Caravaggio’s St Matthew

The Apostle and Evangelist Matthew, whose feast is kept today in the West, has never had much public devotion in Rome. The one notable church dedicated to him, located on the via Merulana between the Lateran Basilica and St Mary Major, was once a cardinalitial title, but by the later 18th century, it was in terrible condition. When its cardinal was transferred to a suburbicarian see in 1776, it was not given to another; the building was destroyed at the beginning of the 19th century during the Napoleonic occupation of Rome, and never rebuilt.

The Contarelli Chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi. Image from Wikimedia Commons by Geobia, CC BY-SA 3.0.

He does, however, have one chapel which is very notable indeed, the place where the painter Caravaggio made his public debut in the Eternal City. In 1585, a French cardinal named Matthieu Cointerel, whose last name is italianized as “Contarelli”, died and left an endowment to decorate a chapel in honor of his name-saint within the French national church, San Luigi dei Francesi (St Louis, i.e. the IX, of the French), in the very heart of the city’s historical center. The cardinal’s executor originally hired a Flemish sculptor named Jacques Cobaert to carve a marble altarpiece of St Matthew with an angel, and the painter Giuseppe Cesari, better known as Cavaliere d’Arpino, to fresco the walls and ceiling.

Cesari was greatly in the favor of Pope Clement VIII, and after finishing the ceiling, moved on to the far grander commission of designing the mosaics inside the dome of St Peter’s basilica. Cobaert completed his statue, which was rejected in part because it did not fulfill the terms of the commission, and in part because it just wasn’t very good. (It was purchased by the Archconfraternity of the Most Holy Trinity of the Pilgrims, who had St Matthew as one of their patrons, and now sits above the altar of the right transept of the FSSP church in Rome.)

The altar of St Matthew is seen here in the background of this photo, taken during the blessing of a bell at Trinità dei Pellegrini in October of 2021.

Veneration of a relic of St Matthew at his altar after a Mass celebrated for the confraternity in 2022. Photo by our favorite Roman pilgrim, Agnese Bazzucchi.

As the jubilee of 1600 approached, the project, still unfinished after 15 years, took on a new urgency. San Luigi dei Francesi stands on one of the main routes by which pilgrims would enter the city, and it would not do for the French among them to see their national church so conspicuously unfinished. The Italian cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte, who lived next door, then suggested that his private employee Caravaggio would be just the man for the job.

Two important matters of historical context should be mentioned here. The Pope who presided over the jubilee of 1500, Alexander VI Borgia, made his family’s name a by-word for the very lowest depths of ecclesiastical corruption. Luther’s revolt, partly provoked and partly justified by the vices which he represented, broke out in 1517. By 1525, it had already proved shockingly successful in detaching large swathes of Germany from the Faith. The hapless Clement VII Medici was only 47 at the time, and might well have lived to see the jubilee of 1550, but might just as well have wondered how much of a Church would be left to celebrate it by then. His successor Paul III, who was at once thoroughly a product of the vices his era, and one of the architects of their demise, died just before the jubilee of 1550, which opened in a period of sede vacante. Faithful clerics had much cause to tremble for the five-year reign of his successor Julius III, whose papacy was marred not only by his indifference to the urgent cause of reform, but also by scandalous stories of the very worst kind regarding his brother’s adopted son, a street-urchin inappropriately named Innocenzo. (The papal name Julius has never been used again, always a sign of a bad pontificate.)

However, by 1575, the seeds planted by Paul III, who called the Council of Trent and founded the Jesuits, and by many others, were bearing much fruit, and by 1600, the many vices and corruptions within the Church that gave so much grist to the Protestant mill were largely extirpated. And thus, while the jubilee of 1575 might be described as great collective sigh of Catholic relief, that of 1600 was to be a sort of year-long victory party for the spectacular success of the Counter-Reformation.

All of this had a particular importance for the French, whose king, Henry of Navarre, had succeeded to the throne as a Protestant, and begun his reign under a papal excommunication. He converted to Catholicism in 1593, but the political turmoil caused by his former allegiance, and the general state of religion in France, was far from over. For the French pilgrims to Rome, the jubilee of 1600 was also a sign that the Catholic, i.e., universal, religion, restored to health by the Counter-Reformation, would bring a peaceful settlement to the civil wars that had wracked their nation for decades.

This, then, is the stage on which Caravaggio made his public debut as an artist in Rome.

Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

The first painting, The Calling of St Matthew, catches the Saint at the moment Christ enters into the customhouse and points to him, saying, “Follow me.” The mediating role of the Church and the papacy is emphasized, against the Protestant rejection of them, by including the figure of St Peter, who is not mentioned in the relevant passages of the Gospels. The customhouse is represented as if it were any Roman tavern, but note that the source of the light that bursts into the space in unseen. This is the artist’s way of telling us that it is the supernatural light of grace, which will enable Matthew to walk away from his former life and follow Jesus. This reflects a theme of the highest importance to the Catholic Church in these years: against the predestinationism of Calvin, we see that the light of God’s grace can shine on anyone, and that conversion is always a possibility for everyone.

