THE SACRIFICE OF ISAAC

  In this painting painted for Pope Urban VIII, Caravaggio exposes the horror of a father's willingness to sacrifice his son. The spectator assists in distress at the moment in which an angel, of human appearance, stops with an energetic gesture the hand Abraham before he slams Isaac, his firstborn, while pointing to the ram. The scene is brutal. The young man, naked and with his arms tied., Is debated with his head resting on a stone, held by the neck by the hand of his father, who has already relaxed the tension at the intervention of the angel.

  The diagonal light illuminates the three characters, leaving in the gloom the lamb that is to replace Isaac, and highlights the face of the angel, Abraham, who becomes surprised and the victim. Likewise, the faces of Abraham and Isaac are turned towards the light, which makes it possible to accentuate the expressions of pain of both. With mastery, Caravaggio emphasizes the drama, although not the violence of the scene, in the way of painting the hands, assembled linearly. The arms the three characters bring the viewer's gaze and at the same time bring depth to the picture. The scene is located somewhere in the Roman countryside and not in the arid places where the biblical event took place.

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THE CRUCIFIXION OF SAN PEDRO

  Roberto Longhi affirms referring to this picture of darkness and half-open just what is necessary to not lessen his tragic and virile pessimism, everything happens with an unconscious evidence that each one fulfills his task. The desolation resides in the pure and simple event ... And the saint, a good model known on the Margutta road, already nailed to the cross, has a calm, conscious look of a modern lay hero.

  Caravaggio achieves the tone of equality that favors the naturalness of the scene with the distribution that makes the characters, but also with the use of color: there are neither stridencies nor contrasts, but harmonization of ocher and brown tones. Only the red doublet of one of the three executioners is imposed within this range of color, pointing to the viewer the correct direction of reading the work, from left to right. The truth of this picture is not in the story telling but in what is shown. The shadows frame and confer drama on Pedro's weight pinned to the cross and the effort made by the three men to lift it.

  There is in this scene a brutal intimacy between the three executioners whose faces are not seen, and their victim. As workers concentrated in any job, the three apply to lift the cross where the old man is nailed to put it in place. One of them hugs him by the feet to hold it, another with a shovel resting on the ground and his face very close to the face of the apostle, places his shoulder under the cross and the third, lifts it with the help of a rope, Like a draft animal

  The truth here lies in the horror, in that naturalness and impersonality with which the torture is executed before the eyes of a single witness: the spectator. And this is before the vertical pole of the cross where San Pedro has been nailed drawing a horizontal line that, slightly diagonally cuts, as in an imaginary cross, the vertical line that forms the executioner that pulls the rope and the one that has bent your back.

  The central point of the view of the bereavement that the spectator has is the face of an old man, clear on a dark background, disoriented by the position of his body, which seems to accept his death more as a biological fact than as a religious fact.

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HONESTY AND PROVOCATION

  The appearance of reality that the artist poses and resolves on the plastic space, that of the canvas, resembles reality and has often taken his models from it. For many years, the desire for perfection or compliance with the norm or simply the need to transcend the reality of the reality of human nature by elevating it to a superior, symbolic, spiritual idea and therefore, clearly removed from what is natural, has given works of high plastic value, Departing from this condition like many other conventions of human behavior, Caravaggio applied to his pictorial work and his life a systematic and deep, while passionate spirit of rebellion.

  Perhaps the painting lacked to find the atmosphere in which life moves, the real space, where the light highlights the shapes of things, where matter is opaque and casts shadows; where movement and expression constantly remember the existence of human life; Accepting this obvious contradiction between the real world and the normative one, the painting, trying to solve, was, according to his works, the intention of Caravaggio.

  The real space is, by nature, limited expands and exists as far as the eye can see and changes with displacement; the space where it is painted is limited and by the painter's decision, selective.

  Caravaggio established the treatment of his space beyond the subjects that he had to present and gave the light the possibility of configuring it: in fact, the direction, the expressive force and the control of the light can only be decided by the author, who find in This is one of his memories and is at the same time one of his abilities. Undoubtedly, Caravaggio was aware of the artificial light of his paintings, that the painted light and its effects and reflections had to be decided beforehand and opted for a sharp contrast between the shapes and the backgrounds so that more than the absence of light, there is Darkness as a starting point.

