Re-forming Images: , , and the Body

Sonia Loredana Del Re

Department of and Communication Studies McGill University, Montreal

October 2013

A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

© Sonia Loredana Del Re, 2013 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

Table of Contents Re-forming Images: Utrecht, Caravaggio, and the Body

Abstract English 3 French 5

Acknowledgments 7

List of Figures 9

Introduction 18 I. The Powers of Caravaggistic Bodies 26 II. “Theatre of Repetition”: Towards an Epistemology of Caravaggism 31 III. Form and Identity 34 IV. Parameters of the study 37

Chapter One Utrecht to and Back: Mobile Identities in Utrecht Caravaggism and Some Antecedents 49 I. Introduction 49 II. Jan Gossart: From the Colosseum to the Castle of the Bishop of Utrecht 56 III. Jan van Scorel, Painter and Ecclesiastic, and a Dutch Papal Connection 62 IV. Bloemaert and the Blooming of the Utrecht School of 70 V. Baburen, Honthorst and Terbrugghen: Protagonists of Caravaggism in Rome 81 VI. Conclusion: The Crisis of the Image 97

Chapter Two Bodies in Flux: Corporeality in Caravaggistic 102 I. Introduction 102 II. The Theatre of Rome: The City, the Body, and Empirical 107 III. The Body Between Naturalism and Performativity in Caravaggio’s Art 115 IV. Death of the Virgin: “A Bloated ” 130 V. Mutations: Early Responses of the Utrecht Caravaggists 146 VI. Conclusion 159

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Chapter Three Embodiment and Performance in Caravaggistic Secular Narrative 163 I. Introduction 163 II. In ’ Disguise: Caravaggio’s Half-Length Male Youths 168 III. Sleight of Hand: Serio-Comic Trickery in Caravaggio’s Fortune Teller and Cardsharps 174 IV. Freaks of Nature: Caravaggio’s Musical Performers and the Lyricism of Marginality 186 V. ‘Ne coscie ne gambe:’ Anatomy of a Crippled Narrative 197 VI. Conclusion 213

Chapter Four The Usual Suspects: Re-staging Caravaggistic Archetypes in Utrecht 216 I. Introduction 216 II. Rehearsing Real Life: Turning Gods into Drinkers, Castrati into Street Musicians and Saints into Whores 218 III. Recast: Caravaggistic Half-Figures in Print 235 IV. ‘Ik sing op mijn manier’: Transformation through Versification 250 V. Conclusion 258

Conclusion 262

Appendix 269 I. Utrecht and Caravaggistic Prints 269 II. Catalogue of Utrecht Caravaggistic Half-Figured Secular Prints 272

Figures 293

Works Cited 351

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Abstract

This dissertation argues for a reconsideration of the function of bodies in

Caravaggistic painting, and in Utrecht Caravaggism more particularly. It examines the role of the human figure in the work of Caravaggio and the Utrecht

Caravaggists in light of the distinct narrative mode within which Caravaggistic painting operates. The issues explored in this dissertation formulate a response to seventeenth-century criticism regarding the treatment of bodies in Caravaggistic pictures, and the purported loss of narrative meaning. This study thus describes how Caravaggistic bodies perform and enact narrative in a way that subverts normative forms of visual narration in Italian and art.

The project as a whole aims to provide a counterpart to our understanding of Caravaggism as a style founded on contrasts of light and dark and realistic representation. I move away from thinking about these characteristics as stylistic choices, and consider them instead as narrative means that are meant to highlight the performative function of bodies in creating narrative content. My study draws on forms of entertainment to illustrate how the human figure, through performance, both produces significations and engages beholders in narrative processes.

Another objective of this project is to underline identity as a key factor in the shaping of Utrecht Caravaggism, as well as an important agent in

Caravaggistic narrative. On the one hand, I explain in what ways Caravaggism renews a relationship between the cities of Rome and Utrecht that was so important to the visual and artistic identity of Utrecht in the sixteenth and

3 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re seventeenth centuries. On the other hand, my work shows how identity functions within Caravaggistic painting as a pictorial and rhetorical device. To this end,

Chapters Three and Four map out a new vision of the relationship between

Caravaggistic painting and viewers by focusing on the mode of address employed by Caravaggistic half-length figural painting.

Hence, my approach to the subject of bodies and performance in

Caravaggism posits narrative not simply as a visual form but as a site between representations and viewers. Within this contiguous space, pictorial bodies and identities and their equivalent in the real world become imbricated. My interpretation of Caravaggistic painting, and of Utrecht Caravaggism more precisely, therefore seeks to reconcile a pictorial mode that appears to negate space and time with narrative invention and intention.

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Résumé

Cette thèse propose de reconsidérer la fonction du corps humain dans la peinture caravagiste et, plus particulièrement, dans le Caravagisme utrechtois. Elle examine le rôle de la figure humaine dans l’œuvre de Caravage et dans l’œuvre des Caravagistes d’Utrecht compte tenu du mode de narration distinct qu’emploie la peinture caravagiste. Les thèmes envisagés ici sont inspirés par les critiques

émises au dix-septième siècle au sujet de la représentation du corps humain dans la peinture caravagiste et selon lesquelles celle-ci nuit à la fonction narrative de la peinture. Cette étude décrit comment l’approche caravagiste subvertit les règles albertiennes de narration en refusant de situer les représentations dans le temps et dans l’espace, et en se concentrant de préférence sur la figure humaine, qu’elle met en avant-plan.

De façon générale, ce projet offre une interprétation complémentaire à la conception du Caravagisme en tant que style préconisant les vifs contrastes de lumière et le réalisme pictural. Plutôt que d’envisager ces traits caractéristiques comme choix stylistiques, ils sont ici considérés pour leur capacité à souligner la fonction narrative du corps humain. Afin de mettre en évidence le rôle performatif de la figure humaine dans la narration figurative, cette étude s’appuie, entre autres, sur l’examen de formes contemporaines de divertissement. Cette approche permet de retracer les processus narratifs que la figure humaine engendre dans la peinture caravagiste et qui impliquent le spectateur dans la création de sens.

Cette thèse a pour autre objectif de souligner un facteur clé dans l’essor du

Caravagisme à Utrecht: la notion d’identité. Cette dernière revêt un intérêt

5 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re particulier pour cette étude parce qu’elle joue également un rôle essentiel au sein du développement narratif dans la peinture caravagiste. Les chapitres qui suivent révèlent, d’abord, que le caravagisme permet de renouer les relations entre Rome et Utrecht qui furent indispensables à la constitution d’une identité visuelle et artistique pour Utrecht aux seizième et dix-septième siècles. Ensuite, ils démontrent l’utilisation de la notion d’identité comme dispositif pictural et rhétorique dans la peinture caravagiste. À cette fin, les troisième et quatrième chapitres dressent un nouveau portrait des liens que la peinture caravagiste cherche à tisser avec ses spectateurs. Typiquement caravagesques, les personnages grandeur nature, représentés à mi-corps attirent particulièrement l’attention des observateurs. La façon dont ils s’adressent aux spectateurs constituent donc le sujet de ces deux derniers chapitres.

Les thèmes de la corporalité et de la théâtralité dans l’art caravagiste demandent d’envisager la narration non pas uniquement comme forme visuelle, mais aussi comme lieu d’échange entre image et spectateur. Les corps dépeints sont souvent poussés aux confins de l’espace pictural de sorte que la fiction s’imbrique avec la réalité. Ainsi, cette thèse souhaite expliquer que ce mode pictural qui semble vouloir nier l’espace et le temps met en branle sa propre méthode narrative par laquelle le spectateur est appelé à participer à la création de sens.

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Acknowledgements

This project could not have been brought to fruition without the unswerving support and great scholarship of my thesis directors Dr. Angela Vanhaelen and

Dr. Bronwen Wilson whose persistence is the cornerstone of this dissertation.

Angela and Bronwen’s guidance has been instrumental, and my foremost gratitude goes to them for their immense generosity, care and acumen. Dank je!

Grazie! I would also like to offer my special thanks to Dr. Chriscinda Henry for her interest and attentiveness during the last months of writing. Thanks are also due to the indefatigable Maureen Coote for her administrative support.

I am indebted to the Fond québécois de recherche société et culture,

Making Publics: Media, Markets and Association in early modern Europe, 1500–

1700, the Bram Garber Fellowship in Art History, the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University, and Forms of Conversion:

Religion, Culture, and Cognitive Ecologies in Early Modern Europe and its

Worlds. The financial support they provided made this project possible.

I wish to acknowledge the kind assistance of the staff at several institutions in the including the and

Rijksprentenkabinet (), Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische

Documentatie (), van Stolk (),

(Utrecht), and Museum Catharijneconvent (Utrecht).

This dissertation is dedicated to my devoted parents Donato Del Re and

Filomena Iannelli in recognition of all their love and constant encouragement. I thank them for instilling in me the value of education and hard work.

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To my partner and better half, Sheldon Nimijean, this lengthy and difficult journey was made more bearable by your smile, your love, your undivided attention and solicitude. I am thankful for your unflagging patience and profound complicity through thirteen long years of graduate and undergraduate studies.

I am also fortunate to have a dependable older brother on whom I was able to count throughout my schooling. Tony Del Re, these acknowledgements would not be complete if I did not thank you for your support, as well as your cool (but lovable) cynicism. To my family, especially Anna Sciacchitano, Sonya Pacitti,

Daniel Nimijean, Gabrielle Nimijean and Ashley Nimijean, thank you for your continued understanding, and for keeping me grounded.

My time at McGill was greatly enriched by the comforting camaraderie and countless laughs shared with Dr. Samantha Burton, Krystel Chehab, Dr. Leah

Clark and Anuradha Gobin. The comments of Dr. Burton and Ms. Gobin in the early stages of writing were salutary.

Finally, I express my entire gratitude to the of Canada, especially to Marc Mayer for his trust, and to Dr. Paul Lang for his generosity of spirit and kind consideration. To Dr. Erika Dolphin, thank you for your counsel and true friendship. Sincere appreciativeness is due to other colleagues at the

Gallery, especially Annie Arsenault, Louise Chénier and Jacqueline Warren.

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List of Figures

0.1 Gerrit van Honthorst, Woman Tuning a Lute, 1624. Oil on canvas, 81.5 × 64.5 cm. Montreal, Museum of Fine Arts (acquired 2013).

0.2 Gerrit van Honthorst, The Duet, 1624. Oil on canvas, 78 × 94.5 cm. Sold Christie’s, New York, 5 June 2013 ( 108).

0.3 Quentyn Metsys, Ill-Matched Lovers, c. 1520/1525. Oil on panel, 43.2 × 63 cm. Washington, National Gallery (inv. no. 1971.55.1).

0.4 Marinus van Reymerswaele, Two Tax Gatherers, 1540? Oil on panel, 94.1 × 77 cm. , Musée du , on loan from the Ministère des Finances.

1.1 Joost Cornelisz. Droochsloot, Panorama of Utrecht, c. 1650–65. Oil on canvas, 224.3 cm × 64.2 cm. Utrecht, Centraal Museum (inv. no. 2298).

1.2 Jan van Scorel, Presentation of in the Temple, 1524–26. Oil on wood, 114 × 85 cm. , .

1.3 Jan Gossart, Neptune and Amphitrite, 1516. Oil on panel, 191 × 128.4 cm. , Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie (inv. no. 648).

1.4 , Portrait of Pope Julius II, 1511. Oil on polar, 108.7 × 81 cm. , National Gallery (inv. no NG27).

1.5 Copy after Jan van Scorel, Portrait of Pope Paul VI, 1524–26. Oil on panel, 93 × 73.6 cm. Utrecht, Centraal Museum (inv. no. 2244).

1.6 Jan van Scorel, Lokhorst Triptych (middle panel), c. 1526. Oil on panel, 79 × 147 cm. Utrecht, Centraal Museum (inv. no. 6078).

1.7 Jan van Scorel, Lokhorst Triptych (left interior wing), c. 1526. Oil on panel, 81.4 × 65.2. Utrecht, Centraal Museum (inv. no. 6078).

1.8 Jan van Scorel, Lokhorst Triptych (right interior wing), c. 1526. Oil on panel, 81.5 × 65.7. Utrecht, Centraal Museum (inv. no. 6078).

1.9 , Fall of the Rebel Angels, 1554. Oil on panel, 303 × 220 cm. , Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten (inv. no. 112).

1.10 , Fall of the Rebel Angels, c. 1600. Black chalk, pen and ink with grey wash and white highlights on paper. Utrecht, Centraal Museum (inv. no. 9322).

9 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

1.11 Abraham Bloemaert, and Punishing Niobe by Killing her Children, 1591. Oil on canvas, 249.5 × 203 cm. , Statens Museum for Kunst (inv. no. KMSsp342).

1.12 Hendrik Goltzius after , Mars and Venus, 1588. Engraving, 44.2 × 32.7 cm. Hollstein 321.

1.13 Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem, Baptism of Christ, 1588. Oil on canvas, 170.5 × 206 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre (inv. no. RF 1983-25).

1.14 Hendrik Goltzius, Fall of Phaeton (from the series ), c. 1588. Pen and -brown ink, brush and brown wash, heightened with white, 16.5 × 25.3 cm. New York, Metropolitan Museum (inv. no. 1992.376).

1.15 Abraham Bloemaert, Landscape with the Prophet Elijah in the Desert, . Oil on canvas, 72 × 97 cm. St. Petersburg, (inv. no. 6802).

1.16 Crispijn de Passe II, Frontispiece to Van’t light der teken en schilder konst, 1643. Engraving.

1.17 Gerrit van Honthorst, of , after Caravaggio, 1616. Pen and brown ink and wash on paper, 38 × 26.5 cm. , National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design (inv. no. NG.K&H.B.15597).

1.18 Caravaggio, Crucifixion of Saint Peter, 1600. Oil on canvas, 230 × 175 cm. Rome, Church of .

1.19 , Christ Washing the Feet of the Apostles, c. 1617–18). Oil on canvas, 199 × 297 cm. Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie (inv. no. 462).

1.20 Dirck van Baburen, Capture of Christ with the Malchus Episode, 1615– 16. Oil on canvas, 125 × 95 cm. , Fondazione di studi di storia dell’arte .

1.21 Jan van Scorel (?), Christ Blessing, c. 1520–30. Oil on panel, 52 × 39 cm. , .

1.22 After Jan van Eyck, Salvator Mundi, 15th century (?). Oil on panel. Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie.

2.1 Caravaggio, , 1597. Oil on canvas mounted on wood, 60 × 55 cm. Florence, Galleria degli .

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2.2 Caravaggio, Taking of Christ, c. 1602. Oil on canvas 133.5 cm × 169.5 cm. , National Gallery of Ireland (inv. no. L.14702).

2.3 Caravaggio, , 1601–1602. Oil on canvas, 107 cm × 146 cm. Potsdam, Schloss Sanssouci.

2.4 Caravaggio, Saint , c. 1598. Oil on canvas, 173 cm × 133 cm. Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (inv. no. 81).

2.5 Caravaggio, and , c. 1598. Oil on canvas, 100 cm × 134.5 cm. Detroit, Art Institute (inv. no. 73.268).

2.6 Caravaggio, Death of the Virgin, 1606. Oil on canvas, 369 × 245 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre (inv no. INV 54).

2.7 , Death of the Virgin (first version). Current location unknown.

2.8 Carlo Saraceni, Death of the Virgin (second version), 1610. Oil on canvas, 459 × 273 cm. Rome, Church of .

2.9 Detail, before restoration of , , 1619. Oil on canvas, 132.5 × 160.5 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum (inv. no. SK-A-4188).

2.10 Detail, after restoration of Hendrick ter Brugghen, Adoration of the Magi, 1619. Oil on canvas, 132.5 × 160.5 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum (inv. no. SK-A-4188).

2.11 Hendrick ter Brugghen, Calling of Saint Matthew, c. 1618–19. Oil on canvas, 152 × 195 cm. Le Havre, Musée des beaux-arts André-Malraux (inv. no. 77-7).

2.12 Caravaggio, Calling of Saint Matthew, 1599–1600. Oil on canvas, 322 × 340 cm. Rome, Church of .

2.13 Dirck van Baburen, Entombment of Christ, c. 1617. Oil on canvas, 222 × 142 cm. Rome, Church of San Pietro in Montorio.

2.14 Caravaggio, Entombment of Christ, 1602–1603. Oil on canvas, 300 × 203 cm. Rome, Pinacoteca Vaticana.

2.15 Gerrit van Honthorst, Beheading of Saint John, c. 1617–18. Oil on canvas, 324 × 215 cm. Rome, Church of Santa Maria della Scala.

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2.16 Caravaggio, Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, 1599–1600. Oil on canvas, 322 × 340 cm. Rome, Church of San Luigi dei Francesi.

2.17 Abraham Bloemaert, Baptism of Christ, 1602. Oil on canvas, 60.3 × 77.4 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (inv no. 3340).

2.18 Dirck van Baburen, Procuress, 1622. Oil on canvas, 101.5 × 107.6 cm. , Museum of Fine Arts (inv. no. 50.2721).

2.19 , Young Woman at a Virginal, c. 1670–72. Oil on canvas, 51.5 × 41.5 cm. London, National Gallery (inv. no. NG2568).

3.1 Caravaggio, Boy with a Basket of Fruit, c. 1593. Oil on canvas, 70 × 67 cm. Rome, .

3.2 Caravaggio, Sick Bacchus, c. 1593. Oil on canvas, 67 × 53 cm. Rome, Galleria Borghese.

3.3 Caravaggio, Fortune Teller, c. 1594. Oil on canvas, 115 × 150 cm. Rome, Musei Capitolini.

3.4 Caravaggio, Cardsharps, c. 1594. Oil on canvas, 94 × 131 cm. Fort Worth, Kimbel Art Museum (inv. no. AP 1987.06).

3.5 Bravo veneziano (no. 134) from Cesare Vecellio’s De gli habiti antichi e moderni (, 1590).

3.6 Soldato disarmato (no. 133) from Cesare Vecellio’s De gli habiti antichi e moderni (Venice, 1590).

3.7 Tiziano Vecellio, , 1516–17. Oil on canvas, 75 × 67 cm. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum.

3.8 Lucas van Leyden, Tavern Scene (Prodigal Son), c. 1517. Woodcut from two blocks, 67 x 48.5 cm. Hollstein 193.

3.9 Lucas van Leyden, Young Man with a Skull, c. 1519. Engraving, 18.4 × 14.5 cm. Hollstein 174.

3.10 Lucas van Leyden, Fortune Teller, c. 1508. Oil on panel, 24 × 30.5 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre (inv. no. RF 1962-17).

3.11 Lucas van Leyden, Chess Players, c. 1508. Oil on oak, 27 × 35 cm. Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie.

12 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

3.12 Lucas van Leyden, Card Players, c. 1520. Oil on panel, 28.8 × 39.5 cm. Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (inv. no. 221 (1971.9)).

3.13 Caravaggio, Lute Player, c. 1595. Oil on canvas, 94 × 119 cm. St. Petersburg, Hermitage Museum (originally collection).

3.14 Caravaggio, Lute Player, c. 1597. Oil on canvas, 102 × 129.9 cm. New York, Wildenstein collection (originally Del Monte collection).

3.15 (?), Impassioned Singer, c. 1508–1510. Oil on canvas, 102 × 78 cm. Rome, Galleria Borghese.

3.16 Giorgione (?), Flute Player, c. 1508–1510. Oil on canvas, 102 × 78 cm. Rome, Galleria Borghese.

3.17 Bartlomeo Manfredi, Bacchus and a Drinker, c. 1608–1610. Oil on canvas, 132 × 96 cm. Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica di (inv. no. 1012).

3.18 , Gypsy with Tambourine, c. 1613–15. Oil on canvas, 65 × 59 cm. New York, with Grassi Studio, 2013 (previously Marchese de Mari collection, Florence).

3.19 , Young Woman with a Violin (), c. 1612. Oil on canvas, 83.5 × 97.8 cm. Detroit, Detroit Institute of Art (inv. no. 68.47).

3.20 , Saint Cecilia, 1606. Oil on canvas, 95.9 × 74.9 cm. Pasadena, North Simon Museum (inv. no F.1973.23.P).

3.21 Orazio Gentileschi, Mary Magdalene, 1621–24. Oil on canvas, 82.3 × 68.5 cm. London, with Whitfield Fine Arts, 2013.

3.22 Orazio Gentileschi, and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes, 1621–24. Oil on canvas, 134.6 × 157.5 cm. Hartford, (inv. no. 1949.52).

3.23 Orazio Gentileschi and , Casino delle Muse, c. 1611–12. . Rome, Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi.

3.24 Orazio Gentileschi and Agostino Tassi, Casino delle Muse, c. 1611–12. Fresco. Rome, Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi.

3.25 Gerrit van Honthorst, Musical Group on a Balcony, 1622. Oil on panel, 308 × 102.5 cm. Los Angeles, Getty Museum (inv. no. 70.PB.34).

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3.26 Bartolomeo Manfredi, Denial of Saint Peter, c. 1616–18. Oil on canvas, 166 × 232 cm. Braunsweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum (inv. no. 495).

3.27 Bartolomeo Manfredi, Tavern Scene with a Lute Player, c. 1612–14. Oil on canvas, 129.5 × 190.5 cm. London, with Trafalgar Galleries, 2004. Current location unknown.

3.28 Bartolomeo Manfredi, Concert, c. 1614–16. Oil on canvas, 130 × 190 cm. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi (inv. no. 1890–4359).

3.29 Bartolomeo Manfredi, Card Players, c. 1610–20. Oil on canvas, 130 × 191.5 cm. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi (heavily damaged in the 1993 Uffizi bombing).

3.30 , with Fortune Teller, 1631. Oil on canvas, 190 × 265 cm. Vienna, Liechtenstein Museum.

4.1 Gerrit van Honthorst, Merry Violinist with a Wineglass, 1623. Oil on canvas, 107.2 × 88.3 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum (inv. no. SK-A-180).

4.2 Gerrit van Honthorst, Smiling Young Man Squeezing Grapes, 1622. Oil on canvas, 83.3 × 66.7 cm. Worcester, Worcester Art Museum (inv. no. 1968.15).

4.3 Caravaggio, Bacchus, c. 1595. Oil on canvas, 95 × 85 cm. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi.

4.4 Gerrit van Honthorst, Merry Violinist with a Wineglass, 1624. Oil on canvas, 84 × 66.5 cm. St. Petersburg, Hermitage Museum.

4.5 Gerrit van Honthorst, Merry Violinist with a Wineglass, c. 1624. Oil on canvas, 83 × 68 cm. Madrid, Thyssen-Bornemisza (inv. no. 1986.21).

4.6 Hendrick ter Brugghen, Bass Viol Player with a Glass, 1625. Oil on canvas, 104.8 × 85.1 cm. London, Hampton Court (inv. no. 1260).

4.7 Gerrit van Honthorst, Singing Elder with a Flute, 1623. Oil on canvas, 107.5 × 85.5. Schwerin, Staatliches Museum.

4.8 , Rhetoricians at a Window, c. 1661–66. Oil on canvas, 75.9 × 58.6 cm. Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art (inv. no. 512).

4.9 Jan Steen, Rhetoricians at a Window, c. 1655. Oil on panel, 72 × 60 cm. Worcester, Worcester Art Museum (inv. no. 1954.22).

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4.10 Gerrit van Honthorst, Young Woman Playing a Violin, 1626. Oil on canvas, 84.5 × 66 cm. The Hague, Royal Picture Gallery .

4.11 Hendrik Goltzius, Courtesan, 1606. Black, white and red chalk on grey paper, 24 × 19 cm. St. Petersburg, Hermitage Museum.

4.12 Crispijn de Passe II, Two Men in a Brothel (Frontispiece of Le miroir des plus belles courtisannes de ce temps), 1630. Engraving, 11.2 × 15.1 cm. Hollstein 183.

4.13 Gerrit van Honthorst, Woman Tuning a Lute, 1624. Oil on canvas, 83 × 67 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre (inv. no. INV 1369).

4.14 Gerrit van Honthorst, Female Guitar Player, 1624. Oil on canvas, 82 × 68 cm. Fontainebleau, Musée national du château de Fontainebleau (inv. no. INV 1368).

4.15 Hendrick ter Brugghen, Fife Player, 1621. Oil on canvas, 71.3 × 56 cm. Kassel, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (inv. no. GK 179).

4.16 Hendrick ter Brugghen, Flute Player, 1621. Oil on canvas, 71.5 × 56 cm. Kassel, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (inv. no. GK 180).

4.17 Crispijn de Passe II after , Coridon, from De Passe’s Van’t light der teken en schilder konst (Amsterdam, 1643).

4.18 Dirck van Baburen, Singing Young Man, 1622. Oil on canvas, 71 × 58.8 cm. Frankfurt am Main, Städel Museum (inv. no. 2242).

4.19 Dirck van Baburen, Lute Player, 1622. Oil on canvas, 71.2 × 58.5 cm. Utrecht, Centraal Museum (inv. no. 11481).

4.20 Gerrit van Honthorst, Old Woman Singing Street Songs, c. 1621. Oil on canvas, 65 × 50 cm. Haarlem, Museum (inv. no. OS I-225).

4.21 , after Gerrit van Honthorst, Old Woman Singing Street Songs, . Engraving. Hollstein 297.

4.22 Theodor Matham, after Gerrit van Honthorst, Young Woman Playing a Violin, 1626. Engraving. Hollstein 41.

4.23 Theodor Matham, after Gerrit van Honthorst, Merry Violinist Holding a Wine Glass, 1627. Engraving. Hollstein 39.

4.24 Gerrit van Honthorst, Lute Player, 1624. Oil on canvas, 84 x 66.5 cm. St. Petersburg, Hermitage Museum.

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4.25 Gerrit van Honthorst, Merry Violinist Holding a Wineglass, 1624. Oil on canvas, 84 x 66.5 cm. St. Petersburg, Hermitage Museum (inv. no. 717).

4.26 Cornelis Bloemaert, after Abraham Bloemaert, Rommel Pot Player, c. 1625. Engraving. Hollstein 287.

4.27 Jan Steen, Rommelpot, c. 1660. Oil on panel, 32.8 × 26.1 cm. Manchester, Art Gallery (inv. no. 1979.503).

4.28 Detail from Pieter Brueghel I, Battle of Carnival and Lent, 1559. Oil on wood, 118 × 164 cm. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum.

4.29 Frans Hals, Rommel Pot Player, c. 1618–1622. Oil on canvas, 106 × 80 cm. Fort Worth, (inv. no. ACF 1951.01).

4.30 Claes Jan Vischer after Jan van de Velde, Rumbling Pot Player, c. 1620–1641. Engraving. Hollstein 132.

4.31 Cornelis Bloemaert, after Gerrit van Honthorst, Man Eating Ham, 1625. Engraving. Hollstein 298.

4.32 Cornelis Bloemaert, after Dirck van Baburen, Flutist, 1625. Engraving. Hollstein 284.

4.33 Theodor Matham, after Hendrick ter Brugghen, Man with Wineglass and Violin, c. 1626–1627. Engraving. Hollstein 45.

4.34 Attributed to Theodor Matham, after Hendrick ter Brugghen, Man with Wineglass and Violin, late 1620s(?). Engraving. Not in Hollstein.

4.35 Gerrit van Honthorst, Merry Musician with Violin under His Left Arm, 1624. Oil on canvas, 81.3 × 63 cm. New York, with Otto Naumann, 2001.

4.36 Gerrit van Honthorst, Smiling Girl Holding an Obscene Image, 1625. Oil on canvas, 81.3 × 64.1. St. Louis, City Art museum (inv. no. 63:1954).

4.37 Theodor Matham, Man with Miniature Portrait, late 1620s(?). Engraving. Not in Hollstein.

4.38 Theodor Matham, Man with Miniature Portrait, 1630s(?). Engraving. Not in Hollstein.

4.39 Cornelis Bloemaert, after Abraham Bloemaert, Bagpipe Player, c. 1625. Engraving. Hollstein 291.

16 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

5.1 Hendrick ter Brugghen, Bagpipe Player, 1624. Oil on canvas, 100.7 × 82.9 cm. Washington, National Galiery (inv. no. 2009.24.1).

5.2 Frans Hals, Peeckelhaering, 1628–30. Oil on canvas, 75 × 61.5 cm. Kassel, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen

5.3 van Rijn, Rembrandt Laughing, c. 1628. Oil on copper, 23.75 × 17cm. market, 2013.

5.4 Johannes Vermeer, Young Woman at a Virginal, c. 1664. Oil on canvas,72.5 × 64.7 cm. Whereabouts unknown (stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in March 1990).

5.5 Johannes Vermeer, Procuress, 1656. Oil on canvas, 143 × 130 cm. , Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (inv. no. 1335).

17 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

Introduction

“The beginner in the profession of painting who sets out to learn and achieve everything, by toiling to imitate nature in making a single half-length figure from the waist up, should take care not to wallow in the pleasure he takes in the process, especially if he sticks to it over the years. Indeed, should he want to satisfy the commissions he will receive of putting together many figures, he will be at pains to join one piece to another, for he will not be accustomed at all to taking into account neither the thighs nor the legs of the figures, so that linking them together will prove difficult for him.”1

The Bolognese artist (1578–1660) did not care for the unconventional approach to painting he describes in the quote above. His critique is directed toward Caravaggistic painting, a mode of painting based on a set of pictorial devices employed by the Lombard artist Merisi da

Caravaggio (1571–1610). Intense light, undefined settings, a limited number of figures, striking close-ups, half-length figures (often life-size), and attention to the plasticity of forms figure among the major pictorial strategies used by Caravaggio and the artists who appropriated his mode, the Caravaggists. These bold characteristics all work to emphasize the body, and its uses toward narrative ends.

1 Carlo Cesare Malvasia, Felsina Pittrice. Vite de pittori bolognesi II (, 1678), 258. “Quel partecipiante nella professione della pittura che si propone impararla e conseguire il tutto mediante l’affaticarsi nell’imitazione della natura col fare una sola meza figura dal mezo in su, guardissi dalla dillettazione che in quella prende, massime fermandovicisi per continuazione di anni, poiché, quando vorà esequire li comandi che le verano di pore di molte figure, durerà poi fatica nell’unire pezzi con pezzi, non essendo (massime egli) avezzo a considerare né le cosce, e né le gambe su le figure, la quale unione le parerà poi dura.” The English translation is taken from Lorenzo Pericolo, Caravaggio and Pictorial Narrative: Dislocating the Istoria in Early Modern Painting (London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2011), 26. Unless otherwise noted, the English translations of excerpts from Malvasia’s Felsina Pittrice are taken from Pericolo’s publication. A first full English translation of Felsina Pittrice, to which Pericolo is participating, is in the works; the first volume of Harvey Miller Publishers’ critical edition was published in 2012. Fourteen more volumes are forthcoming. Felsina Pittrice is a collection of biographies of Bolognese artists active in the Baroque era, among which Francesco Albani features prominently. Malvasia, a scholar and art historian, quotes Albani at length.

