshment is the f o u n d i n g proposition n o t only for Annibale's o w n subsequent achievement but for the widespread and historically significant p h e n o m e n o n of style w h i c h that achievem e n t w o u l d serve in turn as threshold for, of a classicism within baroque. In that style, as in this altarpiece, the resurgent ideals of classicism would, in the m o s t hteral sense, be embodied in the splendid sensuousness of optically defined presence and appearance that were the innovation of A n n i bale. This n e w classicism assumes a look and a tonality of meaning (again in a literal sense) visibly different f r o m that in Annibale's sixteenth-century models. T h e clarity of Annibale's c o m m i t m e n t to this n e w course is evident in his Madonna above Bologna ( O x f o r d , Christ C h u r c h ; 44) of 1593 or 1594, in a design which, t h o u g h inspired possibly b y Annibale's exposure to the Sistine Madonna (39) in the original, and to Raphael's Madonna di Foligno (45) in engraving, is m o r e doctrinaire in its g e o m e t r y than either. B u t the identity of the i m a g e as a p h e n o m e n o n of the n e w style, and not as a recollection, is even m o r e apparent here than in the Madonna with the Evangelist and Catherine; the grand dimension of the M a donna here is n o t just f r o m a will to achieve a classicizing grandeur, b u t f r o m a w i l l — b a r o q u e in essence—to m a g nify the splendor of a physical presence, and that presence is conveyed to us in terms that m a k e it vibrant w i t h the excitements of light and texture.

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43. Correggio, Madonna

of St.

George,

Dresden, Gallery

45.

44.

Annibale Carracci,

Raphael,

Madonna

Madonna

above

Bologna.

Oxford, Christ Church Gallery

di

Foligno.

Vatican Gallery

[31]

A n n i b a l e Carracci, Toilet of Venus. W a s h i n g t o n , N a t i o n a l Gallery, S a m u e l H . Kress Collection

[32]

T o a classicism of f o r m s and tonality of expression A n nibale added chat o f ancient subject m a t t e r in the Toilet of Venus (Washington, N a t i o n a l Gallery; 46), of 1 5 9 4 - 9 5 . T h e nudes d o n o t j u s t translate t h e a c c u s t o m e d m o d e l s of antique statuary b u t a m p l i f y t h e m , aggrandizing their e f fect of substance and d i m e n s i o n . H o w e v e r , A n n i b a l e m a k e s n o c o r r e s p o n d i n g effect in his h a n d l i n g of t h e sensuous description of these nudes: o n t h e contrary, as if t o insist o n their ideality as an aspect o f b o t h their O l y m p i a n n a t u r e and the historical distance t o w h i c h they pertain, h e has, as it were, distilled off f r o m t h e nudes t h e sensual epidermis of their sensuousness, g i v i n g to the bodies a p u r i fying, m o r e nearly even radiance that affirms the descent of their i m a g e r y f r o m ancient statues. T h e intellectually m o t i v a t e d dehberateness of this effect is accentuated b y contrast w i t h the o p u l e n c e of chiaroscuro in t h e setting and of t e x t u r e in t h e accessories. Again, there is a revealing i n cident of a critique of C o r r c g g i o ' s e x a m p l e in this painting. T h e h a n d m a i d e n at the left transcribes almost exactly C o r reggio's p o i g n a n t l y sensual V e n u s in his Education of Cupid (47) b u t diminishes her sensuality and p u t s b o t h her n u d i t y and the idea of it at a distance. A great p i c t u r e — g r e a t in d i m e n s i o n also; it is a b o u t five meters l o n g — m a r k s t h e last a c c o m p l i s h m e n t of A n n i b a l e in B o l o g n a b e f o r e his p e r m a n e n t transfer to R o m e in N o v e m b e r 1595: t h e St. Roch Distributing Alms (48), d o n e f o r the c o n f r a t e r n i t y of S. R o c c o in R e g g i o E m i h a , and n o w , like so m a n y others o f Annibale's p r i m e B o l o g n e s e w o r k s , in Dresden. T h e painting was executed almost altogether in 1594 or 1595, b u t it had been c o m m i s s i o n e d , and possibly in s o m e degree b e g u n , as early as 1 5 8 7 - 8 8 . A l t h o u g h a conception of design m a d e at that time, w h e n A n n i b a l e w a s in the m a i n concerned w i t h p r o b i n g s t o w a r d b a r o q u e ness, m a y a c c o u n t f o r evidently b a r o q u e qualities in the c o m p o s i t i o n , this need n o t be t h e case. T h e a r m a t u r e of design, a brilliantly m a n i p u l a t e d play in c o u n t e r p o i n t o f

47. Correggio. Education

of

Cupid.

London, National Gallery

diagonal impulses, locked absolutely i n t o a p o w e r f u l l y charged b u t precise and finally d e t e r m i n i n g equilibrium, is a w h o l l y a p p r o p r i a t e response t o the potential f o r d r a m a t i c action in this p a n o r a m i c historia; t h e principle of m o d a h t y , w h i c h s w a y e d Annibale's stylistic f o r m u l a t i o n s often, w a s surely operative here. In any case, t h e St. Roch d e m o n strates at the highest possible level t h e interaction A n n i b a l e had f o r m e d b e t w e e n classical principle and b a r o q u e device; t h e b a r o q u e i m p u l s i o n o f diagonal design w o r k e d n o t o n l y into c o u n t e r p o i n t b u t w i t h i n each i m p u l s e into disciplined c o m m u n i t y of direction, in w h i c h actions and gestures

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48. A n n i b a l e C a r r a c a , St. Roch Distributing

Alms.

D r e s d e n , Gallery

seem to line u p like iron filings r e s p o n d i n g t o a m a g n e t . T h e charged e q u i l i b r i u m the design finds satisfies, in t h e end, r e q u i r e m e n t s o f classical design n o less stringent than for a Raphael; the Expulsion of Heliodorus (49), f o r e x a m p l e , achieves an end effect n o different in principle f r o m this. N o less i m p o r t a n t t o t h e t e m p e r of the w h o l e , and equally affirmative of its descent f r o m classicism—Raphael's, m u c h m o r e t h a n V e r o n e s e ' s superficial b r a n d of it, as has

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f o r this instance been a l l e g e d — i s t h e rhetoric o f the picture: in the largeness and e m p h a t i c character of t h e d r a m a t i c action; in t h e d e m o n s t r a t i v e n e s s and i m p r e s s i v e a m p l i t u d e of t h e actors, and the h a n d s o m e large deliberateness o f their p o s t u r e s and their gestures. T h i s is t h e rhetorical m o d e n o t of any N o r t h Italian or V e n e t i a n m o d e l b u t o f Raphael, as it had been i n v e n t e d b y h i m for t h e Stanze, and climactically d e v e l o p e d in his T a p e s t r y

49. Raphael, Expulsion of Heliodoms. Vatican, Stanza d ' E l i o d o r o

Cartoons and in his late Transfiguration (50)—Raphael's classical rhetoric, but aggrandized further by Annibale, and extrapolated to the verge of baroque hyperbole. It is impossible to establish h o w much of the cast of style in these t w o works of 1 5 9 4 - 9 5 — t h e reference to antiquity in the Toilet of Venus, the analogue to Raphael's m o d e of rhetoric in the St. Roch—may be due to the brief visit Annibale made to R o m e late in 1594, but it is explicit that, in any case, the substance of his formulation of a classicism within baroque had been entirely resolved before his definite transfer of residence to Rome, where he was settled by the autumn of 1595. T h e classicism his R o m a n paintings manifest perfects and clarifies what he had laid d o w n in Bologna, and it acquires a specifically Roman accent, c o m pounded f r o m the examples of ancient art that Annibale could see there in unparalleled abundance and f r o m the H i g h Renaissance interpretations of antiquity. Annibale had come to R o m e to enter into the service of the Farnese, and f r o m 1595 to 1597 he performed his first work for them in the decoration in their great R o m a n palace of a r o o m called the Camerino, of which the theme was 50. Raphael, Transfiguration. Vatican Gallery

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A n n i b a l e C a r r a c d , Choice of Hercules.

Naples, C a p o d i m o n t e M u s e u m

the h i s t o r y of Hercules. T h e centerpiece of this decoration, a painting o n canvas laid flat u p o n the ceiling, depicts t h e Choice of Hercules (51); the canvas has long since been rem o v e d and replaced b y a copy, and the original transferred to the m u s e u m at C a p o d i m o n t e in Naples. I m m e d i a t e l y striking in the picture, and m a r k e d l y different in its consistency and i m p a c t f r o m the nearest similar exercise d o n e in

[36]

B o l o g n a , the Toilet of Venus, is the w a y in w h i c h t h e sense in this antique subject m a t t e r of b e l o n g i n g authentically to antiquity has b e e n reinforced b y Annibale's exploitation of w h a t he had c o m e t o k n o w in R o m e of t h e appearances of ancient times that s u r v i v i n g statuary d o c u m e n t e d f o r h i m . In the principal f i g u r e there is a singular confluence bet w e e n Annibale's previously asserted will to a g g r a n d i z e

53. Michelangelo. Sistine Ceiling, detail, ¡mudo. Vatican, Sistine C h a p e l

52. G l y k o n , Farnese Hercules. Naples, N a t i o n a l M u s e u m

h u m a n substance and an antique m o d e l t h e n in the c o u r t yard of the palace, the so-called Farnese Hercules (52), w h i c h he w o u l d inevitably consult. At the s a m e t i m e Annibale, in this depiction of a heroic a n a t o m y , had n o less inevitably to refer t o M i c h e l a n g e l o (53). In t h e f i g u r e of the t e m p t r e s s at the right it is t h e late and m o s t classical Raphael (54) w h o s e interpretation of a n t i q u e f o r m is taken over, w h i l e the Virtue, o n t h e left, reflects t h e filtering of a n t i q u e attit u d e and d r a p e r y style t h r o u g h t h e n o b l e m o d e l s of t h e School of Athens. B e y o n d the p a r e n t a g e of classicism, an-

54. Raphael, Fire in the Borgo, detail. Vatican, Stanza dell'Incendio

tique or H i g h Renaissance, that has been dehberately asserted b y A n n i b a l e in the figures, his assertion of a kinship w i t h statuary in their appearance is a n e w device: I h a v e referred already t o t h e circumstance that, since A n n i b a l e ' s t i m e k n e w the l o o k of the ancient w o r l d in the m a i n f r o m statuary, reference t o its appearance m a k e s a w a r r a n t y f o r t h e t r u t h of ancient subject matter. T o achieve this reference Annibale appropriately diminishes the effects o f o p t i cahty in his style, s m o o t h i n g t h e description of t h e fall of light o n substance, m u t i n g the effects of t e x t u r e in the

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draperies n o less than in the flesh—disciplining b a r o q u e vibrance t o w a r d modulated continuity. This process does not m a k e a d i m i n u t i o n of the figures' existential p o w e r ; it is a clarifying and a distillation of it, appropriate to a classical mentality. Further, w h a t the figures lose in optical effects of sensuous i m m e d i a c y they replace with their effects of clarity and certainty of presence. Their illusion has been lessened but their verisimilitude has not, and b y the sense of a distillation that they give they are m o r e appropriately seen as dwellers in a distanced, O l y m p i a n sphere. F r o m the C a m e r i n o Annibale transferred his attention to the m u c h larger project of decoration of the vault of the great salon in the palace (55), w h e r e he worked, assisted on occasion b y his b r o t h e r Agostino, f r o m late 1597 to the end of 1599. T h e reason for the decoration was apparently an i m p e n d i n g marriage, to be celebrated in 1600, b e t w e e n the y o u n g Ranuccio Farnese and Margherita Aldobrandini, daughter of an allied great R o m a n house, that of the then reigning pope, C l e m e n t VIII. T h e t h e m e of the decoration, the Loves of the Gods, was taken with the meaning of an epithalamion, an ode in celebration of the marriage. T h e t h e m e accounted for the subjects Annibale was to illustrate, but not for the scheme in which he chose to represent them. T h a t proceeded f r o m another préexistent circumstance: that the salon was a gallery in which the antique sculpture of the Farnese collection was displayed. This suggested to Annibale the brilliant t h o u g h t of treating his scenes o n the vault as if they w e r e pictures hanging in a gallery (56); as an assemblage of illusionistic semblances of f r a m e d paintings {quadri riportati, as the current language called them) and sculptural reliefs, h u n g u p o n or inserted into a f r a m e w o r k of fictitious architecture—an architecture m a d e with paint apparently to extend and c r o w n the gallery's real walls. T h e painted architecture extends the luxury of decoration of those real walls. T h e fictive superstructure encloses

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After Giovanni Volpato, Farnese Gallery

A n n i b a l e Carracci, Farnese Gallery,

R o m e , Palazzo Farnese

an a d d i t i o n t o t h e space a s t o r y h i g h a b o v e t h e actual c o r nice; at t h e c o r n e r s it is o p e n t o an a p p a r e n t o u t s i d e sky. T h e l o n g sides o f t h e s u p e r s t r u c t u r e are d i v i d e d i n t o a l t e r nating bays of simulated rehef sculpture and paintings inserted i n t o f i c t i t i o u s p i c t u r e m o l d i n g s ; in t h e c e n t e r is a quadro riportato in t h e m o s t e x a c t sense, h e a v i l y f r a m e d as if it w e r e a canvas. T e r m s o r A t l a n t i d s , m a d e in m o n o c h r o m e p a i n t t o c o n v e y t h e illusion t h a t t h e y are s t u c c o sculptures, h a n d s o m e l y a n d h e a v i l y d i v i d e t h e p i c t o r i a l a n d

s c u l p t u r a l episodes. O n each s h o r t wall, a g r e a t vertical picture, f r a m e d w i t h p a i n t as if it w e r e an easel w o r k , leans f o r w a r d in space a n d rises a b o v e i n t o t h e s u p e r s t r u c t u r e t o its v e r y limit. A c r o s s t h e o p e n i n g t o a p a i n t e d s k y w e h e r e perceive, t w o s m a l l e r " p i c t u r e s " h a n g as a b r i d g e t o t w o l a r g e scenes, t h e s e n o w p r e t e n d i n g t o b e tapestries, w h i c h , s t r e t c h e d across t h e u p p e r space, w o u l d s h a d e us f r o m t h e " s k y . " T h e s e i n t u r n a d j o i n a l a r g e central p a i n t i n g t h a t is c o n t a i n e d in w h a t s e e m s t o b e an a r c h i t e c t u r a l m o l d i n g

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57. Raphael, Story of Psyche. R o m e , Villa Farnesina, Loggia di P s y c h e

rather than a n o r m a l picture f r a m e , as if this central scene w e r e a fixed e l e m e n t in the decorative scheme. A r o u n d t h e b o t t o m of the painted superstructure, b e l o w the T e r m s and posed as if they w e r e sitting o n t h e real cornice of t h e gallery, are n u d e s in color, w h o s e derivation f r o m M i c h e l -

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M i c h e l a n g e l o and others, Sistine Chapel. Vatican

angelo's Ignudi is instantly o b v i o u s and w a s m e a n t b y A n nibale to be. T h e c o m p l e x i t y of t h e system of fictitious architecture Annibale has p r o j e c t e d in paint u p o n t h e vault precludes o u r t r y i n g to describe and analyze it in detail, b u t w e

. X h P · · 59. A n n i b a l e Carracci, Farnese Gallery,

detail, Venus and Anchises

should n o t e h o w , w i t h the s t i m u l a t i o n of close contact w i t h the R o m a n w o r l d , Annibale has m a d e in this s c h e m e a t r a n s m u t a t i o n of t h e precedents of t h e H i g h Renaissance that is m o r e inspired and original t h a n any p r e v i o u s painter had achieved. Raphael's Story of Psyche in the Villa F a r n e sina (57) w a s of necessity referred to, and f r o m it c a m e t h e idea of c o v e r i n g t h e center of the vault w i t h images in t h e

m o d e oí quadri riportati, avoiding thus the logic, destructive t o a classical u n i t y of decoration, of f o r e s h o r t e n i n g illusion. F r o m Michelangelo (58) c a m e t h e basis f o r t h e idea of a f r a m e w o r k of i n t e r l o c k i n g elements of architecture p r o jected in paint o n t o t h e ceiling, in w h i c h s o m e f i g u r a t i v e elements display at least in part t h e character of illusion, while others contradict it. In o n e respect Annibale's

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A n n i b a l e Carracci, Farnese Gallery,

detail, Hercules and Iole

scheme conveys a sense more like Raphael's than Michelangelo's: the vault of the Farnesina, like that of the Farnese, seems to contain the spectator spatially and psychologically as if in the shelter of an umbrella; the vault of the Sistine does not contain but only surmounts him. M o r e than either, however, Annibale creates the effect in both

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the pseudo-architecture and the figurative elements of his vault (59, 60) that they are palpable presences. T h e forms of architecture are transformed fluently and almost pervasively into the h u m a n forms of fictive stucco sculpture, which despite their m o n o c h r o m e inspire in the spectator's eye and imagination no less a conviction of their presence

seems, by c o m p a r i s o n w i t h its early sixteenth-century antecedents, to pullulate and be intensely present, yet the m o d e of ideality to which its f o r m s have been reshaped is in m o s t ways not so different. Annibale's manner of m a g nifying his anatomies and e n d o w i n g t h e m with clarity of f o r m and regularity of p r o p o r t i o n is close to Raphael's (61) and still m o r e doctrinaire than his; in s o m e respects A n n i bale's actors seem m o r e distant. Yet there emerges f r o m Annibale's figures w h a t w e have perceived already in the Choice of Hercules: a distilled sensuality, c o m p o u n d e d f r o m the nudity that has been illustrated and a quality of surface o n it that is as if caressed b y light. This emanation to the spectator's psyche, c o m b i n i n g with the illustration and aggrandizement of presence, makes a p o w e r of felt existence that is not in Annibale's models but is of his o w n t i m e and, w e m u s t not forget, of his invention. A comparison with Michelangelo's models (62) eloquently demonstrates the difference of Annibale's effect. T h e comparison p r o v o k e s an observation on the nature of Annibale's ideality, h o w ever; formally n o less than Michelangelo's, it is philosophically—or, perhaps m o r e exactly, m o r a l l y — i n a less exalted sphere.