  The option to give prominence to the light was, in its time a real revolution, it almost seems that in the beginning of his thought, in the first mental embozo, we know that not towards previous studies of his works, the darkness is already established in a way that the figures emerge from the dark background and the light decides their place and the role they play in the presentation of the chosen theme.

  The light shows the color and the real aspect of things, does not hide or camouflage the reality that was observed with attention by the painter and that can give us another clue to his pictorial ideology, the will to show it as it is. In accordance with and consistent with this evidence, Caravaggio exercised his skill in precision and rigor.

  The maturity of the fruits that I paint is evident, the objects are identified with such clarity: the delicacies, the glass jars full of water or wine, the shabby clothes, the perfectly written scores, the musical instruments, the furniture, etc. . All this is a sample of the objects of his time, of what belonged to his immediate surroundings.

  Then a question of difficult answer arises, why did you choose to show ordinary, simple objects? Why did you choose your models among friends and neighbors? Was it an act of coherence, of logic, of proximity of identification with that more real or immediate, or perhaps an act of provocation? In any case, it is part of artistic freedom.

  Freedom was evident and necessary in the conception of its own pictorial space, to build not only the spatial depth and the place of representation, but especially the intensity of the moments represented through the light, even redirecting the theme that requested its representation in a natural space, towards dark and depopulated environments of objects, dominated by the construction that he entrusts to the light and the nuances that he generates when he gives corporeality to the bodies through color.

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CONDEMNATION AND EVASION

  Caravaggio sank in the Roman night. Apparently, he killed a policeman and was imprisoned in the Tor di Noma prison from where he fled with the help of his friends. He became an outlaw who hid among criminals. Shortly afterwards, he killed a Ranuccio Tomasoni da Terni in a fight while playing the chord, after accusing him of cheating. On May 31, 1606, the Roman authorities announced the death sentence of Michelangelo Merisi. none of his powerful protectors came to his aid Del Monte was ill and Prince Colonna was out of the care so he was forced to flee from Rome where he could never return.

  The first scale of the escape was the Feud of the Colonna in Lazio, where in the summer of 1606 I paint "The dinner of Emaus" commissioned by Ottavio Costa a version of a subject already discussed previously. But an artist of his category needed a place where he could display his skills so he left Lazio and settled in Naples, taking care that at that time it was Spanish jurisdiction.

  Always under the protection of the Colonna Caravaggio he contacted the Caraffa family and thanks to his new and wealthy relationships, he received commissions to paint various paintings, among the most important canvases of this period are "Virgin of the Rosary" for the church of the Dominicans "Seven Works of Mercy" and the "Flagellation of Christ" a heartbreaking picture in him seems to evoke the tortures he was subjected to during his detention in Rome,

  In the eight months that his stay in Naples lasted, Caravaggio became a celebrity but this recognition was not enough for him, since Naples could not be compared to Rome at that time in the center of the world. News came from the Holy See where its most direct rivals, such as Caliver d'Arpino or Giovanni Baglione, were deserving of the highest honors: the entrance to the Academy of San Lucas or the concession of the Order of Christ.

  Perhaps that was the reason why he decided to move to Malta where his ordination as a knight of the order could ensure his forgiveness of his crime and therefore pave his return to Rome.

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THE OPPORTUNITY TO CONSECRATE

  Michelangelo, remember that he had already worked in the Contarelli chapel when the Cavalier D Arpino decorated the vault, now had the mission of adorning the side walls with his canvases. Berne-Joffroy in his "Caravaggio Report" writes that "Caravaggio must have felt very intimidated and full of a very lively desire to take advantage of this great occasion to fully affirm his strength. His state of spirit is easy to imagine. He wanted to overcome everything he had done so far.

 Remember that if his previous works had earned him enough compliments, he had not lacked criticism, in particular they had reproached him for not knowing how to compose; As a result of this challenge, Caravaggio delivered "The Martyrdom of St. Matthew" and "The Vocation of St. Matthew", two magnificent canvases that inaugurated a new and controversial phase in his art and also in the history of Western painting as stated by Valerio Mariani , author of the monographic book "Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio".

  If the first of the paintings where he was self-portrait for the third time in the figure of a spectator, impacted by the dramatic realism of the murder of the saint, the second scandal when choosing as a scene, a telonium, the little sacred place where the collectors of taxes collected their taxes.