Note also that Matthew points to himself in a gesture of doubt, as if to say, “Who, me?”, for the Church, a wise mother in her better days, knows that we all have doubts about our ability to correspond to God’s grace. In conjunction with the other paintings in the chapel, we see that even an Apostle was not free of such doubts, but was able to turn from his role as a despised tax collector to become both an evangelist and a martyr. (Caravaggio himself had and deserved a reputation as a difficult character, someone who understood well the difficulties of trying to live a life of grace.) Against the elitism of the early Protestants, we also see here the importance of each individual in God’s plan of salvation. In this particular church, this would perhaps also have reminded contemporary viewers of the importance of one man’s role, that of King Henry, in saving the Catholic faith of an entire nation.

Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

The second painting, The Inspiration of St Matthew, stands over the altar, and was the last of the three to be completed. What we see in the chapel today is not the original version, which was rejected because it violated one of the rules of Counter-Reformation art, that things should be shown as much in accord with truth as possible. Caravaggio, not much of one for following rules generally, depicted the angel touching St Matthew’s hand, which an angel, who does not have a material body, cannot do. The noble family of the Giustiniani, who lived across the plaza from the church, intervened, purchasing the original, and convincing those in charge of the project to recommission. In the new version, the angel is conspicuously not touching the Saint, who looks heaven-ward for inspiration. He is also dressed more appropriately in the red of martyrdom, rather than the dark brown of the original version. The Gospel book which he is writing is positioned directly over the place where the Missal would be placed for the reading of the Gospel during the celebration of Mass.

A black-and-white photograph of the destroyed original version of St Matthew and the Angel. Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

The original version was one of six works by Caravaggio owned by the Giustinianis. When Napoleon, modern Europe’s first truly grand cultural terrorist, occupied Rome, he imposed ruinous inheritance taxes on the city’s noble families, many of whom were thus forced to sell off their painting collections. The original St Matthew and the Angel eventually found its way to Dresden, where it was destroyed during the fire-bombing of the city in World War II. No color photograph was ever taken of it.

Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

The third painting, The Martyrdom of St Matthew, was the first to be completed and unveiled. In the original commission, Cardinal Contarelli had specified that it was to show the violence of the soldiers as they attacked St Matthew while he was celebrating Mass, a reference to the violence with which Protestantism was imposed in many parts of Europe, and the subsequent destruction of countless churches and monasteries. It was also supposed to include “suitable architectural elements”, and a crowd displaying various emotional reactions. All of this would make for a very conventional, late Mannerist work of the Counter-Reformation.

Caravaggio’s real name was Michelangelo Merisi, and like his famous namesake, he understood very well that man, and not architecture, is the protagonist of the great drama of human salvation. Note here that the architectural element is reduced to the barest possible minimum in the background, and the drama of Matthew’s death is thrust forward to fill the space. The humility of a follower of Christ is emphasized by the fact that he lies prostrate on the ground, a trend in Caravaggio’s work which would become more and more pronounced as he progressed. For us today, it is perhaps impossible to appreciate how remarkable this was at the time, to show an Apostle in the midst of his martyrdom not front and center, but lying on the ground, and to give so much prominence to the persecutor. But of course, it is from that position of humility that St Matthew reaches up to receive the palm of martyrdom from the angel above him, whom he sees and the persecutor does not. It is from that humility that he enters into the glory of his Lord.

Raphael’s Liberation of St Peter

The feast of St Peter’s Chains which we keep today originated as the dedication feast of a Roman basilica on the Esquiline hill, within sight of the Colosseum. We do not know precisely when it was first built, but according to a surviving dedicatory inscription, it was already considered old when Pope Sixtus III restored it in the 430s. Apart from the Vatican basilica, it is the only ancient church of note in Rome dedicated to the Prince of the Apostles, and has custody of one of the city’s most important relics, the two chains by which Peter was held in prison.

As such, it was historically one of the most prestigious cardinalitial titles. In 1467, it was conferred upon the 37th Franciscan minister general, Francesco Maria della Rovere, who continued to hold it after his term expired less than two years later, until his election to the papacy with the name Sixtus IV in 1471. A few months later, in the finest traditional of papal nepotism, he bestowed it upon his nephew Giuliano, who held it for almost 32 years, until he was elected pope in 1503, taking the name Julius II. The building owes much of its current appearance, including its façade, to renovation work done at Giuliano’s behest. (It remained in the della Rovere family continually until 1520; 28 years later, it was given to his 13-year old grand-nephew Giulio, who held it for 22 years.)