18 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

As a result, the Caravaggistic approach to painting was criticised by many.2 What was it that so annoyed Albani in particular? In his mind, Caravaggistic painting’s insistence on physicality hindered narrativity. In problematizing the use of the body in narrative, Caravaggism subverts the principles of traditional pictorial narrative, which gravely distressed Albani.

His remarks on Caravaggism were published by Carlo Cesare Malvasia

(1616–1693) in his collection of biographies of Bolognese artists, Felsina Pittrice, an extensive work that has yet to be entirely translated from its original Italian version.3 In a recent publication, Lorenzo Pericolo brings attention to extensive criticism on the work of Caravaggio and the Caravaggists on which this dissertation draws.4 Among other things, Pericolo analyses many of Albani’s seldom studied remarks on Caravaggism, as quoted by Malvasia. Building on

Pericolo’s insights, this dissertation investigates the issue at the heart of Albani’s criticism: the function of bodies in Caravaggistic painting.

As Chapter Three of the dissertation explains, Albani feared that leg-less isolated figures handicapped the act of storytelling that was one of the primary purposes of representation. The principles of traditional pictorial narrative under which Albani, like most Italian painters, practiced his art were famously elaborated by Genoese painter and art theorist Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472)

2 Critics focused on different elements of Caravaggio’s approach. For instance, his peer (c. 1566–1643), despite being visibly influenced by his style, condemned Caravaggio’s painting method. Caravaggio’s distinctive and vigorous held great appeal for Baglione, but the latter’s allegiance to traditional preparatory methods and draughtsmanship prevented a strict adherence to Caravaggio’s approach. Baglione is known for his unenthusiastic observations on Caravaggio’s work and for his acrimonious dispute with the artist. Some of his criticism is explored in Chapter Two of this dissertation. 3 For more on Malvasia’s Felsina Pittrice see note 1 above. 4 See particularly page 4 of Pericolo’s Caravaggio and Pictorial Narrative.

19 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re for whom narrative in history painting—what he termed istoria—was the sum of many parts articulated according to mathematical rules.5 In Albertian narrative the human figure generates meaning through action only in so far as those actions are situated in time and space. This meant that bodily actions only made sense when contained within a larger pictorial structure, which included other human figures in action. This large narrative structure was built through composition, perspective, proportions, colour, temporality, etc. Within the structure, the body itself was subjected to specific rules of conduct such as meaningful gestures and decorum. Moreover, the body as a signifying force only gained momentum when it was placed among a multiplicity of figures.

Hence, mathematically constructed schemes provided overarching views that functioned as self-sufficient images. Narrative then was conceived as something contained within images and to be read by the viewer. If for Alberti bodies counted as one of the organizing principles of a complete istoria,

Caravaggistic art shifted the equation by positing the body as a locus of narrative in itself. As a result, the practice of situating a story temporally and geographically through the creation of a setting (the structure described above) became superfluous. Thus, Caravaggistic bodies—often disengaged from their familiar environments—are thrust front and centre, and take on a unique narrative role. In other words, when bodies are extracted from the perspectival structure

5 Alberti’s concept of istoria is introduced and developed at length in his treatise De pictura (On Painting) of 1435. For a recent translation and interpretation of this work see: Rocco Sinisgalli, Leon Battista Alberti: On Painting; A New Translation and Critical Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2011).

20 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re that serves to situate a story as they are in Caravaggistic painting, narrative is relocated onto these very bodies.

In his works conceived for private consumption, Caravaggio often employed life-size (or nearly life-size) half-length figures, which effectively confront observers with a mimetic image. By pushing the human figure to the very front of the pictorial space, the image breaks the threshold between representation and observer. This confrontation, as Albani’s criticism seems to suggest, can create a feeling of unease. This was likely so because it challenges the beholder to engage with representation in a way that was somewhat uncommon in central at the time of Caravaggio’s beginnings in Rome in the . Placing emphasis on the body enabled Caravaggistic painting to create a mimetic rapport between viewers and pictorial characters. This connection is rooted in the physical reflection of the viewer in the pictorial world through corporeal mimesis. In other words, extreme close-ups of life-size figures encourage the beholder’s mimetic identification with painted figures.6 Beholders are provoked to interact with the scene, and to participate in the construction of a plot. This disruption of self-sufficient pictorial narrative is what alarmed Albani.

Caravaggio’s work stands apart from the work of his contemporaries who abided by traditional narrative forms as formalized by Alberti, but his work also plays a great deal with other pictorial conventions. Above all, its potential to permeate the boundaries that normally divide sacred and secular images appealed

6 Gabriele Klein, “Image, Body and Performativity: The Constitution of Subcultural Practice in the Globalized World of Pop” in Muggleton and Rupert Weinzierl, eds., The Post- Subcultures Reader (Oxford: Berg, 2003), 46–47 argues for a similar appeal to viewers in the context of modern art.

21 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re to collectors and painters, as much as it shocked and baffled others. For example,

Caravaggio’s Calling of Saint Matthew, a painting about conversion—and about unstable identities, Chapter Two claims—had an important following among

Dutch Caravaggists (fig. 2.8).7 Two key aspects of this work can account for its popularity in the Netherlands. The first is the significance of conversion themes to both Roman Catholics and Reformed denominations.8 The second is the near- complete lack of religious elements in the composition. The subject is virtually treated as an everyday scene, thus giving way to an almost profane representation that practically neutralises Catholic references and formulates a universal, non- denominational brand of Christian religiosity.

The ability of Caravaggio’s work to function on different registers, and to push the limits of modes of representation, certainly favoured its dissemination to

France, and the Low Countries. Caravaggio’s flexible narrativity and the unfixed meanings it generates offered a significant advantage to Dutch artists, who were working in a confessionally diverse country. In the mid 1610s and early

1620s, the Utrecht Caravaggists, a small group of painters that includes Hendrick ter Brugghen (1588–1629), Gerrit van Honthorst (1592–1656), and Dirck van

Baburen (c. 1594/5–1624) imported Caravaggism from Rome to their hometown of Utrecht (and into the Netherlands at large). Their art is marked by the unrestricted pre-eminence of the body as an agent of the narrative.

7 Among Utrecht painters, Hendrick ter Brugghen (1588–1629) and Jan van Bijlert (c. 1597– 1671) each made at least two versions of the subject based on Caravaggio’s composition. For an analysis of one of Ter Brugghen’s versions of Calling of Saint Matthew see pages 148–152 in this dissertation’s Chapter Two, where I also describe Caravaggio’s own composition. 8 For more information on the popularity of conversion themes in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, see note 128 in Chapter One of this dissertation.

22 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

Moreover, the Utrecht Caravaggists were deeply invested in the production of the type of imagery described in this Introduction’s opening quote, though the connection has never been suggested before. Indeed, Albani’s criticism immediately calls to mind a large group of characters examined in Chapter Four of this dissertation, and which have recently been catching the attention of scholars and museums.

Take for instance, Honthorst’s half-length Woman Tuning a Lute (1624) newly acquired by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (fig. 0.1). The painting was accessioned to replace Honthorst’s Duet (1624), which was the object of a restitution agreement in 2013 (fig. 0.2).9 It is one of several compositions painted by Honthorst in the 1620s that correspond to the type described by Albani in the opening citation. The Utrecht Caravaggists were particularly drawn by

Caravaggistic half-figured pictures because they evoked for them an earlier

Northern tradition. Sixteenth-century Dutch and Flemish art was replete with examples using “the limited frame of the half-figure painting to display as closely and shockingly as possible, the facial expressions and significant gestures of low- class figure types, mostly two or three figures of money changers, drunkards, lecherous old men and whores,” notes Walter Friedlaender.10 This description brings to mind the work of early Netherlandish artists like Quinten Metsys (1466–

1530) and Marinus van Reymerswaele (c. 1490–c. 1567), who worked out of a

9 For the circumstances of the restitution see “The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Plays at the Heart of History: A Ceremony Featuring Three Outstanding Artworks (Gift/Restitution/Acquisition,)” Montreal Museum of Fine Arts press release, April 23, 2013, http://www.mbam.qc.ca/en/honthorst-waldmuller. 10 Walter Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955), 82.

23 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re tradition with which the Utrecht Caravaggists were certainly familiar (figs. 0.3 and 0.4).

Paintings like Honthorst’s Duet hark back to Northern models while inscribing themselves within a modern Caravaggistic aesthetic. It is easy to see how a representation like Duet in which the bodies of courtesan and a brothel patron are pushed right up against the picture plane eliminates much of the distance between observer and image in a manner similar to that seen in Metsys’ and Van Reymerswaele’s examples. This mode of representation instils a form of confrontational and engaged viewership that may have seemed unsettling to painters like Albani who approached painting as a window through which observers could look—from a safe distance—at a parallel world ordered according to its own intrinsic rules and characteristics.

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts’ replacement of Honthorst’s now restituted Duet with the acquisition of a single-figured composition by the same artist (Woman Tuning a Lute) makes Albani’s critique quite topical even today.

Albani’s condemnation of the half-length single-figured compositions that were a staple of Caravaggism brings forward some interrogations for it was like it that incensed the Bolognese’s criticism.11 What was it that potentially made a painting like Woman Tuning a Lute more dangerous or problematic than the racy

Duet, a brothel scene taking place at night, in which a bare-breasted courtesan and her client serenade each other? Doesn’t the ardent candle held by the prostitute just above her client’s groin elicit a far more obscene occurrence than the single

11 Although Albani likely never saw Honthorst’s Woman Tuning a Lute, he was possibly familiar with the Italian works of the Dutch artist in Rome, Florence and elsewhere.

24 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re lutist tuning her instrument? Perhaps, but by including the brothel patron, who with his measure gesture sets the rhythm to his and the courtesan’s melodic act, the Duet excludes observers from the twosome’s tête-à-tête recital. Left out, the observer becomes a voyeur witnessing the game of seduction in which the prostitute and her client engage.

In contrast, the single female lutist might have appeared more threatening to viewers because she is unaccompanied. As such, her act of tuning her instrument makes an appeal for harmony with the beholder. Separated from other figures (and cut off from any setting), she connects with spectators differently than her disrobed comrade in Duet, and openly addresses her audience. The same lutist dressed in another outfit hung in the palace of the Dutch sovereign Prince of

Orange and Stadtholder Frederik Hendrik (1585–1647) in The Hague four hundred years ago (fig. 4.13). This speaks to the appeal such paintings held then, and continue to hold now as the recent acquisition of her alter ego by the

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts shows.12

While underscoring the interest generated by half-length Caravaggistic pictures, this dissertation is equally concerned by the issues that posed a problem for Albani: the body and its narrative role in Caravaggistic painting. The Utrecht

Caravaggists’ work as a whole connects to Caravaggio’s remarkable fixation with the human form and its representational potential. Their engagement with the

Italian artist’s painting mode is central to my investigations. Taking Caravaggio’s and the Utrecht Caravaggists’ involvement with the human figure as my point of

12 For more on the painting in Frederik Hendrik’s collection see pages 232–233 in Chapter Four of this dissertation.

25 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re departure, this dissertation traces the workings of body performativity in

Caravaggistic narrative.

I. The Powers of Caravaggistic Bodies

This study draws attention to the mimetic qualities of the representational body in

Caravaggistic painting and to the impact of this on the beholder. In doing so, it highlights mimesis as one of the characteristics that make Caravaggio’s work so appealing. In a study concerned with “the powers of association,” Bruno Latour explains that power is acquired not through action, but through the ability to coerce others into acting.13 I use this insight to introduce the persuasive character of the Lombard painter’s pictures, and why his mode of painting was both emulated and criticized. In depicting bodies in a way that encourages viewers to relate to pictorial characters, Caravaggio is able to induce beholders into projecting themselves into the representation. To carry this out, the painter endows his figures with an evocative physicality, confronting beholders with life- size mirror images of human figures in many of his canvases.

The Caravaggistic approach to depicting the body has been an object of interest in modern criticism, albeit it has not been assessed in depth. The early

Caravaggio scholar Roberto Longhi (1890–1970), writing in the 1920s, drew attention to Caravaggio’s “flesh and blood” painting “where the whole body and the bodies between them seem to be damned for life in the exaltation of an all-

13 Bruno Latour, “The Powers of Association,” in Power, Action and Belief, ed. by John Law (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986), 264–80.

26 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re powerful physicality.”14 Longhi’s original insights about the place and function of bodies in Caravaggio’s painting were later construed as the artist’s interpretation of a Counter-Reformation aesthetic, which called for the naturalistic and direct portrayal of historic and religious figures. Walter Friedlaender’s chapter on

“Caravaggio’s Character and Religion” counts among the first studies to make inferences between Caravaggio’s style and a sense of Catholicism in line with the

Counter-Reformation.15

In his recent publication, Lorenzo Pericolo opposes the view that

Caravaggio’s hauntingly physical history pictures are an expression of the artist’s deep Christian religiosity.16 As we saw earlier, Alberti’s conception of history painting entailed the elaboration of a “rhetorical device” that included as much contextual detail and peripheral data as possible.17 Pericolo’s in-depth study of

Caravaggio’s innovative approach to painting offers a challenging understanding of the painter’s dismantling of traditional pictorial narrative. Before entering the

“fictitious realm of the istoria,” Pericolo explains, the human figure must undergo a process of refinement through which it sheds its natural character and gains beauty and propriety, a process Caravaggio forgoes.18 But the artist’s unapologetically corporeal painting is not related to the painter’s personal faith

14 Roberto Longhi, “Precisioni nelle gallerie italiane: La Galleria Borghese, Michelangelo da Caravaggio,” in Opere complete II-I: Saggi e Ricerche 1925–1928 (Florence: Sansoni, 1967): 303. “Pittura tutta costruita in carne e sangue….dove tutto il corpo ed i corpi fra loro paiono dannarsi a vita nella esaltazione di una onnipossente fisicità” (my translation). 15 Friedlaender, “Caravaggio’s Character and Religion” in Caravaggio Studies, 117–35. For a critique of Friedlaender see note 89 in Chapter Two of this dissertation. For another significant study dedicated to this tradition of equating Caravaggio’s style with his religious position see Maurizio Calvesi, Le realtà del Caravaggio (: Einaudi, 1990). 16 Lorenzo Pericolo, Caravaggio and Pictorial Narrative, 49. 17 Ibid., 67. Pericolo also terms this complex structure “rhetorical piece” and “visual machinery.” 18 Ibid., 41.

27 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re and supposed adherence to the artistic principles of the Counter-Reformation,

Pericolo argues. It is rather the result of Caravaggio’s response to the traditional

“relation between the human figure, and the notions of beauty, propriety, and pertinence as requested of the istoria.”19 Caravaggio effectuates a “systemic dislocation” of the connections between the human figure and Alberti’s principles of bodily decorum.20 Put differently, Caravaggio rejects the Albertian body.

Pushing this idea further, this dissertation argues that Caravaggistic painting proposes an alternative to Albertian criterions of corporeality.

Another, quite different, approach to Caravaggio’s attention to bodies is informed by contemporary queer theory. In contrast to Friedlaender and others like him, this field of thinking likens male figures in Caravaggio’s art to sexual behaviours. In 1971, Donald Posner maintained that the painter’s early pictures of young males were to be interpreted within a homoerotic framework.21 The alluring boys were seen by Posner as both a reflection of Caravaggio’s and of his early patrons’ sexual preference.22 Androgyny, sensuality, solicitous gazes all denoted, in Posner’s view, homoerotic content; and this is their “essential meaning,” he concluded.23 More recently, Graham Hammill explored in a book chapter what he called the “insistence of the flesh” in

19 Ibid., 52. 20 Ibid., 51. 21 Donald Posner, “Caravaggio’s Homo-Erotic Early Works,” Art Quarterly 34 (1971): 301–24. 22 Michael Kitson first affirmed that Caravaggio’s early works were created by an homosexual artist for homosexual patrons in The Complete Paintings of Caravaggio (New York: Abrams, 1967), 7. 23 Posner, “Caravaggio’s Homo-Erotic Early Works,” 319.

28 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

Caravaggio’s work.24 His study of the epistemological and aesthetic spaces in the

Italian artist’s paintings is rooted in queer theory and psychoanalysis. Hammill’s analysis, in which the Uffizi’s Sacrifice of Isaac, to give one example, is understood to suggest “an erotic, homosexual, pederastic, and anal carnality,” is also derived mostly from the poses of Caravaggio’s figures.25 Taking up carnality as a site of resistance to change, Hammil’s model provides a counterpoint to this dissertation’s concern with the transformative and significative powers of bodies.

The writer briefly raises the issue of Caravaggio’s break with Alberti’s istoria: the artist’s corporealizations reject the functional organization of the body as a narrative unit, and thereby reduce the audience’s capacity to relate to depicted bodies, in Hammill’s opinion.26

In contrast, this dissertation adopts the view that Caravaggistic painting’s disruption of the representational body as theorized by Alberti induces a persuasive process of identification in which beholders are caught—wilfully or not. This process, this dissertation argues, has a direct incidence on the production of narrative. It acts as a building block upon which beholders can structure narrative content. Caravaggistic art does not seek to be plainly read. Instead, it resorts to embodied pictorial performance and embodied viewership to engage the actual bodies of beholders in a pas de deux with compellingly physical painted figures.

24 Graham L. Hammil, “History and the Flesh: Caravaggio’s Queer Aesthetic,” in Sexuality and form: Caravaggio, Marlowe, and Bacon (: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 63–95. 25 Ibid., 88. 26 Ibid., 75.

29 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

Two publications from 2012 manifest an interest in the human figure in

Caravaggistic art. The exhibition Corps et ombres: Caravage et le caravagisme européen (Bodies and Shadows: Caravaggio and His Legacy) hints at the impact of the physicality of Caravaggistic bodies in its title, but doesn’t investigate the matter in its French and English catalogues.27 In contrast, Natasha Seaman’s study on the Utrecht Caravaggist Hendrick ter Brugghen openly draws attention to the materialization of the body in this painter’s work.28 The scholar equates the effect of haunting materiality (of bodies and objects) in Ter Brugghen’s work— observable mostly in his deliberately archaising style—to the artist’s desire to connect to history. Seaman opposes the materiality of Ter Brugghen’s paintings to

Caravaggio’s illusionistic naturalism. The scholar’s suggestion that Caravaggio’s

“trompe l’oeil works to deny [his pictures’] materiality,” runs somewhat counter to my conception of Caravaggistic bodies as empirical objects.29 Building on studies like Seaman’s, this dissertation addresses more directly corporeality in

Caravaggistic art and the implications of a pictorial form based on embodied and performative narrativity.

This dissertation’s interest in the body’s narrative authority is partly stimulated by the thinking of Judith Butler about bodies and identities. As is well

27 Michel Hilaire and Axel Hémery, eds., Corps et ombres: Caravage et le caravagisme européen, exh. cat., (: 5 continents, 2012); J. Patrice Marandel, ed., Caravaggio and His Legacy, exhibition catalogue (: Del Monico Books and Prestel, 2012). The French leg of the exhibition was shown in two simultaneous venues, the Musée Fabre in Montpellier and the Musée des Augustins of , from 23 June to 14 October 2012. The American leg was shown at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from 11 November 2012 to 10 February 2013 and at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art from 8 March to 16 June 2013 under the title “Burst of Light: Caravaggio and His Legacy.” 28 Natasha Seaman, The Religious Paintings of Hendrick ter Brugghen: Reinventing Christian Painting after the Reformation in Utrecht (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012). 29 Ibid., 4.

30 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re known, Butler argues against an understanding of identity as something that is fixed. Nor are bodies passive material forms. Instead, she emphasizes an

“understanding of identification as an enacted fantasy or incorporation” in which

“acts, gestures, and desire produce the effect of an internal core or substance, but produce this on the surface of the body . . . Such acts, gestures, enactments, generally construed,” Butler continues, “are performative in the sense that the essence or identity that they otherwise purport to express are fabrications manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive means.”30 In Butler’s theory, it is through bodily discourse (acts, gestures, enactments) that identity is brought to life. Repeating these discursive acts affirms identity and strengthens it. Butler’s theory provides a way of thinking about identity as a series of performative actions, as something that is correlated to our bodily acts. Her concept of performativity expands our limited understanding of

Caravaggistic narrative, without marginalizing the body itself. Materiality and performativity are seen as concomitant and complementary in this dissertation.

They work in tandem to generate meaning, thus locating narrative onto the body.

The chapters that follow thus explore how identity functions as a pictorial and rhetorical device within Caravaggistic painting.

II. “Theatre of Repetition”: Towards an Epistemology of Caravaggism

Discourses of replication and repetition are central to the study of Caravaggism.

This dissertation takes a position within these debates by engaging in a

30 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London: Routledge, 1990), 136. For more on the body in Butler’s book see section iv, “Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions,” in the third chapter of her book (128–41).

31 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re reassessment of replication and repetition as creative and dynamic forces. My project also establishes a connection between repetition and a common trope in

Caravaggistic studies: the theatrical. In attention to repetition and theatricality as two structuring notions in Caravaggistic studies and considering how they interact and how they shape our understanding of Caravaggism, this project is not limited to accepting them as is, but attempts instead to test and expand their usefulness. This line of enquiry is indebted to Gilles Deleuze’s criticism of representation in Difference and Repetition, a work that provides a valuable angle through which to think of the epistemic shift introduced by

Caravaggio—and appropriated by the Caravaggists—with regard to bodily representation or, rather, bodily replication.

Deleuze postulates a parallel between Friedrich Nietzsche and Søren

Kierkegaard’s philosophies and the theatre. The two thinkers’ engagement with duplicity (“masks,”) with movement, action, and affect are central to the process of repetition, in Deleuze’s view.31 Caravaggistic art, this dissertation upholds, functions in a similar duplicitous, active, repetitive way. Accordingly, my project uses Deleuze’s “theatre of repetition” as a frame of reference through which to re- consider the work of Caravaggio and the Caravaggists. Deleuze compares the latter with the “theatre of representation” and explains that “in the theatre of repetition, we experience pure forces, dynamic lines in space which act without intermediary upon the spirit, and link it directly to nature and history, with a language which speaks before words, with gestures which develop before

31 Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (London and NewYork: Continuum, 2004), 9–12.

32 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re organised bodies, with masks before faces, with spectres and phantoms before characters—the whole apparatus of repetition as a ‘terrible power.’”32 It seems to me that what Deleuze is getting at is the creativity inherent in repetition.33

My analysis of Caravaggistic painting underlines repetition as a transformational act. In other words, my project posits repetition as a process in which something becomes something else. This approach shows how fecund repetition can be. This dissertation also establishes the Caravaggistic body as a replicative form that uses theatrical means of performance to activate the influence of pictures on their beholders. Through the replication of flesh and blood bodies, Caravaggistic representation acquires control over viewers.

Moreover, the performative mode of signification of Caravaggistic bodies acts as a “language,” to use Deleuze’s word. It reinforces the effectiveness of representation, or its “terrible power.” Through this process, Caravaggistic painting, as my project argues, effectively transgresses conventional representational structures.

Whereas representation is the rapport between a concept and its object in

Deleuzian thought, repetition is perpetual movement.34 Therefore, representation can be inert, while repetition suggests transformative interchange. This idea of movement and transformative energy is central to recurrence, duplication, and reiteration in Caravaggism at large, and in Utrecht Caravaggism particularly.

Deleuze’s description of the “theatre of repetition” serves as an especially useful

32 Ibid., 12. 33 In some ways, Deleuze’s insights also point to the power of a fixed and iconic language of representation, something Caravaggio consciously developed, and which the Caravaggists reused. 34 Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 11–13.

33 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re conceptual tool for reflecting on Caravaggistic secular half-figures. Because these share a common mode of representation founded on repetition, the way they come into the beholder’s view, and are experienced and perceived based on this shared mode requires serious scrutiny, something Chapter Four pursues.

Moreover, Deleuze’s reliance on “theatre” as a metaphor is also relevant in regards to Caravaggism as a theatrical pictorial mode. Works like Honthorst’s

Duet and Woman Playing a Lute are often described as theatrical, similarly to

Caravaggio’s work. Theatre and theatricality, in fact, have become familiar topoi in the literature on Caravaggism. In this dissertation, I expressly draw attention

(for the first time, to my knowledge) to the parallel between the stage and the work of Caravaggio and the Caravaggists. Pressing further the idea of

Caravaggistic painting as theatrical, I explore this trope, and, use it as a unifying current to tie together the different parts of this dissertation. On the one hand, I use it as a meaningful vehicle for interpreting artworks and pertaining literature.

On the other hand, by re-centring narrativity on the body and its performative mode of signification, my project deconstructs the idea of “theatricality” in

Caravaggistic painting.

III. Form and Identity

Turning to the title of the dissertation, “Re-forming images” refers, in the first place, to the Utrecht Caravaggists’ successful adaptation and transformation of a style and pictorial language that emerged in Rome into a socially and artistically acceptable Dutch strain of . In 1890, French sociologist

34 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

Gabriel Tarde (1843–1904) advocated in his influential book The Laws of

Imitation that, “socially everything is either invention or imitation.”35 Yet, one doesn’t exist without the other. Imitation determines invention, and invention is the sine qua non of imitation. What Tarde’s vocabulary shows, then, is that invention and imitation, two recurrent terms in literature on Caravaggism, are not adequate to describe the work of Caravaggio and the Caravaggists. The use of closed taxonomies like invention and imitation entails a dichotomy as well as a hierarchy.36 Instead, this dissertation redirects its attention onto transmission, appropriations and permutations, so that artistic agency may take centre stage.

Michel de Certeau’s observation on the action of speaking as “affecting an appropriation, or reappropriation, of language by its speaker” resonates with the point of view this project espouses.37 To be exact, the work of the Caravaggists is here reconciled with individual agency and construed as a conscious act of appropriation. Consequently, this dissertation employs the word “Caravaggist(s)” as opposed to the oft-used shorthand “follower(s)” not in an attempt to fix these artists’ identities, but so as to consistently call to mind their deliberate and selective involvement with a pictorial mode.38 This dissertation therefore develops an account of Caravaggism in which appropriation is an assertive act.

35 Gabriel Tarde, The Laws of Imitation, translated by Elsie Clews Parsons (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1903), 3. 36 An explicit example of the unpractical approaches founded on this dichotomy can be found in Aflred Moir, Caravaggio and His Copyists (New York : New York University Press, 1976). 37 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 476. 38 Maria Loh’s perspective on repetition and identity is useful in this regard. Loh’s investigations on master plots and narratives of greatness in Remade: Repetition and the Transformation of Early Modern Italian Art (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2007) can be seen to relate to Caravaggism in interesting fashions. For instance, her assertion that “in many ways, the history of Renaissance painting is a history of great workshops” (p. 20) prompts many questions about the

35 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

In the second place, “Re-forming Images” refers to the lineage of the

Dutch Caravaggistic single-figured imagery with which Chapter Four is concerned, a lineage that is more extensive and complicated than previously assumed.39 The ways the images function take on a different aspect when considered in light of this lineage. Moving away from allegorical understanding of this imagery is one of the key contributions this dissertation hopes to make.

Instead, my project focuses on the idea of flexible and transformational representations and identities. To summarise briefly what is expounded in Chapter

Three, the Utrecht images derive ultimately from Caravaggio’s single-figured secular pictures that constitute the Italian painter’s very first efforts as an independent artist. Caravaggio quickly moved on to two- or three-figured scenes, before bringing together a group of different individuals in his Calling of Saint

Matthew to propose a paradigm of pictorial narrative. Bartolomeo Manfredi (c.

1582–1622)—a Cremonese Caravaggist working in Rome—and those who took up and played with his method, re-cast Caravaggio’s characters into large assemblies of performers (singers, musicians), low-life entertainers (fortune tellers, prostitutes, innkeepers), drinkers and gamers.

As if decomposing these large riunioni, as these pictures are known in the

Italian literature, the Utrecht Caravaggists offer their own catalogue of individual characters, showcasing the half-figures one by one in paintings like Woman

Tuning a Lute, and also in prints. Contrary to the synopsis given above, it should idea of repetition as different in Caravaggism given that Caravaggio did not establish a workshop, does not appear to have worked with assistants on a regular basis, and openly rebutted so-called “followers” or “disciples.” 39 Despite being somewhat uncommon in Rome at the time of Caravaggio’s beginnings in the 1590s, half-figured compositions were popular in Northern Italian Art, as noted on page 23 above.

36 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re be noted that the development of this imagery is not as linear as it may seem.

Through the process of becoming that I recount in this thesis, images and identities compose, de-compose and re-compose themselves. The diverse portrayals that make up this sustained lineage are all connected, I argue, by a narrative mode based on the body and performance. These concepts operate in this dissertation as lenses through which to reflect on Caravaggism as a pictorial paradigm.

IV. Parameters of the study

Returning briefly to Albani’s warning against half-length figural images, the quote encapsulates many of the leitmotifs that run through this thesis: artist-patron relations, the fashioning of artistic personae, artistic strategies, pictorial strategies, imitation of nature, narrativity, the body, and pleasure. These themes inhabit my dissertation, which is organised in four chapters. I will now consider these sequentially. The journey begins and ends in Utrecht, not unlike the careers of the

Utrecht Caravaggists. Given that their travel to Rome is the most artistically defining moment of the Utrecht Caravaggists’ careers, the middle of the dissertation transports readers to the eternal city. The three Dutchmen travelled there in the second and third decades of the seventeenth century. The art they saw there and the contacts they established with the artistic community shaped their approach to painting in the same way that, and perhaps more profoundly than some of their predecessors were marked by the works of Raphael and

Michelangelo, as explored in Chapter One. Honthorst, Ter Brugghen and Baburen

37 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re were principally influenced by the Roman paintings of Caravaggio, though their work also denotes the impact of other Caravaggists already active in the city during the Dutchmen’s respective sojourns.

