Reid & Robie

What begins in the work of Caravaggio is, quite simply, modern painting.

– Art Historian André Berne-Joffroy

Painting from live models made Caravaggio’s art feel real. Combined with his signature use of light, he infused his pieces with an emotional intensity never seen before. Yet while his works resonated with many in Rome, after murdering a man in a duel and getting sentenced to death in absentia, Caravaggio fled the Papal States for Naples.

Naples

Despite his notoriety, Caravaggio was still an artist in demand and soon after arriving he painted the Flagellation of Christ, a piece Robie and I saw in the Capodimonte Museum during a trip to Naples in April.

Once again using the outstretched neck to mimic the Crucifixion, Caravaggio brought “street-level” realism to the scene through his rough, vulgar assailants tormenting a passive Jesus.

Following the Flagellation, Caravaggio painted Saint Francis in Prayer, a meditative, brooding figure reflecting the artist’s own troubled life.

Long considered lost, the piece was discovered in 1968 by an art historian inside the San Pietro in Carpineto Romano in Rome. Today the piece is part of the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Antique Art inside the Palazzo Barberini.

When a group of Neapolitan noblemen approached Caravaggio to paint a piece for their newly formed charity aiding the city’s poor, the artist used his trademark style of lighting to paint a chaotic, dramatically condensed visual of the seven acts of mercy into a single, energetic street scene for the Pio Monte della Misericordia.

Beneath a Madonna and child supported by angels, two men carry a body for burial. In the foreground Pero visits her imprisoned father to feed him as St. Martin of Tours calls on a cripple and splits his cloak to clothe the beggar. Further back, a pilgrim seeks shelter from an innkeeper and Sampson quenches his thirst out of the jawbone of an ass. Art historians debate whether Caravaggio painted himself as Samson, but the composition likely represented a plea for mercy after the artist’s conviction, the first step toward redemption and a chance to return to Rome.

Malta

Hoping to win clemency from the Pope, Caravaggio set sail for Malta determined to become a Knight of St. John. Like the nobles of Pio Monde della Misericordia in Naples, the Grand Master recognized the value of hosting a famous painter on his island and commissioned Caravaggio to paint Saint Jerome Writing.

Once again showing his mastery of still lifes with the inkwell, skull and crucifix, Caravaggio presented the saint as an aged, scholarly figure translating the Bible. Bare-chested with sagging skin and a deeply lined face, Jerome was modeled on the Grand Master, an approach the artist hoped would ingratiate him to the most powerful man in Malta.

On December 29, 1984, Saint Jerome Writing was stolen from the Oratory of St. John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta. Taking advantage of reduced security over the holidays, three men entered the church and barricaded the Oratory with fake “work in progress” tape before cutting the canvas directly from its frame. For two years there was no word on the painting until an envelope delivered to Malta’s Director of Museums included a Polaroid and demand for 500,000 Maltese Lira (approximately $1.5 million USD).

Stalling for time, the director negotiated with the thieves while working with authorities to track calls coming from a shoe factory outside Valletta. Recovered during a sting operation, the painting required significant restoration before it was returned to the Co-Cathedral where Robie and I found it hanging in a secure, underground room in March.

Upon completion of Saint Jerome Writing, Caravaggio painted portraits of high-ranking members of the Knights of St. John, work that resulted in an invitation for the artist to join the prestigious Order. Unable to pay his initiation fee, Caravaggio instead offered to paint the knights’ patron saint, a subject he knew well.

Throughout his career, Caravaggio painted different versions of John the Baptist including one housed in Rome’s Capitoline Museum, a piece that bucked convention by focusing on emotion over religious doctrine and portrayed the future saint as a mischievous youth enjoying his seclusion in the wilderness instead of a subdued ascetic subsisting on locusts and honey.

Here again, Caravaggio offered a nod to Michelangelo by twisting John’s body into the pose of an ignudi, the figures adorning the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Caravaggio further imitated the master by painting a ram from the nearby Sacrifice of Noah not the lamb traditionally associated with John the Baptist.

Inside the Palazzo Barberini in Rome, temporarily moved from its home at the Galleria Corsini in Trastevere, Robie and I found another, very different version of John the Baptist by Caravaggio. Caught in a moment of quiet introspection, the young man appears thoughtful and pensive, his pale skin illuminated against a dark, undefined background.

Having rendered so many portraits of the saint, it’s no wonder Caravaggio suggested painting another for the Knights of St. John. For his masterpiece, he envisioned a scene like Salome receives the Head of John the Baptist, only this time at the moment of the martyr’s death.

At roughly 12×17 feet, the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist is the largest painting Caravaggio ever created. Like Salome, it shows the dancer waiting with a gold platter, the old woman and executioner. Rounding out the scene here are a jailer pointing to the plate and two prisoners watching from a window. Designed as an altarpiece, it is the only work Caravaggio ever signed. In the blood spilled from John’s throat, he wrote his name, “f. michelA…” meaning Fra or brother, a reference to his recent inclusion into the Knights of St. John.

After getting inducted into the Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, Caravaggio was on his way to receiving the pardon he so desperately sought from Rome. But the artist’s tempestuous nature and outsized need for respect soon landed him in trouble. After being knighted less than a month, Caravaggio was involved in another brawl and imprisoned. When he subsequently escaped and fled Malta, Fra Michelangelo Merisi was defrocked.

Sicily

Following his escape, Caravaggio made his way to Sicily.