Raphael, Story of Psyche, detail, Three R o m e , Villa Farnesina

Graces.

than the actors in the paintings they enframe. Before the stucco sculptures, o n the cornice, in a space of illusion that appears as if h a l f w a y into our o w n , and in our light as well, the Ignudi are live, flexible, and touchable existences. T h e life Annibale has spread out o n the Farnese ceiling

T h e analogue, in regularity of grand p r o p o r t i o n and lucidity of surface, to the actual sculpture that populated the gallery b e l o w is reserved in that degree for the deities w h o s e amours Annibale depicts: there is a matching of f o r m to an idea of content, and it is adjustable on j u s t this basis. T h e Ignudi w h o sit illusionistically as if before the narrative scenes and on the actual cornice (63) are not O l y m pians, separate f r o m us in a discrete pictorial space, but creatures intermediate between O l y m p i a and us. A g g r a n dized in a n a t o m y , in imitation of the nudes of Michelangelo they so purposely recall (53), they are of a m o r e flexible, less g e o m e t r y - s u g g e s t i n g f o r m than the O l y m p i a n s ; their physiognomies, too, are less beautifully recast. Further, their bodies are revealed to us in a light distinct f r o m

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62. Michelangelo, Sistine Ceiling, detail, Temptation and Expulsion. Vatican, Sistine Chapel 63. Annibale Carracci, Farnese Gallery, detail. Ignudi and Atlantids

64. Annibale Carracci, Silenus

Picking

Grapes.

London, National Gallery

the light i l l u m i n i n g o u r v i e w b e y o n d t h e I g n u d i i n t o A n n i bale's O l y m p u s ; as the I g n u d i o n the cornice share o u r space they share o u r light as well, and it w o r k s u p o n their bodies w i t h a t e x t u r i n g c o m p l e x i t y that a f f i r m s the t r u t h and nearness o f their presence. T h e i r anatomies are also m o r e detailed t h a n t h o s e of t h e gods, and their expressions of c o u n t e n a n c e are m a n i f o l d and psychologically precise. T h e sphere of ideality t o w h i c h A n n i b a l e has raised t h e m is specified b y his artistic m e a n s t o b e at m o s t h a l f w a y bet w e e n us and t h e gods, exactly as their situation in the scene requires. T h e contrast of A n n i b a l e ' s Ignudi w i t h the images of M i c h e l a n g e l o in w h i c h t h e y take their origin affirms that, w h a t e v e r their relation t o t h e artistic past, t h e essence of A n n i b a l e ' s c o n c e p t i o n is of his o w n i n v e n t i o n and only of his time. B u t w h a t is also o n the Farnese ceiling that is particular to Annibale, and indicative for his time, is an a f f i r m a t i o n of a pleasure in existence; m o r e than plea-

sure, it seems an expansive and c o m m a n d i n g j o y , w h i c h c o m e s n o t f r o m t h e narration b u t f r o m the radiance that e m e r g e s f r o m A n n i b a l e ' s recreation of a physical w o r l d . T h e r e is a b y p r o d u c t in small scale of the m a n n e r o f t h e Farnese decoration, d o n e close t o t h e t i m e w h e n t h e ceiling w a s a p p r o a c h i n g its c o m p l e t i o n in 1599, in t w o f r a g m e n t s w i t h Bacchic subjects ( n o w in L o n d o n , N a t i o n a l Gallery; 64, 65) f r o m the decoration of a cembalo, to w h i c h A n n i bale has transferred t h e m o d a l i t y in w h i c h h e painted t h e Farnese nudes. T h e Bacchic t h e m e s {Silenus Picking Grapes and Bacchus with Silenus) are traditionally vehicles of h u m o r , m e a n t — a l l t h e m o r e so in their association w i t h the musical i n s t r u m e n t they once a d o r n e d — t o inspire a m u s e m e n t and an i n t i m a t e delight. T h e Farnese decoration, o n g r a n d scale, had of necessity to w o r k in large effects and w i t h constant implication of a rhetoric. T h e small paintings display t h e other end of Annibale's aesthetic

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65. Annibale Carracci, Bacchus

with

Silenus.

London, National Gallery

range: a most refined and complcx lighting, reverberating against the background (even the arbitrary but wholly atmospheric-seeming one of gold leaf) in which the figures seem most live and tangible resurrections of a pleasureimbued pagan world. T h e intimacy and fineness of visual and physical sensation that Annibale sets forth here are the counterpart of the sensibility he has employed in psychological description: the personalities of the actors are no less vibrantly made alive for us than are their persons. Sensibility in this extraordinary degree of fineness articulates great p o w e r of emotion in a religious painting that comes f r o m this time or very shortly later, a Pietà (66), n o w in Naples, of 1599-1600. Grand forms deduced f r o m what is again an inescapable example in Michelangelo (67) are remade into a more evidently classical and heroic beauty, and adjusted in their composition so as to make, with baroque disposition, a counterpoint of rhythmic movements as well as weights. The alteration of the Michelangelesque design remembers the most nearly baroque precedent in Correggio, the Pietà n o w in the Parma gallery

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(28), and Annibale remembers f r o m it also what Correggio had demonstrated to h i m of emotional sensibihty. As lyric and pathetic as in Correggio, Annibale's emotional response is effectively mimetic, but it is even more essentially aesthetic, inspiring the warping, tormented beauty of the movement of each line and the palpitation of the chiaroscuro light. But Annibale, n o w fixed in his mold of classicism, has—as has n o w become his habit—corrected C o r reggio even as he has recalled him. T h e Quo Vadis, Domine of 1 6 0 2 - 3 (London, National Gallery; 68) speaks a much more doctrinaire version of the classical language Annibale had perfected in these R o m a n years. Although it is a small picture (barely eighty centimeters high), its lucidity of f o r m and expressiveness of content enlarge it greatly in the viewer's mind. T h e figure of the Christ comes toward us as a simple and impactful form, blunt and emphatic in his action. Peter, set in profile counter to the frontal Christ, reacts to the divine apparition with similar emphasis and simplicity. A strong but only modestly inflected light reinforces the lucidity of f o r m and

A n n i b a l e Carracci, Pietà. Naples, C a p o d i m o n t e M u s e u m

67. Michelangelo, Pietà. Vatican, St. Peter's

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Annibale Carracci, Quo Vadis, Domine. London, National Gallery

at once clarifies and strengthens color. T h e discipline Annibale has imposed on his artistic means is in every respect more stringent in the Quo Vadis than w e have ever seen it before; but it must be observed that what w e may think of as an increased abstractness of design and of some elements of f o r m does not diminish the power of existence in the picture. Indeed, the process that resembles abstraction most certainly intended its effects to be the opposite: a

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higher immediacy and urgency in presence and in c o m m u nication of idea. It is nonetheless perceptible that there is, f r o m this time on, a change in the tenor and intention of Annibale's classicism: a new austerity of mind and stringency of means inform his style. From an aesthetic principle, classicism has n o w been elevated to a dogma, moral as well as aesthetic. One last w o r k w e shall consider exemplifies in its best

69. Annibale Carracci, Pietà. London, National Gallery

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aspect what happened in Annibale's art in consequence: a Pietà (also London, National Gallery; 69), not later than 1605 in date, makes an order of extraordinary rigor. T h e figures in the painting are arranged almost as if they might be building blocks, in a sequence estabhshed by a most arbitrary and barely flexible geometry. Yet even as a geometry the design moves, impelled not only by the h u m a n actions held within it but by its o w n internal logic: a stepped sequence rises f r o m the dead Christ to the left, traverses sharply to the right, and then descends to discharge u p o n the Christ again. T h e scheme carries the viewer through the stages of a narrative in which each step is a prodigious declaration of emotion: concentrated, styhzed, and explicit, and of most penetrating power. T h e extreme constraints that Annibale has intellectually imposed upon the image do not limit its dimension of emotion; on the contrary, they intensify and magnify it, in the way that is characteristic of the aspirations of a highest classical style—which Annibale has, at this m o m e n t in his career, achieved. But this classicism remains n o w as ever a classicism within ba-

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roque: presence is as actual as it is poignant, and it is conveyed in a vehicle of light that intensifies the life of feehng as well as of f o r m and exalts the radiance of color. An almost wholly incapacitating mental illness, which took the f o r m of an acute and pathological variety of melancholia, began to manifest itself in Annibale about 1605. It seems soon to have made it impossible for him to paint, though he seems to have been able to continue, in a most limited way, to direct his studio and to give some ideas for design. Annibale died in 1609, not yet fifty, leaving to the pupils he had gathered to himself in R o m e a legacy that would become in their hands the classical m o d e within the style of the Baroque, but leaving also to the wider world of art in Italy the example of his o w n early essays, prior to his classical decision, in the making of the bases of the Baroque style as such. H e was the giant of creation of his time, and his accompHshment would bear fruit long beyond that of the only artist in his world w h o could rival him in artistic merit and in dimension of humanity—Michelangelo da Caravaggio.

II

PLATE П.

Caravaggio,

St. John mn the tue Baptist Пар.

with a

Rome, Capitoline Gallery

Ram.

CARMAGGIO

Ό O T H E R I M A G E O F THIS m o m e n t in Italian painting makes so powerful an assault u p o n our sensibilities as Caravaggio's St. John the Baptist with a Ram (in the Capitoline Gallery in Rome; plate II). A w o r k of his early maturity, about 1602, it stands in an extreme degree for what, in the context of the recent past as well as Caravaggio's contemporary world, was radical and inventive in his art. Recognizing that it is an extreme statement, w e may use it on just that account to make a more pointed demonstration. The past reigning style of Mannerism offers its characteristic conception of the theme of the young Baptist in a painting by Agnolo Bronzino (Rome, Borghese Gallery; 70) f r o m the middle years of the preceding century. This asserts a presence which in some ways seems as forceful as Caravaggio's, and which depends hke Caravaggio's on the affirmation of effects of visual truth. Bronzino's nude has a sharply defined verity of description in the parts of its anatomy; however, opposite to Caravaggio's nude, Bronzino's whole figure gives the effect not of actuality but of artifice. T h e very model Bronzino has chosen, to begin with, affirms his remove f r o m ordinary reality: he is a high-bred youth, of fine and classicizing feature and, for all his evident power of body, no less fine and classicizing anatomical form. Bronzino has defined that f o r m by graphic means conjoined with the means of plastic modehng, as if he meant to recreate for us less a body of palpable flesh than the image of a sculpture. T h e semblance of statuary that has been given to the figure has made it seem asensuous; nevertheless, it conveys a quality of distilled and eccentrically displaced sensuality. As we regard Bronzino's image we experience complex and ambivalent sensations, some of them internally contradictory, and our experience of it is diffuse and faceted. But it is Bronzino's initial approach to the representation of the f o r m that results in such diffusion: the extreme acuity of attention focused on the description

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A g n o l o Bronzino, St. John the Baptist. R o m e , B o r g h e s e Gallery

of each part is of necessity divisive—faceting and analytic. We are each m o m e n t made more aware of the operation in Bronzino's image of a complicated apparatus of intellect: the processes of high and abstracting intelligence are here communicated by the most disciplined formal working of the hand. T h e presence Bronzino's picture so c o m m a n d ingly asserts does not result f r o m the reproduction that

may be in it o f nature; the reality it conveys is that o f its powerful reality o f art. In the art o f Caravaggio's great near-contemporary, Annibale Carracci, intellection and idealization remain prime operative powers. Annibale's Ignudi o f the Farnese ceiling

71. Annibale Carracci, Model Study for an Ignudo of the Farnese Gallery. Paris, Louvre

(63) make overt reference to the precedent o f Michelangelo (53), reinforcing the role in them o f the ideal; at the same time, Annibale's nudes were, far more than Michelangelo's, (Hterally) embodied, the ideal in them incorporated into and compromised with forms that have been optically and sensuously perceived. Even when, as in a study for one o f the Ignudi (71), Annibale immediately confronts the model, his notation o f what he looks at, for all its texture and aliveness, is from the beginning conditioned by a measure o f intellectual arranging and idealization. What we may call "realism"—in the most conventional and pragmatic sense in which the word is used by art historians—is a basis and a starting point in Annibale's creative process, but in his mature art it is never its main end. It was only in his first traceable beginnings that Annibale, as we have seen in his Dead Christ o f ca. 1582 (in Stuttgart; 11), had thought the reality o f the unidealized model a sufficient purpose; he quickly came to reincorporate the traditional requirements o f an ideal style. We have a context now for Caravaggio's St. John, and the first consideration the image impresses on us in this context is that the figure has been seen by Caravaggio apparently without the intervention o f any o f the traditional idealities. Caravaggio seems indeed to have selected his model in defiance o f the requirements o f idealism, and he has willed to present him physically and psychologically in a way that makes him in the most extreme degree actual— immediate, literally without any intermediary between the model-image and ourselves. Caravaggio's apprehension o f the model's presence seems unimpeded in the least degree by any intervention o f the intellect or by those conventions o f aesthetic or o f ethic that the intellect invents. T h e image Caravaggio presents to us is essentially the sensuous perception o f a physical fact; the psychological record accompanying it is only such as is required to imply the meaning that this sensuous presence may have for the viewer.

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This presence is of an aggressively naked youthful male, and in the context of our biographical information about Caravaggio and our understanding of the pictures he painted prior to this one, w e recognize that this image is homosexual in its essential content. O n e might juggle with platonic notions of the picture's sense or try to palliate the subject by lending it an Old Testament or even a m y t h o logical rather than a Christian label, but it is most likely that none of these was meant. In any case, the nominal subject matter is of no more than tangential import, since the real meaning and the nominal theme diverge f r o m one another: the Baptist with the sacrificial ram, or whatever other subject may be proposed instead for it, is merely a figleaf imposed u p o n the real meaning of this picture. T h e real theme is not a narrative, an allegory, or an emblem; it is a presence, and the meaning of the presence is the sheer sensory experience of it and the emotions this experience is meant to generate. T h e artist's seeing of the model and the action of his hand that records the seeing are absolutely immediate to his brush. His perception has been conveyed to the canvas without the intervention, or the consequent deliberation, of any studies in d r a w i n g — i n this he is unlike Annibale Carracci most conspicuously; and his process of recording is as intense as it is direct. There is no precedent for this degree either of intensity or directness in any prior art. T h e seeing impelled by this intensity grasps its object and experiences it as if at highest speed, giving the effect of an instantaneous apprehension of the whole. T h e act of apprehension is including and integral, a unity as well as an instantaneity; and in this apprehension optical and tactile experience—or, more precisely, the sense in the mind of tactile experience—have been fused, reinforcing one another, absolutely interpenetrating, to make an effect which far exceeds that of either kind of experience by itself T h e way in which Caravaggio relates to this seen image

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— b u t not only to this particular kind of image, it should be understood—is as if to a love-object. H e translates into his act of art the lover's experience of seeing and touch, which he has galvanized at that very instant where, in a hving situation, seeing would be turned into touching. Visual sensation is intensely charged, containing a high tension and generating more. T h e artist is by nature a voyeur, and here Caravaggio has created a voyeuristic situation into which the spectator, as he takes the painter's place in front of the completed canvas, necessarily must fall. T h e meaning of the picture thus depends not only on the presence Caravaggio has evoked in it, but on the situation he has n o w made. There is no very meaningful action or emotion that occurs within the painting; what is meaningful comes instead f r o m the relationship established initially between the artist and the model and then, as we are the surrogate for the painter w h e n we look at the picture, between the model-image and ourselves. This is anything but a still-life m o d e of response to experience, despite Caravaggio's prior episodes of interest in still life. T h e quahty of attention and the efficacy of description may indeed be those of a painter of still hfe, but the situation that has been created between the spectator and the picture is very different f r o m what he would confront in a still Ufe. This situation posits a relationship between persons, and requires what w e may describe as a transaction of experience between them. Each confrontation with the image recharges it, as it were, with the life of this transaction. Yet, even as it inescapably demands relationship, the image retains the character of a thing apart f r o m us: a presence and a personality that Caravaggio has objectified. T h e objectivity is not just in the painter's truth of physical description but also in the psychological characterization, and beyond that it arises f r o m Caravaggio's management of the aesthetic factors of which the painting is composed.