Sixtus and Julius were major protagonists of the almost unfathomably chaotic political events that took place in Italy in the later 15th and early 16th centuries, but are certainly best known today as the patrons of some of the finest artists of the later Italian Renaissance. In 1508, Julius commissioned Michelangelo to repaint the ceiling of his uncle’s famous chapel, which had originally been just blue with stars.

A 19th-century reconstruction of the Sistine Chapel as it would have appeared when it was first dedicated in 1481.

The Creation of Adam, the central panel of the new images added to the ceiling by Michelangelo from 1508 to 1512. 

He also brought in several other notable artists to decorate a new set of staterooms, among them, Raphael Sanzio, a native of the little town of Urbino, and a distant relative of his chief architect, Donatello Bramante. But when Raphael had painted a single wall, the pope was so impressed with his work that he fired all the others so that the whole project could be given to him. Raphael was therefore working on his first room, the Stanza della Segnatura, at the very same time that Michelangelo was working on the Sistine chapel ceiling; he finished his project, which was much smaller, first, in 1511.

Raphael’s first painting in the Stanza della Segnatura, the so-called Disputation of the Blessed Sacrament, which would be more properly called The Triumph of Theology.

When Michelangelo was about half-way done with the ceiling, Pope Julius prevailed upon him, though much against his will, to offer a sneak preview. In an age in which imitation, that is to say, imitation of the classical past, had become the very definition of art, there was no one who had a sharper eye than Raphael for seeing what was good about another artist’s work, taking it into his own, and improving upon it. In his second room, therefore, he immediately revised his style in imitation of Michelangelo’s, not just improving upon it, but making a challenge to his rival; a challenge, which, however, would go unanswered.

In the following description, it must be remembered that the first three paintings in the room are in part the work of assistants, as was normally the case in those days. The piece de resistance, however, The Liberation of St Peter from Prison, is basically all Raphael.

The first painting is the one that has given its name to the room, the Stanza of Heliodorus, the agent of the emperor Antiochus who in II Maccabees 3 is sent to Jerusalem to plunder the temple. On the far left, Pope Julius II is carried into the scene on the sedes gestatoria by Swiss guards. (The company was instituted by Julius in 1506, and this is the oldest picture of them as papal guards.) Next to them is a group of citizens of the holy city, anxiously looking on as the high priest in the middle prays for the safety of the temple, and of the treasures that keep it running, and are used to care for the poor.

Notice the very different style of these two group of figures. The pope and the Swiss guards look like they were painted 20 years earlier, by artists of the generation that trained Raphael. The onlookers, on the other hand, are very much in the style of Michelangelo, both in terms of color scheme and pose. The great Florentine was first and foremost a sculptor, and when he was constrained to paint, he painted his human figures (the only subject he was interested in) as if they were sculptures in the sunlight. The woman in the foreground, and the father and son who have climbed up on the pillar to get a better view, are very similar to many of the artfully posed figures in Michelangelo’s ceiling.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Caravaggio’s St Matthew

The Apostle and Evangelist Matthew, whose feast is kept today in the West, has never had much public devotion in Rome. The one notable church dedicated to him, located on the via Merulana between the Lateran Basilica and St Mary Major, was once a cardinalitial title, but by the later 18th century, it was in terrible condition. When its cardinal was transferred to a suburbicarian see in 1776, it was not given to another; the building was destroyed at the beginning of the 19th century during the Napoleonic occupation of Rome, and never rebuilt.

The Contarelli Chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi. Image from Wikimedia Commons by Geobia, CC BY-SA 3.0.

He does, however, have one chapel which is very notable indeed, the place where the painter Caravaggio made his public debut in the Eternal City. In 1585, a French cardinal named Matthieu Cointerel, whose last name is italianized as “Contarelli”, died and left an endowment to decorate a chapel in honor of his name-saint within the French national church, San Luigi dei Francesi (St Louis, i.e. the IX, of the French), in the very heart of the city’s historical center. The cardinal’s executor originally hired a Flemish sculptor named Jacques Cobaert to carve a marble altarpiece of St Matthew with an angel, and the painter Giuseppe Cesari, better known as Cavaliere d’Arpino, to fresco the walls and ceiling.

Cesari was greatly in the favor of Pope Clement VIII, and after finishing the ceiling, moved on to the far grander commission of designing the mosaics inside the dome of St Peter’s basilica. Cobaert completed his statue, which was rejected in part because it did not fulfill the terms of the commission, and in part because it just wasn’t very good. (It was purchased by the Archconfraternity of the Most Holy Trinity of the Pilgrims, who had St Matthew as one of their patrons, and now sits above the altar of the right transept of the FSSP church in Rome.)

The altar of St Matthew is seen here in the background of this photo, taken during the blessing of the newest bell at Trinità dei Pellegrini last October.