Once more a wanted man on the run, this time Caravaggio was being hunted by the Knights of St. John. Staying first in Syracuse, he reunited with a fellow artist and painted the Burial of Saint Lucy now hanging in the Church of Saint Lucia.

To understand the setting, Robie and I visited the Catacomb of San Giovanni, a large, early Christian necropolis second only to Rome. In the subterranean labyrinth Caravaggio placed the saint’s pale, lifeless body surrounded by mourners and two powerfully built gravediggers beginning their arduous task.

Feeling hounded by unknown assailants, Caravaggio soon departed Syracuse for Palermo where he painted Nativity with Saint Francis and Saint Lawrence for the Oratory of St. Lorenzo. When Robie and I visited Palermo in March, we couldn’t view Caravaggio’s painting. Not after it was sliced from the frame, wrapped in a rug and taken from the Oratory during a violent thunderstorm in 1969.

While the probable culprits were the Sicilian Mafia, over the decades conflicting tales have emerged. One described the painting being used as a mat during high-level mob meetings. Another said the piece was put in a barn and eaten by rats while a third claimed the painting was sold to a private collector in Switzerland. Though the theft remains at the top of the FBI’s art crimes, many believe the painting still lies hidden somewhere in Sicily.

For decades after it was stolen, the painting’s empty frame remained in the Oratory as a reminder of what was lost. Then in 2016 a digital, high-resolution replica was installed to allow visitors like us to see Caravaggio’s vision again.

Emphasizing the humble circumstances of Christ’s birth, Caravaggio’s Mary wears a disheveled dress and appears tired after the rigors of childbirth. Unlike the usual aged Joseph, her husband is a rustic, young blonde talking with a shepherd in an obscured site while saints Lawrence and Francis look on.

The scene contrasts with one of Caravaggio’s earlier works of the Holy Family, Rest on the Flight to Egypt now hanging in the Gallery Doria Pamphilj in Rome. Set amid a lush landscape is an elder Jospeh while the Virgin is a tender, romantic figure who has just fallen asleep on the Christ child.

Return to Naples

Hunted on Sicily, Caravaggio sought refuge in Naples, but soon after returning he was ambushed, beaten and left with a deep facial scar, a sign of a wrong being righted likely inflicted by his former brothers in Malta.

Disfigured, ill and exhausted after four years on the run, Caravaggio spent months convalescing while attempting to gain clemency from Rome. During this period he painted David with the Head of Goliath using his own face on the severed head gripped by the hair in a symbolic plea for mercy. He also painted the Martyrdom of St. Ursula, a piece widely accepted as his final work now housed in Naples’ Palazzo Zevallos Stiguano.

Unlike traditional renderings of the martyr and her horde of followers, Caravaggio once more centers on the climax as a young, ashen Ursula looks down at the arrow that has just pierced her bodice. Behind her stands a soldier, mouth open, another self-portrait of Caravaggio witnessing the event.

Death of a Master

After completing the Martyrdom of Saint Ursula, Caravaggio gathered his belongings and set sail for Rome. With him was the self-portrait of David with the Head of Goliath, a piece he planned to give Cardinal Borghese in return for his help in securing a papal pardon for the artist.

When the boat landed, Caravaggio was arrested. Though quickly released, he returned to the wharf to find the boat and all his things gone. Desperate to recover the painting intended for the Cardinal and return to Rome, Caravaggio rushed to the next port only to fall ill and die. Then the man who revolutionized art was buried in a shallow, unmarked grave.

The search for a Master

Four hundred years after Caravaggio’s death, a team of Italian scientists from four universities used historical research, carbon dating and DNA analysis to embark on a meticulous, multi-year investigation to locate the artist’s bones.

Researchers uncovered documents confirming Caravaggio died in Porto Ercole and not Naples as some believed. Then they identified San Sebastiano Cemetery as the likely burial site. But after the cemetery was moved in 1956, they had to exhume more than 200 bodies from a crypt in the Church of St. Erasmus.

Analyzing bone fragments, they searched for a male who died around 1610 at approximately 38–40 years of age. When scientists ran tests on the sample dubbed “Find No. 5,” they discovered a match based on age, height and gender. Carbon dating further confirmed the bones corresponded to the period of Caravaggio’s death while DNA tests matched living relatives with the surname Merisi or Merisio from Caravaggio’s hometown. Once the team found high levels of lead in those bones, they determined it was consistent with 17^th century paints and announced with 85% certainty that they had located the remains of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. With much fanfare, in 2010 they placed a stone, coffin-shaped tomb in Porto Ercole’s town square featuring a ceramic fruit bowl reminiscent of Caravaggio’s early still lifes.

But that wasn’t the end of Caravaggio’s long, restless journey. Uncomfortable with the reliquary, skeptical residents fearing hordes of tourists overtaking their town petitioned to have it removed, and in 2014 Caravaggio’s remains were moved again. This time to a modest graveyard on the outskirts of town.

Unlike the tombs of Michelangelo in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence and Raphael inside the Pantheon in Rome, the artist who pioneered a style so unique it launched the Baroque movement, replaced idealized art with raw, unvarnished reality and gritty, everyday scenes, showed holy figures as ordinary people, highlighted events emerging from darkness and influenced Rembrandt, Velázquez and Rubens, now lies in a dilapidated cemetery next to a boatyard and gas station.

May Caravaggio one day get his most fervent wish and finally be allowed back into Rome.