T h e objectifying of the psychological c o m p o n e n t of the i m a g e is difficult to characterize f r o m the single picture in itself; it is better demonstrated b y a comparative process w h i c h shows h o w it evolved f r o m Caravaggio's preceding paintings. T h e Fruttaiolo (the Young Fruit Vendor, in the B o r g h e s e Gallery in R o m e ; 72), is almost a decade earher than the

C a r a v a g g i o , Fruttatolo {Young Fruit Vendor). R o m e , B o r g h e s e Gallery

T h e latter are the easier to explain: the planar setting of the body; the self-containing, regulating arrangement of the limbs into a contrapposto; the logic of an evident g e o m e t r y that relates the i m a g e to the picture field and seems to lock it there, h o l d i n g it thus separate f r o m us. Despite his p r e tense of a contrary premise, the intellectual devices of past tradition have in fact not been rejected b y C a r a v a g g i o — nor, obviously, could they be; but they have been masterfully occluded by the clamor he has m a d e in f r o n t of t h e m with his assertion of vulgarian reality.

A t t r i b u t e d t o G i o r g i o n e , Shepherd with Flute. H a m p t o n C o u r t , R o y a l Collection. R e p r o d u c e d b y c o u r t e s y of H . M . the Q u e e n ( c o p y r i g h t reserved)

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74. C a r a v a g g i o , Musica {The Music Party). N e w Y o r k , M e t r o p o l i t a n ¡Vluseum

[56]

Capitoline Baptist; it was painted shortly after C a r a v a g gio's arrival in the capital, about 1593. In this early picture the real meaning, beneath the apparent subject matter of genre-cum-still-life, is the same as that in the Baptist. T h e

psychological characterization of the model conveys a romanticizing tenderness, which despite the element of genre suggests the working upon Caravaggio of a mode of feeling he would have seen in Giorgione (73); it is virtually certain that the young painter had had an experience of

/Э. C a r a v a g g i o , Lutenist. Leningrad, H e r m i t a g e M u s e u m

[57]

tains should be seen as its inspiring motive, not as an adulterant. Again a year or t w o later in time, the Lutenist of the Hermitage (75), of about 1595-96, begins to demonstrate Caravaggio's process of objectifying his relationship to his models: as the p o w e r develops in h i m of objectifying the description of the form, simultaneously and in parallel with that development and as a function of it his power of objectifying feeling develops also. As the figure acquires an appearance more certainly separate f r o m us, so does its psychological identity become discrete. By the time of the Uffizi Bacchus of 1597-98 (76), the articulation of a psychological distinction of the model f r o m the spectator is close in degree to what the Baptist shows.

76. C a r a v a g g i o , Bacchus. Florence, U f f i z i Gallery

Venice. T h e Musica of the Metropohtan M u s e u m in N e w York (74), of a year or so later, ca. 1594, illustrates still more compelhngly the sense of a sympathy between the artist and his models. The models demonstrate the projection u p o n them of the artist's feelings: almost sentimental, and lyrical not only in the tonality of feeling but in the emotive affect he has imparted to the represented forms. The feeling is as genuine and as authentically poetic as it is tender, and the particular sexual implication it con-

[58]

77. C a r a v a g g i o , St. John the Baptist with a Ram (replica). R o m e , D o r i a Gallery

T h e sole instance that we know o f an authentic rephcation by Caravaggio o f one o f his own works is a second version o f the Baptist picture (77), in the Doria Gallery in Rome. It demonstrates no less than the first, Capitoline, version how, by the time o f his early maturity o f style, Caravaggio came to observe and record the psyche o f his models with an effect o f separate and living truth within the real world, no longer trammeled in the psyche and emotions o f the artist. He has interposed a small but very sensible psychological distance between us and the modelimage, which does not lessen its immediacy or decrease its power o f communication, but which makes our experience o f it like that o f a true reaHty, uncompromised by the artificial subjectivity that art suppHes. This psychological distance between viewer and image is no void; it is, rather, like a spark gap; prodigiously charged, it is the bridge for a relationship which is, in both the human and aesthetic dimensions, phenomenally live. Caravaggio's process of maturing was, as we have already noticed, not only an internal one. It was accelerated by the sense that Caravaggio must have felt o f difference from his immediate artistic context and, as well, from the art-historical past: the sense o f difference, which we too must feel strongly, emerges more and more with each new personal expression, and as it emerges it is inevitably selfreinforcing. B y the century's turn Caravaggio's new way had acquired the character o f an aggression against his context o f contemporary art and even more against the sources in the Cinquecento past o f the present's persistent habit o f idealism, conspicuous, for a prime example, in the art o f Annibale Carracci. There are deliberate episodes, o f which the Baptist is among the most expHcit, o f aggression toward the great deities of sixteenth-century painting, M i chelangelo in particular. A deliberate translation into realist prose o f overt classic sources on the sacred Sistine Ceiling (78), the Baptist is not just anti-ideal; it is a derisive irony.

and in a sense a blasphemy, which intends an effect o f sacrilege and s h o c k — t o which its contemporary audience would haye been more susceptible than we. The Amor (in Berlin-Dahlem; 79) o f 1601 or 1602 is a still more drastic inversion in this same vein (80). T h e measure o f Caravaggio's aggression against Michelangelo is in proportion to the latter's towering ideality, but there may be a less theoretical basis for i t — a reaction to Michelangelo's veiling and sublimation o f a sexual disposition that Caravaggio in his art had made overt. The relation to Michelangelo's example is, however, two-faced: Caravaggio is awed by what provokes him to attack, and like all acts o f blasphemy these o f Caravaggio are inescapably ambivalent.

78. Michelangelo, Sistine Ceiling, detail, Ignudo. Vatican, Sistine Chapel

[59]

Pictures like the Baptist and the Amor are at least in part polemic, and they may be taken as nonverbal manifestos of Caravaggio's anti-ideal posture. As he matures, Caravaggio insists that the mission of the painter is not only to describe reahstically; he insists further that what he chooses to describe be real in the sense of being ordinary or, even more, common, popolano—of the people not just in appearance but in expression and behavior. T h e painter's representation must be unstyled, without rhetoric and without maniera. In Caravaggio's whole mature work there is no mythology or ancient history, and except for the Amor there is no classical literary theme. Yet despite the popolano world that the art of the mature Caravaggio describes, there is no genre either, though genre in Seicento art would derive f r o m what he paints. His religious themes are

79. C a r a v a g g i o , Amor. B e r l i n - D a h l e m , Gallery.

80. Michelangelo, Sistine Ceiling, detail. Ignudo. Vatican, Sistine C h a p e l

[60]

81. Caravaggio, Calling of Matthew. R o m e , S. Luigi dei Francesi, Contarelli Chapel

acted out b y persons f r o m the realm of genre in places that could f r a m e genre scenes, and the technique w h i c h describes t h e m is that which genre painters come to use. H o w e v e r , this implies n o submission of religious art to genre; very differently, this is a n e w kind of religious art.

which makes its persons actual and its subject matter u t terly contemporary, m o s t poignantly of now. This begins with Caravaggio's first public and large-scale commission, the Calling of Matthew in the Contarelli Chapel of S. Luigi dei Francesi of 1599 (81), and becomes still m o r e evident in

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Caravaggio, Crucifixion of St. Peter. Rome, S. M. del Popolo, Cerasi Chapel

the paintings o f 1 6 0 0 - 1 6 0 1 in the Cerasi Chapel o f S. M. del Popolo in R o m e (82, 83); it is explicit in a painting o f a briefly later moment, most likely 1 6 0 1 - 2 , the Supper at Emmaus in the National Gallery in London (84). T h e logic o f the case suggests that painting made from such a realist premise should be a kind o f anti-art, in that it

[62]

83. Caravaggio, Conversion of St. Paul. Rome, S. M. del Popolo, Cerasi Chapel

seems to reject all the apparatus o f art that does not serve the immediate purpose of representation and communication; and from what we have observed o f Caravaggio's relation to the High Renaissance, it should be anti-classical as well. But in evident fact the discipline o f form and struc-

C a r a v a g g i o , Supper at Emmaus.

L o n d o n , N a t i o n a l Gallery

ture that Caravaggio exhibits in these works is quintessentially artistic, and it is also classical in kind. There is a sense in every part—let us take the Emmaus as example (85)—of the action on it of a strongly shaping, summary geometry; in the relation of each part to its including form there is a

sense of lucid sequentiahty, and in the whole image a clarity, coherence, and stability of relationship that makes an order of an explicitly classical kind. This formal order illustrates a consonant order of emotion, lucid, stilled, and strong, arresting drama in a powerfully charged instant in a

[63]

C a r a v a g g i o , Supper at Emmaus, L o n d o n , N a t i o n a l Gallery

detail.

C a r a v a g g i o , Entombment.

way that recalls a central dogma of the early Cinquecento's highest classical style. We are accustomed in conventional art history to think of Caravaggio as the great protagonist of Seicento realism, while Annibale Carracci stands as the defender of the principles of classicism; but should we compare a mature and typical work by Caravaggio, his Entombment in the Vatican (86), of 1602, with Annibale's Pietà

[64]

Vatican Gallery

in London (69), of about 1605, we must observe that in essential ways Caravaggio's work is not less classical than Carracci's. The Caravaggio demonstrates no less coherence and economy of form, and an equally stringent discipline of feeling, and in the Caravaggio no less than in the Carracci there is a studied rhetoric that descends f r o m the classical tradition.

In the course of the painting of the Cerasi Chapel a curious instance occurred of what seems certainly to be a crossinfluence between Caravaggio and Annibale. T h e commission for this decoration was in fact a shared one; while the laterals with St. Peter and St. Paul were assigned to Caravaggio, the altarpiece, an Assunta (87), was given to Annibale, in exactly the same time span, 1600-1601. In this close contact Annibale recovered f r o m Caravaggio's example some of the conspicuous interest of his o w n beginning years in realism, and in the Assunta recalled that it was he, not Caravaggio, w h o had first conceived the idea of a popolano typology, which he here describes not in his native optically oriented vein but with a hard-shelled surface of Caravaggesque kind. Caravaggio responded oppositely to Annibale, or at least to some of the ideals that Annibale shared with the more traditional painters of the R o m a n school. Caravaggio did t w o versions of the laterals for the Cerasi Chapel; for reasons we do not know, the first pair was withdrawn. O n e of them, the Conversion of St. Paul (88), exists in the Balbi-Odescalchi collection in Genoa. In it Caravaggio essayed the conventional, accepted m o d e of history painting, fancy and dramatically movemented, a manner totally alien to his normal disposition and his current development of style. Perhaps fortunately for both artists, their enforced conjunction was temporary, as was their effect on each other's art.

A n n i b a l e Carracci, Assumption of the Virgin. R o m e , S. M . del P o p o l o , Cerasi C h a p e l

When w e consider the intrinsic classicism in Caravaggio's mature style it may not be too extravagant to think of it, despite his outward attitude toward the High Renaissance, as a kind of Raphaelism refounded in nature (89, 90), of which the classicism, however, shows none of the outward apparatus that would signal its internal presence. But the center of gravity of Caravaggio's style hes nonetheless in a very different place; his style is anchored at a far different depth into reality, and while he endows the ordinary with dignity of both f o r m and emotion he never tries to escape reality or contravene it. And as this art probes more

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Caravaggio, Conversion of St. Paul. Genoa, Balbi-Odescalchi Collection

deeply into physical reality so docs it come to seek, with ever-increasing profundity, the inner reality o f psychological experience. In the Death of the Virgin o f 1605 (91), in the Louvre, the tenor o f emotion, contained and stilled, remains like that o f classicism, but it probes in private regions that the conventions o f classicism would close off: there is no secret o f the psyche that Caravaggio cannot find out. As he searches out the depths o f feeling he insists increasingly that it convey a total authenticity, requiring that

[66]

89. Caravaggio, Madonna di Loreto. Rome, S. Agostino

t

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m

t Τ ^

Raphael, Healing of the Lame (Tapestry C a r t o o n ) , detail. L o n d o n , Victoria and A l b e r t M u s e u m . R e p r o d u c e d b y courtesy of H . M . t h e Q u e e n (copyright reserved)

.

\

V

91. C a r a v a g g i o , Death of the Virgin. Paris, L o u v r e

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Caravaggio, David.

Caravaggio, Death of the Virgin, detail. Paris, Louvre

emotion wear the look and carry the behavior of the ordinary world, as different as possible from the styled world o f art. In the Death of the Virgin the only touch of rhetoric or self-conscious art is in an accessory o f setting, in the curtain; the human actors, unrhetorical and styleless, convey

[68]

Rome, Borghese Gallery

in each countenance their absolute veracity o f feehng (92). T h e effect o f truth is magnified by the complete absence in the actors o f any device or action o f dramatic kind. Caravaggio's practice is the antithesis o f the rising contemporary doctrine o f the rhetorical affetti, o f which Annibale Carracci at the same time gave such effective demonstrations. As Caravaggio matures further in the Roman years there

C a r a v a g g i o , Supper at Emmaus.