Veneration of a relic of St Matthew at his altar after a Mass celebrated earlier today for the confraternity. Photo by our favorite Roman pilgrim, Agnese Bazzucchi.

As the jubilee of 1600 approached, the project, still unfinished after 15 years, took on a new urgency. San Luigi dei Francesi stands on one of the main routes by which pilgrims would enter the city, and it would not do for the French among them to see their national church so conspicuously unfinished. The Italian cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte, who lived next door, then suggested that his private employee Caravaggio would be just the man for the job.

Two important matters of historical context should be mentioned here. The Pope who presided over the jubilee of 1500, Alexander VI Borgia, made his family’s name a by-word for the very lowest depths of ecclesiastical corruption. Luther’s revolt, partly provoked and partly justified by the vices which he represented, broke out in 1517. By 1525, it had already proved shockingly successful in detaching large swathes of Germany from the Faith. The hapless Clement VII Medici was only 47 at the time, and might well have lived to see the jubilee of 1550, but might just as well have wondered how much of a Church would be left to celebrate it by then. His successor Paul III, who was at once thoroughly a product of the vices his era, and one of the architects of their demise, died just before the jubilee of 1550, which opened in a period of sede vacante. Faithful clerics had much cause to tremble for the five-year reign of his successor Julius III, whose papacy was marred not only by his indifference to the urgent cause of reform, but also by scandalous stories of the very worst kind regarding his brother’s adopted son, a street-urchin inappropriately named Innocenzo. (The papal name Julius has never been used again, always a sign of a bad pontificate.)

However, by 1575, the seeds planted by Paul III, who called the Council of Trent and founded the Jesuits, and by many others, were bearing much fruit, and by 1600, the many vices and corruptions within the Church that gave so much grist to the Protestant mill were largely extirpated. And thus, while the jubilee of 1575 might be described as great collective sigh of Catholic relief, that of 1600 was to be a sort of year-long victory party for the spectacular success of the Counter-Reformation.

All of this had a particular importance for the French, whose king, Henry of Navarre, had succeeded to the throne as a Protestant, and begun his reign under a papal excommunication. He converted to Catholicism in 1593, but the political turmoil caused by his former allegiance, and the general state of religion in France, was far from over. For the French pilgrims to Rome, the jubilee of 1600 was also a sign that the Catholic, i.e., universal, religion, restored to health by the Counter-Reformation, would bring a peaceful settlement to the civil wars that had wracked their nation for decades.

This, then, is the stage on which Caravaggio made his public debut as an artist in Rome.

Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

The first painting, The Calling of St Matthew, catches the Saint at the moment Christ enters into the customhouse and points to him, saying, “Follow me.” The mediating role of the Church and the papacy is emphasized, against the Protestant rejection of them, by including the figure of St Peter, who is not mentioned in the relevant passages of the Gospels. The customhouse is represented as if it were any Roman tavern, but note that the source of the light that bursts into the space in unseen. This is the artist’s way of telling us that it is the supernatural light of grace, which will enable Matthew to walk away from his former life and follow Jesus. This reflects a theme of the highest importance to the Catholic Church in these years: against the predestinationism of Calvin, we see that the light of God’s grace can shine on anyone, and that conversion is always a possibility for everyone.

Note also that Matthew points to himself in a gesture of doubt, as if to say, “Who, me?”, for the Church, a wise mother in her better days, knows that we all have doubts about our ability to correspond to God’s grace. In conjunction with the other paintings in the chapel, we see that even an Apostle was not free of such doubts, but was able to turn from his role as a despised tax collector to become both an evangelist and a martyr. (Caravaggio himself had and deserved a reputation as a difficult character, someone who understood well the difficulties of trying to live a life of grace.) Against the elitism of the early Protestants, we also see here the importance of each individual in God’s plan of salvation. In this particular church, this would perhaps also have reminded contemporary viewers of the importance of one man’s role, that of King Henry, in saving the Catholic faith of an entire nation.

Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

The second painting, The Inspiration of St Matthew, stands over the altar, and was the last of the three to be completed. What we see in the chapel today is not the original version, which was rejected because it violated one of the rules of Counter-Reformation art, that things should be shown as much in accord with truth as possible. Caravaggio, not much of one for following rules generally, depicted the angel touching St Matthew’s hand, which an angel, who does not have a material body, cannot do. The noble family of the Giustiniani, who lived across the plaza from the church, intervened, purchasing the original, and convincing those in charge of the project to recommission. In the new version, the angel is conspicuously not touching the Saint, who looks heaven-ward for inspiration. He is also dressed more appropriately in the red of martyrdom, rather than the dark brown of the original version. The Gospel book which he is writing is positioned directly over the place where the Missal would be placed for the reading of the Gospel during the celebration of Mass.