It is important to remember that the Dutch painter, historian and biographer (1548–1606) had written about Caravaggio’s art in his influential Schilder-boek (Book of Painters) published in Haarlem in 1604, thus introducing Caravaggio to his readers and certainly piquing the curiosity of

Dutch artists.40 Moreover, works by the Italian artist entered the as early as 1616 when the Flemish painter Louis Finson (c. 1580–1617) returned to the Netherlands with in his possession Madonna of the (1606–1607),

Crucifixion of Saint Andrew (1606–1607), and a now missing Judith and

Holofernes.41 At that time, only one of the Utrecht Caravaggists had returned home from the customary trip to .42

Chapter One introduces the processes of appropriation, identity formation, and transformation that are discussed throughout the dissertation. This part of my project considers the idea of Utrecht as a crossroads, or in Jan de Vries’ terms, as a “gateway city,” where many influences converge and are absorbed into a local

40 Van Mander’s comments on Caravaggio can be found on folio 191r of his Het Schilder-Boek (Haarlem, 1604). For an online transcription see: http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/origineel.php?origineel=mand001schi01_01_scan0413. For a digital view of the original folio see: http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/origineel.php?origineel=mand001schi01_01_scan0413. 41 These pictures are listed in Finson’s inventory of 1617 and were thus in Amsterdam at the time of his death. The first is now part of the collections of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (inv. no. GG_147) while the second is at the (inv. no. 1976.2). 42 We know that Ter Brugghen returned to Utrecht in 1614. See page 86 (esp. note 100) in Chapter One of this dissertation for more details on this.

38 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re visual culture to produce persistent, yet mutable identities.43 I bring attention to

Utrecht’s connection to Rome, which I portray as a dual link. Lynn Federle Orr recently stressed the profound and complex linkage between the two cities in an essay.44 Building on this, I suggest that their religious bond was recast into artistic ties in the years following the Protestant Reformation. Art, I argue, became for

Utrecht the main point of contact with the Eternal City; it served as a way of connecting with Rome at a time when the two cities’ religious affiliation was rapidly eroding.

The Bishopric of Utrecht, established in 695, was a state of the Holy Roman

Empire from 1024 until 1528, when Emperor Charles V secularised its worldly power. Dutch artists had begun to journey to Rome some twenty years earlier, and travel continued to intensify after the Reformation came into effect in 1580 with the birth of a Protestant state.45 Roman Catholicism remained present in Utrecht throughout and after this critical change, and the continued demand for history painting generated a great deal of artistic activity in the city.46 Much of the art produced in Roman Catholic Utrecht asserted the city’s longstanding spiritual and

43 Jan de Vries, “Searching for a Role: The Economy of Utrecht in the Golden Age of the Dutch Republic,” in Masters of Light: Dutch Painters in Utrecht During the Golden Age, ed. Joaneath A. Spicer (New Haven and London: Press, 1998), 57. De Vries uses the expression, which I have repurposed, in reference to the commercial functions of the city. 44 Lynn Federle Orr, “Le caravagisme à Utrecht,” in Hilaire and Hémery, Caravage et le caravagisme européen, 209–10. The semi-permanent presentation of the collection of Old Masters (1450–1700) at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht entitled “Utrecht Dreams of Rome” (5 July, 2008 to 2 September, 2012) also traced the development of Utrecht’s unique tradition of looking to Rome for pictorial models. No exhibition catalogue was produced, but for further information see http://centraalmuseum.nl/en/visit/exhibitions/utrecht-dreams-of-rome/. 45 For a comprehensive account of the history of the Dutch Republic see Jonathan Irvine Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477–1806 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University, 1995). 46 On the art market in Utrecht see Maarten Prak, “Guilds and the Development of the Art Market During the ,” Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 30, no. 3/4 (2003): 236–51.

39 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re temporal ties with Rome, and beginning in the early sixteenth century, this resulted in visual conventions informed by Italian art. First- and second-hand involvement of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century artists active in and around Utrecht with Roman/Italian visual culture allowed them, I posit, to fashion individual and shared identities for themselves.

The Utrecht Caravaggists’ appropriation of Caravaggism and their interaction with its social networks in Rome are also considered along those lines in the last section of Chapter One. Beginning with this chapter, forms of fellowship and association will emerge as fundamental themes for this dissertation. In this way, Chapter One, as well as Chapter Four, makes a contribution to recent studies on Utrecht’s close-knit artistic network as developed in Federle-Orr’s essay and in Elizabeth Nogrady’s work.47

Whereas Chapter One elaborates on the mutable quality of artists’ and patrons’ self-definition, Chapter Two probes the difficult subject of bodily transfiguration in Caravaggistic painting. Caravaggio’s interest in bodies and transformation is clear from his oeuvre. Many of his pictures can be interpreted as representing moments where existence becomes vulnerable and identities are in flux. Images such as Death of the Virgin and Entombment of Christ, depict figures that have just passed away or are in the process of dying. Beheadings feature prominently in this category; think of Caravaggio’s Medusa, for instance.

Different types of physical alterations are also represented in Caravaggio’s Supper

47 For Nogrady’s work see “Abraham Bloemaert (1566–1651), the ‘Netherlandish ’ and Artistic Collaboration in Seventeenth Century Utrecht” (PhD dissertation, New York University, 2009); “Artistic Series: an Utrecht Specialty,” in The Bloemaert Effect: Color and Composition in the Golden Age, eds. Liesbeth M. Helmus and Gero Seelig (Petersberg: M. Imhof, 2011), 46–54.

40 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re at Emmaus. Other works—among which can be counted Calling of Saint

Matthew—portray moments of spiritual transition. Instants of intellectual transformations can also be found in Caravaggio’s two versions of Matthew and the Angel, for instance. Even his Basket of Fruit, in which a still-life is shown in a relative state of decay, seems to reference decomposition, alteration, transformation.

Processes of death, rebirth, and change can be a rich area of exploration in

Caravaggio studies and Caravaggistic studies. The second chapter of the dissertation analyses pictures by Caravaggio and the Utrecht Caravaggists in which the main character is in a state of transition, physical or other. Particular attention is paid to how these pictures convey corporeality and play on ideas of naturalism that are central to the depiction of realistic bodies. An analysis of

Caravaggio’s Death of the Virgin—a work notorious for its treatment of the body of Mary—lays the ground for looking at works by the Utrecht Caravaggists that engage with some of the same issues. Pictures like Honthorst’s Beheading of

Saint John and Baburen’s Entombment of Christ—Caravaggistic works created in

Rome in the 1610s—offer insight into the Dutch painters’ early responses to

Caravaggio’s handling of corporeality. This part of my project enables me to begin studying connections between naturalism, the body, performance, and identity in the art of Caravaggio and the Utrecht Caravaggists, notions that continue to be essential throughout the dissertation.

Moving from images of death, to images that celebrate life, Chapter Three addresses issues of identity, embodiment and performance in the secular paintings

41 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re of Caravaggio, and in those of Bartolomeo Manfredi whose contribution to

Caravaggism is pivotal. Rather than attempting to change conventional understandings of Caravaggio’s and Manfredi’s work, I draw on existing interpretations to better grasp the influence of Italian paintings on the

Caravaggistic half-figures produced in Utrecht in the 1620s. Indeed, the works by

Caravaggio, Manfredi and others considered in this chapter—images often astride between real and fictional worlds—were particularly resonant for the Utrecht

Caravaggists and contributed to the emergence of the imagery with which Chapter

Four is concerned. I situate the pictures of the Italian painters within a culture of entertainment and begin connecting dots between duplicity, illusion and distraction, points of intersection where the characters in the Roman works discussed in this chapter and the Dutch half-figures of Chapter Four meet.

The Caravaggistic secular half-figured paintings and prints produced in

Utrecht in the 1620s show individual characters that can be imagined to have populated the everyday in the seventeenth-century Netherlands, like the courtesan in Honthorst’s Woman Tuning a Lute.48 Taken together, this cluster of images prompts a series of questions about the nature of Caravaggism and its relevance to

Dutch seventeenth-century art and culture in general. By way of this chapter on

48 A number of half-length Caravaggistic paintings and prints produced in Utrecht represent religious figures. In order to separate these from the far larger group of non-religious half-length paintings and prints in which I am interested, I have grouped the latter under the heading “secular.” Although they are often referred to as “genre” images, my contention is that these works are better understood as “secular.” Because genre imagery is very much about action and setting, and that these figures are entirely isolated from any context, it seems somewhat inappropriate to categorize them as genre. In fact, by being de-contextualized, these works uproot genre conventions in some ways. For more on the term “genre” see Wolfgang Stechow and Christopher Comer, “The History of the Term Genre,” Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin 33, no. 2 (1975–76): 89–94. It should be noted that a handful of Caravaggistic half-figures from Utrecht depict historical and mythological figures. These, however, are not considered in this study.

42 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

Utrecht’s Caravaggistic half-figures, this dissertation seeks to make its own contribution to the growing interest in this distinctive imagery.

In 2009, the exhibition Caravaggio in Holland: Musik and Genre bei

Caravaggio und den Utrechter Caravaggisten brought together a number of these half-figures, hence calling attention to a neglected area of research in

Caravaggistic studies.49 This exhibition followed in the footsteps of other studies focused on musical themes, in which some of the Dutch figures described here were briefly addressed.50 This thesis, however, wishes to sidestep thematic divides to study instead an entire cross-section of subjects and evaluate how identities become enmeshed in the close relationships they establish with viewers through performance and corporeality.51

49 Jochen Sander, Bastian Eclercy, Gabriel Dette, eds. Caravaggio in Holland: Musik und Genre bei Caravaggio und den Utrechter Caravaggisten, exh. cat. (Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 2009). 50 See for instance, Edwin Buijsen, ed. The Hoogsteder Exhibition of Music and Painting in the Golden Age (: Waanders, 1994); Karel Moens and Iris Kochelbergh, eds., Muziek & grafiek: burgemoraal en muziek in de 16de- en 17de-eeuwse Nederlanden, exh. cat. (Antwerp: Pandora, 1994); Thea Vignau-Wilberg, ed., O Musica du edle Kunst: Musik und Tanz im 16. Jahrhundert, exh. cat. (Munich: Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München, 1999); Marcus Dekiert, Musikanten in der Malerei der niederländischen Caravaggio-Nachfolge: Vorstufen, Ikonographie und Bedeutungsgehalt der Musikszene in der niederländischen Bildkunst des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts (Münster: Lit, 2003). I am grateful to Dr. Wayne Franits for bringing these references to my attention. Other studies on the same subject include Marten Jan Bok, “On the Origins of the Flute Player in Utrecht Caravaggesque Painting,” in Hendrick ter Brugghen und die Nachfolger in Holland, ed. Rüdiger Klessmann (Braunschweig: Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, 1988), 135–41; Wayne Franits, “Emerging from the Shadows: Genre Painting by the Utrecht Caravaggists and Its Contemporary Reception,” in Masters of Light: Dutch Painters in Utrecht During the Golden Age, ed. Joaneath A. Spicer (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), 114–20. 51 Leonard Slatkes’ observation that “the simple lumping together of all Utrecht single-figured musician paintings, or even musical groups, under the rubrics of ‘theatrical musicians’ or ‘ musicians,’ as has often been done in the past, will no longer serve” is something this dissertation strives to overturn (see Leonard Slatkes and Wayne Franits. The Paintings of Hendrick ter Brugghen, 1588-1629 (Amsterdam and Philadephia: John Benjamins, 2007), 177). Examples of other arbitrary categorisation against which this dissertation argues include the following: “Iconographically, these images can be divided into two types: the young male musician or drinker who takes centre stage in the pictures of Honthorst, Ter Brugghen, and Baburen, and the old men and women with books and other objects” from Dennis P. Weller et al., Sinners and Saints, Darkness and Light: Caravaggio and His Dutch and Flemish Followers, exh. cat. (Raleigh, North Carolina: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1998), 113. Weller makes this assertion

43 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

Although I began my research long before the exhibition Caravaggio in

Holland opened (and its catalogue was published), it validated the importance of a detailed study that takes into account not only musicians, but also other character types. Indeed, the existence of these images as a cohesive unit, as a congruous type of imagery—albeit with its own intrinsic variations—has not yet been investigated. Neither has the group of prints spawned by Caravaggistic half- figures painted in Utrecht been examined as an ensemble, to my knowledge.

Together, painted and engraved Caravaggistic half-figures evoke the idea of a cast of characters. Pursuing this line of thought, Chapter Four examines how the figures function as a company of performers, thus shedding light on entertainment as a source, but also as a purpose of the individual half-figures that inhabit the secular paintings of the Utrecht Caravaggists, and the prints after these. In other words, I consider the representations of musicians, singers, drinkers, courtesans, peasants, shepherds and shepherdesses as forms of entertainment in and of themselves. Moving away from moralistic understandings of entertainment culture, this part of the project attempts to redirect attention onto performance as a bodily, sensory and intellectual enterprise. Hence, I propose an alternate reading focused not only on subject matter and meaning, but also on format, function and address. Apparent binaries (male/female, realistic/comical, old/young, high/low, absorption/address) help me construct and deconstruct ideas about the internal rules that govern this troupe of performers.

in his discussion of Jan van Campen’s Old Woman with a Book (c. 1625), which he relates to “numerous single-figure compositions painted by members of the Utrecht and others working elsewhere in the northern Netherlands in the 1620s [of which] the popularity can be seen in the many prints made after these paintings.”

44 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

With the closing chapter, I wish to bring another dimension to our current understanding of Caravaggistic half-figures (largely based on iconographic approaches) by reclaiming their place in the Dutch entertainment culture of their time. This part of the dissertation underlines the performative role of painters, printmakers, and of the entertainers they portray. It connects the cast of pictorial characters staged in half-length single-figured paintings and engravings to different forms of entertainment: theatre, literature, poetry, music and singing, carnival, merrymaking, sex, satire, jokes, etc. The personages created by the

Utrecht Caravaggists are consequently located within a hybrid culture, and are seen to occupy the middle ground between high and low culture. This enables me to uncover the dual nature of the images as high art representing low types.

The binary essence of engraved half-figures comes particularly to the fore in their unique combination of image and text; sophisticated Latin verses and low- life subject matter, for instance, often mix in these prints. Hence, the verses are here taken not as explanatory appendices, but as conduits for addressing some of the more difficult interrogations the printed images trigger.52 By considering the

52 My interest in the verses on Dutch Caravaggistic secular prints was in part stimulated by what Marcel Roethlisberger had to say about these in the work of the Bloemaert family of artists from Utrecht: “The captions are humanist embellishments aimed at the educated audience for which the prints were destined. Learned showpieces of their authors, occasionally farfetched in thought and language, the legends can be of different kinds—descriptive, poetic, or moralizing. Often their objective is to complement the image with a similarly ingenious wording, without contributing a new dimension to its understanding. They are of particular interest when they provide a conclusion of their own: they can orient our interpretation but must not confine it to a single direction. It is a truism that each viewer, then and now, reads the image according to his personal knowledge and references. Only recently have scholars begun to investigate the poetic legends, usually with too narrow premises; a comprehensive study is as yet lacking.” See Marcel Roethlisberger and Marten Jan Bok, Abraham Bloemaert and His Sons: Paintings and Prints (Doornspijk: Davaco, 1993), 26. Sections Threes and Four of Chapter Four are my contribution to the gap described by Roethlisberger. The recent work of W. McAllister Johnson in Versified Prints: A Literary and Cultural Phenomenon in Eighteenth-Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,

45 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re prints alongside the paintings, the significance of the Caravaggistic half-length secular figure becomes all the more distinct and manifest. In opposition to instances in which scholars have used the prints solely as an aid in deciphering the meaning of paintings to which they relate, a joint examination of paintings and prints reveals the different usages of the two forms.53

My treatment of the engraved half-length figures differs from previous scholarship in its scope, first and foremost, as well in as in its approach. The prints, further to contextualizing the paintings, as illustrated in existing literature, should also be interpreted in their own right and require a framework within which to do so, something I aim to provide here. When considered on equal footing with the paintings, the prints become more than mere documents, more than derivative works of referential nature. Often, these prints have been studied in and of themselves only in so far as they provide clues to existing or lost paintings.54 The provoking questions some of these images elicit are finally

2012), also catalysed my awareness of the importance to study the verses on the prints that interest me. 53 The study of prints as a means of elucidating the meaning of Dutch genre paintings is not uncommon in history. The iconologist Eddy de Jongh is a major exponent of this approach. For instance, in the exhibition catalogue Tot Leering en Vermaak: Betekenissen van Hollandse genrevoorstellingen uit de zeventiende eeuw (Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, 1976), Jongh and his team used prints alongside contemporary literature and emblem books as primary evidence for interpreting paintings. 54 There are two exceptions to note. One is the catalogue to the exhibition Mirror of Everyday Life (the follow-up show to Tot Leering en Vermaak cited in the note above) in which one of these prints is discussed per se as printed genre imagery. See Eddy de Jongh and Ger Luijten, Mirror of Everyday Life: Genre Prints in the Netherlands, 1550–1700 (Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, 1997), 199–203. The other exception is Michela Gianfranceschi, Le incisioni da Caravaggio e caravaggeschi: musici, giocatori e indovine nelle scene di genere (Rome: Logart Press, 2011), 122–125, which looks very briefly at a small number of Caravaggistic half-figures printed in the Netherlands in the 1620s. Gianfranceschi’s short review relies on existing allegorical interpretations, which my own analysis puts into question. Lastly, Joaneath A. Spicer glosses over Caravaggistic printed imagery in “The Role of Printmaking in Utrecht during the First Half of the Seventeenth Century,” The Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 57: 116–7. She attributes the scarcity of prints after Caravaggistic paintings to the difficulty in reproducing the “immediacy and

46 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re addressed by this dissertation, which, in so doing, contests existing allegorical readings.

Studies on Caravaggistic prints are few and far between. Alfredo

Petrucci’s Il Caravaggio acquafortista e il mondo calcografico romano of 1956 and Michela Gianfranceschi’s more recent effort, Le incisioni da Caravaggio e caravaggeschi: musici, giocatori e indovine nelle scene di genere of 2011, are the only two I have come across.55 My study then, which catalogues for the first time as many of the known prints that distinctly repeat the format and subject matter of

Utrecht’s 1620s Caravaggistic half-figured secular paintings, makes a contribution to the small field of Caravaggistic prints (see Appendix). Research conducted primarily at the Rijksprentenkabinet of the Rijksmuseum in

Amsterdam, as well as at the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie

(RKD) in The Hague, and at the Atlas van Stolk in Rotterdam, provides the basis for this part of the project. Furthermore, the thesis tackles variants and re- workings of the prints in an effort to uncover the significance of these alterations.

It should be stated, lastly, that in no way does my interest reside in distinguishing between originals, replicas, workshop variants, copies, etc., an

intense physicality” they generate (116). Again, my analysis of this imagery contributes a different outlook with regard to corporeality in Caravaggistic prints. 55 Petrucci’s work (published in Rome by Fratelli Palombi) discusses primarily two enigmatic Caravaggistic prints published in Rome at the onset of the seventeenth century, the Fortune Teller dated 1600 and the Denial of Saint Peter (1603), both dubiously ascribed to Caravaggio by Petrucci. Gianfranceschi’s work (see note 53 above) introduces its readers to reproductive prints after the genre paintings of Caravaggio and the Caravaggists. Most of these were produced from about the middle of the seventeenth century to mid-nineteenth century, often as part of printed series documenting prominent art collections. The Dutch half-figured prints, to which Gianfranceschi devotes a short section, count among the only Caravaggistic prints contemporary to the paintings to which they relate.

47 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re undertaking best suited to catalogues raisonnés.56 Conversely, duplicity and multiplicity are here viewed as positively intrinsic (and intentional) properties of the characters and of the group as a whole. Indeed, the fact that so many of these figures were produced, and the fact that they can comfortably be grouped together and be seen to form a cohesive, though variegated whole is of the essence. It probes the unstable nature of viewership and incites us to think about the way they address viewers, as well as the means through which they engender meaning.

In perpetually displacing narrative from the outside toward the body, paintings like Honthorst’s Woman Tuning a Lute, implicate viewers in a dual game or performance that hinges on immediacy and physicality. This brings us back to the focus of this dissertation: the narrative role of the body and performance in

Caravaggio and in Utrecht Caravaggism.

56 Gerrit van Honthorst was the first of the Utrecht Caravaggists to have an adequate catalogue raisonné devoted to his work. Published in 1999, Richard Judson and Rudolf Ekkart’s Gerrit van Honthorst (1592–1656) (Doornspijk: Davaco) is a revised and improved edition of Judson’s 1959 monograph Gerrit van Honthorst: A Discussion of His Position in Dutch Art (The Hague: Nijhoff). It traces the artist’s entire career, which can be broadly divided into a Caravaggistic period, and his time as court artist and portrait painter characterised by a classical style. The phase that interests us is comprised more or less between the years 1616 and 1630. It should be noted that the prints studied in Chapter Four are listed under the heading “Copies” in this catalogue raisonné, which gives an indication of the little relevance accorded to them. A catalogue raisonné of Hendrick ter Brugghen’s work was released in 2007. The Paintings of Hendrick ter Brugghen, 1588-1629: Catalogue Raisonné (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company) is based on the text of Leonard Slatkes and was completed by Wayne Franits. Franits published his own catalogue raisonné devoted to Dirck van Baburen in 2013, The Paintings of Dirck van Baburen (ca. 1592/93-1624): Catalogue Raisonné (Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2013). The only other previous monograph on Baburen, Slatkes’ Dirck van Baburen (c. 1595-1624): A Dutch Painter in Utrecht and Rome (Utrecht: Haentjens, Dekker & Gumbert, 1965) was out of date. Marcel Roethlisberger and Marten Jan Bok’s volumes on the Bloemaerts cited in note 51 of this Introduction remains the most comprehensive source on the life and work of the artist considered as the father of the Utrecht Caravaggists, Abraham Bloemaert. Bloemaert’s Caravaggistic period, runs from about 1621 to 1625. This publication is valuable also for its entries on some of the prints studied in this thesis, several of which were engraved by Bloemaert’s son, Cornelis.

48 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

Chapter One Utrecht to Rome and Back: Mobile Identities in Utrecht Caravaggism and Some Antecedents

I. Introduction

No Dutch artistic movement or style has been so closely associated to the art of a foreign artist than Utrecht Caravaggism. In fact, it is particularly difficult to situate the work of the Utrecht Caravaggists within a broader Dutch art historical narrative given that their art is embedded in two distinct artistic traditions (Italian and Dutch), and also born out of a local school (the Utrecht school) that has conventionally been understood as international in character. This chapter aims to reveal the project of the Utrecht Caravaggists as both a contribution to a larger history and as part of ongoing processes of self-invention and self-assertion. Hence, it is concerned with a fundamental art historical question, that of artistic identity and its politics. The chapter posits that the deliberate preservation of ties between Utrecht and Rome was a strategy for

Dutch artists’ self-fashioning and for the construction of a collective artistic identity for the Utrecht school of painting during a period of complex epistemic shifts.57

It is my objective to outline the Dutch historical tradition within which the artistic project of these painters may be considered, an undertaking from which previous authors have tended to shy away. The drawing out of historical antecedents for Utrecht Caravaggism provides a counter-point to simplified

57 For examples of artworks that express a desire to conserve the Catholic spirit of Utrecht see Xander van Eck, “Dreaming of an Eternally Catholic Utrecht during Protestant Rule: Jan van Bijlert’s Holy Trinity with Sts Willibrord and Boniface,” Simiolus 30 (no. 1/2, 2003): 19–33.

49 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re narratives about its development and enables me to situate it within a continuum and to underscore its distinctiveness. This tradition, fostered by the customary artistic pilgrimage to the Eternal City, originated, I explain, as a religious connection between Utrecht and the Papal capital. The interactions of Dutch artists active in and around Utrecht in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries with Italian art—and Roman art more particularly—shaped their sense of individual artistic identity. It also served to articulate a collective identity founded on the ideal of an enduring connection to the Eternal City. While the association with Rome had been largely religious in character, artistic exchanges between the two cities served to revivify and alter the nature of their interconnectedness.

The brief flourishing of Utrecht Caravaggism during the second decade of the seventeenth century is a distinguishing feature of Northern Netherlandish art.58 Understanding how it fits in the art of the Dutch Golden Age, which roughly spans the seventeenth century, has proved challenging nevertheless.59 Its advent and special significance are due in part to the privileged place Utrecht held in the

Netherlands as a hub of artistic activity during this period. Even after Amsterdam and Haarlem later developed into art centres (as did The Hague, Leiden and

Rotterdam to a lesser degree), each with somewhat distinctive schools of painting,

58 See, for example, Jean-François Revel, “Utrecht, l’étincelle qui a enflammé le génie hollandais,” Connaissance des arts (June 1961): 72–81. 59 C.H. de Jonge’s catalogue for Utrecht’s Centraal Museum (Catalogus der schilderijen) published in 1933 sparked a resurgence of interest in Utrecht Golden Age painting. De Jonge emphasized the international character of Utrecht painting, which he saw as opposed to the Dutch “national style.” This dichotomy has made it difficult for even modern scholars to define Utrecht’s place in Dutch art. See for example, Christopher Brown, Utrecht Painters of the Dutch Golden Age (London: National Gallery, 1997), 10.

50 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re the Utrecht school remained the most diversified in the country. This is due chiefly to its stylistic and thematic multiplicity, accrued primarily through contact with international artistic influences and currents, as well as through its rich religious history as a Roman Catholic centre, which cannot be overestimated.

Joost Cornelisz. Droochsloot’s (1586–1666) Panorama of Utrecht of c.

1630 asserts this laden history and avows the city’s spiritual fibre (fig. 1.1). In it, a long string of church towers is silhouetted against the sunbathed sky. From left to right stand St. Jacob’s church, St. John’s church, the town hall tower, St.

Peter’s church, the tower of St. Martin’s Cathedral (or Dom Church), the

Buurkerk (or Neighbourhood Church), the Episcopal palace, St. Chapel,

St. Paul’s Abbey, St. Mary’s Church, St. Catharine’s Church, the chapel of St.

Ursula’s Convent, the Weeskerk (or Orphans’ Church, former Regular

Monastery), St. Gertrude’s Church, St. Nicholas’ Church, and the St. Nicholas beguine monastery. The Dom tower, at the centre of the picture, overlooks the city centre. At 112 meters, it remains the tallest church tower in the Netherlands to this day, and it was certainly the tallest structure in the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century.60 As such, the Dom Tower would have been visible to travellers from afar whether they approached the city from the eastern sandy plains or from the western cultivated fields.61 In total, thirty-six church towers were spread over the 131 hectares enclosed within the city walls, the largest urban

60 E. J. Haslinghuis and C. J. A. C. Peeters, De Dom van Utrecht (’s-Gravenhage: Staatsuitgeverij, 1965), 416; Ron Dom Poort tot Cultuurhistorie, “Welcome to Ron Dom and the Dom Tower,” http://www.domtoren.nl/default.asp?action=pagina&pagina=2540&taal=1 (accessed June 28, 2010). 61 Christopher Brown, Utrecht Painters, 11.

51 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re area in the Northern Netherlands.62 Utrecht’s unambiguously identified the city as a spiritual centre.63 Originally the see of the ancient Roman Catholic bishopric of Utrecht, established when Saint Willibrord (c. 657–739) was consecrated bishop of the Frisians in the year 695, Utrecht remained a Catholic stronghold after the Reformation, accordingly maintaining its strong spiritual and historical ties to Rome.64

The approach taken in this chapter is in line with idiographic approaches to the “geohistory of art” recently proposed by Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann in that it attempts to get away from generalizations. Instead, it seeks to emphasize individual circumstances and specific places as opposed to spatial processes.65 In order to steer clear of deterministic approaches, however, I wish to draw attention to the dynamics between places and individuals. The chapter thus stresses historical specificity and individual agency equally. It considers cultural appropriations as assertive acts, which can be both personal and communal. In addition, it allows me to avoid an account in which things are seen as static, thus enabling movement—a central leitmotif of the narrative—to come to the fore. As

62 Jan de Vries, “The Economy of Utrecht,” 49. 63 For a summary account of the state of religious affairs in Utrecht in the first half of the seventeenth century see Benjamin J. Kaplan, “Confessionalism and Its Limits: Religion in Utrecht 1600–1650,” 60–71. For an in-depth study on the subject of religion in Utrecht in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century see the same author’s Calvinists and Libertines: Confession and Community in Utrecht, 1578-1620 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). 64 Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition, s.v. “Willibrord, Saint,” http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9077091 (Accessed July 1, 2010). Recent percentage estimates of Roman Catholics residing in Utrecht in the first half of the seventeenth century—out of a population of about thirty thousand—range enormously: thirty-five percent in Brown, Utrecht Painters, 12, and seventy-five percent in Kaplan, “Confessionalism and Its Limits,” 60. 65 Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann and Elizabeth Pilliod, eds., Time and Place: The Geohistory of Art (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 9.

52 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re such, this chapter is indebted to Michel de Certeau’s thinking.66 His incisive portrayal of users/producers (as opposed to ‘consumers’) serves as a framework for thinking of artists (and patrons) as moving, operating actors.67

In this chapter I aim to situate the Utrecht Caravaggists in a long lineage of Dutch artists whose work engages with Italianizing practices. I thus investigate the work of artists whose involvement with both Italian and Netherlandish visual traditions had a considerable impact on the art of Utrecht. My exploration opens with Jan Gossart (c. 1472–1532), reputedly the first Flemish artist to journey to

Rome. His Italianized work at the castle of the Bishop of Utrecht functioned as an effective conduit for introducing Italian visual conventions in Utrecht, and marks a turning point in Dutch art. I then move on to Jan van Scorel (1495–1562), regarded by Karel van Mander as “one of the first [great masters from the

Northern Netherlands] to have brought the correct manner of composing and making pictures.”68 Scorel further cemented Utrecht’s artistic ties to Rome. He achieved this by incorporating conventional Italian visual components such as idealized figures, architectural settings, and classical draperies into his , all evident in his Presentation of Jesus in the Temple (1524–26), for example (fig.

1.2). Other figurative compositions included typical Italianate nudes and landscape backdrops. I use evidence from Gossart’s and Scorel’s work to bring to

66 See page 35 (esp. note 36) in the Introduction to this dissertation for more on how De Certeau’s insights are used here. 67 De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 476. De Certeau draws a distinction between the concepts of strategies and tactics. The former relates to institutions and structures of power who are the “producers”, while the latter refers to how individuals (or “consumers”) navigate the spaces defined by the strategies of the “producers.” 68 Karel van Mander, The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters, ed. Hessel Miedema (Doornspijk: Davaco, 1996), vol. I, 161, and vol. III, 268.