Milan, B r e r a Gallery

[69]

is an e v e r - d e e p e n i n g sense in his pictures o f the i n w a r d n e s s of feeling. The David of t h e B o r g h e s e Gallery (93), of late 1605 or early 1606, tragically introspective, is an e x a m p l e . Late in M a y of 1606, in an a r g u m e n t that ensued f r o m a ball g a m e , C a r a v a g g i o m u r d e r e d o n e Ranuccio T o m m a sini and was c o m p e l l e d in c o n s e q u e n c e t o flee R o m e , seeking r e f u g e m a i n l y in the territory of t h e C o l o n n a princes a r o u n d Palestrina. It was there that C a r a v a g g i o p a i n t e d a second i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of the Supper at Emmaus (94), n o w in t h e Brera Gallery in Milan; it d e m o n s t r a t e s m o s t eloquently w h a t h a d h a p p e n e d t o C a r a v a g g i o ' s p e r c e p t i o n of e m o t i o n in the f e w y e a r s — o n l y f o u r or at m o s t f i v e — since his first version of the t h e m e in 1 6 0 1 - 2 (84). In place of the f o r m i d a b l e i m m e d i a c y o f c o n f r o n t a t i o n w e are o f fered in the early version, the later painting asks a slower, quieter, m o r e g r a d u a l a p p r o a c h t o its inhabitants, in w h o m w e find a m u c h m o r e recessive, i n w a r d m o d e of indicating their e m o t i o n s : a gentling continence controls t h e t e n o r of t h e scene. T o s u p p o r t this different tonality of feeling and articulate it, light w o r k s w i t h a c o n c o m i t a n t restraint. T h e affective p o w e r of t h e lighting is n o t actually less t h a n in the brilliant display of t h e early Emmaus: its s t r e n g t h comes, h o w e v e r , n o t f r o m saliences and contrasts b u t f r o m an intensely c h a r g e d yet m u t e d vibration; the light plays m o r e m o v i n g l y t h a n in the early version, b u t n o w in sordino. T h e r e m a y be in this later Emmaus painting s o m e t h i n g biographical, a reflection of a state o f m i n d induced b y flight and e x i l e — I hesitate, in C a r a v a g g i o ' s circumstances, to suggest that its m o t i v e w a s remorse. It is true in any case that other paintings apparently of this m o m e n t , 1606, s h o w solitary a n d tragic-seeming states of feeling w i t h ext r a o r d i n a r y d e p t h : so the Magdalen, w h i c h survives o n l y in copies (as in Marseilles; 29), w h i c h reveals h o w well the artist k n o w s t h e c o n d i t i o n of spiritual anguish; or t h e St. Francis (95) in the c h u r c h o f t h e C a p p u c h i n s , in R o m e ,

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gio, St. Francis. hiesa dei C a p p u c c i n i

m o r e controlled, b u t n o less p o i g n a n t in its record of a state of spirit. U n d e r b a n i s h m e n t in R o m e , C a r a v a g g i o in t h e latest m o n t h s of 1606 or in early 1607 w e n t f r o m Palestrina to

N a p l e s to w o r k . H i s experience of that c i t y — v i o l e n t a n d teeming, unceasingly in f e r m e n t — s e e m s to h a v e r e g e n erated in C a r a v a g g i o s o m e part of his o w n native t o u g h ness, r e d e e m i n g t h e i n t r o v e r s i o n i n t o which, in t h e year or so before, he s e e m e d t o fall. O b j e c t i v i t y in the r e c o r d of e m o t i o n and explicitness of f o r m are again asserted in the Flagellation of 1507 in S. D o m e n i c o M a g g i o r e (96). T h e description of b o t h f o r m and feeling c o n v e y t h e m o s t i m pactful effect of a veracity, u n s p a r i n g of t h e spectator in its acuity and force. In t h e Crucifixion of St. Andrew of 1607 (97), recently rediscovered and n o w in the Cleveland M u seum, the sense of authenticity in the e m o t i o n s that C a r a v a g g i o depicts is such that w e m u s t force ourselves t o realize that these c o u n t e n a n c e s and gestures are n o t " r e c o r d s " ; t h e y are creative i m a g i n i n g s of t h e artist, w h o has felt in himself and t h e n p r o j e c t e d o n the e m o t i o n a l l y inert m o d e l s w h a t the latter could hardly be expected to feel o n c o m m a n d . T h e feelings C a r a v a g g i o p r e t e n d s t o us that he rep o r t s are actually his r e m e m b e r i n g s , interpretations, or e x trapolations of his o w n e m o t i o n a l experience, w h i c h he has, in the picture, situated in an externalized reality and instilled i n t o the countenances of real people. T h o u g h it is, thus, C a r a v a g g i o ' s e m o t i o n s that the persons in the p i c t u r e wear, they seem really to b e l o n g only and absolutely t o these persons and to the situations in w h i c h they act. T h e Salome in L o n d o n (98), of the s a m e year as t h e St. Andrew, d e m o n s t r a t e s this n o less certainly. W h e n w e consider h o w intensely C a r a v a g g i o m u s t h a v e experienced these feelings it seems a f o r m i d a b l e act of art that he w a s able t o extricate himself f r o m his depiction of e m o t i o n s and externalize and objectify t h e m as he has. T h e r e is n o c o m m e n t a r y f r o m h i m and n o i n v o l v e m e n t o n his part; and there is n o i n d e x of sentiment or pity, w h i c h i n v o l v e m e n t in situations such as these should a l m o s t u n a v o i d a b l y extract. C a r a v a g g i o ' s o b j e c t i f y i n g of e m o t i o n does n o t m e a n a rejection of the c o m p a s s i o n that his creating i m a g i n a t i o n

96. Caravaggio, Flagellation. N a p l e s , S. D o m e n i c o M a g g i o r e

[71]

C a r a v a g g i o , Crucifixion of St. Cleveland, M u s e u m of Art

[72]

Andrew.

m u s t h a v e m a d e h i m feel and that t h e painted i m a g e t h e n d e m a n d s absolutely f r o m t h e spectator. It m a y , h o w e v e r , h a v e been f o r h i m a psychological defense. C a r a v a g g i o ' s capacity for c o m p a s s i o n v^^as so deep and t e r r i b l e — i n t h e sense of terribilità—that w e r e he n o t able t o objectify it it could h a v e d e s t r o y e d h i m . His b i o g r a p h y reveals a p o tency of feeling that repeatedly b e c a m e u n g o v e r n a b l e , e r u p t i n g in excess, in violence, and, as w e h a v e seen, even in m u r d e r . W h a t h e could n o t achieve in life, h o w e v e r , he w a s able t o achieve in art, disciplining and o b j e c t i f y i n g his emotions, s u b l i m a t i n g thus his real-life vice of u n g o v e r n able passion. T h e process in art is a self-chastisement and an exorcism; p e r h a p s it m i g h t be seen also as a f u n c t i o n of his sexual disposition, trying to evade the taint that the " f e m i n i n e " vice of pity w o u l d cast u p o n his maleness. W h e n C a r a v a g g i o m o v e d o n f r o m N a p l e s to M a l t a late in 1607 there w a s n o i n t e r r u p t i o n in t h e biographical reco r d of restlessness and violence, b u t t h e expression of his art b e c a m e increasingly controlled. T h e Beheading of St. John the Baptist (99), in t h e cathedral at Valetta in Malta, of late 1 6 0 7 - 8 , is t h e m o s t impressive evidence o f this. A t r u t h that, as w e l o o k at it in the painting, seems n o t t o h a v e been t a m p e r e d w i t h at all has actually been stagem a n a g e d w i t h a deliberateness like that in a Poussin, a Sarto, or a Raphael. T h e setting, n e w in its extent f o r C a r a vaggio, is like a d i m l y lit stage, b u t it gives n o effect at all of artificiality. Instead, it seems to add a w i d e r d i m e n s i o n t o t h e given reahty, relating its inhabitants n o t j u s t t o the spectator in t h e space in f r o n t (as w a s usual before) b u t to a space that connects at either side i n t o the actual e n v i r o n ment, w h i c h is at once t h e actors' and o u r o w n . W i t h i n this larger a m b i e n c e t h e Hght that reveals t h e persons and t h e place to us has been m a n i p u l a t e d w i t h precise and absolute control (100): relentlessly, a l m o s t cruelly insistent, yet w o n d e r f u l l y fine in m o d u l a t i o n , t h e light w o r k s w i t h a m a t c h i n g of p o w e r s and subtleties that only R e m b r a n d t

f

ν C a r a v a g g i o , Salome. L o n d o n , N a t i o n a l Gallery

[73]

C a r a v a g g i o , Beheading of St. John the Baptist. Valetta (Malta), C a t h e d r a l

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later would achieve, and with an effect of truth that R e m brandt never matched. T h e history of the event has been given us in its essentials, but this, even less than earlier paintings by Caravaggio, is not a narrative. We are s h o w n persons—"actors"

100.

Beheading

Caravaggio, of St. John the Baptist, detail. Valetta (Malta), C a t h e d r a l

seems no longer the right w o r d for t h e m — i n a situation caught in an arrested moment of which w e can feel, oppressively, the stillness: the stillness seems almost to make an aching in our ears. The stillness is that of a crucial pause between violent and dramatic actions, and it is gravid with the sense of them. T h e violence and drama have not been described, but instead the moment that is the aftermath of one and the prelude to the other. T h e tonality of this situation is in fact quite contrary to that of drama, especially if we imply by drama something that conveys the sense of being staged. What w e have been presented with appears, oppositely, an actuality, a moment of present truth—a

101. C a r a v a g g i o , Burial Siracusa, S. L u c i a

of St.

Lucy.

[75]

" n o w " — a n d , as in the psychological m o m e n t of truth the world for a terrible instant of realization stands quite still, so does it here. This past history which has been made a present is a m o m e n t of arrested time: by definition, thus, eternal, so that it is no less a " n o w " for us than for Caravaggio when he arrested it for his contemporaries. And though he has avoided the depiction of the violence, he has made its burden and its consequence of tragedy eternal also. T h e St. John painting is the image of a death, and in Caravaggio's latest pictures death seems a constant presence—an omnipresence, indeed—hauntingly sensible to the viewer through and all around the h u m a n presences in each scene. From the m o m e n t of his exile f r o m R o m e in 1606, and more after he fled Malta in 1608, an object of vendetta by the knights of the Order, Caravaggio was a hunted man, in fear of violence and death; both soon found him out. T h e mortal themes of Caravaggio's latest works were surely on account of patrons' orders, but the feeling about death that Caravaggio paints into them is all his own. D o n e in Sicily, to which he came f r o m Malta, the Burial of St. Lucy (101) in the church of S. Lucia in Siracusa dates f r o m late in 1608; the Resurrection of Lazarus (102), n o w in the Messina Museum, f r o m early 1609. Both themes have literally to do not just with death in a general sense but specifically with the grave, with burial and disinterment. Both scenes are inhabited by persons w h o seem in no way to belong to any world of art but only, simply, to be true, and they carry in them feehngs that, no less simply, convey an utter authenticity. T h e Burial of Lucy is so blunt that it is as if in it Caravaggio should have renounced art, wanting to do no more than give mute voice in his canvas to the suffering of a c o m m o n humanity. In the Resurrection of Lazarus the long-past occurrence is relived for us, and w e become enchained, transfixed spectators of the real event. T h e image has the power of a primitive (we

[76]

102. C a r a v a g g i o , Resurrection of Lazarus.

Messina, M u s e u m

л f.

г, .·•

103. G i o t t o , Resurrection of Lazarus. P a d u a , Arena C h a p e l

m i g h t c o m p a r e G i o t t o ' s version of the t h e m e ; 103), j o i n e d , h o w e v e r , to t h e explicitness that results f r o m a n e w m i m e t i c truth. As t h e j o l t i n g charge of h f e assaults h i m , Lazarus' gesture is like t h e s u d d e n release of a spring; it b r i n g s to m i n d the C r u c i f i x i o n and t h e death that m u s t befall t h e C h r i s t w h o here inspires life, as t h e t h e m e itself implies his resurrection. B u t there is n o sense in these associations of d o g m a ; t h e absolute m e a n i n g is that of the truth, as p r e s ence and e m o t i o n , o f w h a t w e h a v e been m a d e to see (104). T h e Adoration of the Shepherds (105), also in the m u s e u m at Messina and o f the s a m e t i m e as the Lazarus, is a similar

104. C a r a v a g g i o , Resurrection of Lazarus, Messina, M u s e u m

detail

[77]

1Фч

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^

106. Caravaggio, St. John the Baptist. R o m e , B o r g h e s e Gallery 105. C a r a v a g g i o , Adoration of the Messina, M u s e u m

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Shepherds.

image of unstyled truth, f r o m which emerges an emotion that is in the same instant completely still and wholly shattering; there is no least trace of subjectivity or sentiment. Yet a painting I j u d g e to be of Caravaggio's last year, the St. John of the Borghese Gallery in R o m e (106), done almost certainly in Naples (to which Caravaggio had returned) in late 1609 or early 1610, reveals an evident c o m munion between the artist and his model. T h e relationship, however, is of a very different kind f r o m that in the pictures of similar subject matter done, Hke the Baptist with the Ram (plate II), in Caravaggio's early mature years. This late image asserts neither physicality nor sensuahty; and

though its tenor is as gentle as that of theMn5!ca (74), earlier than the Baptist, this is without sentiment. T h e late St. John speaks of a spiritual dimension in Caravaggio's relation to the model that is unlike what is in the young painter's images of other youths, which are, in one sense, the most private expressions of this artist's psyche. T h e communion in this late work is a gentle, tragic-seeming one, which k n o w s too well the transience of the mortal world that Caravaggio, more than any painter w h o had lived so far, had learned to recreate so truthfully in art. Caravaggio's o w n mortahty was proved to him too soon, in July 1610, at the age of thirty-eight.

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III

PLATE

III.

Ludovico Carracci, ΗοΙγ Family with St. Francis and Donors. Cento, Museo Civico

IXJDOVICO CARRACCI

U D O V I C O CARRACCI WAS the oldest of the family triumvirate of Bolognese artists—Ludovico ^himself, born in 1555, and his two cousins. Agostino and Annibale—who altered drastically and irrevocably the course of Italian art in the later years of the sixteenth century and laid the bases for the style that would dominate the century to come. Ludovico is outdistanced in art history by his cousin Annibale, five years his junior, whose creativity knew virtually no impediment, at least until his latest years. Ludovico was nevertheless in his own right an artist of extraordinary stature, the inventor of a novel rep-

L

107. Ludovico Carracci, Annunciation. Bologna, Gallery

ertory of feelings, and forms in which to communicate them, that would open ways to the coming Baroque style. Yet this very capacity for feeling in Ludovico was also his defect. Quite without the classicizing resource of emotional control that Annibale possessed, Ludovico's powers of feeling could simultaneously be the motive of his accomphshment and the cause of grave flaws in it. He was a faulted genius who needs more elaborate explanation than we can here afford. I shall make some observations only, passing many matters of importance without remark: my account will of necessity be incomplete.

T h e Annunciation (107), now in the Bologna Gallery, is the earliest painting that we can attribute with complete certainty to Ludovico. T h e date given it in the literature varies between 1582 and 1584. It is regrettable that the date cannot be more exactly specified, for our interpretation o f a matter o f historical precedence between Ludovico and Annibale in part depends on it. Ludovico was by this time twenty-seven years old at least and had been a member o f the painters' guild since 1579. Let us see what this early work tells us o f the painter. It is quiet, even gentle, in form and in expression, yet despite this quiet we feel a very powerful, assertive presence. T h e form impresses itself on us by its clarity and simpBcity, and it is made salient by a strong, uncomphcated Hght. T h e image creates an immediate and adequate effect o f truth, not only in its presences but in the communication o f their meaning by action and gesture; the seeming naturalness o f action and gesture has an effect as intense as the form itself, conveying genuinely the actors' inner states. H o w did this painting differ f r o m — o r resemble—its contemporary context o f Itahan art? Let us compare, first o f all, a picture probably o f some ten years earlier by Ludovico's teacher. Prospero Fontana, an Annunciation now in the Brera Gallery in Milan (108). T h e Ludovico stands against this representative work o f the late Maniera as an index o f a new attitude toward the nature and the uses o f art, and indeed toward nature itself In the Maniera work ornamental value takes primacy over the desire for descriptive truth, and a code o f highly stylized, fancy behavior almost excludes the sense o f any narrative sincerity. Ludovico's picture seems, by comparison, to be deliberately in a prose style while the Maniera Annunciation pretends to a fanciful and elaborated poetry. Another work exactly contemporary with Ludovico's Annunciation, by an older, highly distinguished Bolognese painter, Bartolommeo Passarotti, is a Presentation in the

108, Prospero Fontana, Annunciation. Milan, Brera Gallery

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Temple o f ca. 1583, now in the Bologna Gallery (109). It is apparent from this painting that in the Bolognese school around Ludovico, even among older painters, there were strong symptoms, though they are no more than symptoms, o f an interest like his in forceful presence and descriptive truth. But Passerotti's naturaUsm, unhke Ludovico's, is fragmentary, and in the context o f the whole picture the elements o f naturalism are overridden by the ornamentalism, the attitudinizing, and the concettistic fancy o f Maniera. T h e concern with a new naturalism o f forms and content and, as a necessary consequence, a new mode o f actual compositional design was not unique to Bologna at this time: it had been anticipated elsewhere in Italy, and most particularly in Florence, a decade before Ludovico's Annunciation. B y this date in Florence, a naturalizing style was much advanced and in some respects in command o f more sophisticated means than Ludovico possessed. However, as in the Doubting Thomas by the Florentine Santi di Tito (ПО), datable before 1584 (in B o r g o San Sepolcro), we realize that the Florentine impulse to naturalism is impeded by a residual Florentine habit o f ideality, and by a politeness that inhibits seeking for intensity. At the same date there are also Roman evidences o f the new tendency toward naturalizing style. T h e Immaculate Conception by Scipione Pulzone (111), in the town o f Ronciglione near Rome, ca. 1581, reveals an accomplishment o f naturalistic form that very much resembles Ludovico's in its insistence; however, it is more constrained, reflecting more the role that was played in R o m e by the mentahty of the strictest Counter-Reformation. But it is in the work o f Ludovico's cousin, the young Annibale Carracci, as in his Crucifixion o f 1583 (plate I), that we observe a measure o f attainment o f naturalism in painting that far outstrips all other contemporaries. Beside this work, the naturahsm o f Ludovico's Annunciation seems

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109. Bartolommeo Passarotti, Presentation in the Temple. Bologna, Gallery

no. Santi di Tito, Doubting

Thomas.