A black-and-white photograph of the destroyed original version of St Matthew and the Angel. Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

The original version was one of six works by Caravaggio owned by the Giustinianis. When Napoleon, modern Europe’s first truly grand cultural terrorist, occupied Rome, he imposed ruinous inheritance taxes on the city’s noble families, many of whom were thus forced to sell off their painting collections. The original St Matthew and the Angel eventually found its way to Dresden, where it was destroyed during the fire-bombing of the city in World War II. No color photograph was ever taken of it.

Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

The third painting, The Martyrdom of St Matthew, was the first to be completed and unveiled. In the original commission, Cardinal Contarelli had specified that it was to show the violence of the soldiers as they attacked St Matthew while he was celebrating Mass, a reference to the violence with which Protestantism was imposed in many parts of Europe, and the subsequent destruction of countless churches and monasteries. It was also supposed to include “suitable architectural elements”, and a crowd displaying various emotional reactions. All of this would make for a very conventional, late Mannerist work of the Counter-Reformation.

Caravaggio’s real name was Michelangelo Merisi, and like his famous namesake, he understood very well that man, and not architecture, is the protagonist of the great drama of human salvation. Note here that the architectural element is reduced to the barest possible minimum in the background, and the drama of Matthew’s death is thrust forward to fill the space. The humility of a follower of Christ is emphasized by the fact that he lies prostrate on the ground, a trend in Caravaggio’s work which would become more and more pronounced as he progressed. For us today, it is perhaps impossible to appreciate how remarkable this was at the time, to show an Apostle in the midst of his martyrdom not front and center, but lying on the ground, and to give so much prominence to the persecutor. But of course, it is from that position of humility that St Matthew reaches up to receive the palm of martyrdom from the angel above him, whom he sees and the persecutor does not. It is from that humility that he enters into the glory of his Lord.

The Raising of Lazarus

Today's reflection for Lent is on Caravaggio’s Raising of Lazarus, painted in 1609, and now in the Regional Museum of Messina in Sicily. I might have used a painting of Palm Sunday for this one, but wanted to reflect on a reason that the crowds gathered and cheered and laid down palm leaves on that day.

It was because they had seen Our Lord raising up Lazarus from the dead, and thought He was the messiah who would bring political power to them. This was the fulfillment of scripture and the old covenant, and so characterizes the old sabbath, Saturday, but in a Christian light. In the Eastern Church the Saturday before Palm Sunday is called Lazarus Saturday. We can see that what happened subsequently eclipsed this: the crucifixion and death of Our Lord, which was a disappointment to many of those who were cheering that day, but which led to the Resurrection. So Saturday as well as Sunday has new meaning. Saturday is the fulfillment of the Old Covenant and an anticipation of the New Covenant, by which we are all raised up, but unlike Lazarus at this point, not just to life, but to eternal life, because of the events celebrated on Easter Sunday. This is the ‘8th day’, Christ, whose resurrection is celebrated every Sunday, characterizing the New Covenant. 

We undergo a spiritual death, rebirth and union with God in the triple sacrament of baptism, confirmation and Eucharist, achieved through the one is who is God, Jesus Christ who destroyed death by death. God willing, this will lead to our own bodily resurrections on the last day.

St Jerome and Caravaggio

Yesterday was the birthday of the famous early Baroque painter Michelangelo Merisi, who was born in Milan in 1571, and named for the Saint of the day. “Michelangelo” is a fairly common name in Italy, and he shares it with more than one artist of the same century, of whom the most famous by far bore the last name Buonarroti. The young Merisi would discover this to be a problem for his career when he came to Rome in 1592 at the age of 21, less than 30 years after the death of the painter of the Sistine Chapel, sculptor of the Pietà, and architect of St Peter’s; to set himself apart, he used the name of the village where his parents had been born, Caravaggio.

Today, he is without question one of the most admired painters of his era; between 2000 and 2010, there were five major shows dedicated to him in the city of Rome, where many of his works can be seen in various churches and museums. In his own lifetime, while certainly successful, and very influential on other painters, he was also a controversial figure, for reasons which are far more interesting than those given by the silly anti-clerical fantasies of certain modern writers. His life can most charitably be described as disordered, but was rarely described charitably by his contemporaries.

More than one of his paintings was rejected after completion. The best-known of these, the Madonna dei Palafrienieri (“of the grooms” of the Papal court), was first displayed in St Peter’s, but soon moved to the parish church of the Vatican, dedicated to St Anne, and thence to the private collection of Cardinal Scipione Borghese.