 But even being all this bold and provocative for his contemporaries, the greatest contribution of these two great works lay in the extraordinary treatment that Caravaggio made of light.

  This, which symbolized the supernatural presence of the divinity appeared as an autonomous element in space and time and determined the narrative rhythm of the scene "The light in his paintings" states Gombrich does not make the bodies seem softer and funny, but which is hard and almost blinding in its contrasts with the deep shadows causing the whole of the strange scene to stand out with an unwavering honesty that few of his contemporaries could appreciate, but of decisive effects on later artists.

 Despite the heated discussions that took place, the paintings were not only accepted by the heirs of the cardinal, who had died shortly before, but also commissioned a new canvas "San Mateo and El Angel" which however later was not pleasing to his clients who rejected them for undermining the decorum, because the saint was incarnated by a rough man and again the painter was forced to make a second version.

 While working for the Contarelli chapel, Cardinal Tiberio Cesari made another important assignment; two canvases to decorate his chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo. Caravaggio undertook the realization of "The Fall of Saul" and "The Crucifixion of St. Peter", it seems that the Lombard painter also had to execute new versions of these works because of his lack of circumspection.

  To these two important commissions were added another two of no less importance as "The Virgin of Loreto" for the church of San Agustin and "The Virgin of the Palafreneros", commissioned by the brotherhood of the Pope's Palafreneros for the Vatican Basilica.

  In any case Caravaggio enjoyed then fame and prestige but the scandal accompanied him permanently. The death of the virgin was rejected by the Carmelites of Santa Maria della Scala despite the intermediation of the Marques de Guistiniani, because Caravaggio again lacked decency by placing the scene in the framework of a humble dwelling and using a prostitute as a model of The virgin

  Other works of the same period, such as "Victorious Love" reflected his attraction to the abyss. The painting portrayed a shameless teenager, probably a homosexual prostitute, who tramples on the symbols of power and knowledge, Caravaggio could no longer contain his fury and it was time for the final break with the Vatican.  

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A DETERMINING MEETING

  The first religious canvas of Caravaggio is San Francisco receiving the stigmas, which some historians, such as Dominique Fernandez, consider the first and most genuine example of Baroque art. Moved by the veracity of the painting, Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, ambassador of the Duke of Tuscany at the Holy See. He proposed to the young Lombard "shelter and cubierno" in the Madama palace. It seemed an irresistible proposition and will be a crucial encounter in Caravaggio's biology, but he reluctantly accepted it at Valentin's request, perhaps with the promise that his freedom would be respected.

  Thus between 1595 and 1600 Michelangelo Merisi was under the protection of the high prelate. Turned overnight into a recognized painter thanks to the influences of Cardinal Del Monte, he began for the young master Lombardo his most brilliant and controversial stage in which he committed some of his most important works.

  Caravaggio temporarily abandoned sordid environments and channeled his inner restlessness towards painting. His language gave his paintings "Magdalena Penitente, Santa Marta and Santa Maria Magdalena" an unknown tension until then, in which chiaroscuro played a decisive role.

  These coincidences also reached his profane works "The tahures, Head of Medusa" in which humor and horror appear. The real experiences of the street looked out over the devious, roguish or cheeky faces of their characters. To be true to that truth, as some radiographic analyzes show, such as the one carried out in the second version of "The Good Adventure", Caravaggio dispensed with the previous drawing because he considered that by introducing a preconceived idea into the painting, he falsified its truthfulness. This revolutionary idea scandalized the academicists and also the church. Caravaggio did not limit himself to showing the idealized suffering of the Christian martyrs, but rather exposed the brutality and proximity of the color.

  Caravaggio systematically violates the principle of decorum in the painting sanctioned by the ideologies of the counter-reform, for whom the divine characters should appear with the sacred attributes and not with those who vulgarize them in the eyes of the beholder.

  Despite the good disposition of his protector, Cardinal Del Monte many pictures of Caravaggio were not accepted, which forced him to make new corrected versions of them. Stupor and Scandal caused their Christs, Virgins and Saints represented as close beings, for whom I use models taken from the street and especially those from the unseemly neighborhoods of the city, whose gestures and looks reflected without restraint that point of despair that causes daily struggle for survival in a medium dominated by misery.

  There was the contradictory circumstance that the paintings that the rich bourgeois gave him for the church were rejected by the religious and then bought by art lovers.

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