53 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re light the ways in which a strong connection to Rome is expressed in their art and plays an active role in the creation of their self-image and in shaping the artistic milieu of Utrecht.69

By 1580, the Protestant Reformation had significantly weakened the

Utrecht Archdiocese and the generation of Utrecht artists that followed Gossart and Scorel was faced with a new set of challenges. Above all, they were confronted with diminishing church commissions. These artists sought to appeal to both the deep-rooted and changing tastes of the aristocracy, and to attract the interest of the rising merchant class. To do so, painters diversified their styles, subject matter, and media.

Abraham Bloemaert (1566–1651), whose career spanned the last quarter of the sixteenth century to the middle of the seventeenth century, is an example of one such artist who experimented with different styles and subject matter, and seems to have nurtured a heightened sense of self as an artist, as well as an acute sensitivity to the shaping of a collective identity for Utrecht’s painters. Indeed,

Bloemaert played a vital part in the advancement of Utrecht’s artistic community.

Furthermore, he appears to have been one of the first distinguished painters from

Utrecht to integrate printmaking into his artistic operations, ultimately contributing to the establishment of printmaking in the city, a development that strengthened its position as an art centre and provided an identity-building

69 Gossart and Scorel were by no means the first Dutch artists to engage with Italian artistic conventions. The first two sections of this chapter attempts to underline the ways in which their artistic strategies can provide an antecedent for investigating the Utrecht Caravaggists’ own engagement with a new Italian paradigm. For an exploration of early artistic relations between the Netherlands and Italy see: Italy and the Low Countries Artistic Relations: The Fifteenth Century; Proceedings of the symposium held at Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht, 14 March, 1994, ed. Victor M. Schmidt (Florence: Centro Di, 1999).

54 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re instrument for the entire collectivity, while also operating as a means of artistic self-promotion. That Bloemaert’s versatility, adaptability and ingenuity made him a successful teacher is confirmed by the remarkable number of younger artists he trained. Considered to be the father of the Utrecht Caravaggists, Bloemaert is central to the narrative I construct. In the fourth section of the chapter, I underscore the strategies he employed in the creation of his artistic persona and his commitment to creating a shared artistic identity for Utrecht’s painters. With an eye to making manifest his own connection to Rome (despite never visiting the city), I will highlight the role he held in setting up the artistic context in which the

Caravaggists operated in Utrecht.

The chapter’s fifth section introduces the three central protagonists of

Utrecht Caravaggism. It describes their own participation in the tradition of journeying to Italy and their involvement with Utrecht’s shifting relationship to

Rome. I here aim to stress their contribution to a collective identity for Utrecht’s artistic community as well as their active shaping of their own distinct artistic personae. Hence, this chapter endeavours to set the Utrecht Caravaggists— typically cast as the exception in Dutch art—within a broader tradition of cultural and pictorial translation that stimulated the formation of artistic identities, collective and individual. Dirck van Baburen, Gerrit van Honthorst and Hendrick ter Brugghen’s emulation of Caravaggio—which, I contend, is rooted in a long- standing artistic convention that expresses consideration for Italian and, more particularly, Roman models—is not viewed here as mere imitation. Rather, it is regarded as an identity-shaping action, or as an act of identity appropriation, and

55 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re is considered as part of a longer history of artistic self-fashioning and of self- representation.

II. Jan Gossart: From the Colosseum to the Castle of the Bishop of Utrecht

As a Roman Catholic stronghold, Utrecht’s ties to Rome and the Papacy were firm and entrenched. Early on, in 1508 and 1509, Jan Gossart (c. 1472–1532) travelled to Rome on the diplomatic mission of Philip of Burgundy-Blaton (1464–

1524), Admiral of the Netherlands from 1498 to 1517 and bishop of Utrecht from

1517 to 1524.70 The artist worked in the province of Utrecht shortly thereafter, and introduced into Netherlandish painting figures reminiscent of those in

Raphael’s work and architectural backgrounds akin to those in Filippino Lippi’s compositions.71

An anonymous inscription on Gossart’s Roman pen and ink drawing of the Colosseum captures the connection between the artist and the Eternal City.

The first section of the inscription reports, in Dutch, that the drawing is by the hand of Jan of Mabuse (as he was known from the town in the Southern

Netherlands in which he was born), while the second section, in Latin, describes the image as a depiction of the Colosseum created in Rome in front of the actual

70 Stephanie Schrader, “Drawing for Diplomacy: Gossart’s Sojourn in Rome,” in Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures: Jan Gossart's Renaissance; The Complete Works, ed. Maryan W. Ainsworth (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2010), 45. On Philip of Burgundy see Louis Sicking, Neptune and the Netherlands: State, Economy, and War at Sea in the Renaissance (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004): xxvii, 99. 71 Lucas van Leyden was also largely influenced by some of the art created in Rome during the Renaissance period. Despite not travelling to Italy, he assimilated Raphael’s style through the prints of Raimondi as well as through contact with the work of Jan Gossart with whom he travelled across the provinces of Zeeland, Flanders and Brabant. His work is discussed here and there in this dissertation.

56 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re monument.72 Stephanie Schrader explains how Gossart’s rendering of the

Colosseum, as well as its anonymous inscription, lays a claim to the antique and asserts the creative act of the artist.73 I argue that it also articulates the development of a rapport between the artist and the historical city and artistic centre, as well as a new consciousness of this rapport.74

This tie is reflected later in Gossart’s work: a changing sense of personal identity is revealed when he signs his 1516 Neptune and Amphitrite with the

Latinized form of his name: Johannes Malbodius (fig. 1.3).75 The large-scale mythological panel shows the over-sized figures of Neptune, god of the sea, and his consort, the sea goddess Amphitrite, standing together in the cella of an ancient temple. The painting is believed to be the “earliest surviving large-scale mythological composition in northern European painting to depict nude figures in antique architecture.”76 The artist’s Latinized signature thereby reinforces the idea of a shift in the work of Gossart, and a transformation in the way he perceives and presents himself and his art.

The artist’s sense of connection to Rome was also fostered through his social associations, especially to Philip of Burgundy. Gossart’s affiliation with this key historical figure accelerated the artist’s success in Rome and in the

Netherlands, and confirms that the linkage to Rome is also tied to the formation of

72 Schrader, “Drawing for Diplomacy,” 47. The inscription reads, “Jennin Mabusen eghenen / handt Contrafetet in Roma / Colosseus.” 73 Ibid., 47–49. 74 Maarten van Heemskerck’s (1498–1574) Self-Portrait in Rome with the Colosseum Behind of 1553 in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, appears to be making a similar statement. 75 Maryan W. Ainsworth, “The painter Gossart in His Artistic Milieu,” in Ainsworth, Gossart’s Renaissance, 9. 76 Ainsworth, Gossart’s Renaissance, 217 (cat no. 30).

57 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re social networks. Philip of Burgundy, a humanist and protector of Erasmus of

Rotterdam (1466?–1536), was Gossart’s main patron. He commissioned the painter to decorate his castle of Suytburg (now Souburg, Walcheren Island) in

Zeeland, which he aspired to turn into a humanist court.77 Gossart worked on this commission together with the Italian painter and printmaker Jacopo de’Barbari (c.

1460/70–c. 1516), remembered not only for his famous woodcut of Venice, but also as the first important Italian Renaissance artist to visit the German and

Netherlandish courts.78 Gossart’s collaboration with de’Barbari, in addition to furthering the Northern Netherlandish artist’s acquaintance with Italian artistic conventions and practices, must have amplified his sense of identification with these models. It is likely that Albrecht Dürer’s (1471–1528) trip to the

Netherlands in 1520 prompted Gossart to make his only efforts in the art of printmaking during that same decade.79 However, it seems fair to suggest that de’Barbari’s work as an engraver could also have stimulated his initial interest in the medium.

Gossart’s method for integrating the classical ideals he had studied in

Rome, but had not assimilated into his practice up to this point, finally took form in his mythological panels for Philip of Burgundy. A watershed moment, Gossart brings into effect the passage from a Late Gothic style to a Renaissance style combining an Italian formal language and a Northern sensibility. Labelled as

77 Ibid., 16, 218; Wouter Th. Kloek, Willy Halsema-Kubes, Reinier Jan Baarsen, Art before the Iconoclasm: Northern Netherlandish Art, 1525–1580 (Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum; 's-Gravenhage: Staatsuitgeverij, 1986), 11. 78 For a thorough study on the artist, his travels, and his German and Dutch connections see Simone Ferrari, Jacopo de’ Barbari: un protagonista del Rinascimento tra Venezia e Dürer (Milan: Mondadori, 2006). 79 Nadine M. Orenstein, “Gossart and Printmaking,” in Ainsworth, Gossart’s Renaissance, 105.

58 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

Romanism by G. J. Hoogewerff, this new Netherlandish style hinged in part on the depiction of anatomically accurate human bodies in convoluted poses within predominantly religious and mythological compositions.80 His Neptune and

Amphitrite, a suitable subject for the Admiral, features the Roman god of the sea and his wife as life-size nudes. The only extant part of the decorative programme of Souburg castle, these colossal mythological nude figures were unprecedented in Netherlandish art, though their poses are indebted to Dürer’s 1514 copper engraving of Adam and Eve. This print would have been readily available to

Gossart, as would have been de’ Barbari’s Mars and Venus engraving (c. 1509–

16), another clear source for the mythological couple, according to Maryan

Ainsworth.81 The columns and bucrania that adorn the classical temple in which the god and goddess stand find their own source in Roman architecture.

The practice of sojourning to Rome and studying there the work of the foremost Italian artists, as well as classical art and architecture, exerted considerable influence on Netherlandish painters. The politico-religious affiliation between Utrecht and Rome was now being enhanced by the formation of new artistic ties. The inauguration of Romanism at Souburg is the first concrete expression of a recasting of the artistic ties between the Netherlands and Italy resulting from artistic exchange. After being named Bishop of Utrecht in 1517,

Philip of Burgundy relocated to the medieval Episcopal castle of Wijk bij

80 See G. J. Hoogewerff, Nederlandsche schilders in Italie in de 16de eeuw: De geschiedenis van het Romanism (Utrecht: Oosthoek, 1912). The term has been used less often since the work of individual sixteenth-century Netherlandish artists has been the subject of more in-depth research. 81 Ainsworth, Gossart’s Renaissance, 220 (cat no. 30).

59 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

Duurstede, twenty-five kilometres southeast of Utrecht.82 Gossart followed him there and stayed in Duurstede for about six years. Despite the relative isolation and intimate character of the court of Philip at Wijk bij Duurstede, the circle of scholars and artists gathered there created a vibrant artistic environment.83

The task of decorating the palace was, once again, assigned to Gossart who created a group of erotically charged paintings of mythological nudes in the same vein as the Neptune and Amphitrite, such as Hercules and Deianeira (1517) and Venus and (1521). According to Stephanie Schrader, these works were meant to showcase Philip’s prowess, both political and sexual, in an effort to shape Philip’s political identity as admiral of the Burgundian fleet.84 She argues that Gossart repurposed antique mythology and eroticism to this end. Wouter

Kloek, Willy Hanselma-Kubes and Reinier Jan Baarsen also underline that

Neptune and Amphitrite shows a strong desire to revive Antiquity.85 Drawing on ancient art and mythology enabled Gossart and his patron to engage with the classical past, and, as suggested by Kloek, Hanselma-Kubes and Baarsen, to compel the distinguished visitors of Souburg castle to activate their knowledge of humanist thought and ancient history.86 If Gossart’s panels with nude Roman gods painted for Philip were meant to exalt the admiral’s sexual and political power as

Schrader contends, they also connected him to Rome. Despite his notoriously

82 For a history of Wijk-bij-Duurstede and details about its castle see M. A. van der Eerden-Vonk, J. Hauer, and G. W. J. van Omme, Wijk bij Duurstede: 700 jaar stad; Ruimtelijke structuur en bouwgeschiedenis (Hilversum: Verloren, 2000). 83 For example, the historian Gerardus Geldenhouwer (1482–1542) was part of Philip’s court in Utrecht. He was in his service from 1515 to 1524 and wrote Philip’s biography. 84 Schrader, “Gossart’s Mythological Nudes and the Shaping of Philip of Burgundy’s Erotic Identity,” 57. 85 Kloek, Halsema-Kubes, Baarsen, Art before the Iconoclasm, 12. 86 Ibid.

60 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re licentious behaviour and his favourable stance on physical love, he was, after all,

Bishop of Utrecht.87 This prompts me to observe that the association with ancient

Roman mythology he endeavoured to establish through Gossart’s paintings might also have helped to mediate the contradiction between his avid political and sexual interests, and his position as Bishop. The classical architecture, proportions, and mythology which Gossart’s panels re-call link Philip to ancient

Rome, while evading any evocation of modern papal Rome.

Hence, the expression of an enduring connection to Rome acquired another dimension in the art of Gossart, especially in his drawing of the

Colosseum and in the paintings he made for Philip of Burgundy. I contend that the existing ties as well as a renewed sense of connection through artistic exchange helped Gossart construct for himself a position in the world. It also contributed to elevate his status, as it did for his patron Philip of Burgundy, a political and religious figure of great importance in the Netherlands at this time, who employed and patronage as a means of self-assertion. The example of Jan van Scorel (1495–1562), who according to Karel van Mander briefly studied with Gossart in Utrecht, also allows us to observe this process, as well as the ways in which it can be tied to specific social affiliations, as was the case for Gossart.88

87 See Schrader, “Gossart’s Mythological Nudes,” particularly the section entitled “The Pleasures of Looking,” 65–66. 88 Van Mander/Miedema, Lives I, 198.

61 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

III. Jan van Scorel, Painter and Ecclesiastic, and a Dutch Papal Connection

Jan van Scorel’s Portrait of Pope Adrian VI depicts Utrecht-born Adriaan

Florenszoon Boeyens (1459–1523)—the only Dutch pope and the last non-Italian pope until the election of John Paul II, 456 years later (fig. 1.5).89 The painting, as

Liesbeth M. Helmus notes, is significantly indebted to Raphael’s Portrait of Pope

Julius II (1511): both popes are shown frontally in knee-length, seated on a high- backed chair decorated with finials, against a minimal background (fig. 1.4).90

They wear the pope’s winter costume: a pleated white surplice topped with a mozetta (a shoulder-length cloak in red velvet trimmed with white fur), and a matching cap, the camauro.91 Helmus further observes that, like Julius, Adrian holds a crumpled white cloth or handkerchief, in his hand.92

In view of these striking similarities, it becomes even more notable that while they are both turned three-quarters, Julius is turned towards the right and

Adrian towards the left, as if facing one another if the two portraits were to be hung side by side. Hence, I argue that Scorel’s portrait of the Dutch Pope expresses a desire to associate the holy man from Utrecht with his Italian counterpart. Adrian’s election as pope was surprising and appears to have been politically manipulated by his protector Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor from

1519 to 1556. Adrian, however, did not entertain the likelihood of an arranged

89 Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition, s.v. “Adrian VI (pope),” http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9003795 (Accessed July 2, 2010). 90 Liesbeth M. Helmus and Molly Faries, eds., Catalogue of Paintings, 1363–1600: Centraal Museum Utrecht (Utrecht: Centraal Museum, 2011), 283–85. 91 Ibid., 283. 92 Ibid.

62 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re election.93 Based on this, I contend that Scorel’s portrait of Adrian endeavours to put the Dutchman on equal footing with his Italian predecessor as a way of legitimizing his election and his authority.

Moreover, the correlations between Van Scorel’s Portrait of Pope Adrian

VI and Raphael’s Portrait of Pope Julius II articulate a desire for the Dutch artist to liken himself to the famous Italian painter, whom he succeeded as Curator of the Vatican collections. In fact, the Schoorl-born artist occupied important positions as a painter and as an ecclesiastic. Scorel first worked in Rome at the court of Adrian VI during his short pontificate from 1522 to 1524; the Utrecht

Pope provided the artist with lodgings in his Vatican apartments. In his Lives,

Karel van Mander claimed that the Pope “put him [Scorel] in charge of the entire

Belvedere,” although it is not entirely clear what kind of duties he performed.94

Nevertheless, I maintain that Adrian’s choice of a fellow countryman as custodian of the collections of the Belvedere and as his portraitist affirm the Pope’s identity as a Dutchman while reinforcing Utrecht’s religious and artistic ties to Rome.

This assertion on the part of Adrian can be seen as a way for him to claim his legitimacy as sovereign of the Papal States, and as a way to emphasize Utrecht’s ecclesiastical strength.

Scorel also held important offices in Utrecht, where he established himself after returning from Italy in 1524. He was first named vicar of the Janskerk, and

93 Molly Ann Faries, “Jan van Scorel, His Style and Its Historical Context” (PhD diss., Bryn Mawr College 1972), 59–60. 94 Van Mander/Miedema, Lives I, 201. Miedema observes that no documentary evidence has surfaced regarding the purported position of Curator of the Vatican collections in the Belvedere to which Scorel was appointed by Adrian VI according to the literature (see Lives III, 280).

63 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re later vicar of the Mariakerk, before obtaining a canonry in 1528.95 Scorel was something of a humanist; he cultivated diverse interests that extended beyond religious life and painting: he mastered several languages, was versed in composing epigrams and songs, and practiced archaeology and engineering.

However, it was his artistic and ecclesiastic roles that consolidated his connection to Rome and helped strengthen the ties between the papal city and the Bishopric of Utrecht. Scorel remained in Utrecht until his death some thirty-four years later.

Despite refusing to become a member of the painter’s guild, his Utrecht shop thrived during the years 1524–27 and 1530–50. During the short years between these two periods, he was in Haarlem where he continued to expand and standardize the operations of his workshop, thus spreading his renown and activity beyond Utrecht.96 In fact, Van Mander recorded that notable artists like the Flemish Frans Floris (1519/20–1570) regarded him as a “torchbearer and pioneer” of in the Netherlands.97 As one of the first Northern

Netherlandish artists to journey to Italy, Scorel was one of the Dutch instigators of the artistic pilgrimage to Rome.98 So important was his role in introducing Italian art to the Northern Netherlands that his return to Utrecht in 1524, approximately a

95 For details on Scorel’s clerical status and functions, see Molly Ann Faries, “Jan van Scorel, Additional Documents from the Church Records of Utrecht,” Oud Holland 85 (1970): 1–24. 96 Faries in Helmus and Faries, Catalogue of Paintings, 168. 97 Kloek, Halsema-Kubes, Baarsen, Art before the Iconoclasm, 11. 98 Van Mander/Miedema, Lives I, 194. Miedema notes that Van Mander’s claim that Scorel was the first Netherlandish artist to travel to the peninsula and import the essence of Italian art into his country is a slight exaggeration since at least Jan Gossart, the Southern Netherlandish artist who was in Rome in 1508/09, had preceded him in doing so as we saw earlier (see Lives III, 272). For more on the significance of the Italian sojourn in Utrecht see Lynn Federle Orr, “Reverberations: The Impact of the Italian Sojourn on Utrecht Artists,” in Masters of Light, 100–113.

64 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re century before the advent of Utrecht Caravaggism, is considered to have been a defining moment in the history of Northern Netherlandish painting.99

Scorel retained religious and artistic associations with Catholic Rome throughout his life. Without a doubt, these actively contributed to his sense of identity, and were crucial to realizing his ambitions. He carried on producing portraits and religious compositions in an Italianate style that appealed to his supporters and patrons among whom counted highly influential clerics and the most powerful nobles at the court of Holland.100 However the religious and political climate transformed over the course of Scorel’s career and the artistic sphere was greatly affected by the significant changes caused by the Protestant

Reformation.

Religious imagery came under attack during the political and religious riots that ensued.101 In fact, religious visual arts entered a state of crisis with the first upsurge of iconoclasm in Northern Netherlands, the so-called Beeldenstorm, in the summer of 1566, just four years after Scorel’s death in 1562. During this period churches and monasteries were stormed by insurgents who attacked visual representations of biblical characters and saints.102 Many of the monumental altarpieces for which Scorel was admired, along with a great deal of public

99 Kloek, Halsema-Kubes, Baarsen, Art before the Iconoclasm, 11. 100 Faries in Helmus and Faries, Catalogue of Paintings, 167–68. 101 For an account of the state of visual arts in the sixteenth century, and more precisely, before and after the Iconoclasm, see Kloek, Halsema-Kubes, Baarsen, Art before the Iconoclasm. 102 The initial spontaneous disfigurement of religious statues was followed by the whitewashing of the interior walls of churches. Mia Mochizuki notes that whitewashing was already practiced in Dutch Gothic churches, however. See her study of the Grote Kerk (or Church of Saint Bavo) in Haarlem and the religious material culture of the Reformation entitled The Netherlandish Image after Iconoclasm, 1566–1672. Material Religion in the Dutch Golden Age (Berkeley: Ashgate, 2008), 1, 1n1.

65 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re religious art in the Low Countries, did not survive the Iconoclastic Fury. The unrest had not, however, put a complete halt to the production of art: while churches were being repaired and outfitted with new furnishings and sculptures, painters adjusted to the situation by turning to non-religious art forms such as portraits.103

The iconoclastic crisis was followed by the Dutch Revolt against Spanish rule in 1568, a conflict that was as much a political revolution as it was a religious one. It not only led to the formation of an independent Dutch state but it also set in motion the decisive stages of the Reformation. If the Reformation did not completely signal the end of large-scale altarpieces commissioned by churches, it certainly resulted in a massive reduction in such commissions. As the principal source of religious patronage, the near disappearance of the was a colossal blow to painters. Nevertheless, Scorel’s (and his workshop’s) surviving religious works, portraits, and group portraits had a lasting impact on

Netherlandish painting in general, and most especially on future generations of

Utrecht painters, thus assisting considerably in the fabrication of an artistic identity for Utrecht based on its long-standing connection with Rome. As the artistic landscape transformed, Scorel emerged as a figure of continuity.

Scorel’s Lokhorst Triptych (c. 1526), his first painting after his return from

Italy, encapsulates this idea of transformation and continuity in the artist’s work

(figs. 1.6 to 1.8). It integrates lessons on narrative, composition, perspective, and

103 Kloek, Halsema-Kubes, Baarsen, Art before the Iconoclasm, 129.

66 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re beauty gained during his travels.104 The representation Entrance of Christ into

Jerusalem on the central panel is considered a stepping-stone on several counts

(fig. 1.6).105 The subject matter is rarely used for memorial altarpieces like this one, which generally depicted the Crucifixion and scenes from Christ’s

Passion.106 Likewise, the way that Scorel conflates three moments of the story—

Christ’s descent from the Mount of Olives, Christ met by the multitude, and

Christ gazing at the city before him—is innovative.107 The placement of the hillside on a diagonal plane structures the composition and unites the three moments. The strong and effective main line of the composition opens onto a topographically accurate view of Jerusalem. The detailed cityscape, a first hand description, is based on Scorel’s meticulous observation of the Holy City during his pilgrimage.108

The landscape extends into the interior wings of the triptych—decorated with the likenesses of saints—and thereby connects the three panels. Two of the six saintly figures especially embody the new ideal of beauty that Scorel acquired through contact with Italian art: Agnes (left panel), in her diaphanous gown, assumes a graceful pose, while Sebastian’s body (right panel), though somewhat mannered in his awkward stance, is meant to represent an idealized vision of male beauty (figs. 1.7 and 1.8). Also on the left panel, Pope Saint Cornelius—shown with the horn, his attribute—assumes the features of Pope Adrian VI, a close and

104 See the description of the triptych in ibid., 24–25. 105 Kloek, Halsema-Kubes, Baarsen, Art before the Iconoclasm, 24–25; Faries in Helmus and Faries, Catalogue of Paintings, 199–202. 106 Faries in Helmus and Faries, Catalogue of Paintings, 168. 107 Kloek, Halsema-Kubes, Baarsen, Art before the Iconoclasm, 24. 108 Ibid.; Faries in Helmus and Faries, Catalogue of Paintings, 198.

67 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re long-time friend of the patron of this work.109 Dean of the Salvatorkerk (called

Oudmunster) in Utrecht, Herman van Lokhorst (?–1527) commissioned the triptych from Scorel after the artist returned from Rome.110

That Adrian VI, Scorel’s benefactor while in Rome and Lokhorst’s friend, appears in the triptych under the guise of Pope Saint Cornelius underscores both the artist’s and the patron’s papal connection to Adrian. It also heightens the prestige of the commission, and thereby participates in the fashioning of both the painter’s and the patron’s personae. In manipulating visual conventions, Gossart was able to assert his and his patron’s personal and social identities.

According to Van Mander, who dedicates part of his biography of the artist to describing the triptych, the work was positioned in Utrecht’s St. Martin’s

Cathedral, the Domkerk, as a memorial to Lokhorst after his death.111 To sum up in the words of Molly Ann Faries, the Lokhorst Triptych “helped establish Scorel as a master painter in Utrecht. . . . [It] ushers into the north Netherlands the style that was so highly prized by Karel van Mander, a style ‘illuminated’ by the art of

Italy.”112 She concludes that “although The Lokhorst Triptych is traditional in its function, in its form Scorel has offered his contemporaries something completely new: a low oblong format, elegant poses, colourful costumes, and a luminous and expansive representation of space.”113 Scorel’s son, Victor, famously saved the triptych from the March 7, 1580 iconoclastic attack on the Domkerk, thus

109 Faries in Helmus and Faries, Catalogue of Paintings, 197. 110 Ibid., 199. 111 Van Mander/Miedema, Lives I, 201. 112 Faries in Helmus and Faries, Catalogue of Paintings, 167–68. 113 Ibid., 202.

68 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re amplifying Scorel’s significance as a figure of continuity at a time of radical change.114

The iconoclastic crisis altered the way people felt about images, and inevitably led artists to rethink not only their approach to producing images and the purposes given to them, but also the ways in which they did business. As sacred buildings were stripped of their images during the crisis, painted and printed images increasingly came to adorn private domestic spaces as well as secular public spaces. Existing kinds of private and public patronage expanded and new forms of art emerged and were diffused as artists sought novel ways of making images relevant to new audiences, and ways of endowing images with a purpose other than the former exclusively devotional function. Significantly,

Utrecht’s persistent religious connection to Rome continued to have a bearing on art production in the city, as it had in the past.

In addition to being a religious centre, the city of Utrecht was also the seat of the provincial government. However, the city relinquished its status as the most important urban area to Amsterdam during the seventeenth century, a period conventionally described as the Golden Age in Dutch painting. Even as the conditions that led to the rise of Amsterdam as a political, commercial and artistic centre were set in motion, the painting school of Utrecht continued to flourish.

Caravaggism figures among the currents that emerged out of the artistic kinship with Rome that Utrecht had developed for more than a century. Indeed, I hope to have demonstrated so far the existence of a long-standing practice originating in

114 Helmus in Helmus and Faries, Catalogue of Paintings, 12.

69 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re the early sixteenth century whereby artists working in Utrecht cultivated artistic links to the Eternal City that helped promote their artistic identity. As will be discussed in the remainder of this chapter, Utrecht painters continued to adapt this strategy. While Jan Gossart and Jan van Scorel both had close professional, social and religious ties to papal Rome, the relationship with Rome transformed into one of artistic emulation as the Reformation weakened the Catholic Church’s grip on

Utrecht. In fact, one could posit that art became a means of carrying on the ties with Rome without overtly invoking a religious affiliation.

After Jan Gossart and Jan van Scorel, a number of important Flemish and

Netherlandish artists, including Frans Floris (1519 or 1520–1570) and Hendrick

Goltzius (1558–1617), began travelling to Italy. In the sixteenth century a sojourn in Rome emerged as an essential step in an artist’s development. Those who did not make the trip to the Eternal City benefited from the influence of those who had returned, as was the case with Abraham Bloemaert, who holds a crucial place in the development of the Utrecht school of painting and is the subject of the next section of this chapter.

IV. Abraham Bloemaert and the Blooming of the Utrecht School of Painting

Abraham Bloemaert, a seminal figure of the Utrecht school of painting, was instrumental in fostering a climate that made the expansion of artistic practice in Utrecht possible and viable. Despite never having visited Rome, he promoted

Romanist and Italianist approaches through his art and teaching. In this section, I show that his experimentation with style makes manifest his interest in Italianist

70 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re models and his search for new strategies of representation.115 I will emphasize his goal of cultivating artistic openness and his desire to establish a versatile school of painting in his adoptive city—a school where even a style like Caravaggism, so embedded in the Roman Counter-Reformatory context, could forge a place for itself. While highlighting Bloemaert’s continuous engagement with the process of reinventing his artistic identity, my examination also investigates his role in nurturing a shared (albeit multifaceted) identity for the Utrecht school of painting as a whole.

Bloemaert was born in the Dutch town of Gorinchem in 1566, the year of the iconoclastic crisis, the Beeldenstorm. Bloemaert’s life spanned the Eighty

Years War, or Dutch War of Independence (1568–1648), and his art—not surprisingly—conveys experimentation with different stylistic trends. Van

Mander’s life of Bloemaert is the only early biography of the artist, and it counts among the longest and most detailed of his Schilder-boeck (Book of Painters).116

Having died in 1606, Van Mander was only acquainted with Bloemaert’s early period, but it is likely that he knew him personally, and that he possibly gathered the information for his biography from the painter himself.117 A more recent biography based on substantial archival research depicts Bloemaert as one of the foremost Roman-Catholic painters working in a Calvinist-dominated nation.118

115 For a recent review of Abraham Bloemaert’s work and significance see Liesbeth Helmus and Gero Seelig, eds., The Bloemaert Effect: Colour and Composition in the Golden Age (Petersberg: M. Imhof, 2011). 116 Van Mander/Miedema, Lives VI, 83. 117 Ibid. 118 Marten Jan Bok, “Life of Abraham Bloemaert,” in Marcel Roethlisberger and Marten Jan Bok, Abraham Bloemaert and His Sons: Paintings and Prints (Doornspijk: Davaco, 1993), 549–87. A

71 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

Despite the Dutch war of independence against Catholic Spanish rule, the effects of a lifetime in a strained political and religious environment did not prevent

Bloemaert from enjoying a long and successful career as a painter and draughtsman.