Ss Joachim and Anne were traditionally held to have been childless for many years when they conceived the Virgin Mary by a special grace; therefore, by the time Mary herself was the mother of a toddler, Anne would be very old indeed. Caravaggio, who believed intensely in the use of radical naturalism and realism in his works, paints her as a very old woman, whose face has none of the sweetness one might expect an Italian (of all peoples) to show in the face of Jesus’ grandma. Much more importantly, the whole orientation of the painting, the lines and the sweep of the light, sends the eye downwards; this, and the intense darkness of the background, are wholly out of keeping with the architectural spirit of the churches in which it was only very briefly displayed, both of them bright spaces with bright domes that lift the eye up to heaven.

It is perhaps no more than a coincidence, but a very interesting one, that Caravaggio did three fairly similar paintings of the Saint whose name he would perhaps have received if he had been born only one day later. I suspect Jerome was a figure with whom he must have felt a strong affinity. The great project of this Doctor of the Church, to produce a fresh translation of the Bible from the “truth of the Hebrew text (Hebraica veritas)”, as he often called it, was as controversial in the late 4th century as Caravaggio’s work would be 12 centuries later. In his prologues to the various books, St Jerome complains frequently of those who ignorantly criticize him for “changing the Bible”, not realizing how much and how often the older Latin and Greek versions had themselves been changed. In the prologue to Ezra and Nehemiah, he even pleads with the people he was sending it to not to circulate it publicly, lest it stir up further hatred against him. (This is, of course, a purely rhetorical plea from a master polemicist who knows full well that his work will be widely circulated, and in the end vindicated.) In a similar vein, Caravaggio was once called “that Milanese fellow who wants to destroy the art of painting.”

The most famous of the three is the one now displayed in the Galleria Borghese in Rome, directly across the room from the Madonna dei Palafrenieri.

It is possible that Scipione Borghese commissioned this shortly after becoming a cardinal in 1605. Jerome had served for a time as the secretary of Pope St Damasus I, and is therefore traditionally depicted as a cardinal, which the contemporary Pope’s secretary would normally be. In addition to a host of other roles, Card. Borghese was made Secretary for Apostolic Briefs, the equivalent of Jerome’s position, by his uncle, Pope Paul V.

Caravaggio was trained in youth as a still-life painter, and never really learned to paint as anything else. He was completely dependent on models, and this accounts for some of the flaws in his work. The Counter-Reformation period laid heavy emphasis on the fact that St Jerome was not merely a learned man, but a monk, a response to the Protestants’ misuse of his learning in support of their theological innovations. His robes are therefore opened to show his body emaciated by an ascetic life of the kind rejected by the early Protestants. (This will become the standard way of representing him for the rest of the 17th century.) The anatomy of Jerome’s chest in this painting is not so much incorrect as absent; the elderly model simply cannot stay in that odd position long enough for Caravaggio to paint him properly. On the other hand, the figure on the left, whose model is long past feeling fatigue, shows no distortion at all.

One may also imagine how the featureless black background appeared to those who were used to seeing St Jerome in a rather more cluttered study. This version by Domenico Ghirlandaio, Michelangelo’s painting teacher, is typical. (From the church of All Saints in Florence, 1480)

His other two paintings of St Jerome are less well known than that of the famous Borghese Gallery, but in point of fact both done rather more precisely. One of them, St Jerome in Meditation, is thought to be contemporary to the Borghese one, and commissioned for another Cardinal, Benedetto Giustiniani; it is now at the Museum of the Abbey of Montserrat.

The same model is used as in the Borghese painting; for an artist who is wholly dependent on the use of models, it is easier to learn a face and use it repeatedly than to constantly learn new faces, and there are several models who appear in more than one work by Caravaggio. The less strained position has given the artist time to paint a much better figure in regards to anatomy; the background is now completely featureless, bringing Jerome the ascetic to the fore, with no hint of Jerome the scholar.

The other dates from two years later, when Caravaggio had gone to Malta to work under the patronage of the Knights of Malta, and is kept in the cathedral of St John in Valletta.

Here the various traditions for representing St Jerome are finely balanced. The scholar writes at his table, but the crucifix and skull show us that he is also a monastic and a contemplative. The table itself, which is almost sticking out at the viewer, the section of a wall on the right, and especially the wall on the left where the galero hangs, create a much more realistic sense of space. (The galero also reminds us, against the idea of a “Protestant” Jerome, of his close association with the Papacy.) Most notably, the radical chiaroscuro of the earlier paintings is considerably tempered by the lighter background; it is a far less showy painting, one which speaks of an artist who is maturing.

Caravaggio is today known by many for the shocking realism of some of his works, such as the very bloody “Judith Decapitating Holofernes” in the Barberini Gallery in Rome, or the “Martyrdom of St Ursula”, which captures the very moment at which she is shot in the chest with an arrow. It is probably fair to say that that is what makes him so appealing to modern tastes, just as it made him widely detested in the 19th century. (One English guide book of Rome which was well-known in that era did not mention his “Madonna of Loreto” in its description of the church of St Augustine.) And yet it is in the painting of an elderly man quietly working in his study, or alone in silent contemplation, that we see this maturation taking place.