Borgo San Sepolcro, Cathedral

111. Scipione Pulzone, Immaculate

Conception.

Rondglione, Chiesa dei Cappuccini

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incomplete and arbitrary, m o r e like the m o d e w e have just observed of the c o n t e m p o r a r y Pulzone in R o m e , or like the restrained assertions of descriptive truth w e find in Florentine r e f o r m e r s Hke Santo di Tito. Annibale here displays a far m o r e — i n every sense of the word—comprehending grasp of the visual matter that signifies existence: complex, flexible, and alive. Whatever Ludovico had acc o m p h s h e d by this time in the w a y of a naturalism like A n nibale's, his penetration on this w a y was m u c h behind. T h e Vision of St. Francis (112), n o w in A m s t e r d a m , is a picture b y Ludovico of sUghtly later date than his Annun-

112.

Ludovico Carracci, Vision of St.

Francis.

Amsterdam, Ryksmuseum

ciation, probably b e t w e e n 1583 and 1585; evidently it is a m o r e confident and sophisticated w o r k . It is m o r e searching and elaborate in its description of forms, especially as they are revealed in light. T h e r e is a continuing constraint in the d e m e a n o r of the actors, but their setting and the composition that contains t h e m have a n e w f r e e d o m . T h e r e is the evidence here of the w o r k i n g on L u d o v i c o of Annibale's m o r e advanced naturalist example and of their j o i n t exploration of their p r o g r a m of w h a t is historically called eclecticism, of reference to the great masters of the earlier sixteenth century: C o r r e g g i o in particular has been

114. Alessandro Moretto, Madonna

di

Paltone.

Paltone, Chiesa del Pellegrinano

113. Correggio, Nativity

{La

Notte).

Dresden, Gallery

i m p o r t a n t to the Vision of St. Francis. T o c o m p a r e it to Correggio's f a m o u s Notte (113) is to observe that there are, there, a similar compositional mobility, a like spatial m o v e m e n t , and the source of inspiration for Ludovico's various and highly expressive manipulation of the hght. A n d Ludovico's fineness and intensity in the description of his actors' expressions is n o less Correggesque. As in C o r reggio also, light articulates feeling, defining and m o s t subtly specifying it. At the same time, the quiet of larger f o r m s contains e m o t i o n and creates a tension between intensity of feeling and its constraint, which generates an extraordinary poignance of effect. T h e r e is recall not only of C o r reggio but of the f o r m s and m o d e s of natural description and of simple and sincere belief that occur in another aspect of the N o r t h Italian tradition, m o r e provincial than the B o lognese, as in the L o m b a r d Madonna di Paitone, about 1550, b y M o r e t t o (114).

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T h e feeling in Ludovico's picture is of controlled yet p r o f o u n d piety. It has been noted often that this i m a g e c o n f o r m s to the prescriptions for the renovation of religious art that are contained in the tract referred to earlier in connection w i t h Annibale, the Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane of Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti, which r e c o m m e n d s the u n i o n of piety w i t h descriptive truth to m o v e the Christian spectator. T h e first t w o chapters of the tract were issued, t h o u g h not for general distribution, in late 1581 with an i m p r i n t date of 1582. T h e near-coincidence of time, place, prescription, and practice between Ludovico's first t w o pictures and the Discorso are t o o close to be only accidental. It is possible, or even hkely, that a reading of Paleotti, or a discussion of it, gave an affirming impulse to a direction L u d o v i c o had already undertaken; w e m i g h t suppose that s o m e t h i n g similar m i g h t have occurred in Annibale's case as well. B u t the connection with Paleotti's tract is imprecise, and m a n y questions about it are u n a n swered. For example, h o w , w i t h i n a year, or perhaps less, of the appearance of the partially published book, could a m a j o r leap of style have been evolved f r o m its prescript i o n s — f r o m the m o d e s t r e f o r m it seems the tract proposes to formidable invention? Paleotti, after all, gives only verbal advice in his Discorso but n o visual model, and w e have seen that his o w n artistic taste was far less radical than the style that either Ludovico or Annibale conceived. Paleotti did not invent Ludovico's or Annibale's style, and he m a y not at all h a v e m e a n t his verbal prescriptions to take the f o r m that, hypothetically, the t w o artists gave them. W h a t m u s t be clear in the matter of Ludovico's and A n nibale's innovation of style is Annibale's far m o r e radical exploration of naturalist devices. If w e m a y deduce f r o m this that it was he w h o set an e x a m p l e to Ludovico for this naturalist direction, it further vitiates the possible role of Paleotti's treatise in f o r m i n g Ludovico's style. W e have noted that the early Annibale's pursuit of naturalism is n o t

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only in religious subjects, w h e r e Paleotti r e c o m m e n d s it, but in genre, a region that m u c h m o r e immediately invites it and that L u d o v i c o never chose to explore. Let us review a f e w examples of this naturalist direction in a genre realm: antecedent to the S. Niccolò Crucifixion (plate I), A n n i bale's Butcher's Shop (12), most p r o b a b l y of 1582, at latest 1583, or, slightly after the Crucifixion, the Bean Eater of the C o l o n n a Gallery in R o m e (15), of 1584-85. W e r e m a r k e d that Annibale had even very early dared to handle a religious subject as if it were genre, in his Dead Christ (11), n o w in the Stuttgart Gallery, painted n o later than 1582 or 1583. I think w e m a y recapitulate the order of events in these first essays t o w a r d the n e w naturalism that w o u l d be a basic factor in the f o u n d i n g of the " m o d e r n , " p o s t - M a n nerist style. T h e first and only partial steps w o u l d have been taken b y Ludovico in concert with, and partially in echo o f c o n t e m p o r a r y reformers, partially in Bologna, m o r e particularly in c o n t e m p o r a r y Florence; but L u d o v i c o himself did not m o v e m u c h b e y o n d the example of these contemporaries, if at all. His action, h o w e v e r , could have been a stimulus to the y o u n g e r Annibale w h o then, p l u n g ing radically ahead on this route, outdistanced L u d o v i c o and then in t u r n gave h i m example in the n e w direction. T h e dating of Ludovico's first large-scale altarpiece (115) varies between 1585 and 1588. It has n o w f o u n d its w a y to the m u s e u m in Raleigh, N o r t h Carohna. If w e grant, as w e seem to have done, Annibale's p r i m a c y in the invention of the n e w naturalism, then this w o r k by Ludovico m u s t o w e m u c h to Annibale's precedent in his Assumption of 1587 (30), n o w in Dresden. Annibale's (as one might call it) " p o pulist" naturalism of types and countenances is reflected f r o m the Dresden altar into Ludovico's painting, and there is a partial, less successful adaptation of Annibale's naturalism of gesture and of action. Ludovico's modernist intention here has, h o w e v e r , been c o m p r o m i s e d w i t h a residual

rigidity of f o r m s like that w h i c h appeared in his earlier paintings, as well as b y a c o n c e p t i o n o f the figures that is, in the m o s t literal sense, superficial m o r e than it is s u b s t a n tial: in a w a y that recalls tendencies o f past M a n n e r i s m , the figures wear g a r m e n t s that seem assemblages o f colored planes, w i t h v e r y little m a t t e r u n d e r n e a t h . T h e spatial s c h e m e is also recollective of M a n n e r i s m , conspicuously of precedents in T i n t o r e t t o . A Conversion of St. Paul (116) in t h e B o l o g n a Gallery, of b e t w e e n 1587 and 1589, is a religious painting that has m o r e the character of an ancient h i s t o r y t h a n o f a d e v o tional image, a n d it s u m m o n s f r o m L u d o v i c o m u c h m o r e of t h e M a n n e r i s t residue that is in his present disposition. T h i s is a potentially fancy subject, like the preferred s u b jects of the M a n n e r i s t s , and it invites elaborated o r n a m e n tal c o n t o u r s and fine attitudes and even a specific reference t o a precedent t h e n in B o l o g n a f o r this s a m e t h e m e b y the great M a n n e r i s t painter P a r m i g i a n i n o . T h i s m a n n e r i z i n g tendency is n o t j u s t an overcast o n the style of L u d o v i c o ' s picture b u t a significant factor in it. It is, h o w e v e r , less assertive in the w h o l e effect of style t h a n t h e still f u r t h e r acc o m m o d a t i o n L u d o v i c o has n o w m a d e w i t h Annibale's e x a m p l e of a n e w direction, specifically again in t h e D r e s den Assumption, of p h y s i o g n o m i c description and insistently d r a m a t i c action. A n d the effect of presence and of d r a m a is once m o r e m a g n i f i e d b y t h e i n s t r u m e n t that L u d o v i c o e m p l o y e d so well f r o m the b e g i n n i n g , his skillful m a n i p u l a t i o n of light.

115. L u d o v i c o Carracci, Assumption of the Virgin. Raleigh, N . C . , M u s e u m of A r t

W h e n he w a s a s t u d e n t L u d o v i c o had been called "il b u e " f o r his a p p a r e n t slowness. H e w a s indeed s l o w t o m a ture if w e conceive that the Bargellini Altar (117), painted b y L u d o v i c o in 1588 at t h e age of thirty-three, is t h e evidence of his first e m e r g e n c e i n t o an entirely self-certain and c o m m a n d i n g style. T h e style is a dialectic o f the rigid, still abstracting surfaces that w e f o u n d in t h e earlier Assumption and of the o r n a m e n t a l fluency of shapes and design that

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116. Ludovico C a r r a c a , Conversion of St. Paul. Bologna, Gallery

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117. Ludovico Carracci, BargelUni Altar. Bologna, Gallery

were in the Conversion of St. Paul: both, it should be noted, Maniera-like. T o previous retrospective study in the domain of Correggio, Ludovico n o w has joined Titian and Veronese, perhaps come to Ludovico f r o m Annibale's exposure to the Venetians in situ rather than f r o m an internal impetus of Ludovico's own. Annibale's St. Matthew (34), also dated 1588, is unequivocally related to Ludovico's current work, but the evident connection between the t w o altarpieces also marks their difference. In Annibale's the forms are fleshed and rounding, sensuously textured, and they are traversed by rhythms that are suave, controlled, and strong, closely approximating the examples of earlier sixteenth-century Venetian design. Ludovico, however, still makes angled planes of f o r m as if f r o m sheet metal; contours are less curves than they are sequences of fineedged angles, impelled and nervous in their rhythms. T h e y lend an overcast to single forms and to the whole design of a transposed nervous Maniera elegance. This effect is accompanied, and at once moderated and modulated, by the working of the light; very differently f r o m Annibale, Ludovico's hght makes fine, almost febrile complexities of chiaroscuro and then, contrarily, as if in compensation, makes episodes of textured radiance which almost outdistance Annibale in their warmth. T h e St. Vincent (118), of shghtly later date, probably 1589-90, in the Palazzo Magnani in Bologna, is in the same temper of f o r m and draftsmanship as the Bargellini altarpiece, nervous and fine-spun; the elegance of design and shapes is still more recollective of Maniera. There are here, again, episodes that specifically derive f r o m Parmigianino. But still more evidently than in the Bargellini altarpiece these elements are wedded to a sharply descriptive and powerfully presence-making "modernity." Color functions similarly; its sharpened and insistent brilliance, assertive and light-saturated, on the one hand conveys an

118. Ludovico Carracci, St. Vincent. Bologna, Palazzo Magnani, Credito Romagnolo

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119. L u d o v i c o Carracci, Flagellation.

[92]

Douai, M u s e u m

abstracting ornamental value and on the other holds a p o w e r f u l descriptive force. T h e Flagellation (119) in the m u s e u m at Douai, of 1 5 8 9 90, s h o w s the same vocabulary of f o r m , w h i c h has been applied n o w not to elegance but to the illustration of acutest pathos. Ludovico's response to the narration and its content of e m o t i o n is an assimilation to it in an act of sharpest empathy. T h e s y m p t o m s o f this exceptional capacity for feeling were present in the earliest works, but there it had been muted, i n w a r d , and constrained. Here that p o t e n tial for feeling has been intensified to an incisiveness and pitch that m a k e a m a j o r invention w i t h o u t precedent in the history of ItaHan art and w i t h n o exact previous c o u n t e r part elsewhere. Ludovico's concern w i t h the expressive possibilities of h g h t and his capacity to manipulate it, visi-

ble since his beginnings, are here also developed to a n e w degree, forced so as to illustrate the sharpness, poignance, and violence of the emotion. T h e light w o r k s in reciprocally m a g n i f y i n g conjunction with the taut, wire-sharp, s w i f t - m o v i n g w e b of r h y t h m i c pattern. M a y one speculate that if C a r a v a g g i o saw this w o r k o n his w a y to R o m e about this time it could have had a considerable effect o n him, perhaps m o r e potent than that of his Milanese teachers? T h e Capture of Christ (120) is in the same mode, but w i t h its c o m m u n i c a t i o n m a d e still m o r e emotionally acute b y the k n o t t i n g intersections of the actors with each other and b y the closeness of presence, pattern, and e m o t i o n to

121. Annibale Carraca, Man of Sorrows. Dresden, Gallery 120. Ludovico Carraca, Capture of Christ. Paris, private collection

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ourselves. In Annibale Carracci's painting of a similar t h e m e (121), in Dresden, of t w o or three years before, the sense of nearness m a y be even m o r e and the pathos n o less strong, but it is conveyed to us w i t h a very different sense of its control. Ludovico's p o w e r of e m o t i o n is his great resource: his aggressive exploitation of it is at once his p r o d i gious merit and his potential failing. T h e Madonna and Child with Saints of about 1 5 9 0 - 9 1 (122), in the D o r i a Gallery in R o m e , indicates h o w L u d o vico adjusts his m o d e to the inherent tenor that he discerns in the subject matter. This intimate and loving t h e m e calls forth a m o r e fluent, less nervously complicating r h y t h m , and a warmer, richer, m o r e sensuously textured surface. C o l o r and light m o d u l a t e into one another. It is not j u s t a different t h e m e that calls forth this response, but also L u dovico's reaction to Annibale's example, increasingly m o r e pressing and authoritative in the last t w o years, of a V e n ice-like luxury and suavity of surfaces and of f o r m . This impulse t o w a r d a m o r e sensuous and fluent style had been received, to begin with, f r o m Annibale, and then, in the altarpiece of 1591 (plate III) for the C a p p u c h i n church at Cento, near Bologna ( n o w Cento, M u s e o C i vico), was put i n t o w h a t w e m a y call the crucible of L u d o vico's extreme emotionalism, f r o m which it e m e r g e d s o m e t h i n g different in degree and effect f r o m w h a t A n n i bale had m e a n t b y it, b e c o m e the i n s t r u m e n t of a n o w alm o s t violent splendor of e m o t i o n and of f o r m . In the C e n t o altar, life-sized, grand, rich-textured presences are p o w e r f u l l y m o v e d . T h e y e m e r g e f r o m the u n i f y i n g g r o u n d in radiant assertions of their light and color. T h e h g h t seems the great animating i n s t r u m e n t in the picture, at once the s y m p t o m of the emotional exaltation—it is almost a p o s s e s s i o n — t h e artist has conceived for his actors and the agency of its expression. This is a picture of sensationally B a r o q u e effect, far m o r e so than any to this m o m e n t in Annibale's oeuvre, and it anticipates b y a genera-

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122. Ludovico Carraca, Madonna and Child with Saints. Rome, Doria Gallery

tion the character of the incipient H i g h Baroque; and located in G u e r d n o ' s native t o w n , this picture w o u l d in fact b e c o m e the y o u n g e r artist's school. B u t even as it looks forward, the C e n t o altar has, in characteristic C a r r a c cesque way, l o o k e d back to find inspiration for its f o r w a r d impetus, to C o r r e g g i o , w h o s e e x a m p l e has here been read

\Χ

-

J

/ %

123. C o r r e g g i o , Rest on the Flight to Egypt {Scodella Altar). P a r m a , Gallery

in the originals, n o t just t h r o u g h Annibale's paraphrases. C o m p a r e the richness and m o b i h t y of the Scodella altar (123) or the passionate expressiveness of the great Giorno (124), both readily accessible to Ludovico in 1591. T h e Trinity in the Vatican M u s e u m (125), of around 1591-92, holds another element like that in the H i g h Baroque. In it

124. C o r r e g g i o , Madonna of St. Jerome {II Giorno). P a r m a , Gallery

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125. L u d o v i c o Carracci, Vatican Gallery