As this chapter articulates, Bloemaert participated in different stages of

Dutch . Mannerism, a mode of painting that originated in Rome around 1520, developed as a reaction to the classical principles, normative proportions, and structured space of art.119 It swapped these ideals for a formal language based on movement, spirituality, and a less defined sense of space. It tended to result in highly stylized compositions and complex iconography. After spreading across Italy it extended north to France, Flanders and the Netherlands where it persisted into the early seventeenth century. At first,

Bloemaert’s Mannerist work was deeply indebted to his Dutch and Flemish predecessors, but with time he developed his own personal interpretation and mode.120

In his early career, Bloemaert contributed to maintaining Utrecht’s connection to Rome through his engagement with Italianate visual conventions.

As artistic exchange between the Netherlands and Italy increased, knowledge of

Italian painting became vital even to artists who never crossed the Alps. First

revised summary of this extensively documented biography is available in the recent exhibition catalogue The Bloemaert Effect, 18–22. 119 For a thorough introduction to Italian Mannerism see the collection of seminal essays on the topic edited by Liana Cheney, Readings in Italian Mannerism (New York: P. Lang, 1997). For an overview of European Mannerist style in art, architecture, literature, theatre, music, and design see John Shearman, Mannerism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967). 120 For a brief introduction to Utrecht Mannerism see the section “The Mannerists: Abraham Bloemaert and Joachim Wteweal” in Christopher Brown, Utrecht Painters, 21–29.

72 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re imparted indirectly via the work of Flemish Italianists and through contact with

Italian prints, the influence of Italian art on Bloemaert was soon mediated through the work of the Haarlem School of painting. Van Mander records that the young

Bloemaert, probably about nine years of age at the time, began to practice his draughtsmanship by copying the work of Frans Floris after his family moved to

Utrecht, sometime in or before 1576.121 Floris’ history painting, revered for its

Roman mode, had launched a new style in Antwerp that influenced a whole generation of Flemish painters in the same way that Van Scorel was the bearer of a new pictorial idiom that came to dominate the northern Netherlandish visual tradition in the second quarter of the sixteenth century. One striking example of

Floris’ influence on Bloemaert can be found in the latter’s drawing Fall of the

Rebel Angels (c. 1600), which is based on Floris’ composition for the same subject (figs. 1.9 and 1.10). Whereas the confused upper part in Floris’ panel gives way to a clear sky in Bloemaert’s drawing, both compositions are dominated by the figure of St Michael towering over a jumble of bodies in the bottom half. Despite streamlining the overall composition, Bloemaert’s representation of the theme clearly originates from Floris’ concept.

121 Van Mander/Miedema, Lives I, 446. For Miedema’s comment on this see Lives VI, 86–87. Bloemaert’s father Cornelis (c. 1540–1593) became a member of the city’s saddlers’ guild in that year. A now lost Utrecht saddlers’ guild account book lists him as a newly-admitted master in the year 1576. Here see particularly page 87n34. Cornelis, who had left his native town of Dordrecht for Gorinchem before Bloemaert’s birth, found work as a sculptor (‘beeldsnyder’), in s’Hertogenbosch (1567) and in Gorinchem again (1572/73) prior to settling in Utrecht. He is recorded in the Utrecht town and churchwarden accounts as receiving ten pounds from the Franciscan monastery for two pedestals used in the fitting of the chamber where the Union of Utrecht was to take place in 1579. One can surmise that Bloemaert assisted his father in his work, given that he would later follow him to Amsterdam in 1591 when Cornelis obtained a six-month term as city engineer (here see Bok, “Life of Bloemaert,” 558).

73 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

Bloemaert first studied with Gerrit Splinter (flourished 1569–1689) for a period of only two weeks, and then with Joos de Beer (d. 1599 in Utrecht)—who was a pupil of Floris and owner of an impressive collection of paintings—and finally with an unnamed bailiff at Hedel Castle who exploited him as a houseboy.122 Dissatisfied by these three apprenticeships, Bloemaert travelled to

France at the approximate age of sixteen.123 In Paris, he endured two more unsuccessful apprenticeships with Jehan Bassot and a certain ‘Maître Herry’, before studying with Hieronymus Francken (1540–1610).124 A trip to Italy at this time would have been expected, but instead Bloemaert returned home in 1585 or

1586.125

In 1591, Bloemaert moved to Amsterdam when his father entered the service of the city. Whether Bloemaert was required to accompany his father on this posting or whether he saw it as an opportunity to establish contacts with the artistic communities in Amsterdam and Haarlem is uncertain.126 On 31 October

1591, the last day of his father’s term, Bloemaert requested citizenship from

122 On Joos de Beer see Van Mander/Miedema, Lives I, 446 and Miedema’s comments in Lives VI, 88. On Bloemaert’s apprenticeship at Hedel Castle see Van Mander/Miedema, Lives I, 449. For further information see Bok, “Life of Bloemaert,” 556, 556n50. 123 Van Mander/Miedema, Lives I, 449 and Lives IV, 90; Bok, “Life of Bloemaert,” 556–57. 124 Any influence he may have retained from his teachers and from his Parisian sojourn is undetectable. Moreover, if he was introduced to the work of the École de Fontainebleau during this time, no evidence of any influence is visible in his work. 125 Back in Utrecht, Bloemaert likely split his time between assisting his father and working on his own art. The earliest known example of Bloemaert’s work is found in the album amicorum (friendship book) of his friend Aernout van Buchell (1565–1641): A Putto, 1590. Pen and red wash, 15.4 x 19.6 cm. Leiden, University Library, inv. no. Ltk. 902, fol. 11v. Signed ABR. BLOMMERT.F. / CIC IC”XC. [MDXC, 1590]). Van Buchell, who later became a historian and classical scholar, had returned from Italy in 1588, two years prior to Bloemaert’s drawing, the first sign of the two men’s lifelong friendship. Van Buchell’s journal-style notes and his correspondence with learned contemporaries provide valuable information on Bloemaert. 126 Cornelis had also brought with him his pupil Hendrick de Keyser (1565–1621), who later became city architect and sculptor in Amsterdam. See Bok, “Life of Bloemaert,” 558; Van Mander/Miedema, Lives IV, 85, 92.

74 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

Amsterdam, a prerequisite for becoming a member of the , the sine qua non condition for selling one’s artwork on the local market.127 Bloemaert came of age right around this period: he set up a workshop in the old Poor Clares convent of Amsterdam and, in 1592, married the first of his two wives.128 With these latest events, a trip to Italy had become impractical, and even impossible, after he was named guardian of his father’s five remaining underage children in

Utrecht following the patriarch’s death in November 1593.129

His earliest signed work Apollo and Diana Punishing Niobe by Killing

Her Children (1591) speaks to Bloemaert’s interest in Italianate models (fig.

1.11). More directly, it points to the Antwerper Bartholomeus Spranger (1546–

1611), who spent most of his career in . Spranger’s unique synthesis of

Netherlandish visual culture and Italian Mannerism (absorbed principally during his time in Rome from 1566–1575) left a lasting impression on the artists who were to become the keystones of the Haarlem school: , Cornelis

Cornelisz. van Haarlem (1562–1628) and Karel van Mander.130 Bloemaert’s closest contact with Spranger’s work would have been through the prints after his designs, some of which were engraved by Goltzius. Examples of engravings after

Spranger that Goltzius published in Haarlem such as Mars and Venus (1588) provide visual evidence of the influence Spranger exerted on Bloemaert’s early

127 Bok, “Life of Bloemaert,” 558. 128 Judith van Schonenborch (c. 1548–1592) was eighteen years his senior. She inherited a substantial family fortune and died childless when Bloemaert was only 26 years old. 129 Bok, “Life of Bloemaert,” 561. 130 Van Mander’s decisive encounter with Spranger in Rome revealed to him the Mannerist beauty of Parmigianino’s art. In turn, Van Mander imparted the Sprangerian idiom to Cornelisz. and Goltzius, who finally travelled to Rome and other Italian centers in 1590–91 at the rather late age of thirty-two.

75 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re work in the form of elongated bodies in elegant but unnatural positions and exaggerated gestures—characteristic elements of the formal language of

Mannerist art (fig. 1.12). Moreover, Bloemaert’s representation of the Niobids being massacred uses a soft palette with strong colour contrasts that emphasize the drama of the scene, another typical feature of mannerist painting.131

The Sprangerian manner, combined with Cornelisz.’s and Goltzius’ interpretations of it (see figs. 1.13 and 1.14 for examples), remained Bloemaert’s visual mode of choice until 1600.132 A first shift in his manner becomes apparent at this time as he moves towards a more understated Mannerist style and more varied themes; his figures adopt less affected poses, the settings become more naturalistic and gradually the religious and mythological figures become secondary to the bucolic landscapes in which they are portrayed. A strong illustration of this new approach is found in his Landscape with the Prophet

Elijah in the Desert of the 1610s: the prophet, in his bright red cloak, is but a small figure sitting atop a hill surmounted with tortuous trees (fig. 1.15). These

131 This approach can also be found in the work of Bloemaert’s fellow citizen and exact contemporary (1566–1638). Wtewael enthusiastically responded to the developments in Haarlem Mannerism, but unlike Bloemaert, he had travelled to Italy (and France) from about 1588 to 1592, and thus had first hand knowledge of Parmigianino’s and Spranger’s Roman works. His eccentric religious and mythological paintings are recognizable by their acidic palette, convoluted compositions and idealized figures in distorted poses of which Cephalus and Procris (c. 1595–1600) and and Andromeda (1611) are representative examples. 132 Bloemaert’s ties with the Haarlem Mannerists can be deduced from a few facts. For instance, Cornelisz. owned a painting by Bloemaert entitled Young Tobias (unknown today, see Roethlisberger and Bok, Abraham Bloemaert, cat. no. 93). Moreover, Van Mander’s intimate knowledge of Bloemaert’s life is a tangible testimony of his rapport with the Utrecht painter, albeit the only remaining one. There is no evidence of a direct connection between Bloemaert and Goltzius, but the Utrecht painter’s professional relationships with Goltzius’ stepson, Jacob Matham (1571–1631)—to whom Goltzius taught the art of engraving—and with another engraver who worked in Goltzius’ studio, (1565–1607), suggest that the two painters may have known each other. Goltzius was primarily a draughtsman and engraver before 1600 when he turned to paint. Hence, the example in figure 1.14, which dates from the period I am discussing here, is a drawing.

76 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re picturesque religious and mythological scenes set in vast pastoral landscapes with ruined cottages and twisted vegetation became his new specialty.

As Bloemaert became increasingly accomplished in different styles and genres, he also seems to have become increasingly mindful of the need to create better training opportunities in Utrecht. The years 1611–1612 mark a turning point for the arts in Utrecht with the ratification of the Painters’ Guild charter in

1611, the establishment of professional engraver Crispijn de Passe I (c. 1565–

1637) in the city in 1611, and the founding of a drawing academy in 1612.133

Modelled on the Italian concept of an accademia, the Utrecht academy provided young artists with an added training tool—drawing from live models—which could supplement the conventional master-pupil system that was part of guild training. Bloemaert was certainly instrumental in setting up the academy. One can surmise that the creation of an academy arose partly out of the desire for and affirmation of a kinship with the Italian model of art instruction and production, and the professionalization and ennoblement of the arts it fostered. Its establishment positively impacted the expansion of the Utrecht school. As Janssen writes, “the foundation of the ’s Guild in 1611 and the drawing academy in 1612 marked the beginning of a period of unprecedented growth for painting in

133 In a letter dated 21 June 1612, the scholar Johan de Wit cheerfully responds to his friend Aernout van Buchell’s note informing him of the recent arrival of printmaker Crispijn de Passe I in Utrecht (1611), and expresses excitement for the possibility of the launch of an academy in Utrecht. See Bok, “Life of Bloemaert,” 571. For more information on the establishment of the painters’ guild in Utrecht and the 1612 statutes see Maarten Prak, “Guilds and the Development of the Art Market during the Dutch Golden Age,” Simiolus 30 (no. 3/4, 2003): 236–51, especially 241, 245. For further details on the Utrecht drawing academy see Bok, “Life of Bloemaert,” 571– 72. Some passages from Bok’ brief section on the academy are taken from his article “‘Nulla dies sine linea,’ De opleiding van schilders in Utrecht in de 17de eeuw,” De zeventiende eeuw 6 (1990): 58–68.

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Utrecht that would last until the middle of the century.”134 In his drawing manual

Van’t Light der teken en schilder konst (The Light of the Arts of Drawing and

Painting) of 1643, Crispijn de Passe II (1597–1670) recounts how he learned to draw “in a famous drawing school which was, at that time, organized by the most eminent masters.”135 The frontispiece of Van’t Light depicts these artists: the versatile Bloemaert, his pupil, Caravaggist and classicist Honthorst, portraitist

Paulus Moreelse (1571–1638), flower and landscape painter Roelandt Savery

(1576–1639), and Mannerist Joachim Wtewael are depicted surrounding a group of students who are drawing a sculpture of as patroness of the Arts (fig.

1.16). The image evokes the artists’ circle’s connection to an Italian or academic conception of painting and vaunts the intellectual prowess and erudition of its members.136 On the other hand, the variety of genres is typical of local schools of painting in the seventeenth-century Netherlands, while the distinctive breadth of styles is idiosyncratic of Utrecht’s unique position and history.

Cornelis Bloemaert II (1603–1692), the second of fourteen children born from Bloemaert’s marriage to Gerarda de Roij (c. 1580–1648), his second wife, was also, like De Passe II, part of the generation of apprentices who benefited

134 Paul Huys Janssen, Jan van Bijlert, 1597/98-1671: Catalogue Raisonné (Philadelphia: J. Benjamins, 1998), 54. 135 Crispijn van de Passe, Della luce del dipingere et disegnare (Amsterdam, 1643): no page number, first part, introduction entitled “A gl’ amatori del arte.” De Passe writes, “Nella mia gioventù mi son applicato a molti, & diversi esercity ma particolarmente mi son applicato allo studio della scienza del designare, & perciò ho letto i più eccelenti autori, é hanna tratato, comunicato, con gli piu eccelenti ma[e]stri, come… Habrahamo Blomart l’eccelente Paolo Morelz un Pittore & architetto della Città d’Utrecht, ma ancora più particolarment con il fìglio van der Burg con il quale visita l’Accademia dov’erano al hora gli piu Celebri huomini del secolo.” The text of De Passe’s drawing book appears first in Italian, and then in French, Dutch and German. The English translation of the passage cited above is from Bok, “Life of Bloemaert,” 571. 136 Marten Jan Bok, “Artists at Work: Their Lives and Livelihood,” in Masters of Light, 94. Bok writes, “Van de Passe’s drawing book reflects in print the achievement of the Utrecht drawing Academy.”

78 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re directly from these local developments. Significantly, the arrival of De Passe I to the city made the study of engraving in an internationally renowned publishing house available to his son Cornelis.137 Later, Cornelis, as well as his brothers

Hendrick (1601/2–1672) and Adriaen (1610/13–1666) all journeyed to Rome, and

Cornelis resided there until his death. Bloemaert certainly also had the artistic education of his four sons in mind, considering the insufficient training he had received, and which was the subject of his lament: “I wish that once in my life I could have seen a good master painting, or handling colours so that I could have learned their manner or technique by observing them.”138 Presumably, this had a bearing on his outstanding dedication to teaching.139 Surely, the financial advantage to having many pupils also represented an enticement. Nevertheless, pecuniary profit was not the only significant way in which Bloemaert profited from his pupils. The large workshop Bloemaert established in Utrecht became a training ground for the following generation of Utrecht painters. As a result, the individuality of the Utrecht School as a whole and Bloemaert’s own identity as an artist and teacher were simultaneously strengthened.

Many of Bloemaert’s pupils travelled to Rome, passing on new ideas to their teacher upon their return. His apprentices Gerrit van Honthorst and Hendrick

137 Born in Arnemuiden, Netherlands, De Passe I began his career as draughtsman, engraver and print publisher in Antwerp in the mid 1580s. At the end of the decade he fled to Aachen for religious reasons, and then to Cologne in 1589 from where he moved to Utrecht in 1611, again for religious reasons. De Passe was active and successful, and his extensive production of engravings, which covers remarkably varied subjects, was popular throughout Europe. 138 Van Mander/Miedema, Lives I, 449. 139 In her dissertation “Abraham Bloemaert (1566-1651), the ‘Netherlandish Academy’ and Artistic Collaboration in Seventeenth-Century Utrecht,” Elizabeth Nogrady addressed many of the questions that underpin this section, namely Bloemaert’s concern for professional development opportunities, teacher/student relationships, concepts of artistic consciousness and individuality, and cooperation in Utrecht. See note 47 in the “Introduction” for the full reference.

79 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re ter Brugghen were, in their turn, to teach him a valuable art lesson upon their return from Rome. Thus, Bloemaert was driven into a hiatus during which he temporarily abandoned his contemporary picturesque Dutch landscapes that provided the casual setting for scaled-back religious or mythological scenes, like the Landscape with the Prophet Elijah in the Desert briefly discussed earlier.

Faced with competition from a new generation of painters, Bloemaert quickly reinvented himself and adopted the ideas they had brought back from Rome, namely Caravaggism. This period—only a short interval—partially shaped the artistic fortune of the teacher as Caravaggism became the new paradigm for the visual tradition of Utrecht as it did in no other Dutch city.

Bloemaert’s efforts to bring the prestige of a long tradition of Italianising

Dutch art back to Utrecht where it had been begun by Gossart and Scorel had now come full circle.140 Of course, major political and religious changes had occurred in that time, altering the development of Dutch art and contributing to the growth of genres other than history painting, as well as modifying the relationship between sacred and secular images. Bloemaert stands as a key figure in the history of the arts in Utrecht and acted as an epicentre for its artistic community and network. Through his experimentation with style, Bloemaert explored artistic translation and reinforced Utrecht’s ties with Rome despite never visiting the city.

His investigations into new strategies of representation, into the medium of print,

140 It is interesting to note that Bloemaert was associated to the Scorel family: Victor van Scorel (c. 1539–1617), a son of Jan van Scorel and a neighbour of Bloemaert, signed Bloemaert’s first will as one of two witnesses (see Bok, “Life of Abraham Bloemaert,” 562). It does seem probable that Bloemaert—who was born after Jan van Scorel died—could have developed a close connection to his predecessor’s work through contact with his son, though this possibility cannot be examined further here.

80 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re and into new training structures lay the foundation for a more diversified school of painting that allowed Caravaggism to find a niche in a Protestant country.141

V. Baburen, Honthorst and Ter Brugghen: Protagonists of Caravaggism

I have, so far, explored the intricate connection between Rome and

Utrecht that arose from religious association, artistic translation and artists’ travels in the sixteenth century. While the appeal of Rome resided primarily in access to both classical art (large monuments and smaller statuary) and

Renaissance and contemporary art (public sacred art and more modestly-sized private devotional and secular works), access to the city’s particularly dynamic patronage networks constituted another major incentive.

In a recent introduction to a collection of essays, Jill Burke and Michael

Bury discuss the intersections of art and identity in early modern Rome. They contend that Roman patrons—as this section will suggest—used the visual arts as a way to assert status in a society in which the nature of identity formation was continually shifting.142 To introduce these ideas, they call on poet and scholar

Lelio Guidiccioni’s description of Rome in his 1622 eulogy for as

“the common city of people from other lands and the fatherland of every individual.”143 What Giudiccioni emphasizes in my view is that Rome, in addition

141 For more on Bloemaert’s involvement in printmaking see the first section of the Appendix. 142 Jill Burke and Michael Bury, Art and Identity in Early Modern Rome (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2008), 18. 143 Ibid. A citation for this source appears to be missing from Burke and Bury’s essay. Guidiccioni published his eulogy in Breve racconto della trasportatione del corpo di Papa Paolo V. dalla basilica di S. Pietro à quella di S. Maria Maggiore: con l'oratione recitata nelle sue esequie, & alcuni versi posti nell’apparato (Rome, 1623) at ’s request. The

81 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re to being a city of foreigners, also promoted individuality. In other words and somewhat paradoxically, its cosmopolitan character fostered a need for forceful self-assertion. In what follows, then, I investigate the ways in which Rome—a bustling centre for the arts of the past and present—provided the Utrecht

Caravaggists not only with a pictorial model with which to identify, but also with

“strong motivation for competitive self-assertion” to use Burke and Bury’s expression.144

Ter Brugghen and Honthorst both studied with Bloemaert, an artist that, as

I demonstrated, acted upon his occupational identity and was deeply vested in fashioning Utrecht’s distinctiveness as a repository of both Dutch and Italianate artistic traditions.145 Bloemaert and his early contemporaries turned Mannerism into a leading pictorial style in their native city, and the Utrecht Caravaggists’ interactions with Caravaggism can be interpreted in part as a desire to break with the past and to provide a substitute for Utrecht Mannerism while still honouring

Italianate conventions.

The dates and duration of Ter Brugghen’s and Honthorst’s respective apprenticeships with Bloemaert are not known and cannot be verified given that the records of the Utrecht saddlers’ guild (the ancestor of the painters’ guild or

Latin citation “communis exterorum ciùitas, & patria singulorum” can be found on page 26 of the Breve racconto. 144 Burke and Bury, Art and Identity, 3. The scholars use these words to describe the context in which the diverse cosmopolitan ruling elite of Rome resorted to artistic patronage as a means of shaping their identity in a city in which “there was relatively open access to high office, not dependent on noble birth.” In addition to patrons, I propose here to apply the idea of “competitive self-assertion” also to artists working in Rome. 145 Ter Brugghen’s apprenticeship with Bloemaert is chronicled by seventeenth- and eighteenth- century authors (, , ) although no documentary evidence has been recovered. See Marten Jan Bok and Yoriko Kobayashi, “New Data on Hendrick ter Brugghen,” Hoogsteder-Naumann Mercury 1 (1985): 9, 9n27; Slatkes and Franits, Ter Brugghen, 3.

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Guild of Saint Luke) for the years prior to the creation of the latter in 1611 are lost.146 What is more, the regulations of the Guild of Saint Luke regarding training and apprenticeship in the statutes of 1612 are not useful for determining the chronology of Ter Brugghen’s and Honthorst’s training, for they had likely completed their formal education by then. No works by Ter Brugghen, Honthorst, or Baburen are known from the period preceding their travels to Italy. Contrary to

Ter Brugghen and Honthorst, Baburen is registered in the pupil records of the

Utrecht Guild of Saint Luke, as a student of Paulus Moreelse in the year 1611.147

However, we do not know when this apprenticeship began or ended. Moreelse had himself made the customary trip to Italy in the second half of the 1590s, and could therefore share his personal understanding of Italian art with his pupils, and instil in them an awareness of and an interest in the contribution of Southern art to

Northern visual culture.

Because the apprenticeship tuition for Bloemaert’s pupils, to take their example, averaged about forty-seven guilders per year—a substantial amount— this type of training was reserved for the children of well-to-do families.148 These young artists can thus be presumed to have been sufficiently affluent to afford a trip to Italy destined to broaden their artistic training. The traditional Italian

146 Before the creation if the painters’ guild or Guild of Saint Luke in Utrecht in 1611, painters were affiliated to Utrecht saddlers’ guild. Registers of pupils of the saddler’s guild are lost for the years before 1611. See also note 77 in the present chapter, and Bok and Kobayashi, “New Data on Ter Brugghen,” 10. Moreelse, who was slightly younger than Bloemaert and Joachim Wtewael, had studied with the Delft portrait painter Michiel van Mierevelt (1567–1641). 147 Slatkes, Baburen, 2. 148 Bok, “Life of Abraham Bloemaert,” 573. The amount excludes boarding and guild membership.

83 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re sojourn was typically carried out after completing four to five years of instruction under a skilled master.

It is probable that Baburen had already left on his artistic pilgrimage to

Rome by 1612, since he is absent from the Utrecht painters’ guild records for that year. The earliest record of him in Italy is in a document which notes the existence of an untraced Martyrdom of —a popular Caravaggistic theme—executed for a church in Parma, signed by Baburen, and bearing the date of 1615 on its verso.149

As a third generation artist from a Utrecht family of Roman Catholics, an artistic pilgrimage to Italy was a natural step in Honthorst’s training. While nothing is known of his departure from Utrecht and his arrival in Rome after his apprenticeship with Bloemaert, pictorial testimonies of his Roman period are more numerous than for any of the other Utrecht Caravaggists. His earliest extant signed and dated work—a 1616 drawn copy of Caravaggio’s Crucifixion of Saint

Peter in the church Santa Maria del Popolo—demonstrates Honthorst’s early interest in the Italian painter’s work (figs. 1.17 and 1.18).

In contrast to Honthorst and Baburen, the years Ter Brugghen, the eldest of the Utrecht Caravaggists and the first among them to have travelled to Italy, spent in Rome remain entirely obscure. It is interesting to note that although his father was the illegitimate son of a Catholic priest, Ter Brugghen was likely a

Protestant.150 This serves as a brief reminder of the fluidity of religious affiliation

149 Slatkes and Franits, Ter Brugghen, 134, 134n9. 150 Bok and Kobayashi, “New data on Ter Brugghen,” 13–14. In fact, the painter had a Reformed wedding ceremony, and four of the eight children from this union were baptized in a Reformed church. See also Slatkes and Franits, Ter Brugghen, 3, 6. Slatkes, however, believes Ter Brugghen

84 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re in the Dutch Republic at the time.151 Ter Brugghen must have entered

Bloemaert’s studio as early as 1602, at the age of about thirteen or fourteen. The young artist must have trained with him for at least two to four years, after which he departed on the journey that took him to Rome.152

Although his return date is documented, his arrival date in the Eternal City can only be approximated to about 1606.153 If the estimated date is correct, this would place Ter Brugghen in Rome in the year that Caravaggio fled the city

(1606), making him likely the only Utrecht Caravaggist to have arrived there before Caravaggio’s departure.154 Because Ter Brugghen’s stay in Rome is unrecorded in documents and artworks, it is difficult to assess how much

Caravaggio’s bold and innovative style initially influenced his art. One possible explanation for the absence of known Roman paintings is that Ter Brugghen’s works were destined for private patrons.155 However, some of Baburen’s and

Honthorst’s canvases for Roman private collectors—some of which will be might have been a “nominal” Protestant only. See page 6 and 6n24 of his and Franits’ monograph cited in the note above. 151 On the subject see R. Po-chia Hsia and Henk van Nierop, eds., Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2002). Hsia speaks of “porous boundaries” in his introduction to this collection of essays. 152 Scholars Marten Jan Bok and Yoriko Kobayashi have posited an early apprenticeship with an unidentified master in The Hague, where Ter Brugghen’s father, Jan (or Johan) Egbertsz. ter Brugge (c. 1561–1626?), moved his family from Utrecht sometime between 1586 and 1589 to accept a position as first bailiff ordinaris to the Court of Holland. The family returned to Utrecht some years later. See their article “New Data on Ter Brugghen,” 9. 153 The date is corroborated by the notary and rederijker Cornelis de Bie (1627–c. 1715) in a statement revealing that Rubens, who left Rome in October of 1608, had met Ter Brugghen while in Rome. See Cornelis de Bie, Den spiegel van der verdrayde werelt (Antwerp, 1708), 263. In her recent study on Ter Brugghen, Natasha T. Seaman gives the dates of the artists’ Roman tenure as 1607–1614, but provides no reference. See Seaman, Religious Paintings of Hendrick ter Brugghen, 2. 154 Leonard Slatkes suggest that Ter Brugghen “would have been one of the very few northern Caravaggesque painters in Rome while Caravaggio was still active in that city. See his article “Bringing Ter Brugghen and Baburen up-to-date,” Bulletin du Musée National de Varsovie 37 (1996): 201. 155 Slatkes and Franits, Ter Brugghen, 5.

85 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re discussed in this section—are still extant, and in some cases documented in contemporary sources.

We know that Ter Brugghen had travelled north to Milan in the summer of

1614 as he prepared to return home.156 The mystery concerning his early works continues in Utrecht where he became a member of the Guild of Saint Luke in

1616.157 A profound knowledge of Caravaggio’s compositions is apparent in Ter

Brugghen’s art—the sort that can only come from direct contact with these.

Indeed, his Utrecht production demonstrates a persistent preoccupation with

Caravaggio’s inventions. For instance, his two versions of Calling of Saint

Matthew—one of which I analyze in the next chapter—while illustrating his allegiance to Caravaggio’s famous composition for the same subject, also shows the Utrecht painter negotiating the gap between the Caravaggistic paradigm and the Dutch tradition in which he was trained.

156 Bok and Kobayashi, “New Data on Ter Brugghen,” 10, 25 (under “doc. no. 17”). This information is known from a legal deposition taken in Utrecht on 1 April, 1615. Ter Brugghen, along with the Utrecht artist Thijman van Galen (b. 1590), presumably travelled from Milan through Switzerland and across the Alps through the Gotthard Pass in the company of another Utrecht painter, Michiel van der Zande and the latter’s apprentice, Frans van Knibbergen. The deposition, transcribed by Bok and Kobayashi in the citation given above, was first published by J.J. Dodt van Flensburg, “Hendrick ter Brugghen,” Historische Genootschap te Utrecht Berigten I (Utrecht, 1846), 133–35. It was signaled again by M.E. Houck in “Mededelingen betreffende Ter Borch en andered, benevens aantekeningen omtrent hunne familieleden” [Information concerning Ter Borch and others, with notes on members of his family] in Verslagen en Medelingen van de Vereeniging tot Beoefening van Overijsselsch Regt en Geschiedenis (1899), 355–58. See also Slatkes, “Ter Brugghen and Baburen up-to-date,” 200. 157 Bok and Kobayashi, “New Data on Ter Brugghen,” 11, 26 (under “doc. no. 18”). Ter Brugghen’s earliest secure painting, Adoration of the Magi (oil on canvas, 134 x 160 cm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) is signed and dated 1619. See again Bok and Kobayashi’s article, 10, 10n29. According to Leonard Slatkes, Ter Brugghen’s earliest known canvas is Supper at Emmaus (oil on canvas, 160.3 x 188.3 cm, Toledo, Museum of Art, inv. no. 1983.1). The painting is dated to 1616. See Slatkes and Franits, Ter Brugghen, 111 (under no. A22). Its autography, however, is the source of controversy. Here, see Wayne Franits, “Hendrick ter Brugghen: A Survey of His Life, Artistic Development, and Reputation,” in Slatkes and Franits, Ter Brugghen, 6–7; Paul Huys Janssen and Michael Hoyle, review of The Paintings of Hendrick ter Brugghen, by Slatkes and Franits, Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 32, no. 4 (2006): 314–18.