St Lucy - A Saint of the Roman Canon and Caravaggio's Greatest Painting

St Lucy is a Saint of the 3rd century, a virgin martyr who was venerated from the moment of her death and whose feast is celebrated on December 13th in both East and West. An account of her life can be found here.

As with all worthy images intended for use in worship, we see in this portrayal of her by the great 18th century Venetian Tiepolo an account of her story and the characteristics that identify her uniquely. She is shown receiving her final Holy Communion; the instrument of her impending death, the dagger by which she was stabbed in the throat, is placed at the bottom right of the composition, along with her eyes on a plate. This latter symbol is the one most commonly associated with her, although it developed relatively late in the Middle Ages, linked to her name, which is derived from the Latin word for light. (Tiepolo, incidentally is the painter of what in my estimation is the best Immaculate Conception ever painted!)

Other attributes we will see are a palm branch - which is appropriate to all martyrs - as seen in this famous Renaissance period painting by Francesco della Cossa, ca. 1473.

During her passion, the consul Paschasius ordered that she be removed to a brothel and abused until she died. However, teams of men tried but failed to move her. We see this in the painting below in this 15th-century depiction, in which teams of oxen are being used. This is referred to in the Magnificat antiphon for her Second Vespers: “With such great weight did the Holy Spirit set her, that the Virgin of Christ remained unmoved.” (Master of the St Lucy Legend, 1480. Click to enlarge.)

A tradition iconographic image has the saint holding a cross as a sign of martyrdom as in the beautiful fresco.

I finish with Caravaggio and his Burial of St Lucy. This is a late painting done when he was in exile, so to speak, from Rome and living in Sicily, the home of St Lucy. It is an altarpiece, and in my opinion, one of his most brilliant paintings. I do not know if the stylistic development is by accident or design, but regardless, I like the result, which reflects the developing baroque style better than his early work. It is shrouded in more mystery, with disappearing edges, far more numinous monochrome rendering and less colouration than he might have painted in his youth. The composition is brilliant; the arcs formed by the limbs of the two figures in the foreground create a mandorla, which frames the figure of St Lucy. The only bright color is the red robe of a bystander that vertically bisects the mandorla shape, striking to the heart of the martyr.

This is one of a series of articles written to highlight the great feasts and the saints of the Roman Canon. All are connected to a single opening essay, in which I set out principles by which we might create a canon of art for Roman Rite churches, and a schema that would guide the placement of such images in a church. (Read it here.) In these, I plan to cover the key elements of images of the Saints of the Roman Canon - Eucharistic Prayer I - and the major feasts of the year. I have created the tag Canon of Art for Roman Rite to group these together, should any be interested in seeing these articles as they accumulate. For the fullest presentation of the principles of sacred art for the liturgy, take the Master’s of Sacred Arts, www.Pontifex.University.

St Jerome and Caravaggio

Yesterday was the birthday of the famous early Baroque painter Michelangelo Merisi, who was born in Milan in 1571, and named for the Saint of the day. “Michelangelo” is a fairly common name in Italy, and he shares it with more than one artist of the same century, of whom the most famous by far bore the last name Buonarroti. The young Merisi would discover this to be a problem for his career when he came to Rome in 1592 at the age of 21, less than 30 years after the death of the painter of the Sistine Chapel, sculptor of the Pietà, and architect of St Peter’s; to set himself apart, he used the name of the village where his parents had been born, Caravaggio.

Today, he is without question one of the most admired painters of his era; between 2000 and 2010, there were five major shows dedicated to him in the city of Rome, where many of his works can be seen in various churches and museums. In his own lifetime, while certainly successful, and very influential on other painters, he was also a controversial figure, for reasons which are far more interesting than those given by the silly anti-clerical fantasies of certain modern writers. His life can most charitably be described as disordered, but was rarely described charitably by his contemporaries; the introduction of the Wikipedia article on him states with clever restraint that “he handled his success poorly.”

More than one of his paintings was rejected after completion. The best-known of these, the Madonna dei Palafrienieri (“of the grooms” of the Papal court), was first displayed in St Peter’s, but soon moved to the parish church of the Vatican, dedicated to St Anne, and thence to the private collection of Cardinal Scipione Borghese.

Ss Joachim and Anne were traditionally held to have been childless for many years when they conceived the Virgin Mary by a special grace; therefore, by the time Mary herself was the mother of a toddler, Anne would be very old indeed. Caravaggio, who believed intensely in the use of radical naturalism and realism in his works, paints her as a very old woman, whose face has none of the sweetness one might expect an Italian (of all peoples) to show in the face of Jesus’ grandma. Much more importantly, the whole orientation of the painting, the lines and the sweep of the light, sends the eye downwards; this, and the intense darkness of the background, are wholly out of keeping with the architectural spirit of the churches in which it was only very briefly displayed, both of them bright spaces with bright domes that lift the eye up to heaven.

