Holding a dagger in your hand is better than singing the praises of hypocrisy
--Appreciation of Caravaggio's works
Above: "Lute Player"
Oil on canvas
Author: Michelangelo Merrissi da Caravaggio
Year: 1596
Dimensions: 94 x 119 cm
Collection: Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (Hermitage Museum)
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) was an Italian painter with a unique style in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.
There are too many definite words to describe him: a blasphemous killer; a stunted hybrid; an irritable and brutal alcoholic; a guy who drinks all day, keeps his sword in his hand, and causes trouble... But at the same time he is also praised for his erudition and vast theological knowledge, his pious soul, his eternal side of the poor, and so on...
In short, he was the "King of Focus" in the Roman art scene.
01
Beautiful man complex
What the? The Caravaggio pictured above is not the Caravaggio you know?
Yes, there would be no Caravaggio without violence, and this saying is true. Because his painting style generally gives people the feeling of "looking at the pain series", such as this:
"Juddah who cut off Holofloni's head"
such:
The Doubts of St. Thomas
But before 1593, Caravaggio was a young man who loved art, and there were not many dark sides in his work during this period, but more of a love for young boys and the pursuit of carnal desires.
The styles are as follows:
Works: The Musicians
Oil on canvas
Author: Michelangelo Merrissy da Caravaggio
Year: 1597
Size: 92x118.5cm
Collection: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Musicians shows the image of a young man full of sexual innuendo, and the young man with the trombone in the back row is Caravaggio himself. In this painting, the gender characteristics of the characters are not very obvious, which is also characteristic of Caravaggio's early works. In addition, several musicians in the painting do not see any happiness, and it is obvious that this is not the state of life that the people in the painting want, including the young Caravaggio himself.
In 1593, Caravaggio entered Giuseppe Cesari's studio as an assistant, and the following year he left Cesary to become acquainted with the painter Prospero Orsi, who was already a small position in the painting world, introduced Caravaggio to influential collectors, and soon Caravaggio mastered the painting technique with his talent, showed his talent in his early works, and was appreciated by Cardinal del Monte, becoming a cardinal guest. At this time, Caravaggio was flourishing and ambitious.
He painted intimate works for the cardinals with sexual hints, such as Bacchus, the Musicians, and The Young Man Who Played the Lute, and in these works, Caravaggio used his own image. At that time, caravaggio never had a woman in his work, and all the models were boys: a tall nose, big eyes, a throat knot that did not protrude, a half-naked upper body, and a specific light everywhere showed the artist's heartfelt love for the model.
Caravaggio's early works with sexual cues, in which the self-portraits are all young and handsome, are undoubtedly caravaggio living a comfortable, relaxed, and debauched life under the patronage of Bishop Del Monte, while at the same time reflecting Caravaggio's narcissistic tendencies, which are characteristic of his early works.
02
The pinnacle of the aesthetics of violence
In 16th-century Rome, the Counter-Reformation greatly influenced the creation of art. The Church encourages the educational function of art, advocates the use of visual arts to educate the people, theologians more and more advocate realism, abandon Mannerism, so the art of painting gradually abandons the stereotypical and exaggerated human object state in Mannerism, tends to live, trying to eliminate the gap between the viewer and the picture itself.
The cardinal of the time, Gilio da Fabriano, who advocated depicting scenes of the crucifixion and martyrdom of Christ in painting after the Council of Trent, argued that these scenes should not be expressed only in idealized poses, but should "honestly reflect the splashes of blood, torn skin and wounds, and the faces of fiasco." ”
At the same time, in the second half of the 16th century, in order to commemorate the early religious martyrs, martyrdom painting gradually became popular, and catholic reformers hoped to evoke the people's mourning for the victims of the early massacres through words and images, so paintings containing violent and bloody elements had a greater market.
Works: The Call of St. Matthew
Age: 1600
Dimensions: 323 x 343 cm
Collection: Exhibition of the Chapel of Contagelli in Rome, Italy
The social background provides objective favorable conditions for Caravaggio's creation, and his grasp of the light and shadow of the picture pushes this violent atmosphere to the peak. Between 1600 and 1606, caravaggio's self-portraits were often of Goliath with his head cut off, or of John the Baptist, and paintings involving bloodshed and killing accounted for one-third of All of Carava's works, and his world was a world of violence.
Works: The Martyrdom of St. Matthew
03
A criminal
Caravaggio was rebellious, he was promiscuous and arrogant, and the 17th-century collector Giulio Magiani wrote in his Biography of Caravaggio: "Caravaggio studied diligently, but often got into trouble with his violent disposition." During the painting of the Martyrdom of St. Matthew and the Call of St. Matthew in the Kentari Chapel of the Church of St. Louis Francis, he and his assistants often insulted opponents and imitators, and conflicts with people were common to Caravaggio. He often carried a long sword with a mantra of "I'm going to cut off your flesh to refine it."