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Although a second trip to Italy for Ter Brugghen has been posited, a single stay in Rome was clearly sufficient for Ter Brugghen to engage deeply with

Caravaggio’s visual idiom.158 Despite the absence of visual evidence from his years in Rome, I propose that his early involvement with Caravaggistic modes can be construed as a means, on the one hand, of integrating the Roman artistic world and, on the other hand, as a form of self-representation. As a young artist and as a foreigner (possibly Protestant), Ter Brugghen certainly sought to assert equally his individuality and his compliance to Roman pictorial modes. His dual engagement with Dutch artistic conventions and a new Roman mode of painting

(Caravaggism)—albeit in line with long-standing practices discussed in the previous sections—entail a constant defining and affirming of his identity as an artist.

A much stronger case can be made for Baburen and Honthorst, as evidence of their early involvement with the Caravaggistic idiom and networks of patronage is more easily recovered.159 If Baburen’s and Honthorst’s Roman canvases form the basis of our understanding of their commitment to and

158 Christiaan Schuckman, “Did Hendrick ter Brugghen Revisit Italy? Notes from an Unknown Manuscript by Cornelis de Bie,” Hoogsteder Mercury 4 (1986): 7–22. Schuckman’s suggestion is based on a manuscript note written by Cornelis de Bie, who was mentioned in note 97 of the present chapter. The son of the Flemish artist Adriaen de Bie (1593–1668), Cornelis published in 1661 a compilation of artist biographies and panegyrics with engraved portraits entitled vande edel vrij Schilder const (The Golden Cabinet of the Noble and Free Art of Painting). De Bie’s hand written addendum—found inside his personal copy of the publication— states that “the painter Hendrick Terbruggen lived with my father, Adriaen de Bic [sic], in Rome anno 1620, also long before that year, and afterwards.” However, Slatkes argues that the omission of this rather important piece of information from the Bie’s printed edition of Het Gulden Cabinet and from his other biography of Ter Brugghen in Den Spiegel vande Verdrayde Werelt (Mirror of the Distorted World) of 1708 calls into question its reliability. See Slatkes and Franits, Ter Brugghen, 13. 159 As early as 1620, associated Honthorst to Caravaggism when he wrote: “Egli venne a Roma all’epoca in cui lo stile del Caravaggio trovava seguito generale.” See his Considerazioni sulla pittura, ed. Adriana Marucchi (Rome: Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, 1956–1957), 258.

87 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re appropriations of Caravaggio’s revolutionary manner, the ties the two painters forged with some of the city’s most distinguished patrons, including many protectors of Caravaggio himself (Marchese , Cardinal

Francesco Maria Del Monte, Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the Barberini) convey another layer of investment with Caravaggism to which painters and patrons alike participated.160

Honthorst’s and Baburen’s personal ties with the Giustiniani brothers, aristocratic banker Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani (1564–1637) and Cardinal

Benedetto Giustiniani (1554–1621), are particularly significant.161 While their role as patrons of Caravaggio will be discussed in Chapter Three, it seems crucial to recall here that Marchese Vincenzo’s eminent collection of over five hundred pictures included no less than fifteen works ascribed to Caravaggio, the largest number of works by the artist in a single collection to this day.162 It therefore

160 Del Monte’s collection featured a concert scene ascribed to Honthorst, which was later purchased by cardinal Francesco Barberini in 1628. A representation of Apollo Flaying by Honthorst is listed among the possessions of . For more information on this see Giani Papi, “Novità sul soggiorno italiano di Gerrit Honthorst,” Paragone 41 (nos. 479–81, 1990): 62n17, 63n17. Ties between Baburen and Scipione Borghese have also been suggested (see again Papi’s article referenced above, p. 51). However, Valentina White demonstrates that Baburen’s Capture of Christ in the Galleria Borghese was not part of the original collection put together by Scipione. Rather, it entered the collection in 1787. See her essay “Il soggiorno romano di Dirck van Baburen. La committenza e le opere,” in "Fiamenghi che vanno e vengono non li si puol dar regola": Paesi Bassi e Italia fra e Seicento; Pittura, storia e cultura degli emblemi, ed. Irene Baldriga (Sant’Oreste: Apeiron, 1995), 183. The role of Giustiniani as protector of Baburen and Honthorst is explored below. 161 Natasha Seaman proposes that Ter Brugghen too was able to make connections with Vincenzo Giustiniani based on similarities between the Dutchman’s work and paintings by Caravaggio in the Giustiniani collection. See Seaman, Religious Paintings of Ter Brugghen, 12–13. 162 The following fifteen works in the Marchese’s inventory are listed as by (or believed to be by) Caravaggio: Saint Matthew and the Angel (no. 1), Agony in the Garden (no. 2), Crowning with Thorns (no. 3), Saint Augustine (no. 4), Saint Jerome (no. 5), Portrait of Sigismond Laire (no. 6), Mary Magdalene (no. 7), Lute Player (no. 8), Amor Vincit Omnia (no. 9), Doubting Thomas (no. 10), Portrait of a Famous Courtesan (no. 11), Portrait of a Courtesan (also known as Portrait of Fillide) (no. 12), Portrait of Cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani (no. 13), Portrait of a Woman (no. 74), Portrait of Prospero Farinacci (no. 89). See Luigi Salerno, “The Picture Gallery of Vincenzo Giustiniani III: The Inventory, Part II,” Burlington Magazine 102, no. 685 (April 1960): 135–49.

88 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re comes as no surprise that he promoted artists associated with Caravaggism. More importantly here, he was an early supporter of the Utrecht Caravaggists. The

Giustinianis, in fact, housed Honthorst and Baburen, as well as the

Amsterdammer David de Haen (c. 1590–1622), who was a close collaborator of

Baburen’s.163 As will be discussed further in Chapter Three, the households of cardinals offered countless opportunities for artistic advancement. Living with the

Giustiniani in their palazzo near the church of San Luigi dei Francesi—a very meaningful site for Caravaggism considering that Caravaggio’s cycle dedicated to

Saint Matthew hangs in one of its chapels—offered Honthorst and Baburen exceptional advantages. In addition to direct contact with the artworks in the

Giustiniani collections, it provided a lively cultural milieu and access to important social networks. Through these networks, they gained access to many noteworthy art collections in Rome and made the acquaintance of other art patrons.

Naturally, the two artists also painted for the Giustiniani brothers themselves. The Marchese commissioned Baburen’s earliest known Roman work,

Christ Washing the Feet of the Apostles (c. 1617–18), a picture that blends elements of Caravaggism—stark chiaroscuro, a limited palette of earth colours, an unspecified setting, and an emphasis on bodies, expressions, and gestures, to name but a few—with a compositional structure that nevertheless ascends from

The large variety of works by other artists and schools in the Giustiniani collection does not fail to remind us that the Giustiniani had varied artistic interests, Caravaggism being only one. Slatkes appropriately remarked in 1965 that “an art collector of the calibre of Vincenzo Giustiniani remained for the most part uncommitted to either the baroque classicism of the Carracci and their followers or to Caravaggio, but patronized both groups.” See Slatkes, Baburen, 46. 163 Art historian and painter Joachim von Sandrart (1606–1688), who was a pupil and collaborator of Honthorst, chronicled that his master was invited by Giustiniani to take up residence at his palazzo. See his L’Academia Todesca della Architectura Scultura et Pictura, oder der Edlen Bau- Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste (Nuremberg, 1675–79), part II, book 3, 303.

89 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re his Utrecht instruction (fig 1.19).164 For his part, Honthorst contributed a portrait of a woman and two religious paintings to the Giustiniani collection: the London

Christ before Caiaphas, arguably the most famous and copied painting from his

Roman years, and the Berlin Liberation of Saint Peter.165

Honthorst and Baburen stood to profit from their ties with the Giustiniani in other important ways. For instance, the brothers likely played a part in procuring Honthorst his three commissions for the Order of Discalced Carmelites, notorious for commissioning and then rejecting one of Caravaggio’s most controversial paintings, Death of the Virgin.166 The most significant of

Honthorst’s commissions for the Carmelites, an of the Beheading of

Saint John (c. 1617–18), adorns one of the chapels of the same church for which

Caravaggio’s altarpiece of the Virgin was originally commissioned, Santa Maria della Scala.167 Honthorst’s commission for this church, which I analyze in

164 Leonard J. Slatkes, “David de Haen and Dirck van Baburen in Rome,” Oud Holland 81 (1966): 183; Slatkes, Baburen, 48–52. Based on style and compositional syntax, Slatkes situates Christ Washing the Feet of the Apostles and Capture of Christ with the Malchus Episode, which I will briefly look at below, at the beginning of Baburen’s Italian production. 165 Silvia Danesi Squarzina, “The Collections of Cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani, Part I,” Burlington Magazine 39, no. 1136 (Nov. 1997): 766–91. Christ Before Caiaphas (oil on canvas, 272 x 183 cm, National Gallery, London, inv. no. NG3679) is dated to c. 1617, while the Liberation of Saint Peter (oil on canvas, 129 x 179 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, inv. no. 431) is dated 1616–18. The Liberation was commissioned by Cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani, who bequeathed it to his brother, Marchese Vincenzo (1621). 166 Gianni Papi and Loredana Lorizzo both believe that a close connection between Honthorst and a member of the Discalced Carmelites accounts for the several commissions the artist received from the order. See Papi, “Soggiorno italiano di Honthorst,” 47–68; Lorizzo, “Spiritualtà carmelitana nelle opere romane del pittore olandese Gerrit van Honthorst,” in “Fiamenghi che vanno e vengono, 159–67. Tommaso Megna has argued convincingly that the Giustiniani brothers must have acted as a point of contact between Honthorst and the order, or with a particularly influential member. See “Gherardo delle Notti a Roma: le commissioni pubbliche, il ‘patronage’ Giustiniani e nuovi elementi documentari” in Decorazione e collezionismo a Roma nel Seicento: Vicende di artisti, committenti, mercanti, ed. Francesca Cappelletti (Roma: Gangemi, 2003), 87– 100, particularly 95. 167 The two other commissions were Saint Paul Caught Up Into the Third Heaven (1618) for the Roman church of Santa Maria della Vittoria and Christ in the Carpenter’s Shop (c. 1617, oil on

90 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

Chapter Two, underscores the intricate ties that connect the Dutch painter, the

Giustiniani, the Carmelites and Caravaggio himself. As such, Santa Maria della

Scala can be interpreted as a site where the interests and objectives of these users/producers of Caravaggism intersect.

Investigations into the role of Vincenzo Giustiniani as protector of

Baburen have unearthed significant associations with a nucleus of patrons of

Roman Caravaggism, amongst whom the Spaniard Francesco Cussida stands out.168 Through patronage and social connections, Cussida, a diplomatic representative serving Phillip III of Spain in Rome, sought to associate himself with protagonists of Caravaggism. Cussida enlisted Baburen and his friend David

De Haen to paint a joint cycle depicting Christ’s Passion for his family chapel in

San Pietro in Montorio.169 The cycle includes Christ on the Mount of Olives,

Mocking of Christ, Way to Calvary, and Entombment of Christ.170 The likely date

canvas, 142 x 118 cm) for the convent of San Silvestro in Montecompatri, a small town on the Alban Hills southeast of Rome from where it was stolen in 1977. Although this work has yet to be recovered, a later version is extant at The Hermitage in St. Petersburg (c. 1620, oil on canvas, 137 x 185 cm, inv. no. 5276). Giani Papi lists a third version in Greenville. See Gherardo delle Notti: Gerrit Honthorst in Italia, (Turin: Soncino, 1999), 13. Judson thinks Scipione Borghese is responsible for these two commissions (see J. Richard Judson and Rudolf E.O. Ekkart, Gerrit van Honthorst, 1592–1656 (Doornspijk: Davaco, 1999), 7). See also the references listed in note 110 of the present chapter for other interpretations. 168 For further information on Cussida and his links with Baburen see Cecilia Grilli, “Il committente della cappella della Pietà in San Pietro in Montorio in Roma,” Bollettino d’arte 79 (1994): 157–64; White, “Soggiorno romano di Baburen,” 168–93; Cecilia Grilli, “Il collezionismo di Pietro Cussida a Roma e una seconda cappella della Pietà di San Pietro in Montorio,” in Vittorio Sgarbi, et. al., Caravaggio e l’Europa. Il movimento caravaggesco internazionale da Caravaggio a (Milan: Skira, 2005), 57–63. 169 Baburen is, in fact, traced in Rome for the first time in the 1619 stati d’anime of the parish Sant’Andrea delle Fratte as sharing an accommodation with his compatriot De Haen in the vicinity of the parish church, of which they were said to attend the services regularly. See White, “Soggiorno romano di Baburen,” 169, 169n15. 170 The attribution of the paintings in the Pietà chapel in San Pietro in Montorio to Baburen and to his colleague David de Haen has been the subject of debate for a long time. In a recent conference paper, Wayne Franits has offered a new interpretation as well as a summary of the literature concerning the attribution debate. See Franits, “Additions (and Subtractions) to David de Haen (c. 1597–1622),” Lecture recorded at the National Gallery of Canada on June 18, 2011

91 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re of 1617 for the large Entombment altarpiece supports the claim that the Pietà

Chapel decorations were not Baburen’s first Roman works, for such an important commission would not have been granted to an inexperienced painter.171 In

Chapter Two I discuss the indebtedness of Baburen’s Entombment to

Caravaggio’s 1603 altarpiece of the same subject commissioned by Alessandro

Vittrice for the Chiesa Nuova of the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri (called Santa

Maria in Vallicella), situated just two kilometres away from San Pietro in

Montorio. Suffice it to say here that such overt emulation is evidence that Cussida likely sought to employ a painter who could very easily replicate the style of

Caravaggio and quote with ease his celebrated Entombment.

Indeed, the hiring of an artist must have been a question of great consideration for Cussida, whose chapel, as Leonard Slatkes has noted, was located in the same church as Raphael’s Transfiguration (which had been donated to San Pietro in Montorio by Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici), Sebastiano del

Piombo’s Flagellation fresco (for which Michelangelo famously provided a drawing), as well as Bramante’s Tempietto, which marks the location of Saint

Peter’s crucifixion.172 It should also be remembered that as Baburen’s protector,

Vincenzo Giustiniani possibly facilitated the Cussida chapel commission.

Baburen’s connections to powerful collectors among Caravaggio’s most

(http://www.gallery.ca/en/learn/wayne_e_franits.php). See also pages 9–18 in his recently published catalogue raisonné on Baburen’s work. For earlier interpretations see Slatkes, Baburen, especially chapters III and IV; Slatkes, “David de Haen and Dirck van Baburen in Rome,” Oud Holland 81 (1966): 173–86; see also references in note 112 in the present chapter. 171 Slatkes, Baburen, 28–29; White, “Soggiorno romano di Baburen,” 171. 172 Slatkes, Baburen, 29.

92 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re important patrons would have only increased the painter’s appeal in the eyes of

Cussida.

An earlier painting by Baburen, Capture of Christ with the Malchus

Episode (c. 1615–16), appears to have also been commissioned by a member of the Cussida family (fig. 1.20).173 The picture is a nocturnal scene created from a dark palette of earth tones with strong contrasts of light and dark featuring expressive figures dressed in both classical and contemporary costumes. It illustrates the young painter’s familiarity with several of Caravaggio’s compositions, public and private. First and foremost, it makes evident Baburen’s acquaintance with Caravaggio’s Taking of Christ, a work completed in 1602 at the request of the Roman nobleman Ciriaco Mattei, a notable art collector who lodged Caravaggio for a period of time (1601–1602) and commissioned at least three known works from him.174 Whereas the left side of Baburen’s Capture cites and expounds on Caravaggio’s Taking, the Malchus Episode on the right-hand side of the canvas seems to reference the two central figures in Caravaggio’s

Martyrdom of Saint Matthew as well as perhaps suggesting a replication of the fallen body of the apostle in Conversion of Saint Paul.175 Judging from the expression and gesture of Jesus in his Capture, Baburen was also familiar with

173 See the results of Valentina White’s archival research for more information on the Cussida family as the patrons for this work in her article “Soggiorno romano di Baburen,” especially 172– 73. 174 The Mattei were an illustrious and powerful Roman family. Ciriaco’s brothers were Cardinal Girolamo Mattei and Marquis Asdrubade Mattei, also a fervent art collector. The two other works Ciriaco commissioned from Caravaggio are the London Supper at Emmaus and the (Youth with Ram) today in the Musei Capitolini. For further details on Caravaggio’s relationship with the Mattei family see: Creighton E. Gilbert, Caravaggio and His Two Cardinals (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995); Sergio Benedetti, Caravaggio e la collezione Mattei (Milan: Electa, 1995). 175 White, “Soggiorno Romano di Baburen,” 173.

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Bartolomeo Manfredi’s composition for the same subject matter, a painting that resurfaced in 2002.176

Cussida was also closely associated with Baburen’s companion David de

Haen. Although not many details about this little-known artist have surfaced, we know that he again came into the employment of Cussida some years after the completion of the Pietà Chapel and was living with the family in 1621.177 We also know that De Haen was residing at Palazzo Giustiniani with Marchese Vincenzo shortly thereafter and died there in 1622.178 This seems to reinforce the idea of an intricate set of connections between the Dutch Caravaggists and Roman patrons of Caravaggism.

In other words, the Utrecht Caravaggists’ relationship with Giustiniani,

Cussida and other supporters of Caravaggism can be described as an association of vested parties informally tied together by their shared interest in the works of

Caravaggio. The association would have been mutually beneficial. The artists gained recognition and credibility as Caravaggists, hence reinforcing their identification with Caravaggio himself and his way of thinking about painting.

Giustiniani and Cussida exercised their sustained and resolute patronage of

Caravaggism as an instrument, one could say, of self-representation and as a means to uphold and enhance their status. Hence, the associations between

Baburen, Honthorst and Roman patrons of Caravaggism—particularly

176 For an account of the rediscovery of Manfredi’s Capture of Christ, its cleaning and its restoration, see Gianni Papi, Manfredi: La Cattura di Cristo (Milan: Collezione Koelliker, 2004). 177 Cecilia Grilli, “David de Haen, pittore olandese a Roma,” Paragone 11 (1997): 34. 178 The information is known from an entry in the “Libro dei morti” [Book of the Dead] of the Sant’Eustachio parish to the effect that the painter died on 31 August, 1622 in the Giustiniani household and was buried at Santa Maria dell’Anima. See Grilli, “David de Haen,” 34.

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Giustiniani—and their participation in Caravaggism emerge as strategies for, on the one hand, building identity, and on the other, for asserting it.179

It is interesting to note that Honthorst’s success was not confined to Rome; it soon spread to Florence where Grand Duke Cosimo II de’ Medici (1590–1621) was eager to have his Roman Ambassador, Piero Guicciardini (1560–1626), obtain six paintings by the hand of the Dutch artist.180 Guicciardini himself had commissioned an altarpiece of the Adoration of the Shepherds (1620) from

Honthorst for his Florentine chapel in the church of Santa Felicità.181 This must have triggered the Grand Duke’s desire to acquire the works the painter left behind when he departed Rome shortly after receiving his payment for the

Guicciardini Adoration in the spring of 1620.182

Honthorst’s return to Utrecht was celebrated at Het Poortgen, the inn owned by his aunt Bellichgen, with such distinguished guests as Abraham

Bloemaert, Paulus Moreelse, Crispijn de Passe I, and Aernout van Buchell, who

179 It is difficult to pinpoint the exact reasons that prompted Giustiniani to support the two Utrecht artists. Similarly, explaining the painters’ alignment with Caravaggism very early on during their Italian tenure is a challenging task. 180 Papi, Honthorst in Italia, 15, 15n42. Two letters written by the secretary Cioli, and initially published in Godefridus Joannes Hoogewerff. De Nederlandsche kunstenaars te Rome in de 17e eeuw en hun conflict met de Academie van St. Lucas (Amsterdam: Akad, 1926), 286–87), document the Granduke’s interest in purchasing six canvases by Honthorst in Rome. A descriptive list of the coveted canvases said to be attached to the second letter was never recovered. 181 Honthorst’s altarpiece for Guicciardini (oil on canvas, 338 x 198 cm) was moved to the Uffizi Gallery in 1837 and destroyed in the 1993 car bombing that also ruined two paintings by the Caravaggist Bartolomeo Manfredi and damaged many others. 182 The payment was made on 9 April, 1620. See Papi, Honthorst in Italia, 11. As mentioned in note 124 of the present chapter, a description of the canvases purchased by Guicciardini in Rome for Cosimo II has not reached us. Nevertheless, four paintings by Honthorst at the Uffizi are likely to have been part of that group. Three of these are merrymaking scenes: Supper with Lute Player (c. 1619–20, oil on canvas, 144 x 218 cm, inv. 1890.730), Supper Party (c. 1619, oil on canvas, 138 x 203 cm, inv. 1890.735) and Fortune Teller (c. 1620, oil on canvas, 137 x 204 cm, inv. 1790.734). The other one is a Nativity scene (oil on canvas, 95.5 x 131 cm, inv. 1890.739).

95 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re recorded the fête in his journal entry of 26 July, 1620.183 The presence of prestigious guests from the local artistic community at Honthorst’s return party confirms that the painter was by then already recognized as a notable artist.

Clearly, the reputation of Gherardo delle notti, as he had become known in Italy for his Caravaggistic nocturnal scenes, preceded him. In addition, it reinforces the idea of travel to Rome as a determining factor in the formation of individual and collective artistic identities in Utrecht and corroborates the central role played by the increasingly important association with a new mode of painting and the networks of patronage it facilitated.

The investigations taken up in this section make us aware of Ter

Brugghen’s, Baburen’s, and Honthorst’s strategic commitment to the elaboration of Caravaggism as a mode of self-fashioning, and as a means of furthering their own ambitions. In fact, Xander van Eck has demonstrated that after the return of painters of that same generation from Rome, Caravaggistic subject matters began to be favoured by the Dutch Roman Catholic Church.184 This is in line with my suggestion that these artists’ engagement with Caravaggism should be in part understood as their contribution to a collective project that developed around local foci into a -European movement.185 Through their indelible association with

Caravaggism and through their participation in the development of Dutch

183 Marten Jan Bok, “On the Origins of the Flute Player in Utrecht Caravaggesque Painting,” 135; Judson and Ekkart, Honthorst, 14. 184 Van Eck asserts that conversion themes painted in a Caravaggistic style were favoured by the Dutch Catholic Church in the first half of the seventeenth century. See “From Doubt to Conviction: Clandestine Catholic Churches as Patrons of Dutch Caravaggesque Painting” Simiolus 22, no. 4 (1993–94): 217–34. 185 For approaches to Caravaggism as a “global” movement see Benedict Nicolson’s work in The International Caravaggesque Movement: Lists of Pictures by Caravaggio and His Followers throughout Europe from 1590 to 1650 (Oxford: Phaidon, 1979) and in Caravaggism in Europe, 3 vols., (Turin: Umberto Allemandi, 1989).

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Italianist conventions, the Utrecht Caravaggists perpetuated the twofold association of their hometown to the Eternal City, thereby strengthening the

Utrecht School’s Roman affiliation while forging distinctive artistic personae of their own.186

VI. Conclusion: The Crisis of the Image

In closing, I would like to draw a parallel between my argument about

Utrecht’s association with Rome and Hans Belting’s discussion of the crisis of the image in the early modern period. Belting describes a shift in the concept of image that resulted in there being two kinds of images: the old cultic image and the new image, which proclaims itself as art. Belting observes that the “dual aspect that permeates every image at the time therefore emerges in a particular dramatic form in the Netherlands.”187 He intimates here that this shifting between cult image and art image was particularly fraught in the Netherlands. I believe that this is especially the case in Utrecht, because the city’s traditional religious relationship with Rome was to some extent replaced by an artistic connection, as I have shown.

Belting finds an expression of this change in the work of the Netherlandish

Romanists. The scholar illustrates this dual tradition with a panel painting of

Christ Blessing by Jan van Scorel, whose work I discussed earlier in the chapter

186 It should be remembered here that Ter Brugghen was likely Protestant (see note 94 of the present chapter). In his case, artistic identity and affiliation with an Italian style appears to have mattered more than religious membership. For more on the connections between the religious affiliation of Caravaggistic painters and the Dutch Catholic Church as a patron see again Van Eck’s article “From Doubt to Conviction.” 187 Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, trans. E. Jephcott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 475.

97 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re as an example of the way in which the Southern model was absorbed into Dutch art (fig. 1.21). Belting believes that Scorel’s Christ Blessing was inspired by an earlier representation of Christ by Jan van Eyck (c. 1390–1441) (fig. 1.22).188

Indeed the two “portraits” of Jesus are very much alike. Van Eyck’s version is anchored in the tradition of icons: the head of Christ is presented to us in the close foreground, thereby occupying almost entirely the picture plane while the flat, shallow background remains bare but for the delicate outline of a decorative cross behind Christ’s head. In contrast, Scorel’s bust-length Christ is framed by an elaborate classical architectural structure that recedes into the picture thus creating a fictional space that is inhabited by a group of vivacious putti. “While working to counteract the breach between the old icon, now an image within an image, and the new invention in the spirit of ‘foreign’ (Italian) art” Belting argues, “[Scorel’s painting] at the same time confirms the double aspect of such images.”189 Indeed, this picture’s “multilayered structure” to use Belting’s words, emphasizes this crisis of the religious image by combining local models with new ones from the

Italian Renaissance. Therefore, the old icon-type image, still present in Scorel’s panel as a citation, is integrated into a modern artistic invention.190

188 Van Eyck produced two versions of this small devotional work, one in 1438 and one in 1440. The panel illustrated in Belting, Likeness and Presence, 431 (fig. 261) is said to be a copy after the first version. See Elisabeth Dhanens, Hubert and Jan van Eyck (New York: Alpine Fine Arts Collection, 1980), 292–4. 189 Belting, Likeness and Presence, 478. 190 Ibid., 475. Interestingly, Natasha Seaman proposes that Ter Brugghen employs a similar strategy in his religious paintings. She writes, “[his] paintings’ hybrid content and stylistic effect are a sign of Ter Brugghen’s investigation into the nature and status of religious painting after the Reformation. In straddling two traditions, Italian and Dutch, Ter Brugghen … sensitively registers in his works the legacy of the sixteenth-century image crisis instigated by the protestant Reformation” (Seaman, Religious Paintings of Ter Brugghen, 2).

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This double aspect of the image as religious icon and art object, I contend, resonates with the dual rapport of Utrecht to Rome, which was both religious and artistic. The second superseded the first after the Reformation, enabling the artistic connection to emerge as more significant. The twofold—spiritual and temporal—character of the ties between the two cities meant that both Catholic and Protestant artists had an interest in journeying to the papal and artistic capital, regardless of the schism created by the Reformation and the Catholic Church’s response to it, the Counter-Reformation. The religious conflict, in fact, did not deter Northerners from travelling south, to the land of the Holy See. Martin

Luther himself encouraged Lucas Cranach’s son, Hans, to travel to Italy to complete his artistic education. In recognizing the potential contribution of

Southern art to Northern traditions, even the most ardent Reformer, as Belting points out, made distinctions between the religious and artistic spheres.191

A fervent Catholic, Abraham Bloemaert was equally compelled to persuade his own pupils to visit Italy despite never doing so himself. What is more, he prepared the terrain for the flowering of a firmly grounded and very successful and diversified school of painting in Utrecht. It should be restated that he contributed to the establishment of printmaking in the city, a development that certainly went a long way in reinforcing its identity as a centre for the production of visual arts.192 The following generation of Utrecht painters—most prominently the Utrecht Caravaggists, two of whom were pupils of Bloemaert—perpetuated the artistic connection to Rome that had come to supersede the official, spiritual

191 Belting, Likeness and Presence, 470. 192 See note 85 above.

99 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re association, which had been fractured by the Reformation to a certain extent.

While I have stressed the significance of a trip to Rome in the education of young

Northern artists, for it provided the opportunity of studying Italian art first hand and of obtaining local commissions, the increased likelihood of attracting patrons once back in Utrecht was an additional incentive for making the trip to Rome.193 I suggested that in travelling to Rome, the Utrecht Caravaggists partook in an artistic tradition that connected them to previous generations of Dutch painters who looked to Rome for aesthetic insight, thereby reinforcing the dual link to

Rome which was here interpreted as a means of self-fashioning and a determining factor in the shaping of a collective artistic identity.

This chapter has shown that continuities can play a significant part in issues of identity at a time of major ruptures. It also emphasizes that both individuality and collectivity—often in tension with one another—were simultaneously reinforced by the complex set of relations that connected Utrecht to Rome. The investigations I took up above bring to light the individual’s role as a link in the historical chain I described. Different strategies for affirming an individual artist’s position within a continuous historical convention (including practices of artistic patronage) were illustrated. Ultimately, however, the use of

193 Xander van Eck suggests that out of the relatively small percentage of Protestant artists who executed paintings for Catholic patrons most were likely to have travelled to Italy where they came into direct contact with Counter-Reformatory art. See “The Artist’s Religion: Paintings Commissioned for Clandestine Catholic Churches in the Northern Netherlands, 1600–1800,” Simiolus 27, no. ½ (1999): 78. This article shows, however, that most commissions granted by the Catholic Church in the northern Netherlands in the seventeenth century were given to Catholic painters. For more on Van Eck’s noteworthy research, see his book Clandestine Splendor: Paintings for the Catholic Church in the Dutch Republic (Zwolle: Waanders, 2008).

100 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re visual arts in the assertion of identities and in the preservation and transformation of a lineage comes to the fore.

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Chapter Two Bodies in Flux: Corporeality in Caravaggistic History Painting

I. Introduction

In Chapter One, I examined the connection between the cities of Rome and

Utrecht. As the seat of an archbishopric, Utrecht had formal ties to Rome. The bond, however, was reshaped into an artistic rapport after the Protestant

Reformation. The persistent but shifting association of Utrecht to Rome, I argued, served as a building block in the fashioning of artistic personae and a collective artistic identity for the Utrecht school of painting. My re-evaluation of the

Caravaggists prompts a reconsideration of Caravaggio’s art, particularly the ways in which bodies, naturalism, and the city work together to construct a new mode of visual thinking. Exploring how these elements operate in Caravaggio’s art is essential to understanding the Utrecht Caravaggists’ engagement with the new pictorial paradigm proposed by the Italian painter.