Trinity

126. L u d o v i c o Carracci, St. Ursula Aitar. B o l o g n a , Gallery

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the light is the vehicle not of an emotional exaltation b u t of a grand pathos, which, as in the H i g h Baroque, is conveyed t h r o u g h and fused w i t h beauty of a sensuous presence. T h e St. Ursula Altar (126), in the B o l o g n a M u s e u m , of 1592, applies the m o d e of the C e n t o altarpiece to an extended tragic narrative. Light is again the agent that articulates w h a t is narrated and described, and it conveys the tenor of emotion; darkened and various, intrinsically dramatic, it reveals tragedy and beauty simultaneously. This, too, is a m o d u s of the H i g h B a r o q u e and one that as well looks b a c k w a r d to Correggio. B u t there is a f u r t h e r r e t r o spective dimension here, identifiably Venetian, w h i c h mixes Titian's l u x u r y of color w i t h the complexity of T i n toretto's composition. Like Annibale, Ludovico does not simply practice a style; within his style he practices w h a t w e have called m o dahties, adjusting style in each instance to the nature of the subject dealt with. T h e Madonna with St. Jerome and St. Francis (127), the so-called Scalzi altar, of ca. 1593, also in the Bologna Gallery, is not a narrative subject but a visionary, devotional, and d o g m a t i c one, illustrating the I m m a c ulate Conception. Light here has been m u t e d to a pale s h i m m e r i n g of the upper air. T h e impulsive, r o u n d i n g r h y t h m s that had been in the C e n t o altarpiece and its assertive sense of substance are preserved only in St. J e r o m e ; the Virgin and St. Francis are m o r e fragile beings, recalling in their f o r m s the r h y t h m i c patternings of the Bargellini altar. T h e emotional sense of the picture is undeniably grand, yet restrained and fmely tuned. It is a deliberately distilled image, obviously recollective of Raphael's Sistine Madonna (39), but, in contrast, it s h o w s n o n e of the essential serenity of that great classical w o r k . H e r e the feeling is of febrility contained, and of the i m m i n e n c e of an e x t r e m e emotion. This is the final confirmation of divergence of Ludovico f r o m Annibale's example, in an unclassicizing

127. L u d o v i c o Carracci, Madonna with St. Jerome and St. Francis {Scalzi Altar). B o l o g n a , Gallery

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direction that contrasts with Annibale's powerful affirmation, in his altarpiece in Bologna (42) o f the same moment, 1593, o f a resurrected genuinely classical style. In 1594, in the Vision of St. Hyacinth in the Louvre (128), the essential emotional personality o f Ludovico suddenly emerged. Hitherto it had been somewhat deflected or restrained, or perhaps it was not till now entirely matured. But here we see it in its full dimension, impassioned, extreme, and wholly counter-classical. The power o f magnified presence achieved recently at Cento is, in this work, pressed toward the spectator in a crowded space. Strong physical movements by the actors are incorporated with violent impulses in the design. T h e vision depicted for us o f the Saint's own vision has been given intensest immediacy and violent life, o f which the extreme degree is concentrated in the head and hands o f Hyacinth. There is no face like it in the history o f art before. A surreal straining toward ecstasy, striving, in the literal sense o f ecstasy, beyond the self, is frozen rigid in this state, harsh and utterly unforgettable. In the pendant life-size paintings o f 1 5 9 4 - 9 5 oí the Flagellation (129) and the Crowning with Thorns (130), in the Bologna Gallery, a like violence o f feeling has been incorporated into dramatic actions that have been interpreted by Ludovico with every device he could conceive to intensify their drama. Powerful anatomies and postures not only narrate their drastic and impulsive movement; the very patterns o f their movement, sharp, urgent—indeed explosive—convey the passions that inspire them, and the tenor o f violence is increased and complicated by the light. All this explosion, o f forms and feelings, bursts upon the spectator in life size; again there is the implication o f a B a roque style. B y comparison, Caravaggio's scenes o f violence seem, and are, stylized and classically controlled. T h e Transfiguration in the Bologna Gallery (131), commissioned in 1593 but painted in 1 5 9 4 - 9 5 , is o f over-lifesize scale, about five meters high. In it the concentrated

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128.

Ludovico Carracci, Vision of St. Hyacinth.

Paris, Louvre

129. L u d o v i c o Carracci, Flagellation.

B o l o g n a , Gallery

130. L u d o v i c o Carracci, Crowning

with Thorns.

B o l o g n a , Gallery

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drama of the Flagellation and the Crowning with Thorns is magnified into grandiose hyperbole. T h e picture exaggerates in virtually every respect, in the gigantism of anatomies and the superabundance of their draperies, in the excessive action and in gesture which is m o r e than operatic, all of these reinforcing the effect the figures m a k e of sheer o v e r p o w e r i n g physical presence. T h e picture hits the spectator with prodigious force. Yet, for all the o v e r p o w e r i n g physicality in the Transfiguration, its w h o l e effect is different f r o m the Hyacinth. H e r e there is a stylization of gesture and action that is rhetorical in its effect, and an artificiality in the compositional order that makes this seem a staged rather than a true event. A b o v e all, there is an artificiality in the color, s t r o n g but cold, isolated into local fields— cherry red, cobalt, yellow-gold, and white. T h e B a r o q u e like devices seem here to coexist with impulses of rhetoric and artifice that have reasserted themselves f r o m the previous Mannerist style. Ludovico's inspiration is at least in part f r o m Annibale Carracci's first narrative altar o n very extensive scale, the highly rhetorical and dramatic History of St. Roch (48), n o w in Dresden, b e g u n earher, about 1587-88, but f i n i s h e d — p e r h a p s with the help of Ludovico h i m s e l f — c o n t e m p o r a n e o u s l y with the Transfiguration, around 1595. This hyperbolic m o d e is an inflation and an unclassical exaggeration of w h a t had originally been a classical grand manner, but it is also a means of achieving the rhetorical p u r p o s e of persuasion of a popular religious audience, in a w a y that was to b e c o m e frequent and familiar in the B a r o q u e style. This m o d e became the one w h i c h L u dovico t h o u g h t appropriate to his large-scale commissions, as of narrative altarpieces, for a decade or more. T h e Apostles at the Tomb of Mary of 1601 (sometimes called the Assumption of the Virgin; 132), in the C h u r c h of C o r p u s D o m i n i in Bologna, lessens b y a degree, b u t b y a degree only, the extreme action of the Transfiguration, but L u d o v i c o Carracci, Transfiguration.

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131. B o l o g n a , Gallery

132. Ludovico Carracci, Apostles at the Tomb of Mary. Bologna, Corpus Domini

133. Ludovico Carracci, Christ's Descent into Bologna, Corpus Domini

Limbo.

t o c o m p e n s a t e f o r this there is an increase in the c o m p l e x ity of the picture, in t h e lighting and in the design in g e n eral; and there e m e r g e in this altarpiece certain i d i o s y n c r a sies of f o r m and of e x p r e s s i o n — q u e e r n e s s e s , i n d e e d — t h a t are eccentric spinoffs f r o m L u d o v i c o ' s insufficiently c o n trolled emotionality. T h e y are visible in the Apostles at the Tomb a n d in the Descent into Limbo (133), a p e n d a n t picture in t h e s a m e church, p a i n t e d a f e w years later, in 1 6 0 4 - 5 ; b o t h s h o w a tendency t o w a r d u n n a t u r a l e l o n g a t i o n of the figures and abstractness in t h e drapery style, flatter and stiffer in its p a t t e r n i n g t h a n before, s u g g e s t i n g — y e t again — s o m e partial recall o f t h e late Maniera. At t h e s a m e time, as in t h e Calling of Matthew (134), in the B o l o g n a Gallery of 1 6 0 5 - 7 , there is a w a y of describing p h y s i o g n o m i e s in these altarpieces that verges o n caricature. T h e t e n d e n c y to caricature relates t o c o n t e m p o r a r y ideas o f realism, and specifically t o the n o t i o n o f w h a t w e h a v e previously called " p o p u l i s t " illustration; b u t at t h e same t i m e t h e degree of L u d o v i c o ' s caricature exceeds o u r sense o f w h a t is plausible. T h e Calling of Matthew, b y the w a y , is t h e only evidence of an effect on L u d o v i c o of his brief and apparently g r u d g i n g visit t o R o m e in M a y and J u n e of 1602: the gesture o f t h e C h r i s t is an echo of the f a m o u s gesture, ultimately Michelangelesque, in C a r a v a g g i o ' s picture o n this theme. T h e d e f o r m a t i o n s and the eccentricities w e h a v e n o t i c e d in the altarpieces painted in the h y p e r b o H c m o d e are c o m pletely willed and p u r p o s e f u l . T h i s is very evident w h e n o n e observes the quite contrary character, strongly idealized in a classicizing vein, of a picture p r o d u c e d close in t i m e to the St. Matthew altar, t h e Empress Visiting St. Catherine in Prison (135), in t h e C h u r c h of S. L e o n a r d o in B o l o gna, of a b o u t 1 6 0 5 - 6 . T h a t the mentality that takes these descriptive liberties, either idealizing as here, or eccentric as in the St. Matthew altar, has an affinity still w i t h t h e past Maniera is c o n f i r m e d b y the character o f design L u d o v i c o

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134. Ludovico Carracci, Calling of Matthew. Bologna, Gallery

136. Francesco P a r m i g i a n i n o , Madonna of St. B o l o g n a , Gallery

135. L u d o v i c o C a r r a c a , Empress Visiting St. Catherine in Prison. B o l o g n a , S. L e o n a r d o

Margaret.

has found for his painting. It is made of fine ornamental convolutions that would be quite acceptable to the author of such a wholly Maniera picture as, for example, Parmigianino's Madonna of St. Margaret (136), in Ludovico's time (and still) in Bologna.

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137. Ludovico Carracd, Annunciation. Genoa, Palazzo R o s s o

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An arbitrary attitude toward description is stronger still in a contemporary painting, the Annunciation (137), in the Palazzo Rosso in Genoa, of 1605-7; so also is the sense of an affinity with the precepts of the past Maniera that make ornament a value that takes precedence over truth. It is not only description that is absorbed here into ornament; in an analogous process, emotion turns f r o m prosaic verity into

139. Ludovico Carraca, Birth of the Virgin. Bologna, Gallery

something ornamental, deflecting force of feeling into sentiment; yet sentiment too, despite its sweetness, is intense. We have long since observed that Ludovico was a convert to his cousin's naturalism but not its inventor. Ludovico has apparently decided—he is in his forties n o w — t h a t naturalism is n o longer primary or vital to his intentions for his art. T h e Madonna with Saints in the collection of the Earl of Shelburne (138), of around 1607, and the Birth of the Virgin in the Bologna Gallery (139), of 1607-9, give evidence of the extraordinary measure of artificiality that Ludovico n o w permits himself Here are purities of f o r m that are quite pseudo-classical in their effect, which strangely coexist with distortions that suggest caricature. Works like these by Ludovico—and there are a n u m b e r of t h e m — may be taffy in their f o r m s and confectionery in expression; they may be, in our perspective, meretricious, but to Ludovico himself they were not false. This sentimental m o d e is the reverse of the medal of which the obverse is the extreme emotionalism that carries Ludovico, in an opposite direction, into high dramatic violence. That these are reconcilable expressions of a single integer of personahty is made clear by Ludovico's exactly contemporaneous creation, on grandiose scale, oí the Funeral of the Virgin (140) and the pendant Apostles at the Tomb of Mary (141), n o w in the Gallery at Parma, formerly in the choir of Piacenza Cathedral, of 1606-9. Here we are again in the realm of impassioned hyperbole, where f o r m and idea expand to the full dimension of the space allotted to the artist: these canvases are some seven meters in height. T h e y literally overwhelm the spectator with their magnitude, their density, and their awesome imminence. In the Funeral a procession of Titans, already close u p o n us, marches as if diagonally out into our space in twice our size. T h e effect on the spectator is stunning; the hyperbole is justified by its grandeur and its force of impact. In the Apostles at the Tomb

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Wf-^ùli^·

I

il

140. L u d o v i c o Carracci, Funeral of the Virgin. P a r m a , Gallery

[106]

--aff'""

! !l

»

N O

141. L u d o v i c o Carracci, Apostles at the Tomb of Mary. P a r m a , Gallery

there is a comparable but less urgently directed power of action. Unlike the Funeral, this does not insist so m u c h toward us, and it offers us release in an ascension, more than it is a recession, into a fantasy of celestial landscape. With the Dream of St. Catherine in the National Gallery in Washington (142), probably of 1612, we are dealing with a painting of more normal scale, in life size. Regardless of the difference of scale, the effects of breadth of f o r m and of authenticity of feeling are no less impressive than in the Apostles. These are grand f o r m s too, richly draped, moving in diagonally ascending waves across the picture plane; the figures impinge upon the spectator and impress him with their luxury and power of presence. T h e expression in this painting of an emotional tonaHty at once resonant and fme is not more or less controlled than the eccentric sentiment of certain earlier pictures had been. Feeling here is beautifully articulate, modulating f r o m the handsome sensuous vigor of the Virgin and the Child into the lyric loveliness of Catherine. T h e measure of Ludovico's sophistication in the calculated concord between forms and feelings is illustrated in the Dream of St. Catherine by the way in which he manipulates the rhythmic tenor of the figures and their colors to support what countenance or action illustrates of their emotions. A similar articulateness of feeling appears in the context of a dramatic narrative, the Body of St. Sebastian Thrown into the Cloaca Maxima (143), commissioned in 1612; the picture has recently been acquired by the Getty Museum. A high dramatic content in this painting is achieved less by any virtue of realistic description in it than by the power that is in Ludovico imaginatively to relive the scene and represent it to us in terms that seem immediate and unencumbered by convention, and to convey to us the life of his emotional response. This is an episode in which, for a m o m e n t , Ludovico's art suggests relation, though no necessary actual connection, with the recent art of Caravaggio. About the same time as the

L u d o v i c o Carracci, Dream of St. W a s h i n g t o n , N a t i o n a l Gallery, S a m u e l H . Kress Collection

Catherine.

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143. L u d o v i c o Carracci, Body of St. Sebastian M a l i b u , Calif., J. Paul G e t t y M u s e u m

[108]

Thrown into the Cloaca

Maxima.