It is perhaps no more than a coincidence, but a very interesting one, that Caravaggio did three fairly similar paintings of the Saint whose name he would perhaps have received if he had been born only one day later. I suspect Jerome was a figure with whom he must have felt a strong affinity. The great project of this Doctor of the Church, to produce a fresh translation of the Bible from the “truth of the Hebrew text (Hebraica veritas)”, as he often called it, was as controversial in the late 4th century as Caravaggio’s work would be 12 centuries later. In his prologues to the various books, St Jerome complains frequently of those who ignorantly criticize him for “changing the Bible”, not realizing how much and how often the older Latin and Greek versions had themselves been changed. In the prologue to Ezra and Nehemiah, he even pleads with the people he was sending it to not to circulate it publicly, lest it stir up further hatred against him. (This is, of course, a purely rhetorical plea from a master polemicist who knows full well that his work will be widely circulated, and in the end vindicated.) In a similar vein, Caravaggio was once called “that Milanese fellow who wants to destroy the art of painting.”

The most famous of the three is the one now displayed in the Galleria Borghese in Rome, directly across the room from the Madonna dei Palafrenieri.

It is possible that Scipione Borghese commissioned this shortly after becoming a cardinal in 1605. Jerome had served for a time as the secretary of Pope St Damasus I, and is therefore traditionally depicted as a cardinal, which the contemporary Pope’s secretary would normally be. In addition to a host of other roles, Card. Borghese was made Secretary for Apostolic Briefs, the equivalent of Jerome’s position, by his uncle, Pope Paul V.

Caravaggio was trained in youth as a still-life painter, and never really learned to paint as anything else. He was completely dependent on models, and this accounts for some of the flaws in his work. The Counter-Reformation period laid heavy emphasis on the fact that St Jerome was not merely a learned man, but a monk, a response to the Protestants’ misuse of his learning in support of their theological innovations. His robes are therefore opened to show his body emaciated by an ascetic life of the kind rejected by the early Protestants. (This will become the standard way of representing him for the rest of the 17th century.) The anatomy of Jerome’s chest in this painting is not so much incorrect as absent; the elderly model simply cannot stay in that odd position long enough for Caravaggio to paint him properly. On the other hand, the figure on the left, whose model is long past feeling fatigue, shows no distortion at all.

One may also imagine how the featureless black background appeared to those who were used to seeing St Jerome in a rather more cluttered study. This version by Domenico Ghirlandaio, Michelangelo’s painting teacher, is typical. (From the church of All Saints in Florence, 1480)

His other two paintings of St Jerome are less well known than that of the famous Borghese Gallery, but in point of fact both done rather more precisely. One of them, St Jerome in Meditation, is thought to be contemporary to the Borghese one, and commissioned for another Cardinal, Benedetto Giustiniani; it is now at the Museum of the Abbey of Montserrat.

The same model is used as in the Borghese painting; for an artist who is wholly dependent on the use of models, it is easier to learn a face and use it repeatedly than to constantly learn new faces, and there are several models who appear in more than one work by Caravaggio. The less strained position has given the artist time to paint a much better figure in regards to anatomy; the background is now completely featureless, bringing Jerome the ascetic to the fore, with no hint of Jerome the scholar.

The other dates from two years later, when Caravaggio had gone to Malta to work under the patronage of the Knights of Malta, and is kept in the cathedral of St John in Valletta.

Here the various traditions for representing St Jerome are finely balanced. The scholar writes at his table, but the crucifix and skull show us that he is also a monastic and a contemplative. The table itself, which is almost sticking out at the viewer, the section of a wall on the right, and especially the wall on the left where the galero hangs, create a much more realistic sense of space. (The galero also reminds us, against the idea of a “Protestant” Jerome, of his close association with the Papacy.) Most notably, the radical chiaroscuro of the earlier paintings is considerably tempered by the lighter background; it is a far less showy painting, one which speaks of an artist who is maturing.

Caravaggio is today known by many for the shocking realism of some of his works, such as the very bloody “Judith Decapitating Holofernes” in the Barberini Gallery in Rome, or the “Martyrdom of St Ursula”, which captures the very moment at which she is shot in the chest with an arrow. It is probably fair to say that that is what makes him so appealing to modern tastes, just as it made him widely detested in the 19th century. (One English guide book of Rome which was well-known in that era did not mention his “Madonna of Loreto” in its description of the church of St Augustine.) And yet it is in the painting of an elderly man quietly working in his study, or alone in silent contemplation, that we see this maturation taking place.