One of the main tasks of this chapter is to analyse Caravaggio’s interest in bodies and to argue for the central place held by the human figure in his work and in the Roman (or early Dutch) production of the Utrecht Caravaggists. In their introduction to a collection of essays on early modern anxieties related to the human body as manifested in a variety of visual sources in rather startling ways,

Florike Egmond and Robert Zwijnenberg discuss “the early modern interest in the human body that reflected a—perhaps new and certainly increasing— preoccupation with the margins of the human body, physical violence, the body in

102 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re extremis.”194 Like Egmond and Zwijnenberg’s book, Caravaggio’s interest in bodies is immersed in tales of transition, subversion and extremes. This chapter explores how the artist overturns the visual conventions of the istoria and disrupts narrativity, creating instead a corporeality that induces viewers’ synesthetic participation. The term corporeality serves to remind us that Caravaggio’s paintings are constructed with the body in mind. The viewer encounters the body before the istoria, or to borrow again the words of Gilles Deleuze on the “theatre of repetition,” the image materializes in the beholder’s mind “with a language which speaks before words, with gestures which develop before organized bodies, with masks before faces, with spectres and phantoms before characters.”195

Notions of realism and naturalism are critical to the investigations this chapter takes up. The two terms describe different processes at work in

Caravaggio’s art. Realism is here taken to allude to the deliberate choice of presenting an image as an unadulterated representation of reality. It pertains more to the overall effect sought than to the devices implemented to achieve a truthful depiction. The term “realism,” in fact, came into use in the nineteenth century in reference to depictions of nature or contemporary life without embellishment.196 It was the term “naturalism” (or “di natura”), however, that was applied to

Caravaggio by his contemporaries to speak of his method of painting directly

194 Florike Egmond and Robert Zwijnenberg, eds. “Chapter One: Introduction,” in Bodily Extremities: Preoccupations with the Human Body in early Modern European Culture (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2003): 1–9. 195 See note 31 of the Introduction to this dissertation. 196 John Varriano prefers “realism rather than naturalism…because [he] believes the ‘modernity’ of Caravaggio’s social iconography—his trademark depiction of dirty feet, for example—was every bit as polemical as Courbet’s.” see Caravaggio: The Art of Realism (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006): 2. In contrast, both concepts are used in this dissertation; each has its distinctive definition as noted above.

103 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re from life. Naturalism, then, is read in this chapter as the set of “mechanical” means (close observation, scrupulous replication, non-idealization, etc.) employed by the artist to obtain a faithful (or realistic) representation that nevertheless overthrows our idea of the natural, of the normal. Caravaggio’s radical explorations of the body work against the notion of the aping painter, and shows him carefully considering aspects of human physicality and its performative powers. His approach to the human form therefore entails a certain stylization that is essential to bringing the performative operativity (or theatricality as others define it) of bodies to life.

Section Two maps out correlations between Caravaggio’s interest in bodies, the city as a site of bodily spectacles, and empirical realism (achieved through naturalism) in his work. Empiricism is a valuable concept in charting

Caravaggio’s engagement with corporeality because it encompasses observation and experience, both crucial to Caravaggio’s art. The section considers the history paintings Caravaggio created for private Roman patrons at the end of the sixteenth century and at the beginning of the seventeenth century as spaces, like the city, where the integrity of bodies—those painted and those of viewers outside the canvas alike—could be compromised. The section thus situates this imagery within turn-of-the-century city life in Rome, the cradle of Caravaggism. This provides a social perspective to my analysis of the formal materiality of bodies in

Caravaggio’s paintings and in the early works of the Utrecht Caravaggists, Roman pictures for the most part.

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Section Three investigates naturalistic painting as a pictorial and conceptual device employed by Caravaggio to conceive of his practice, profession and status. A recurring topos in both contemporary and modern literature on the artist, naturalism is here seen not strictly as a stylistic factor, but also as a rhetorical tool—used by the painter himself and by commentators as well—for forging an artistic persona. Different measures were taken by the painter to bring naturalism into effect. Actual pictorial devices and symbolic allusions to naturalism combine in efficacious ways to create an image of the artist as a naturalistic painter. In an interesting twist, performance ends up stealing the scene when the strategies that motivate the practice of naturalism are uncovered.

The key role played by performance in Caravaggio’s work is evidenced in the pervasive underlying analogy in the scholarly literature between Caravaggistic painting and the theatre, of which a number of illustrations appear throughout this dissertation. Yet, the stage as a metaphor for the art of Caravaggio and the

Caravaggists has not been sufficiently explored, defined or articulated even if the trope endures. Accepted as a truism, the association of Caravaggio’s work to theatre nevertheless requires further clarification. For scholars like Michael Fried and Lorenzo Pericolo, the theatricality of Caravaggio’s painting can be located in the sharp lighting that characterizes many of his works, or in the vulgar in-your- face display of a horse’s rear end in the Conversion of Saint Paul.197 In contrast to interpretations of his work as “theatrical,” I propose here to associate his paintings to performance and performativity by considering the body as a locus of narrative

197 Varriano, Caravaggio, 39; Pericolo, Caravaggio and Pictorial Narrative, 261–62.

105 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re that solicits the beholder’s reciprocal engagement. I aim to recentre understandings of Caravaggistic art as “theatrical” around the body as a performative entity. My analysis hones in on the dominant position the human figure assumes and in the tricks it performs, or is made to perform, to transform conventional pictorial narrative into an inclusionary ontological corporeality.

Section Four further explores the linkages between bodies and the everyday. It looks at Caravaggio’s Death of the Virgin, an altarpiece that famously generated debate over the proper treatment of bodies in religious representations. Removed from the chapel for which it was intended soon after it was installed there, the large painting raises questions about the concept of corporeality and the function performance holds within the composition. I examine the circumstances under which the work was first rejected and then reappropriated. Consequently, the study also allows me to consider profound transformations in the function of images in the early modern period Hans Belting surveyed, and the ramification of these on the audiences of Caravaggism, a concern that runs through this dissertation.

The study of bodies, performance, naturalism and realism proposed in this chapter carries through to Section Five. This final section explores the Utrecht

Caravaggists’ engagement with these four notions in response to Caravaggio’s work. I will look at some of their earliest production: Roman canvases by Dirck van Baburen and Gerrit van Honthorst, and one of the earliest known works by

Hendrick ter Brugghen, for whom no Italian works have survived, serve as case studies. The paintings chosen depict moments of physical, mental or spiritual

106 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re instability and instances of bodily transformations. I compare these paintings to those by Caravaggio that served as models, and examine the different attitudes towards bodies these comparisons bring to light. From this viewpoint, it is possible to observe how the Utrecht Caravaggists challenged the material and symbolic boundaries of painting, an important aspect of their work this dissertation highlights by addressing the problematics of viewing.

II. The Theatre of Rome: The City, the Body, and Empirical Realism

Caravaggio came to Rome from Milan in 1593.198 As the most important cultural centre in Europe in the sixteenth century, Rome was a hub of artistic activity. The

Eternal City was in a state of transformation following a long decline after 1527 when it was sacked by the Protestant troops of Charles V. Many of the changes

Rome and Christianity underwent in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were a direct response to the Protestant Reformation, in which church beliefs and practices including Purgatory, devotion to Mary (Mariology), the intercession and devotion of the saints, most of the sacraments, clergy celibacy, and the authority of the Pope came under attack.

By the time of Caravaggio’s arrival, new areas of the Roma Sancta had been undergoing rapid urbanization. Soon after, the newly established religious orders of the Jesuits, Capuchins and Oratorians drew vast numbers of pilgrims

198 Helen Langdon, Caravaggio: A Life (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999): 35. Caravaggio traveled without the support of a benefactor as would be the case under traditional patronage. In lieu of a sponsorship, he appears to have taken advantage of the emerging open art market to make a name for himself.

107 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re and indigents to the city through their charitable work.199 The beliefs and values of orders that sought to emulate Christ by being closer to poverty and suffering influenced higher members of the clergy to write treatises on art. They did this in an effort to institute an art that would imitate visible reality and thereby be accessible and legible to every worshipper.

In his Discorso intorno alle immagini sacre e profane (Discourse on sacred and profane images) of 1582, the archbishop of Bologna, Cardinal

Gabriele Paleotti (1522–1597), condemned the formal investigations and bold stylistic statements with which Mannerist painters were concerned. Indeed, it should be remembered here that Mannerism was profoundly invested—perhaps overly for Paleotti—with the representation of stylized, idealized, elongated, muscular (and often unclothed) bodies. Instead, Paleotti urged artists to refocus their attention on pious content and appropriate subject matter. Similarly, Cardinal

Federico Borromeo’s (1564–1631) De pictura sacra (On Sacred Painting) of 1622 addressed iconographic issues and gave directives on how to reconcile modern images with ancient scriptures and classical art.

The Counter-Reformation, the Papacy’s response to the Protestant

Reformation, was in full swing when Caravaggio entered the Roman studio of

Giuseppe Cesari (1568–1640). Better known as Cavaliere d’Arpino, Cesari was the foremost artist in Clementine Rome, and the Pope’s favoured painter. While

Caravaggio remains a somewhat shadowy figure in Cesari’s studio, his early art must have garnered enough appreciation to secure him a post in the thriving

199 Ibid., 44. On the subject of religious orders as patrons see Francis Haskell, Patrons and Painters: A Study in the Relations between Italian Art and Society in the Age of the Baroque (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980): 63–93.

108 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re atelier. This first period of his production is characterized by his sensuous paintings of young men and luminous and veristic still-lifes. Caravaggio’s Boy

With a Basket of Fruit and Sick Bacchus, both dating to about 1593, and considered in detail in Chapter Three, exemplify how this early production solicited the sensual engagement of the viewer through the deliberate plasticity of bodies and close attention to things and objects.200 Meanwhile, settings and narrative took on a subordinate role.

Caravaggio’s early genre paintings gained him the attention of his first prestigious patron, the Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte (1549–1627), who was building a fine collection of paintings and was on the lookout for young and promising artists. Del Monte invited the painter to take up residence at his Roman house. Caravaggio’s move to , del Monte’s home, initiated the artist into a world of wealthy and influential patrons and art collectors at the centre of Roman intellectual life who had vast cultural interests and precise political agendas.201 If life at Palazzo Madama was not very sumptuous, the cultivated milieu in which the Cardinal moved nevertheless contrasted with the boisterous streets, tavern brawls, and clandestine sexuality that were the other face of Rome with which Caravaggio was well acquainted.202

200 It seems appropriate to relate the plasticity of forms in Caravaggio’s works to Charles Dempsey’s concept of “specular” naturalism in his essay “Caravaggio and the Two Naturalistic Styles: Specular versus Macular,” in Genevieve Warwick, ed., Caravaggio: Realism, Rebellion, Reception (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2006): 91–100. 201 As seen in Chapter One, some of the same affluent art collectors later offered their patronage to Baburen and Honthorst, thereby giving them access to some of Caravaggio’s creations that remained in private hands, as well as to some of the same canvases that may have inspired the Lombard painter. 202 Langdon, Caravaggio, 83, 132. Del Monte’s means appear to have been modest, but the Cardinal “enjoyed the most refined and aristocratic pleasures,” Langdon explains. For a detailed

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Soon after moving to Palazzo Madama, Caravaggio produced one of his few mythological paintings, the shocking Head of the Medusa of 1597 (fig. 2.1).

Mounted on a round and convex shield, the canvas presents to us the bloody head of the -haired as she catches a glimpse of her own reflection. The startling image was sent to the Grand Duke Ferdinando I de’ Medici by Cardinal del Monte as a diplomatic gift; it immediately spread the fame of the Cardinal’s new protégé. The Medusa’s severed head operates on several distinct levels of realism. On the one hand, it is an illusionistic image. This image, moreover, incorporates a scientific illustration of .203 On the other hand, it is also an object in itself: a shield, or “scudo” in Italian.204 A madrigal published by the

Genoese poet Gaspare Murtola (c. 1570–1624) in 1602 warns viewers of the powers of Caravaggio’s Medusa.

[Per lo scudo di Medusa. Pittura del medesimo / Caravaggio.] È questa di Medusa La chioma avvelenata, Di mille serpi armata? Si, si: non vedi come Gli occhi ritorce e gira? description of the environment offered by the Palazzo Madama see Langdon’s chapter “In the Household of del Monte,” 96–130. 203 According to Harvard herpetologist, Dr. José Rosado, the round-eyed snakes in Caravaggio’s Medusa are naturalistic depictions of a common European water snake, the natrix natrix. See John Varriano, “Snake Eyes: Caravaggio, Ligozzi, and the ‘Head of the Medusa,’” Notes in the History of Art 24, no. 1 (fall 2004), 14. 204 Caravaggio’s Medusa (in the collections of the Medici as early as 1598) was referred to both as a “scudo di parata” (ceremonial shield) and as a “rotella” (a military term for shield). In fact, Maurizio Marini is adamant that the Medici Medusa work was not considered as a “quadro” (painting) stricto sensu in the seventeenth century. See his article “Caravaggio, Murtola e ‘la chioma avvelenata di Medusa,’” Artibus et Historiae 25, no. 49 (2004), 175. Instead, the work was part of the Medici armory and acted as a decorative accessory for a Persian armor offered to the Grand Duke by Shah Abbas (see Detlef Heikamp, “La Medusa di Caravaggio e l’armatura dello Scià Abbas di Persia,” Paragone 17, no. 199 (1966): 62–72. Avigdor Posèq suggests that the “shield might have been utilized as a theatrical prop” in the del Monte household. See his article “Caravaggio and the Antique,” Artibus et Historiae 11, no. 21 (1990): 157. It should be noted here again that the painting, which dates from 1597, was already in Florence in the year following that of its creation.

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Fuggi lo sdegno, e l’ira Fuggi, che stupore agli occhi impetra, Ti cangera anco in pietra.205

Murtola conflates Caravaggio’s work with the actual shield on which the Gorgon saw her own reflection and even with the severed head itself, cautioning viewers that looking at the object/image/head might just turn them into stone. He thus calls attention to the multivalent illusionistic deceptions of Caravaggio’s Medusa as an object of which the shape imitates the form of a shield, as an artificial pictorial representation, and as the mighty snake-haired head of the Gorgon

Medusa or its reflection.

A severed head is also the focal point of the dramatic Judith Beheading

Holofernes (c. 1598–99), painted for Cardinal Maffeo Barberini (1568–1644;

Pope Urban VIII as of 1623). Although the Jewish heroine’s exploit had been a long-standing theme for artists, Caravaggio proposes a remarkably violent interpretation by choosing to depict the moment of decapitation. The dramatic climax achieved in this work can be said to resonate with the escalation, in Rome, of corrective violence in the public eye and with increased apocalyptic fear at the turn of the century. Public displays of punitive violence fostered a sense of

205 Gaspare Murtola, Rime... cioè Sonetti, gli Occhi, Lacrime, i Pallori, i Nei, i Baci, le Veneri, gli Amori... Terza impressione (Venice: Roberto Meglietti, 1604): no. 468. The poet Giovanni Battista Marino (1569–1625) also published the following poem on Caravaggio’s Medusa in 1620: “[La testa di Medusa / in una rotella / di Michelagnolo da Caravaggio, / nella Galeria del G. D. di Toscana.] / Hor quai nemici sian, che freddi marmi / Non divengan repente / In mirando, Signor, nel vostro scudo / Quel fier Gorgone, e crudo, / cui fanno horribilmente / volumi viperini / Squallida pompa, e spaventosa ai crini? / Ma che! Poco fra l’armi / A voi sia d’huopo il formidabil mostro, / Che la vera Medusa è il valor vostro.” See “Favole” in La Galeria del Cavalier Marino Distinta in Pitture & Sculture (Venice, 1620): 40. For a translation of this sonnet and more on Marino’s poetry dedicated to Caravaggio’s paintings see Elizabeth Cropper, “The Petrifying Art: Marino’s Poetry and Caravaggio,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 26 (1991), 193–212, especially 204–05.

111 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re fatality.206 High-profile criminal cases such as that of , who was sentenced to decapitation for killing her incestuous father, permeated the social imaginary. One can see how the circumstances of the Cenci case exposed issues of sexual transgression and bodily retribution. The spectacle staged for Beatrice’s punishment—she was beheaded with a sword on September 11, 1599, on the famous Sant’Angelo Bridge—brings up, in its turn, the issue of performativity in public, official acts of violence. The notorious sentence received by Dominican friar and scientist Giordano Bruno on account of heresy is just as disturbingly spectacular as Cenci’s and calls some of the same issues to mind: he was stripped and burned alive at the stake on February 17, 1600, in the Campo de’ Fiori, one of the city’s major public squares.207

John Varriano has already demonstrated that the practice of empirical observation is essential to Caravaggio’s engagement with realism.208 To be sure, empiricism can serve as a constructive lens through which to view the painter’s close observation of bodies and objects. Additionally, it provides a tool for thinking of the connections between his troubling imagery and the corporeal punishment the city wielded over transgressive bodies. Although Caravaggio’s violent images cannot be taken as a mirror of Roman life, the empirical realism he

206 Langdon, Caravaggio, 159. For an examination of this phenomenon and how it influenced Caravaggio’s production to shift from lyrical to violent see Langdon’s chapter “Conversion and Martyrdom,” 154–90. 207 On Giordano Bruno see Luigi Firpo and Diego Quaglioni. Il processo di Giordano Bruno (Roma: Salerno, 1993); Hilary Gatti, “The State of Giordano Bruno Studies at the End of the Four-Hundredth Centenary of the Philosopher's Death,” Renaissance Quarterly 54, no. 1 (spring 2001): 252–61; Michele Ciliberto, “Giordano Bruno tra mito e storia,” I Tatti Studies: Essays in the Renaissance 7 (1997): 175–90; Geoffrey Neal Cassady McTighe, “Bruno as a Martyr for the Freedom of Thought” in The New Light of Europe: Giordano Bruno and the Modern Age (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2007). 208 Varriano, Caravaggio, 1–4.

112 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re employs in them can conveniently function as a means of exerting control over the bodies he paints, which are quick to take on a life of their own.

Caravaggio’s mechanisms for revealing bodies (and their insides) through various visual tricks like extreme close-ups, life-size scaling, effects of light and shadow, relief and plasticity, undressing, segmentation, etc., work to draw the viewer into the picture. Confronting the beholder directly, his representations of bodies are especially compelling because they close in on the inextricable links between being and body, thereby commenting upon the human condition. Indeed, whether saintly, sensual, or revolting, Caravaggio’s figures convey consciousness of the body. A potent instance of this is the figure of Jesus in Taking of Christ

(1602), who distances himself from his impending arrest and from Judas’ kiss with clasped hands extended outward and his torso moving in the opposite direction (fig. 2.2). His clear and observable body language suggests a sense of bodily awareness shared by the beholder. More emphatically, Christ’s thrusting of

Thomas’ finger into his wound in Incredulity of Saint Thomas (c. 1601–1602) signals the same kind of corporeal involvement (fig. 2.3). Both examples bring to light the performative power of bodies and how this exploration overlaps with the artist’s empirical pursuit. The fact that Thomas’ gaze is directed outside the canvas and not at the wound stresses the significance of the body and touch to empirical realism. By de-emphasizing sight, touch and physicality come to the fore, a rationalization that seems to impudently respond to Christ’s reprimand to

Thomas, “is it because you’ve seen me that you have believed? How blessed are those who have never seen me and yet have believed!” (John 20:29).

113 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

Furthermore, the relationship of one body to another in many of

Caravaggio’s works also points to physicality and proximity as crucial constituents of empiricism. The Incredulity can again serve as an example here if one thinks of how the other two disciples in the painting press into the central figural pair to observe the episode with their own eyes. While constraining one another, the contiguous, spatially intertwined bodies in Caravaggio’s painting physically confront viewers and compel them to converge with the protagonists in order to experientially partake in the event.209 A city like Rome—a place historically, culturally, and architecturally complex that can be more easily apprehended if broken down into observable, cognizable microcosms—can be seen, at least in part, to have fostered Caravaggio’s quest for empirical realism.210

Like several other works of his, the insertion of the artist’s self-portrait in

Taking of Christ, commissioned by the Roman nobleman Ciriaco Mattei, collapses the world of the painter into the world of the representation. In it,

Caravaggio holds a lantern up to illuminate the scene, though it remains largely

209 Albert Blankert has already pointed out Caravaggio’s inclination for “spatial reduction,” thereby bringing the figures to the forefront and placing them on the same plane, without any real distance between them even if one is meant to be read as behind another. Caravaggio thus confers the appearance of low relief friezes to his pictures. This same type of relief, Blankert stresses, is built into all Caravaggistic pictures. See “Caravaggio und die nördlichen Niederlande,” in Holländische Malerei in neuem Licht : Hendrick ter Brugghen und seine Zeitgenossen, exhibition catalogue (Braunschweig: Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, 1986): 22. Michael Fried, citing Stephen Bann’s analysis of Caravaggio’s , refers to this effect as “the elimination of all impression of depth.” See The Moment of Caravaggio (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010): 135. 210 Even the earliest Caravaggio scholars have sought to connect Caravaggio to the scientific investigations of his time. See for example Lionello Venturi, Caravaggio (Munich: Wilhelm Goldmann, 1955), 4; Roberto Longhi, Caravaggio (Rome, 1972), ii. More particularly, his relationship to Cardinal del Monte, who was a supporter of (1564–1642), has lead to hypotheses about his association with scientific circles. In contrast, others, like Helen Langdon, have tried to reconcile Caravaggio’s connections to intellectual milieus and the world of the streets. See particularly her two chapters “In the Household of del Monte” and “The World of Street and Brothel” in Langdon, Caravaggio, 93–153.

114 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re ineffectual. The light in the picture emanates, instead, from an undisclosed source outside the canvas, to the left. The light cast onto Caravaggio’s face emphasizes his eyes and his vision, as he gazes intently at Christ’s taking. At the same time, the mysterious light, of which the source is not perceptible, undermines vision as an instrument of knowledge. It is the act of the painter who brings this narrative to life which, in truth, sheds light on the biblical event. The self-portrait as protagonist/spectator can thus be interpreted as an expression of the artist’s embodied experimentation with realism that also evokes the role of the painter as illuminator.

III. The Body Between Naturalism and Performativity in Caravaggio’s Art

Caravaggistic imagery was concerned with the unstable boundaries shared by bodies, naturalism and performativity. This next section underscores the overpowering presence of the human figure, the significance of naturalism, and the functions of performativity in Caravaggio’s paintings. Lorenzo Pericolo’s recent study of how Caravaggio redefined history painting through the dislocation and dismantling of the Albertian istoria presents us with a new and challenging understanding of Caravaggio’s innovative approach to painting. For Pericolo,

Caravaggio’s “close-up views, segmentation of the human body through framing or chiaroscuro, limited number of figures, quasi suppression of perspective and spatial depth, scarcity of, or indifference to, historical circumstances and

115 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re accessories, and misalignment of action and temporalities” all contribute to the artist’s ground-breaking handling of pictorial narrative.211

In what follows, I explore how Caravaggio’s works bring the human figure, naturalism and performativity together to propose an inventive model of narrativity, with the body emerging as a fraught locus of both naturalism and performativity. If nature and performance can seem like conflicting ideas, they here merge to create a transformed vision of narrative. A blend of formal evidence, contemporary textual sources, and modern scholarship support the argument of this section. Studio practice forms an important basis for these investigations. Part factual, part myth, Caravaggio’s idiosyncratic approach to painting figures and motifs from life was a recurrent topic in early testimonies, starting with Caravaggio’s own words recorded in the transcript of a libel suit painter Giovanni Baglione (c. 1566–1643) brought against him in 1603. When during his interrogation Caravaggio was asked to explain the term

“valent’huomini,” which he used to describe some of the painters with whom he was acquainted, he answered, “by the term valent’huomo I mean he who knows how to do well, that is, who knows how to do well by his craft. Thus in painting a valent’huomo is he who knows how to paint well and to imitate natural objects well.”212 Evidently, imitation, nature, and physical things were imperative in the artist’s conception of good painting. The artist’s declaration provides a point of

211 Pericolo, Caravaggio and Pictorial Narrative, 91. 212 Transcribed and translated in Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, 276 (emphasis mine). “Quella parola valent’huomo appresso di me vuol dire che sappi far bene, cioe sappi far bene dell’arte sua, cosi in pittura valent’huomo che sappi depingere bene et imitar bene le cose naturali.” The painters to whom he was referring include the Cavaliere d’Arpino, and Federico Zuccaro.

116 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re departure from which to begin exploring the allegorization of his “naturalistic” pictorial technique.213

The earliest known biographical notes on Caravaggio offer a first glimpse.

Published in Haarlem in 1604 when Caravaggio, aged 33, was still living in

Rome, Karel van Mander’s Schilder-Boek describes some of the artist’s Roman works—“extraordinary things,” he calls them—and discusses his method of painting from life in the section on modern Italian painters. He begins by observing the rupture Caravaggio carried out in regards to established models of representation and narrativity: “he is one who thinks little of the works of other masters, but will openly praise his own. He believes that art is nothing but a bagatelle or children’s work, whatever it is and whoever it is by, unless it is done after life, and that we can do no better than to follow Nature.”214 In asserting that

“he will not make a single brushstroke without the close study of life, which he copies and paints,” Van Mander relates Caravaggio’s break with the past to his reliance on the real as a meaningful source.215 Implied here is the idea that the

Italian painter is not preoccupied with constructing the “visual machinery” that a

213 On Caravaggio and the concept of ‘nature’ see Maurizio Marini, “Gli esordi del Caravaggio e il concetto di ‘natura’ nei primi decenni del Seicento a Roma. Equivoci del caravaggismo,” Artibus et Historiae 2, no. 4 (1981): 38–83; Maurizio Marini, “Equivoci del caravaggismo 2: A) Appunti sulla tecnica del ‘Naturalismo’ secentesco, tra Caravaggio e ‘Manfrediani methodu’ B)Caravaggio e I suoi ‘doppi’. Il probblema delle possible collaborazioni,” Artibus et Historiae 4, no. 8 (1983): 119–54. 214 Karel van Mander, Het Schilder-Boek (Haarlem, 1604), fol. 191r. Transcribed and translated in Hibbard, Caravaggio (London: Thames & Hudson, 1983): 344. “Dan zijn segghen is, dat alle dinghen niet dan Bagatelli, kinderwerck, oft bueselinghen zijn, t’zy wat, oft van wien gheschildert, soo sy niet nae t’leven ghedaen, en gheschildert en zijn, en datter niet goet, oft beter en can wesen, dan de Natuere te volghen. Alsoo dat hy niet eenen enckelen treck en doet, oft hy en sittet vlack nae t’leven en copieert, end’ en schildert…. is so ghewis niet, als t’Leven voor hebben, en de Natuere met al haer verscheyden verwen te volgen: doch behoefde men eerst so verre gecomen te wessen in verstandt, dat men t’schoonste level uyt t’schoon onderscheyden en uyt te kiesen wist.” 215 Ibid.

117 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re true istoria entails, but favours instead representations that are close to the natural objects, bodies and occurrences that make up the real world and transposes these onto the canvas.216 Van Mander applauds Caravaggio’s direct study of life without the intermediary of drawing: “to paint after drawing, however close it may be to life, is not as good as following Nature with all her various colours.”217

Van Mander is less pleased with some of the details he elects to depict, however; the less-than-perfect human figures that inhabit some of Caravaggio’s compositions baffle him. Instead, he advocates the selection of the most beautiful elements from nature by urging painters to “achieve a degree of understanding that would allow one to distinguish the most beautiful of life’s beauties and select it.”218 Van Mander’s biography of Caravaggio is filled with pregnant observations, many of which would have resonated with his Dutch readers.

Caravaggio’s patron Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani provides another contemporary opinion in a letter to his friend Teodoro Ameyden (1586–1656) datable to c. 1620. In it, the Marchese expresses admiration for the painters who master the art of “painting di maniera and with the example from nature before oneself.”219 Here too, a distinction is made between personal style (painting di

216 See note 16 in the Introduction to this dissertation. 217 Van Mander, Het Schilder-Boek, fol. 191r. Transcribed and translated in Hibbard, Caravaggio, 344. Caravaggio does not seem to have used drawing as a way of putting ideas down on paper, or of working out compositions and studying details such as faces and hands. While radically decreasing the breadth of his oeuvre, the lack of works on paper and preparatory sketches makes Caravaggio’s method all the more intriguing to scholars. 218 Ibid. For further remarks on Van Mander’s description see Leonard Slatkes, “Bringing ter Brugghen and Baburen up-to-date,” 201–2. 219 Giustiniani, “Discorso sopra la pittura,” in Discorsi sulle arti e sui mestieri, ed. by A. Banti (Florence: Sansoni, 1981): 45. “Dipingere di maniera, e con l’esempio davanti del naturale” constitutes the twelfth category of painters Giustiniani describes in his letter to his friend Teodoro Ameyden. Giustiniani’s letter is also reprinted in Mia Cinotti and Gian Alberto dell’Acqua, II Caravaggio e le sue grandi opere di San Luigi dei Francesi (Milan: Rizzoli, 1973), 166, F 118.

118 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re maniera) and painting from life. Those who reconcile the two manners—

Caravaggio, the Carracci and Guido Reni—receive the most praise from

Giustiniani. The inclusion of Caravaggio in this category suggests that Giustiniani did not see Caravaggio’s work as rejecting stylization, but as balancing the demands of style and naturalism to compose an effective narrative.