144, Ludovico Carracci, Flight into Egypt. Bologna, Montebugnoli Collection

St. Sebastian, the Flight into Egypt (144), in the MontebugnoU Collection in Bologna, demonstrates—in an oppositely joyous tone—the same extraordinary power o f Ludovico's to rehve an event in his imagination in strikingly fresh-seeming terms. We enter now into the last phase of Ludovico's career, and though earlier happenings in his art may have prepared us for some things that now occur, the events o f this late phase are more singular and, in instances, disquieting, than we may have been led to expect. A first instance is the altar

in the Church o f S. Francesca Romana in Ferrara (145), dated 1614, which depicts an iconographically extraordinary scene, no doubt assigned to Ludovico, which may be described as "Christ Crucified, the Hope o f Souls in Purgatory." T h e theme itself is one to convey a sense o f emotional disturbance, but it seems evident that Ludovico has treated it so as to stress the possibilities in it o f eccentricity o f feeling. He has emphasized the strangenesses o f type, physiognomy, and expression; in the Christ he has insisted on an extreme precision in the modeling o f anatomy, but

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145. Ludovico Carraca, Christ Crucified. Ferrara, S. Francesca Romana

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its effect, in this forcing light, becomes surreal, while the light itself, violent in its dramatic contrasts, is manipulated to create an abstracting and heraldic pattern. This is an emotionally aberrant and disquieting image with an overtone of gloom and a flavor of morbidity. T h e emotionally eccentric temper that is always immanent in Ludovico, which appeared in its acutest f o r m about 1607, has surfaced once again in a depressed key and in a w o r k of m o n u m e n tal size. A year or t w o later than the Crucifixion in Ferrara, the S. Carlo Borrommeo Administering the Eucharist (146), in the Abbey at Nonantola, is a much m o r e melancholy work. Again, light is a primary agent to convey emotion, but here the force of light is considerably diminished and the darknesses corrode the forms. Even the sole strong field of color, S. Carlo's robe, makes a melancholy effect within this context. In f o r m and in quality of expression this is a literally morbid mode, both in the English sense of the word and in the Italian one, which can convey the sense of an excessive softness. T h e Adoration of the Kings (147) in the Brera in Milan, signed and dated 1616, is representative of the group of paintings in this late m o d e — t h e morbid m o d e — d e v e l oped to its extreme degree. A crepuscular light finds out the protagonists but reveals as it does so h o w pliable and substanceless they are; in the half-darkness the secondary actors are almost wraithlike, strange-featured, in places caricatures. T h e expressive matter of the entire picture is as pliant and corroded as the form. It is sentimentality in a black vein, as h u m o r can be black. T h o u g h this morbid vein is the dominant one of Ludovico's last years, and though it intrudes its tenor into almost all he does f r o m around 1613 or 1614 to his death in 1619, it does not wholly consume Ludovico's genius for inventing unconventional and emotion-generating images, particularly of a narrative or dramatic kind. Take, for ex-

Administering

146. Ludovico Carracci, 5. Carlo Bonommeo the Eucharist. N o n a n t o l a , A b b e y C h u r c h 147, Ludovico Carracci, Adoration of the Kings Milan, Brera Gallery

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148. L u d o v i c o C a r r a c a , Martyrdom of St. Margaret. M a n t u a , S. M a u r i z i o

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149. L u d o v i c o Carracci, St. George and St. Catherine Led to Martyrdom. R e g g i o Emilia, C h u r c h of the C h i a r a

ample, the Martyrdom of St. Margaret (148) in the C h u r c h of S. M a u r i z i o in M a n t u a , of 1616, w i t h its brilliant m a n i p u lation of perspective devices and of stagelike setting that c o m p e l c o n n e c t i o n w i t h t h e spectator, and t h e c o n j u n c t i o n in the p i c t u r e — t y p i c a l l y B a r o q u e — o f sensuality w i t h violence. A l t o g e t h e r like a piece of theatre in its staging is the St. George and St. Catherine Led to Martyrdom (149) in the C h u r c h of t h e C h i a r a in R e g g i o Emilia, finished in 1618. It is compelling and i m m e d i a t e in its narrative, of w h i c h t h e tragic and suspenseful sense is s u p p o r t e d b y the crepitation in the b a c k g r o u n d L u d o v i c o m a k e s w i t h l i g h t Yet all his effectiveness of d r a m a t i c device is deflected t o w a r d e m o t i o n a l eccentricity b y the m a n n e r e d — i n d e e d M a n i e r a — s h a p i n g of t h e f o r m s and b y t h e sentimental artificiality c o n v e y e d in their expression.

150. L u d o v i c o C a r r a c d , Susanna and the Elders. L o n d o n , N a t i o n a l Gallery

T h e Susanna and the Elders of 1616 (150) is a t h e m e that seems appropriately t o claim the attention of an aging artist (Ludovico w a s n o w s i x t y - o n e ) — t h e t h e m e of t h e p o w e r and b e a u t y of the female b e i n g and her desirability. L u d o v i c o m a k e s Susanna's b o d y live in light, yet the radiance h e p o u r s o n her m a k e s an equivocation in h e r flesh w i t h s m o o t h e d marble, and Susanna's head, doll-pretty, at the same t i m e has t h e artificial b e a u t y of a piece of classic statuary. T h e r e are a largeness o f f o r m and a g r a n d e u r of idea that, in t h e m i d d l e of L u d o v i c o ' s latest, m o r b i d , m o d e e v o k e the k i n d and merit o f his w o r k s o f a p r i o r time. L u d o v i c o ' s genius w a s always particularly s u m m o n e d b y the challenge of g r a n d scale, and in his last m a j o r w o r k , the fresco Annunciation in t h e C a t h e d r a l of S. P i e t r o in B o l o g n a (151), finished in 1619, L u d o v i c o m a d e a last great exercise of his i n v e n t i v e narrative imagination. T w o great f o r m s in a relation that magnifies their scale and the i m p l i cation of a m o v e m e n t in b e t w e e n t h e m arch t o w a r d each o t h e r across a light-filled space; w e are m a d e t o feel the separate g r a n d e u r of each actor and, in the same instant, the tension that connects t h e m . T h i s last w o r k o f L u d o -

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151. L u d o v i c o Carracci, Annunciation.

B o l o g n a , S. Pietro

vico's is to us an affirmation o f his undiminished powers o f invention and confirms the stature o f his accomplishment in his long career. Y e t the Annunciation was criticized for a detail—an alleged misdrawn foot—and legend has it that Ludovico died in 1619 o f chagrin at the painting's hostile reception. But the problem could not have been just a matter o f detail; the great merits he continued to display, even

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in the context o f the eccentric, morbid mode o f his later years, were in historical fact by now old-fashioned in their mode o f form and their character o f expression. His own past pupils in Bologna, as well as those who had gone from him to work with his cousin Annibale in Rome, had passed Ludovico by in their pursuit o f a new reach o f the modern style he had helped to found.

Bibliography Credits Index

Bibliography This short bibhography is restricted to writings in Enghsh. CARAVAGGIO Friedlaender, W. Caravaggio Studies. Princeton, N.J., 1955; paperback ed.. New York, 1969. Hinks, R. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.

London, 1953.

Posner, D. "Caravaggio's Homoerotic Early Works." Art Quarterly 34 (1971), 3 0 1 - 3 2 4 . THE CARRACCI Bellori, G. P. The Lives of Annibale and Agostino Carraca (translated by C. Enggass). University Park and London, 1968. Boschloo, A. Annibale Carracci in Bologna: Visible Reality in Art After the Council of Trent (translated by R. Symonds). The Hague, 1974. Dempsey, C. " 'Et Nos Cedamus Amori': Observations on the Farnese Gallery." Art Bulletin SO (1968), 3 6 3 - 3 7 4 . Dempsey, C. Annibale Carracci and the Beginnings of Baroque Style. Glückstadt, 1977. Martin, J. The Farnese Gallery.

Princeton, N.J., 1965.

Ostrow, S. Agostino Carracci. Ann Arbor, Mich., 1972. Posner, D. Annibale Carracci: A Study in the Reform of Italian Painting Around 1590. London and New York, 1971.

Credits F o r a f i g u r e n o t listed b e l o w , it m a y b e a s s u m e d t h a t t h e p h o t o g r a p h u s e d f o r r e p r o d u c t i o n h a s b e e n s u p p l i e d d i r e c t l y b y t h e p u b h e m u s e u m o r gallery t o w h i c h t h e p a i n t i n g b e l o n g s . Agraci: 92 Alinari: 16, 28, 39, 40, 43, 45, 49, 51, 61, 66, 72, 76, 77, 83, 88, 93, 96, 99, 100, 103, 105, 106, 109, 110, 114, 123, 124, 132 Anderson: 18, 25, 31, 32, 36, 53, 54, 62, 70, 78, 80, 81, 82, 95 Archivio Fotografico, Soprintendenza for Parma and Piacenza: 140, 141 B ö h m : 33 Brogi: 1, 9, 58 Bruckmann: 30, 34 Courtauld Institute of Art: 138 Credito Romagnolo, Bologna; f r o m С. Volpe, Il fregio . . . e i dipinti di Palazzo Magnani: 118 Croci: 7, 151 C u m i n g Associates: 120 Potofast: 4, 129, 146 Fototeca Unione: piate II

Gabinetto Fotografico Nazionale, Rome: 2, 8, 111 Gernsheim: 71 Giraudon: 91 Hanover Studios, London: 14 Istituto Centrale per il catalogo e la documentazione, Rome: 56, 59, 60, 63, 89 Istituto Centrale del Restauro, Rome: 101, 102, 104 L. von Matt: 67 Photo Studios: 23 Rizzoli: plate I Scodé: plate III Sommer: 52 Villani: 5, 6, 12, 13, 15, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 27, 35, 37, 41, 48, 107, 112, 116, 117, 119, 125, 126, 127, 130, 131, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 139, 144, 145, 147, 148, 149 source untraceable: 10, 75, 87, 122, 128

Index Numbers in italics refer to pages with illustrations. Aldobrandini, Margherita, 38 Amsterdam, Ryksmuseum L. Carracci, Vision of St. Anthony, 112), 86, 8 7 - 8 8

(fig.

Bartolommeo, Fra, 24 Berlin-Dahlem, Gallery Caravaggio, Amor (fig. 79), 59, 60 Beuckelaer, Joachim, 8 Bologna Gallery A. Carracci, Assumption of the Virgin (fig. 40), 27, 28; Madonna with St. John Evangelist and St. Catherine (fig. 42), 29, 30, 98; S. Ludovico Altar (figs. 35, 37, detail), 24, 25, 26 L. Carracci, Annunciation (fig. 107), 82, 83, 84, 86; Bargellini Altar (fig. 117), 89, 90, 91, 97; Birth of the Virgin (fig. 139), 105; Calling of Matthew (fig. 134), Ì02; Conversion of St. Paul (fig. 116), 89, 90, 91; Crowning with Thorns (fig. 130), 98, 99, 100; Flagellation (fig. 129), 98, 99, 100; Madonna with St. Jerome and St. Francis {Scalzi Altar) (fig. 127), 97; St. Ursula Altar (fig. 126), 96, 97; Transfiguration (fig. 131), 98, 100 Parmigianino, Madonna of St. Margaret (fig. 136), 103

Passarotti, Presentation in the Temple (fig. 109), 83, 84 Palazzo Fava, Sala di Jasone Α. Carracci, Battle in the Libyan Desert with Wild Beasts and Harpies (figs. 21, 22, detail), 13, 14, 15; False Funeral of the Infant Jason (fig. 20), 13; Frieze with the History of Jason (part, fig. 16), 8, 10, 12, 14 Palazzo Fava, Sala di Europa Α. Carracci, Europa Leading the Bull (fig. 19), 12; Europa Mounting the Jovian Bull (fig. 17), 10, 11, 12-13 Palazzo Magnani, Credito Romagnolo L. Carracci, St. Vincent (fig. 118), 91 Tacconi Collection L. Carracci, Flight into Egypt (fig. 144), 109 Corpus Domini L. Carracci, Apostles at the Tomb of Mary (fig. 132), 100, 101, 102; Christ's Descent into Limbo (fig. 133), 101, 102 S. Giacomo Maggiore Procaccini, Conversion of St. Paul (fig. 6),3 Sabbatini and Calvaert, Holy Family with St. Michael (fig. 5), 3 S. Giuseppe (formerly, destroyed in W W II) Passarotti, Crucifixion with Saints (fig. 7). 4

S. Gregorio A. Carracci, Baptism of Christ (fig. 24), 16 S. Leonardo L. Carracci, The Empress Visiting St. Catherine in Prison (fig. 135), 102, 103 S. M. Maggiore Sammachim, Madonna Enthroned with Saints (fig. 4), 3 S. M. della Carità (formerly in S. Niccolò) A. Carraca, Crucifixion with Saints (plate I), 2, 4 - 6 , 8, 10, 16, 84, 88 S. Pietro L. Carracci, Annunciation (fig. 151), 113, 114 Borgo San Sepolcro, Cathedral Santi, Doubting Thomas (fig. 110), 84, 85 B o w o o d (Wilts.), Earl o f S h e l b u r n e L. Carracci, Madonna with Saints (fig. 138), 104, 105 Bronzino, Agnolo, 52; St. John the Baptist (fig. 70), 52, 53

Calvaert, Dionisio, 2; Holy Family with St. Michael (fig. 5), 2, 3 Caravaggio, Michelangelo da, 50, 52-79, 93; and A. Carracci, 19-20, 53, 54, 64-65;

and L. Carracci, 98, 102, 107; death of, 79; and Giorgione, 57; and Michelangelo, 59; and Raphael, 65 WORKS: Adoration of the Shepherds (fig. 105), 77, 78, 79; Amor (fig. 79), 59, 60; Bacchus (fig. 76), 58; Beheading of St. John the Baptist (figs. 99, 100, detail), 72, 74, 75, 76; Burial of St. Lucy (fig. 101), 75, 76; Calling of Matthew (fig. 81), 61, 62; Conversion of St. Paul (Genoa, fig. 88), 65, 66; Conversion of St. Paul (Rome, fig, 83), 62; Crucifixion of St. Andrew (fig. 97), 71, 72; Crucifixion of St. Peter (fig. 82), 62; David (fig. 93), 68, 70; Death of the Virgin (figs. 91, 92), 66, 67, 68; Entombment (fig. 86), 64; Flagellation (fig. 96), 71; Fruttaiolo (Young Fruit Vendor) (fig. 72), 55, 56-57; Lutenist (fig. 75), 57, 58; Madonna di Loreto (fig. 89), 65, 66; Musica (The Music Party) (fig. 74), 56, 58, 79; Repentant Magdalen (copy, fig. 29), 19, 70; Resurrection of Lazarus (figs. 102, 104, detail), 76, 77, 79; St. Francis (fig. 95), 70; St. John the Baptist (fig. 106), 78, 79; St. John the Baptist with a Ram (plate II), 52-56, 58, 59, 79; St. John the Baptist with a Ram (replica, fig. 77), 58, 59; Salome (fig. 98), 71, 73; Supper at Emmaus (London, figs. 84, 85, detail), 62, 63, 64; Supper at Emmaus (Milan, fig. 94), 69, 70 Carracci, Agostino, 2, 6, 8, 38, 82 Carracci, Annibale, 2 - 5 0 , 82; and Caravaggio, 19-20, 53, 54, 64-65; and Carracci, L., 82, 84, 86, 88-89, 91, 94, 97-98, 105; and Correggio, 16, 20, 22, 26, 29, 33, 46; death of, 50; and Michelangelo, 37, 40, 41-42, 43, 45, 46, 53; and Paleotti, 6, 88; and Passarotti, 8; and Raphael, 26, 28, 30, 34-35, 41, 42, 43; and Veronese, 10, 12, 22, 24, 34 WORKS: Allegory of Truth and Time (fig. 23), 14, 15; Assumption of the Virgin (Dresden, fig. 30), 20, 22, 24, 28, 88; Assumption of the Virgin (Bologna, fig. 40), 27, 28; Ajsumption of the Virgin (Rome, fig. 87), 65; Bacchus with Silenus (fig. 65), 45, 46; Baptism of Christ (fig. 24), 16; Battle in the Libyan Desert with Wild Beasts and Harpies (figs. 21, 22, detail), 13, 14, 15; Bean Eater

(fig. 15), 8, 9, 88; Boy Drinking (fig. 14), 8, 9, Butcher's Shop (fig. 12), 7, 8; Choice of Hercules (fig. 51), 36, 43; Crucifixion with Saints (plate I), 2, 4 - 6 , 8, 10, 16, 84, 88; Dead Christ (fig. 11), 6, 7, 53, 88; Europa Leading the Bull (fig. 19), 12; Europa Mounting the Jovian Bull (fig. 17), 10, 11, 12-13; False Funeral of the Infant Jason (fig. 20), 13; Farnese Gallery (figs. 55, 56, 59, 60, 63) 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 53; Frieze with the History ofJason (part, fig. 16), 8, 10, 12, 14; Hercules and Iole (fig. 60), 42; Ignudi and Atlantids (fig. 63), 43, 44, 45, 53; Madonna above Bologna (fig. 44), 30, 31; Madonna with St. John Evangelist and St. Catherine (fig. 42), 29, 30, 98; Madonna of St. Matthew (fig. 34), 22, 23, 24, 91; Man of Sorrows (fig. 121), 93, 94; Model Study for an Ignudo of the Farnese Gallery (fig. 71), 53; Pietà (Naples, fig. 66), 46, 47; Pietà (London, fig. 69), 49, 50, 64; Pietà with Saints (fig. 27), 16, 18, 19-20; Quo Vadis, Domine (fig. 68), 46, 48; Resurrection of Christ (fig. 41), 28, 29, 30; S. Ludovico Altar (figs. 35, 37, detail), 24, 25, 26; St. Luke Attar (fig. 38), 26, 28; St. Roch Distributing Alms (fig. 48), 33, 34, 35; Picking Grapes (fig. 64), 45; Toilet of Venus (fig. 46), 32, 33, 35, 36; Venus and Anchises (fig. 59), 41, 42 Carracci, Ludovico, 2, 6, 82-114; and Caravaggio, 98, 102, 107; and Carracci, Α., 82, 84, 86, 88-89, 91, 94, 97-98, 105; and Correggio, 86-87, 91, 94-95, 97; death of, 110, 114; and Fontana, 83; and Michelangelo, 102; and Moretto, 87; and Paleotti, 88; and Parmigianino, 89, 91, 103; and Passarotti, 83-84; and Raphael, 97; and Tintoretto, 89, 97; and Titian, 91, 97; and Veronese, 91 WORKS: Adoration of the Kings (fig. 147), 110, 111; Annunciation (Bologna, Gallery, fig. 107), 82, 83, 84, 86; Annunciation (Genoa, fig. 137), 104; Annunciation (Bologna, S. Pietro, fig. 151), 113, 114; Apostles at the Tomb of Mary (Bologna, fig. 132), 100, 101, 102; Apostles at the Tomb of Mary (Parma, fig. 141), 105, 106, 107; Assumption of the Virgin (fig. 115), 88, 89; Bargellini Altar (fig. 117), 89, 90, 91, 97; Birth of the

