Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... 1

FOREWORD and the Istoria . 3

PART ONE

A Matter of Optics and Rhetoric: The Aporia of Pictorial Narrative Before, During, and After Caravaggio’s Time Caravaggio’s Nonsense ...... 15

Chapter 1 The Glitches in Alberti’s Istoria: The Human Figure Between Beauty and Reality . . 35

Chapter 2 The Glitches in Alberti’s Istoria: Time and Action ...... 67

Chapter 3 The False Dichotomy Between Telling and Showing: Beyond Alberti’s Istoria . . . 93

PART TWO

Blending Genres: Lyrical and Comical Interactions in Caravaggio’s Early Paintings Comedy of Errors . 121

Chapter 4 Money and Seduction: Narrative Patterns in Caravaggio’s Two Versions of The Fortune Teller ...... 135

Chapter 5 Behind the Comical Trick: Caravaggio’s and Giovan Battista Marino’s “Gioco di Primera” ...... 157

Chapter 6 Love in the Mirror: A Comparative Reading of Titian’s Woman at Her Toilet and Caravaggio’s Conversion of Mary Magdalene . 177

V TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART THREE

The Misplaced Hero: The Challenge of the Istoria in Caravaggio’s Early Religious Narratives Truth in Painting ...... 199

Chapter 7 The Calling of Saint Matthew in Retrospective: Experimenting with Narrative Disconnections ...... 211

Chapter 8 “Completely Bereft of Action”: Narrative Blindness and the Heroic Horse in the Cerasi Conversion of Saint Paul ...... 243

Chapter 9 Visualizing Appearance and Disappearance: Caravaggio’s Two Versions of The Supper at Emmaus ...... 265

PART FOUR

“With the Mind’s Eye”: Self-Representation and Self-Referentiality in Caravaggio’s Pictorial Narratives The Shaman Painter or The Metaphysics of Pictorial Invention . 297

Chapter 10 Zuccari’s Lantern: The Blind Spot of Painting in Caravaggio’s The Taking of Christ . . 311

Chapter 11 The Other Michelangelo: The Weight of Composition and Artistic Paragone in Caravaggio’s Entombment ...... 343

Chapter 12 The Impossible Banality of Representing Christ: Self-Parody and Tragicomedy in Caravaggio’s ...... 375

PART FIVE

The Work of Memory: Variations on Themes and Telescopic Parallels in Caravaggio’s Late Pictorial Narratives Artistic Memory and the Invention of the Istoria . 403

Chapter 13 Narratives of the Non-Finito: On Caravaggio’s Denial of Saint Peter, The Burial of Saint Lucy, and The Resurrection of Lazarus ...... 415

Chapter 14 Piercing the Canvas: Painting and Meta-Narrative in Caravaggio’s The Incredulity of Saint Thomas and The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula ...... 447

VI TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART SIX

Reaction to Change: The Afterlife of Caravaggio’s Poetics of Dislocation The Black Tide of Caravaggio’s Painting . 481

Chapter 15 Blind and Deaf Actions: Cecco del Caravaggio’s Chicago Resurrection ...... 495

Chapter 16 The Antichrist of Spanish Painting: Diego Velázquez’s Supper at Emmaus and the Two Versions of La Mulata ...... 517

Chapter 17 Without a Plot: Valentin de Boulogne’s Liechtenstein Merry Company with Fortune Teller ...... 539

EPILOGUE

The End of Narrative? Afterthoughts on the Definition and Function of theIstoria in an Age of Subjectivity . 559

TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS ...... 573

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 589

INDEX ...... 675

VII