Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio
Nancy's favorite artist -- and in my estimation up there with Vermeer, Brueghel, and Rembrandt -- Caravaggio lived the tabloid life: turbulent quarrels, accusations of murder, rejected commissions, scandal, intrigue, and flight across Europe. All his canvases deal with violence, either symbolically (portraits of saints with the instruments of their passion) or directly: Roman legionary Saint Paul is struck from his horse, Saint Peter is crucified upside down, Saint Matthew is slaughtered while preaching. Even the Calling of Saint Matthew, perhaps his greatest work and part of the Saint Matthew Triptych, is suffused with a sense of urgency as Christ reaches into the darkness of Levi's tax collection.
Homosexual and pugnacious, he was beset by demons -- frequently painting unclothed young lads under the guise of portraits of sulky John the Baptist ("Maybe I'll baptize you ... after lunch"), depicting himself as a stunned guilty Goliath pitied by the adolescent David who has just decapitated him. Even in his self-portrait as Bacchus, his face is sad and mottled green, as if prefiguring death.
Like many another great painter, he peeped himself as a bystander, catching a glimpse of Christ being taken (far-right figure) and gazing on Matthew's martyrdom (the prisoner looking over his shoulder).
For more, see Caravaggio's Saint Matthew Triptych.
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Copyright 2002 David Alexander Smith