Virgin (fig. 139), 105; Body of St. Sebastian Thrown into the Cloaca Maxima (fig. 143), 107, 108, 109; Calling of St. Matthew (fig. 134), 102; Capture of Christ (fig. 120), 92; Christ Crucified (fig. 145), 109, 110; Christ's Descent into Limbo (fig. 133), 101, 102; Conversion of St. Paul (fig. 116), 89, 90, 91; Crowning with Thorns (fig. 130), 98, 99, 100; Dream of St. Catherine (fig. 142), 107; Empress Visiting St. Catherine in Prison (fig. 135), 102, 103; Flagellation (Douai, fig. 119), 92, 93; Flagellation (Bologna, fig. 129), 98, 99, 100; Flight into Egypt (fig. 144), 109; Funeral of the Virgin (fig. 140), 105, 106, 107; Holy Family with St. Francis and Donors (plate III), 94, 97; Madonna and Child with Saints (fig. 122), 94; Madonna with St. Jerome and St. Francis (fig. 127), 97; Madonna with Saints (fig. 138), 104, 105; Martyrdom of St. Margaret (fig. 148), 112, 113; S. Carlo Bonommeo Administering the Eucharist (fig. 146), 110, 111; St. George and St. Catherine Led to Martyrdom (fig. 149), 112, 113; St. Ursula Altar (fig. 126), 96, 97; St. Vincent (fig. 118), 91; Susanna and the Elders (fig. 150), 113; Transfiguration (fig. 131), 98, 100; Trinity (fig. 125), 95, 96; Vision of St. Francis (fig. 112), 86, 87-88; Vision of St. Hyacinth (fig. 128), 98, 100 Carracci, the. Frieze with the History of Jason (part, fig. 16), 8, 10, 12, 14 Cento, Museo Civico L. Carracci, Holy Family with St. Francis and Donors (plate III), 94, 97 Cesi, Bartolommeo, 6; Annunciation (fig. 10), 6 Clement VIII, Pope, 38 Cleveland, Museum of Art Caravaggio, Crucifixion of St. Andrew (fig. 97), 71, 72 Colonna family, 70 Correggio, Antonio, 19; and A. Carracci, 16, 20 22, 26, 29, 33, 46; and L. Carracci, 86-87, 91, 94-95, 97 WORKS: Assumption of the Virgin (details, figs. 25, 31), 16, 17, 20, 21; Education of Cupid (fig. 47), 33; Madonna of St. George

(flg. 43), 29, 30; Madonna of St. Jerome {Π domo) (flg. 124), 95; Madonna of St. Sebastian (flg. 26), 16, 17; Nativity {La Notte) (flg. 113), 87; Pietà (fig. 28), 16, 19, 46; Rest on the Flight to Egypt (fig. 123), 95 Dresden Gallery A. Carracci, Assumption of the Virgin (fig. 30), 20, 22, 24, 28, 88; Madonna о/ St. Matthew (fig. 34), 22, 23, 24, 91; Man of Sorrows (fig. 121), 93, 94; St. Roch Distributing Alms {fig. 48), 33, 34, 35 Correggio, Madonna of St. George (fig. 43), 29, 30; Madonna of St. Sebastian (fig. 26), 16, 17; Nativity {La Notte) (fig. 113), 87 Raphael, Sistine Madonna (fig. 39), 26, 27, 28, 30, 97 Douai, Museum L. Carracci, Flagellation (fig. 119), 92, 93 Farnese, Ranuccio, 38 Farnese family, 35, 38 Ferrara, S. Francesca Romana L. Carracci, Christ Crucified (fig. 145), 109, 110 Florence Uffizi Gallery Caravaggio, Bacchus (fig. 76), 58 Salviati, Caritas (fig. 1), 2 S. Croce Santi di Tito, Crucifixion (fig. 9), 5 Fontana, Prospero, Annunciation (fig. 108), 83 Genoa Balbi-Odescalchi Collection Caravaggio, Conversion of St, Paul (fig. 88), 65, 66 Palazzo Rosso L. Carracci, Annunciation (fig. 137), 104 Giorgione (attributed to). Shepherd with Flute (fig. 73), 55, 57 Giotto, Resurrection of Lazarus (fig. 103), 77

Glykon, Farnese Hercules (fig. 52), 37 Hampton Court, Royal Collection A. Carracci, Allegory of Truth and Time (fig. 23), 14, 15 Giorgione (attributed to). Shepherd with Flute (fig. 73), 55, 57 Laureti, Tommaso, 2 Leningrad, Hermitage Museum Caravaggio, Lutenist (fig. 75), 57, 58 London Art Market A. Carracci, Boy Drinking (fig. 14), 8, 9 National Gallery Caravaggio, Salome (fig. 98), 71, 73; Supper at Emmaus (figs. 84, 85, detail), 62, 63, 64 A. Carracci, Bacchus with Silenus (fig. 65), 45, 46; Pietà (fig. 69), 49, 50, 64; Quo Vadis, Domine (fig. 68), 46, 48; Silenus Picking Grapes (fig. 64), 45 L. Carracci, Susanna and the Elders (fig. 150), 113 Correggio, Education of Cupid (fig. 47), 33 Victoria and Albert Museum Raphael, Healing of the Lame (detail. Tapestry Cartoon, fig. 90), 65, 67 Malibu, Calif, J. Paul Getty Museum L. Carracci, Body of St. Sebastian Thrown into the Cloaca Maxima (fig. 143), 107, 108, 109 Malta, Caravaggio in, 72-76. See also Valetta Malvasia, Count Carlo Cesare, Felsina Patrice, 2 Mantegna, Andrea, 6 Mantua, S. Maurizio L. Carracci, Martyrdom of St. Margaret (fig. 148), 112, 113 Marseilles, Municipal Museum Caravaggio (copy after). Repentant Magdalen (fig. 29), 19, 70

Messina, Museum Caravaggio, Adoration of the Shepherds (fig. 105), 77, 78; Resurrection of Lazarus (figs. 102, 104, detail), 76, 77, 79 Michelangelo, 29; and Caravaggio, 59; and A. Carracci, 37, 40, 41-42, 43, 45, 46, 53; and L. Carracci, 102 WORKS: Ignudi (figs. 53, 78, 80), 37, 40, 43, 53, 59, 60; Pietà (fig. 67), 46, 47; Sistine Ceiling (figs. 53, 62, 78, 80), 37, 43, 44, 53, 59, 60; Sistine Chapel (fig. 58), 40, 41, 42; Temptation and Expulsion (fig. 62), 43, 44 Milan, Brera Gallery Caravaggio, Supper at Emmaus (fig. 94), 69, 70 L. Carracci, Adoration of the Kings (fig. 147), 110, Î J Î Fontana, Annunciation (fig. 108), 83 Modena, 16, 29 Moretto, Alessandro: and L. Carracci, 87; Madonna di Paltone (fig. 114), 87 Naples Capodimonte Museum A. Carracci, Choice of Hercules (fig. 51), 36, 43; Pietà (fig. 66), 46, 47 National Museum Glykon, Farnese Hercules (fig. 52), 37 S. Domenico Maggiore Caravaggio, Flagellation (fig. 96), 71 New York Metropolitan Museum Caravaggio, Musica {The Music Party) (fig. 74), 56, 58, 79 Private collection Cesi, Annunciation (fig. 10), 6 Nonantola, Abbey Church L. Carracci, S. Carlo Bonomeo Administering the Eucharist (fig. 146), 110, 111 Oxford, Christ Church Gallery A. Carracci, Butcher's Shop (fig. 12), 7, 8; Madonna above Bologna (fig. 44), 30, 31

Padua, Arena Chapel Giotto, Resurrection of Lazarus 103), 77

the Temple

Paltone, Chiesa del Pellegrinarlo Moretto, Madonna di Paitone (fig. 114), 87 Paleotti, Cardinal Gabriele, 5, 88; and A. Carracci, 6, 88; and L. Carracci, 88; Discorso intomo alle imagini sacre e profane, 5 - 6 , 14, 88 Palestrina, 70 Paris Louvre Caravaggio, Death of the Virgin (figs. 91, 92, detail), 66, 67, 68 Α. Carracci, Model Study for an Ignudo of the Farnese Gallery (fig. 71), 53; Resunection of Christ (fig. 41), 28, 29, 30; St. Luke Altar (fig. 38), 26, 28 L. Carracci, Vision of St. Hyacinth 128), 98, 100

(fig. 109), 83, 84

Zuccaro, Conversion

Piacenza, 26

(fig.

(fig.

Private collection L. Carracci, Capture of Christ (fig. 120), 92 Parma Duomo Correggio, Assumption of Virgin (details, figs. 25, 31), 16, Í7, 20, 21 Gallery A. Carracci, Pietà with Saints (fig. 27), 16, 18, 1 9 - 2 0 L. Carracci, Apostles at the Tomb of Mary (fig. 141), 105, 106, 107; Funeral of the Virgin (fig. 140), 105, 106, 107 Correggio, Madonna of St. Jerome {11 Giorno) (fig. 124), 95; Pietà (fig. 28), 16, 19, 46; Rest on the Flight to Egypt {Scodella Altar) (fig. 123), 95 Parmigianino, Francesco: and L. Carracci, 89, 91, 103; Madonna of St. Margaret (fig. 136), 103 Passarotti, Bartolommeo, 4, 8, 83; and A. Carracci, 8; and L. Carracci, 8 3 - 8 4 WORKS: Butcher's Shop (fig. 13), 8; Crucifixion with Saints (fig. 7), 4; Presentation in

Poussin, Nicolas, 72 Procaccini, Ercole, 2; Conversion (fig. 6), 3

of St. Paul (fig. 2),

3 National Gallery (Palazzo Barberini) of St. Paul

Pulzone, Scipione, 4 - 5 , 86; Assumption of the Virgin (fig. 8), 4, 5; Immaculate Conception (fig. I l l ) , 84, 85 Raleigh, N.C., Museum o f Art L. Carracci, Assumption of the Virgin (fig. 115), 88, 89 Raphael, 29, 37, 72; and Caravaggio, 65; and A. Carracci, 26, 28, 30, 3 4 - 3 5 , 41, 42, 43; and L. Carracci, 97 WORKS: Expulsion of Heliodorus (fig. 49), 34, 35; Fire in the Borgo (fig. 54), 37; Healing of the Lame (detail. Tapestry Cartoon, fig. 90), 65, 67; Madonna di Foligno (fig. 45), 30, 31; School of Athens, 37; Sistine Madonna (fig. 39), 26, 27, 28, 30, 97; Story of Psyche (figs. 57, 61), 40, 4 1 - 4 2 , 43; Three Graces (fig. 61), 43; Transfiguration (fig. 50), 35 Reggio Emiha, Church o f the Chiara L. Carracci, St. George and St. Catherine Led to Martyrdom (fig. 149), 112, 113 Rembrandt van Ryn, 72, 74 Rome Borghese Gallery Bronzino, St. John the Baptist (fig. 70), 52, 53 Caravaggio, David (fig, 93), 68, 70; Fruttatolo {Young Fruit Vendor) (fig. 72), 55, 5 6 - 5 7 ; St. John the Baptist (fig. 106), 78, 79 Capitoline Gallery Caravaggio, St. John the Baptist with a Ram (plate II), 5 2 - 5 6 , 58, 59, 79 Colonna Gallery A. Carracci, Bean Eater (fig. 15), 8, 9, 88 Doria Gallery Caravaggio, St. John the Baptist with a Ram (rephca, fig. 77), 58, 59 L. Carracci, Madonna and Child with Saints (fig. 122), 94

Passarotti, Butcher's Shop (fig. 13), 8 Palazzo Farnese A. Carracci, Farnese Gallery (figs. 55, 56), 38, 39, 4 0 - 4 5 ; Hercules and Iole (fig. 60), 42; Ignudi and Atlantids (fig. 63), 3 9 40, 44, 45, 53; Venus and Anchises (fig. 59), 41 Villa Farnesina, Loggia di Psyche Raphael, Story of Psyche (figs. 57, 61, detail), 40, 4 1 - 4 2 , 43 Chiesa dei Cappuccini Caravaggio, St. Francis (fig. 95), 70 S. Agostino Caravaggio, Madonna di Loreto 89), 65, 66

(fig.

S. Luigi dei Francesi, Contarclli Chapcl Caravaggio, Calling of Matthew (fig. 81), 61, 62 S. M. del Popolo, Cerasi Chapel Caravaggio, Conversion of St. Paul (fig. 83), 62; Crucifixion of St. Peter (fig. 82), 62 A. Carracci, Assumption of the Virgin (fig. 87), 65 S. Silvestro al Quirinale Pulzone, Assumption of the Virgin (fig. 8), 4, 5 Ronciglione, Chiesa dei Cappuccini Pulzone, Immaculate Conception I l l ) , 84, 85

(fig.

Sabbatini, Lorenzo, 2; Holy Family with St. Michael

(fig. 5), 3

Salviati, Francesco, 2; Caritas (fig. 1), 2 Sammachini, Orazio, 2; Madonna

Enthroned

with Saints (fig. 4), 3 Santi di Tito, 5, 6, 86; Crucifixion (fig. 9), 5; Doubting

Thomas

(fig. 110), 84, 85

Sarto, Andrea del, 72 Siracusa, S. Lucia Caravaggio, Burial of St. Lucy (fig. 101), 75, 76

Stuttgart, Gallery Α. Carracci, Dead Christ (fig. 11), 6, 7, 53, 88

Titian, S. Niccolò Altar (fig. 36), 24, 25 Vasari, Stoning of St. Stephen

Vatican Palace, Stanza d ' E h o d o r o Raphael, Expulsion

T i n t o r e t t o , and L. Carracci, 89, 97 Titian, 29; and A. Carracci, 20, 22, 24, 26; and L. Carracci, 91, 97 WORKS: Assumption of the Virgin (fig. 32), 20, 21; S. Niccolò Altar (fig. 36), 24, 2 5 Valetta, (Malta), C a t h e d r a l C a r a v a g g i o , Beheading of St. John the Baptist (figs. 99, 100, detail), 72, 74, 75, 76 Vasari, G i o r g i o , 2; Stoning of St. Stephen (fig. 3),3 Vatican Vatican Gallery C a r a v a g g i o , Entombment (fig. 86), 64 L. Carracci, Trinity (fig. 125), 95, 96 Raphael, Madonna di Foligno (fig. 45), 30, 31; Transfiguration (fig. 50), 35

(fig. 3), 3

of Heliodorus

(fig.

49), 34, 35 Vatican Palace, Stanza dell'Incendio Raphael, Fire in the Borgo (detail, fig.

Titian, Assumption 32), 20, 21

the Bull

of the Virgin (fig.

Veronese, Paolo, 10; and A. Carracci, 10, 12, 22, 24, 34; and L. Carracci, 91 WORKS: Europa Mounting the Bull (fig. 18), 10, ί ί ; Marriage of St. Catherine (fig.

54), 37 St. Peter's

33), 2 2

Michelangelo, Pietà (fig. 67), 46, 47 Sistine C h a p e l M i c h e l a n g e l o and others, Chapel (fig. 58), 40, 4 1 - 4 2

Veronese, Europa Mounting (fig. 18), 10, / ? S. M . de' Frari

Sistine

Michelangelo, Ignudi (figs. 53, 78, 80), 37, 40, 43, 53, 59, 60; Temptation and Expulsion (fig. 62), 43, 44 Venice Academy Veronese, Marriage of St. Catherine (fig. 33), 22 Palazzo Ducale, Sala del Anticollegio

Vicentino, Andrea, 2 Villa Farnesina, R o m e , 41, 42 Volpato, G i o v a n n i , Farnese Gallery 38

(fig. 55),

W a s h i n g t o n , N a t i o n a l Gallery A. Carracci, Toilet of Venus (fig. 46), 32, 33, 35, 36 L. Carracci, Dream of St. Catherine (fig. 142), 107 Zuccari, T a d d e o , 2; Conversion (fig. 2), J

of St. Paul