Caravaggio's personal "madness" and "depravity" gradually increased with his fame. Reading his biography, one wonders whether he was using outward rebellion to conceal his suspicions about religion, his drunkenness, his prostitutes, his fights, and even his killing, and these temperamental irritability are also reflected in his works. In his works, he shows the rebellion against the italian pioneer painters and the challenge to traditional painting, the work is no longer narrative, but the picture is fixed at a certain moment of an event, he uses all the emotions he wants to express to explain in this moment, sudden, unique aesthetic impact and lasting gaze, thinking is his purpose.
He replaced the elegance, sacredness and piety of his works with barbarism, exuberance, and nakedness.
"The Death of the Virgin" uses a prostitute as a model for the Virgin; "The Victorious Eros" represents the Eros God who should have been a little boy as a young boy; "The Cheater" and other manifestations of the darkness of the underclass society... Similarities that are not allowed by the secular and the church abound in his work.
Caravaggio's originality in art history stems from his unrestrained temperament, and his wild uninhibited has a lot to do with his experience. From the age of 14, he lived a life of wandering, wandering, quarrelling and dueling. The earliest records of him are his criminal record, which shows that he was arrested for carrying illegal weapons, fought with others by a prostitute named Lena, had a dispute with the landlord and smashed the landlord's window, etc., and he was really a dangerous person.
Works: The Beheading of St. John the Baptist
Year: 1608
Size: 361x520cm
Collection: Cathedral of St. John the Double Roof in Valletta, the capital of Malta
This is an oil painting of an undisguised execution scene. Caravaggio arranged a fewer people in the picture, forming a unique solemn atmosphere, leaving a large space in the foreground, making the viewer an eyewitness to the brutal execution, and the audience saw yes: the executioner stood in front of the wall of the cell, St. John was tied to the ground without resistance, the executioner stood next to the executioner, one of his fingers in the foreground holding a plate waiting for the maid of St. John's head, in the distant prison window, two prisoners probing their heads and looking out, The people around her were all indifferent, and the only sympathy for St. John was an old woman, who covered her eyes but her ears in horror, a gesture that suggested that she had heard some kind of terrible sound, where Caravaggio cleverly rendered the atmosphere of oppressive horror with silence.
In this painting, Caravaggio depicts a detail worth studying, namely that the blood of St. John on the ground forms Caravaggio's signature, which is also Caravaggio's only signature.
The Beheading of St. John the Baptist Part
04
Die silently
In 1606, Caravaggio had a conflict with a swordsman, Tomassoni, for a woman and killed her in a quarrel, in which Caravaggio was sentenced to be beheaded in absentia, but a day before that he had fled to Naples.
Because he had killed someone, his soul was dying, so at this time his work was full of compassion, he longed for atonement, and he longed for forgiveness and forgiveness from the bishop. In Naples, he created one of the largest paintings of his life, The Beheading of St. John the Baptist.
Finally, in 1609, news came from Rome that the Pope had forgiven Caravaggio for his crimes, and in order to repay the Pope, Caravaggio painted a painting called David With goliath's Head in Hand. In this work, he paints Goliath's head in his own form, and the young David looks at the giant's head with a strange look, and David's image is the face of caravaggio in his youth! This is a distinctive self-portrait, although Goliath in caravaggio's previous works is himself, but the perpetrators are others, but in this painting, the perpetrator is Caravaggio himself. The sword in David's hand is inscribed with the words "Humility Conquers Pride", a battle that takes place in the heart of Cavallagio, and the two sides of the battle are the characters in the painting: the pious and brave "David" Cavallagio and the criminal "Goliath" Cavalageo.
Works: David with Goliath's head in hand
Year: 1610
Dimensions: 125 x 101 cm
Collection: Borghese Gallery, Rome, Italy
In this painting, Caravaggio uses a tone of almost black and hides the young David in the darkness, the sad look on the boy's face and the cold and heavy tones around him form a sense of gravity.
Caravaggio's painting steps are very peculiar, he never draws a delicate sketch on the canvas first, he often paints and modifies directly on the canvas, through X-ray perspective, the picture shows traces of modification, he has modified the expression of Goliath's head several times, from the initial round eyes, nervous facial expression to the final calm and restrained expression, which is the painter's reflection on violent remorse.
In early July 1610, Caravaggio boarded a ship bound for Rome with his atonement, but the ship stopped at Palo, a small harbor on the west coast of Rome. Here, the local guards mistakenly threw him into prison as a local fugitive, and by the time he tried his best to get out, the ship had left the harbor with his work David with Goliath's Head in Hand.
He ran desperately, hoping to catch the ship at the next port, but in the scorching sun and hunger, he collapsed on the beach and was taken to the hospital of the local monastery. On July 18, 1610, Caravaggio, who had a high fever, coma, helplessness, and pain, left this world.
It is recorded that when he was dying, he refused to kiss the cross, but desperately grasped his dagger engraved with the words "No hope, no fear."<
Caravaggio's life was short but brilliant, he applied the unpolished and disguised self-image to his paintings, which is a record and a portrayal of the pain of life; he rebelled and debauched, challenging the aesthetic "forbidden zone" with violence; he integrated realistic techniques into original light and shadow effects, pushing the atmosphere of the picture to climax and peak; he influenced many masters such as Rembrandt and Rubens in the 17th century.
He was a complete thug, but he was also the most impressive saint.