Caravaggio’s nemesis of sorts, Giovanni Baglione, provides further insight into the painter’s use of living models. He writes of the figures in Caravaggio’s

Musicians (c. 1595) and Amor Vincit Omnia (c. 1601–2) that they were “painted from life,” or “ritratti dal naturale” and “dal naturale ritratto.”220 He also indicated that some figures had been painted with the help of a mirror: Caravaggio, he says,

“made some other small pictures which were drawn from his own reflection in a mirror.”221 The operative function of flesh-and-blood models in Caravaggio’s work is also attested by German painter and art historian Joachim von Sandrart who says, in describing Caravaggio’s Amor Vincit Omnia, “he painted for our art patron Marchese Giustiniani, a life-size Cupid after a boy about twelve years of age.”222 By stressing that “a boy” posed as “Cupid,” Sandrart’s reference to

For a biography of Ameyden see Dizionario biografico degli italiani II, “Teodoro Ameyden” by A. Bastiaanse (Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1960), accessible online http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/teodoro-ameyden_(Dizionario-Biografico)/. 220 Giovanni Baglione, Le vite de’ pittori, scultori et architetti dal pontificato di Gergorio XIII fino a tutto quello d’Urbano VIII (Rome: 1649; repr. Velletri: Arnaldo Forni, 1924), 136–37. 221 Ibid., 136: “Fece alcuni quadretti da lui nello specchio ritratti.” The English translation is taken from Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, 234. For more on these paintings see note 3 in Chapter Three of this dissertation. 222 Sandrart, Academia Todesca/Teutsche Academie, part II, book 2, 190. “Nachmalen mahlte er für unserer Kunst Vatter Marches Jiustinian, einen Cupido in Lebens-Grösse nach Gestalt eines ohngefehr zwölffjährigen Jünglings.” Sandrart was in the employment of Giustiniani in the 1630s and resided with him from 1632 to 1635. See also Hibbard, Caravaggio, 378; Keith Christiansen, “Caravaggio and ‘L’esempio davanti del naturale,’” Art Bulletin 68, no. 3 (September 1986): 422; Posèq, “Caravaggio and the Antique,” 166n88.

119 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re painting “after” life or nature accentuates the position held by the human figure and performance in conveying narrative.

The notes of papal physician and art collector Giulio Mancini (1558–

1630) written largely between 1617 and 1621, but which remained unpublished until 1956, are equally important to this topic. His remarks on Caravaggistic painters and their paintings articulate apprehension over their ability to produce narrative content: “the school. . . . is closely tied to nature, which is always before their eyes as they work. It succeeds well with one figure alone, but in narrative compositions and the expression of emotion, which are based on imagination and not merely the direct observation of things, copying alone does not seem to be satisfactory, since it is impossible to put in one room a multitude of people acting out a story . . . having to laugh or cry or pretending to walk while having to stay still in order to be copied.”223 Mancini thus brings forth the idea of Caravaggio’s studio as a stage on which models are made to perform and role-play, a process described also by the painter and art theorist (1616–1690), who is far more critical.

Bellori counts among the first to have used the term “naturalistic painter” in reference to the Caravaggists in the collection of biographies he published in

1672.224 Writing over half a century after Caravaggio’s death, he was

223 Giulio Mancini, Considerazioni, 108–9; Translated in Hibbard, Caravaggio, 350. “Questa schola in questo modo d’operare è molto osservante del vero, che sempre lo tien davanti mentre ch’opera; fa bene una figura sola, ma nella compositione dell’historia et esplicar affetto, pendendo questo dall’immagination e non dall’osservanza della cosa, per ritrar il vero che tengon sempre davanti, non mi par che vi vagliano, essendo impossibil di mettere in una stanza una moltitudine d’huomini che rappresentin l’historia con quel lume d’una fenestra sola, et haver un che rida o pianga o faccia atto di camminare e stia fermo per lasciarsi copiare.” 224 Giovanni Pietro Bellori, Le vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti moderni (Rome: 1672; reprint Bologna: Arnaldo Forni, 1977), 215. Translated in Giovanni Pietro Bellori, The Lives of the

120 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re unsympathetic to his and the Caravaggists’ methods, to the realism imparted by their compositions and the flawed bodies and objects that structure them:

There were many who were captivated by his style and embraced it gladly, because without further study or effort, they made the way easy for themselves to copy from life, working from ordinary bodies lacking beauty. Once the majesty of art had been subjugated in this way by Caravaggio, everyone assumed license, and the result was contempt for beautiful things, and the antique and Raphael were deprived of all authority; whereupon, because of the convenience of models and executing a head from life, those men abandoned the practice of istorie, which are the proper domain of painters, and devoted themselves to half-length figures, which previously were not much in use. Then began the imitation of vile things, as filth and deformities were sought after, as some are wont to do assiduously: if they have to paint a piece of armour, they choose the rustiest; if a vase, they make it not whole but chipped and broken. Clothes for them are hose, breeches and large caps; and likewise in imitating bodies, they dwell with all their zeal on wrinkles and defects of skin and contours, they make fingers knotty, limbs altered by disease.225

Bellori, disapprovingly, gets down to the nitty-gritty of the Caravaggistic modus operandi: painting—from life—incomplete, deficient “half-figures” in strange costumes using unhandsome models, whose bodies are imperfect, even grotesque,

Modern Painters, Sculptors and Architects. A New Translation and Critical Edition, translated by Alice Sedwick Wohl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), [187]. All other translations of Bellori’s text are taken from Wohl’s publication. Bellori wrote: “Molti furono quelli, che imitarono la sua maniera nel colorire dal naturale, chiamati percio Naturalisti” (There were many who imitated his style of painting from nature and were therefore called naturalistic painters). Blankert notes that the term was first employed by Francesco Scanelli who defined Caravaggio as the “primo capo de’ naturalisti” (leader of the naturalistic painters) in Il microcosmo della pittura (Cesena, 1657), 197. See Blankert, “Caravaggio und die nördlichen Niederlande,” 41. 225 Bellori, Vite, 212-213; Translated in Bellori/Wohl, Lives, 184–85.¨ “Molti nodimeno invaghiti della sua maniera, l’abbracciavano volentieri, poiche senz’altro studio, e fatica si facilitavano la via al copiare il naturale, seguitando li corpi vulgari, e senza bellezza. Cosi sottoposta dal Caravaggio la maestà dell’arte, ciascuno si prese licenza, e nè segui il dispregio delle cose belle, tolta ogni autorità all’antico, & à Rafaelle, dove per la commodità de’ modelli e di condurre una testa dal naturale, lasciando costoro l’uso dell historie, che sono proprie de’ pittori, si diedero alle mezze figure, che avanti erano poco in uso. All’hora comincio l’imitatione delle cose vili, ricercandosi le sozzure, e le deformità, come sogliono fare alcuni ansiosamente: se essi hanno à dipingere un armatura, eleggono la più rugginosa, se un vaso, non lo fanno intiero, ma sboccato e rotto. Sono gli habiti loro calze, brache, e berrettoni, e cosi nell’imitare li corpi, si fermano con tutto lo studio sopra le rughe, e i difetti della pelle e dintorni, formano le dita nodose, le membra alterate da morbi.”

121 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re without idealizing them in any way, and thereby subverting the rules of history painting, of the istoria. To demonstrate that “nature alone [was] the object of his brush. . . . [and] provided him with masters,” Caravaggio, Bellori recounts,

“called out a gipsy woman who had chanced to be passing in the street and, taking her to his lodgings, he portrayed her in the act of telling fortunes, as these women of the Egyptian race are wont to do: he made a young man there with one gloved hand on his sword, offering the other one bare to the woman, who holds and examines it; and in these two half-figures Michele conveyed reality so purely.”226

Bellori’s anecdotal description of Fortune Teller (c. 1594) mythologizes

Caravaggio’s approach to painting. It entails the orchestration of ordinary living models—plucked from the street, if we are to believe his hyperbole—to re-create scenes from reality in the studio, essentially turning the painter’s space into a stage. The human figure acquires narrative value through the synchronization of nature and performance.

In truth, none of these accounts can be taken at face value—it should be remembered, in fact, that many other processes are at work in painting practices

226 Bellori, Vite, 202–3, Bellori/Wohl, Lives, 180: “Si propose la sola natura per oggetto del suo penello…Non diede altra risposta, se non che distese la manoverso una moltitudine di huomini, accenando che la natura l’haveva à sufficienza proveduto di maestri. E per date autorità alle sue parole, chiamo una Zingana, che passava à caso per istrada, e condottala all’albergo, la ritrasse in atto di predire l’avventure, come sogliono queste donne di razza Egittiana: Fecevi un giovine, il quale posa la mano col guanto sù la spada, e porge l’altra scoperta à costei, che la tiene, e la riguarda; & in queste due messe figure tradusse Michele si puramente il vero che venne a confermare I suoi detti.” French Caravaggist (1590–1649) inscribed in capital letters the following words on the back of the canvas on which his Barberini Fortune Teller is painted: “Aegiptia Vulgo Zingara Fatui Cerdonis Divinatrix A Simoe Voet Ad Vivum Depicta MCDXVII”. The inscription was revealed during the restoration completed in 1997. With the words “Ad Vivum,” Vouet likely indicates that he painted the figure of the fortune teller from life. See Rosella Vodret, “Simon Vouet, 1617. Una ‘Buona Ventura’ per ,” Bollettino d’arte 6, no. 98 (Oct.–Dec. 1996): 89–94. The inscription is reproduced on page 90. See also Karen Serres, “L’utilisation du modèle vivant dans la peinture caravaggesque à Rome, in Pascal-François Bertrand, ed., et la peinture caravagesque en Italie, en France et en Espagne (Toulouse: Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail, 2003): 89–90.

122 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re and mediate the act of creation—but the pattern they construct establishes an important contrast between traditional studio practices and those of Caravaggio and the Caravaggists.227 The use of living models—a practice forcefully monitored by the —appears to have constituted, for contemporary commentators, an essential element of Caravaggistic painting and the foundational basis of its naturalism.228 More importantly, their analyses cast the human figure as the principal vector of narrative in Caravaggistic painting.

Naturalism and performativity, therefore, become dynamic channels of communication and the body a site for the creation of meaning.

Various kinds of visual evidence are evocative of the destabilizing effect activated by this new take on narrative.229 The overwhelming presence of the human figure is chief among the latest lines of inquiries pursued by scholars.230

Life-size compositions, effective close-ups, intense plasticity, sharp contrasts of luminosity and shade, the absence of settings, a reduced colour palette, non- idealization and dramatic gestures all contribute to spotlight the human figure.

227 With the exception of Giustiniani’s, which remains fairly vague, none of these descriptions are first-hand accounts. The testimony of a studio model employed by the Caravaggist Orazio Gentileschi (1563–1639) constitutes rare textual evidence that some of the Caravaggists followed the working method described by the reports discussed above. See Varriano, Caravaggio, 7–8. For more on Gentileschi’s use of live models see Elizabeth Cropper, “Life on the Edge: , Famous Woman Painter,” in Keith Christiansen and Judith Walker Mann, eds., Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, exhibition catalogue (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001): 273–6. 228 Christiansen, “Caravaggio and ‘L’esempio,’” 422; Serres, “Modèle vivant dans la peinture caravaggesque,” 79; Annick Lemoine, “L’art d’après nature. Réflexions sur l’apparence du naturel dans la peinture caravaggesque à Rome,” in Michel Hilaire and Axel Hémery, eds., Corps et ombres. Caravage et le caravagisme européen, exhibition catalogue (Milan: 5 continents): 158. 229 On technical evidence indicating that some of Caravaggio’s pictures were “quite literally, ‘staged,’” to use Keith Christiansen’s own words, see his article “Caravaggio and ‘L’esempio,’” 422–45; Mina Gregori, “Come dipingeva il Caravaggio,” in Mina Gregori, ed., Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Come nascono i capolavori. (Milan: Electa, 1991), 13–29; Roberta Lapucci, “La tecnica del Caravaggio: materiali e metodi,” in Gregori, Caravaggio, 31–51. 230 On this subject see Annick Lemoine, “L’apparence du naturel dans la peinture caravaggesque,” 157–69; Serres, “Modèle vivant dans la peinture caravaggesque,” 77–90.

123 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

Anecdotic details, like the goitre of a female bystander in Crucifixion of Saint

Andrew (1606–7), the tan lines of Saint Jerome (c. 1605–6), or the pilgrim’s dirty feet in Madonna of Loreto (c. 1604–6) call attention to the physicality, or corporeality of models and to their non-idealized bodies.231 These “narrative incidents,” as Todd P. Olson calls them, undermine the established rules of istoria

(such as propriety).232 In bringing the natural body beyond idealization and even beyond the confines of normality, Caravaggio reclaims it as a narrative site.

If naturalistic depictions take precedence over decorum, the Caravaggists’ reliance on flesh and blood bodies, on living models, betrays the realism for which they strived. The recurrence of models from one painting to another, for instance, counteracts realism. Indeed, having the same person stand in for different characters in two or more compositions exposes the factitious structure of paintings. Take, for example, the female sitter who posed (in the same dress it appears) as the main character in two pictures painted by Caravaggio for the private collection of Cardinal del Monte around 1598, Saint Catherine of

Alexandria and Martha and Mary Magdalene (figs. 2.4, 2.5). Her crippled left ring finger enhances the naturalism of the figure and gives her a strong idiosyncratic presence.233 Yet the repetition of the motif in both paintings

231 On the goiter of the bystander in Crucifixion of Saint Andrew see Todd P. Olson, “The Street Has Its Masters: Caravaggio and the Socially Marginal,” in Warwick, Caravaggio, 69–70. On the Saint Jerome and the Madonna di Loreto see Blankert, “Caravaggio und die nördlichen Niederlande,” 24. The entire body of Saint Jerome, who was a hermit, should be suntanned, but Caravaggio elected to depict a man whose torso was clearly not exposed to the desert’s sun. Blankert also underlines that Dirck van Baburen and Gerrit van Honthorst reused the motif of dirty feet from Caravaggio’s Madonna di Loreto in their respective representations of Granida and Daifilo of 1623 and 1625. 232 Todd P. Olson, “Caravaggio and the Socially Marginal,” 69. 233 Luigi Salerno pointed out the deformity and its occurrence in the Madrid Saint Catherine and in the Detroit Magdalene in “The Art-Historical Implications of the Detroit ‘Magdalen,’”

124 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re accentuates artificiality and unveils them as constructed images. Furthermore, the recurrence of models from one artist’s work to another’s magnifies the implications of what Albert Blankert termed the “typological uniformity of figures” in Caravaggistic art.234 The scholar appears to have been the first to note that Caravaggio’s rigorous depiction of nature brought out the synthetic essence of re-presentation.235 It is instead the idea of working from, after, or with nature rather than naturalism per se that Caravaggio sought to express, Blankert explains.236

Naturalism, then, can be construed as an act that has been rehearsed.237

Like a script, it is expressed through repetition and performative action.

Frequently communicated in the literature is the opinion that Caravaggio’s paintings are decidedly “theatrical”; a few examples are introduced in this section, while others appear in Chapter Three.238 Some scholars have begun to uncover associations between his art and the world of theatre, but theatricality is more often used to suggest a connection between the two or to allude to the synthetic

Burlington Magazine 116 (no. 859): 589. In some of the copies and variants illustrated in this special issue of Burlington Magazine devoted to the Detroit Martha and Mary Magdalene, the defective finger, Salerno notes, has been replaced by a normal one. 234 Blankert, “Caravaggio und die nördlichen Niederlande,” 23. For instance, the bespectacled man in Caravaggio’s Calling of Saint Matthew (1599–1600) appears in Hendrick ter Brugghen’s two compositions of the same subject, as well as in Jan van Bijlert’s. Anachronisms also have a similar effect of revealing pictures as constructed re-presentations. 235 Ibid., 24. The “unnaturalness” that characterizes some of Caravaggio’s paintings is explored further in Chapter Three. 236 Ibid. 237 Here, I rely on the work of Judith Butler in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity to express that certain elements are constituted through the practice of performance. 238 Keith Christiansen made a similar observation in regards to modern interpretations of the work of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770). In his article “Tiepolo, Theatre, and the Notion of Theatricality,” Art Bulletin 81, no. 4 (Dec. 1999): 665–692, he unearths eighteenth-century theatrical conventions so as to begin to put the stage analogy (a commonplace in Tiepolo studies) into perspective.

125 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re quality and overt expressivity of his paintings.239 The following passage on

Entombment of Christ (c. 1602–3) from John Gash illustrates this point:

Similarly, in the public commission of the Entombment, the outstretched arms of the Virgin double as a protective gesture and an allusion to the crucifixion, while the raised arms of Mary Cleophas incorporate a climax to the mourners’ grief and hint at Christ’s future resurrection. The quality of ritualistic mime that Caravaggio thereby brings to his gripping tableaux vivants has much in common with the modern theatre. However, Caravaggio’s overriding sense of dramatic moment was bound, on occasion, to put him at odds with Counter-Reformation orthodoxy, especially when he presented those moments in terms of very ordinary human types and situations, as his rejected works and their ‘corrected’ replacements make clear.240

There is more to the mimetic effects or impressions described by Gash. His allusions to gestures, outward emotion and theatre in this analysis only heighten our awareness of the clash of naturalism and performance amid which bodies are caught in Caravaggio’s work. Theatricality was central to early modern life, as exemplified by the public executions referenced in Section Two. Exploring concepts of theatricality in Caravaggio’s art serves to restore the intent behind his so-called “theatrical” compositions; it acknowledges the agency of the painter and the corporeality of his models. I use the notion of performativity to articulate these processes at work in Caravaggio’s art.

There have been some debates around the “theatrical” operations

Caravaggio’s works carry out. Consider for example Gash’s account of the emphatic gesture of surprise made by the apostle on the right in the London

239 For examples of discussions on the intersections of Caravaggio’s life and work and the world of theatre see Helen Langdon, Caravaggio, 84–93; Olson, “Caravaggio and the Socially Marginal,” 72–74; Genevieve Warwick, “Allegories of Eros: Caravaggio’s Masque,” in Warwick, Caravaggio, 82–90. 240 Grove Art Online., s.v. “Caravaggio” by John Gash, http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article- 9077091 (Accessed February 2, 2013).

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Supper at Emmaus that is taken to denote the character’s befuddlement at realizing that the man that sits next to him—for he is depicted as a simple man— is Christ. Gash explains that “the insistent realism of Caravaggio’s private religious commissions of c. 1601–3 was not, however, exclusively stylistic, for he was always conscious of the need to focus the significance of the image through some striking piece of theatre. In Supper at Emmaus, for example, the right-hand apostle’s double armspan of surprise, which could be viewed simply as a gratuitous piece of illusionism, equally serves as the man’s bewildered assertion that he had last seen the Christ with whom he is now confronted dead on the cross.”241 The gesture conjures up histrionic gesticulation for Gash, but there is little else to be said for theatricality as a major force in this composition. For

Lorenzo Pericolo, who compares Caravaggio’s London Supper at Emmaus with

Venetian precedents, especially Veronese’s Louvre Supper at Emmaus,

Caravaggio’s version falls short of the “metatheatrical” apparatus into which his

Venetian counterpart inserts the biblical episode. In contrast to Veronese’s work with its landscape, grandiose architectural structure, oblivious spectators in elaborate contemporary costumes, dogs and other purportedly extraneous accessories, Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus boils the representation down to its bare minimum, zooming in on the active bodies directly implicated in the event.242 The life-size figures of Christ, two apostles and an innkeeper occupy almost the entire surface of the canvas. Their bodies are not confined by the extreme close-up, but rather extend beyond the space of the composition. This

241 Ibid. 242 Lorenzo Pericolo, “Visualizing Appearance and Disappearance: On Caravaggio’s London ‘Supper at Emmaus,’” Art Bulletin 89, no. 3 (2007): 526–27.

127 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re strategic zooming in provides an immersive experience for viewers whose own bodies feel engulfed by the figures of the apostles. They are drawn into the scene by the still-life that lies on the table, as if the basket of fruits that precariously hangs over the edge of the table appeals to them to reach into the painting. The physical complicity of viewers is thereby solicited. Their corporeal presence before the work is made implicit through the various visual strategies used in the image, among which the overwhelming physicality of human figures is chief.

Thus the “piece of theatre” in Supper at Emmaus does not reside in theatricality per se, but rather in the mechanisms of performance put to work by the representation and the phenomenological input it demands from the beholder.

Technical evidence from Caravaggio’s paintings underlines the performative character of the act of painting. The incised lines found in the ground layer of Judith Beheading Holofernes (1598–99), which reflect

“Caravaggio’s authorship of this masterpiece of staged drama. . . . [and] his conception of narrative painting as a literal recreation—a tableau vivant, as it were—of a specific action” in Keith Christiansen’s view, are also, to my mind, significant clues to the artist’s own performative involvement with painting.243

Christiansen considers the painter’s reflection in the carafe of the Uffizi Bacchus

243 Christiansen, “Caravaggio and ‘L’esempio,’” 429. On Caravaggio’s use of incisions see pages 424–36 of Christiansen’s article. According to him, the artist’s practice of incising lines in his prepared canvases as an aid in composing, points to the possibility that the artist staged his compositions with live models. Moreover, it is not unusual to find in Caravaggio’s paintings pentimenti, concrete evidence of the artist’s changing concept during the process of painting. In some cases, complete “underpaintings” have been uncovered through x-ray examinations that demonstrate that the painter often reworked the whole surface of a canvas, so as to alter the composition significantly. For examples see Todd Olson, “Pitiful Relics: Caravaggio’s Martyrdom of Saint Matthew,” Representations 77, no. 1 (Winter 2002): 107–42.

128 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re to be a declaration of his predilection for painting from life.244 The reflection of the artist, I would stress, also presents (or represents) the painter as performer.

Here, Genevieve Warwick’s remark on the artist “acting as a form of entertainment” seems particularly relevant.245 Michael Fried’s insightful observations also underline the idea of the painter’s physical engagement with painting (painting as an act and as an object, that is). “Caravaggio’s paintings”

Fried argues, “can be shown to imply two distinct (and only notionally temporal)

‘moments’ in their production, an initial immersive ‘moment’ in which the painter is to be imagined as continuous with the picture on which he is working, of being

‘one with’ it or. . . . immersed in it, and a subsequent, specular ‘moment’ in which he finally separates or cuts himself off from the picture, which thereby is given up to visuality, to spectatordom.”246 Taking the place of the painter in front of and in the painting, the beholder reactivates this role. But, Fried adds, “the feat of separation turns out to be difficult if not impossible to achieve [for Caravaggio]” whose presence and own corporeality seem to linger in the work.247

Significantly, the haunting physicality with which Caravaggio’s works are imbued prefigures the sentient characters conceived by the

Utrecht Caravaggists in their half-length compositions with single figures.

244 Christiansen, “Caravaggio and ‘L’esempio,’” 423. Christiansen writes that “the Uffizi Bacchus … may, in a certain sense, be read as [Caravaggio’s] personal statement on the use of models.… And as though to underscore that this Bacchus was, so to speak, painted from life, he included in the carafe of wine an apparent reflection of himself at work on the picture.… [This detail] offers poignant testimony to the importance Caravaggio attached to painting ‘dal naturale.’” 245 Genevieve Warwick, “Introduction: Caravaggio in History,” in Warwick, Caravaggio, 15. The scholar formulates this idea when discussing Caravaggio’s role in the homes of the Roman noblemen with whom he lived on different occasions. 246 Fried, The Moment of Caravaggio, 3. 247 Ibid. Fried offers a fresh account of Caravaggio’s foundational relation to the self-portrait. Although convincing, it should be remembered that many of the same models also appear in Caravaggio’s work again and again, as they do in the work of other Caravaggists.

129 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

Most importantly for this project, the performed naturalism of

Caravaggio’s paintings and the productive tension it activates foreshadow the life-size naturalistic half-figures devised by the Utrecht Caravaggists.

Blankert has already suggested that Caravaggio’s art can be seen to relate to existing Dutch pictorial traditions through its commitment to naturalism.248 Its connection to the idea of performance is another way that it relates to the visual culture of the Netherlands given that performance was also central to Dutch art, even at the time of Lucas van Leyden (c.

1494–1533).249 The combination of these interconnected visual traditions operated in tandem to strengthen the appeal of paintings by the Utrecht

Caravaggists.

IV. Death of the Virgin: “A Bloated Madonna”

This section exposes another dynamic dichotomy at work in Caravaggio’s oeuvre, which opposes the classical body and the natural body and often collapses the two together, thus blurring truth and ideal. It focuses on Caravaggio’s depiction of the Madonna in Death of the Virgin (1605–6) and discusses how her body deviates from established pictorial conventions (fig. 2.6). In keeping with the aims of this chapter, my analysis highlights the ways in which Caravaggio redefined history painting with his treatment of the human figure. The changing

248 Blankert, “Caravaggio und die nördlichen Niederlande,” 24. 249 In his introduction to the exhibition catalogue Lucas van Leyden en de renaissance (Antwerp: Ludion, 2011), which he edited, Christiaan Vogelaar connects Van Leyden’s work to the world and culture of performance (religious plays, rhetoricians’ performances, etc.). For a brief discussion on the possible influence of Lucas van Leyden and the northern tradition on Caravaggio see pages 179–180, 184–185 in Chapter 3 of this dissertation.

130 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re role and function of holy images, from objects of veneration to works of art is brought to the fore through this analysis of the un-idealized body of the Virgin.

In June of 1601 Caravaggio was commissioned by the jurist Laerzio

Cherubini to paint an altarpiece for his chapel in the new church of Santa Maria della Scala, and to deliver the work within a year.250 Cherubini’s private chapel was to be the first in the church to be decorated.251 Built in 1592, Santa Maria della Scala had been conferred to the Italian branch of the Discalced Carmelites.

Teresa of Avila (1515–1582) had founded the order of nuns in Spain in 1562, and soon after her death the order became an official Roman Catholic religious order.

The Discalced Carmelites dedicated their cult to the Virgin Mary, and the decorative program of their Roman church was a testament to this devotion. The

Carmelites aspired to promulgate the worship of the Virgin’s privileges, such as her Immaculate Conception and her Assumption.252

The contract for the commission stipulated that Caravaggio was to deliver a transitum.253 The transitum of the Virgin was of outmost importance for all

Carmelites, given that the Virgin was said to have been assumed into heaven while in a house of Carmelite sisters.254 The subject Caravaggio was instructed to paint was thus considered a distinct feature of Carmelite spirituality; its significance for the Order was paramount. It was also a sensitive issue at this time given that the Reformation had raised the particularly polemical question of

250 For a transcript of the contract (in Latin) see Randolph Parks, “On Caravaggio’s Dormition of the Virgin and its setting,” Burlington Magazine 127, no. 988 (July 1985): 441. 251 Ibid., 439 252 Pamela Askew, Caravaggio’s Death of the Virgin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990): 47. 253 Parks, “On Caravaggio’s Dormition,” 441. 254 Ibid., 442.

131 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

Mariolatry. Yet, there is no sense that the transitum is about to take place or has already taken place in Caravaggio’s representation. The Virgin is not in the process of passing away as the viewer enters the scene, but has in fact already expired. The strong earthly presence of her mortal remains works against the idea of her assumption to heaven.

Randolph Parks believes that “in selecting the moment after the assumptio animae has occurred, [Caravaggio] is most concerned with the reactions of the apostles and the human experience they suffer at the Virgin’s death” and that the artist’s strategy was to “generate an empathetic response in the viewer.”255

However, Caravaggio’s soliciting of the viewers’ contemplation and participation hinged, it seems to me, on unsettling their psychological state. The blatant representation of a corpse—that of the Virgin herself—would have been disconcerting, to say the least. Below, I discuss the ways in which the composition puts her body on display for viewers. In addition, visual strategies woven into the structure of the painting (the contemporary female costumes, for example) work to partly place the scene in the here and now, making it all the more effective. The painting’s distinct form of temporality is to some extent entrenched in the present; the very presence of a corpse, moreover, conveys immediacy, even a sense of urgency that further assaults viewers.

Appositely, the physical state of the Virgin differs significantly in the altarpiece commissioned to replace Caravaggio’s canvas. Carlo Saraceni’s (c.

1579–1620) Death of the Virgin (after 1610) depicts a Virgin that Pamela Askew

255 Ibid., 447–48.

132 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re describes as “moribund rather than dead, and enthroned on her deathbed.”256

Many other iconographic differences include the return, in Saraceni’s version, of the Virgin’s traditional loose-fitting and voluminous blue mantle worn over a red tunic. Her hair is neatly pulled away, and a dazzling halo illuminates her entire face. She is seated; her eyes are open and her hands palm to palm, in prayer.

Hence, Saraceni’s depiction confirms and reaffirms her identity as a holy figure.

Further evidence of the Carmelites’ desire for a more canonical representation of the transitum rests on the fact that the Carmelite fathers rejected

Saraceni’s first altarpiece and quickly demanded a slightly different version, still in place today in the Cherubini chapel (figs. 2.7, 2.8).257 In lieu of the architectural arrangement in the background of his first version of the altarpiece,

Saraceni painted a glory of angels. Askew demonstrates that of the three altarpieces commissioned, this second and last version by Saraceni is the most

“consonant with Carmelite Mariology.”258

In contrast, Caravaggio’s portrayal of the Virgin departed from traditional iconography in several regards. In the canvas painted for the Carmelites, the space in which a vigil is held over the Virgin’s cadaver— a plain, monochrome room with bare walls and a coffered ceiling—appears modern and domestic in some ways. In other words, it would have seemed familiar to seventeenth-century

Roman viewers. On the one hand, secularized settings and un-idealized bodies were typically reserved for genre painting and were unconventional in Roman

256 Askew, Caravaggio’s Death of the Virgin, 65. 257 Loire and Brejon de Lavergnée, Caravage: Mort de la Vierge, 15–16. 258 Askew, Caravaggio’s Death of the Virgin, 67.

133 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re history painting by and large.259 On the other hand, Caravaggio seems to have valued the humble and earthy aesthetic put forth by Brescian painters of the sixteenth century in which religious subjects often took the form of scenes from everyday life.260

The simplicity and bleakness of the setting is further emphasized by a heavy cloth in a rich red colour in the upper part of the composition, which has for scholars determined the theatricality of the scene. Hanging from the ceiling, it has been pulled back to the right-hand corner of the room so that the draping has the effect of a canopy over the Virgin’s body, which lies on a legged-bier directly below it. Set at a sharp angle—nearly forty-five degrees—in relation to the picture plane, the body of the Virgin and the red cloth above it provide a powerful and dramatic axis around which the composition unfolds. The apostles at the far left and right edges of the painting, whose gestures mirror each other, close the composition at both ends. Along with the rest of the group immediately behind the Virgin, they create a wall against which her body is displayed to viewers.

Contrary to Saraceni’s praying Madonna in her customary attire,

Caravaggio’s Virgin defies her conventional pictorial identity. She does not wear

259 His first Saint Matthew and the Angel (1602) and Madonna and Child with Saint Anne (1605), to cite two examples, make use of cruder models (a peasant-like Matthew and a wrinkled hag for Anne) and situate them within barren settings that amplify the presence of the decrepit or coarse bodies. Both paintings were rejected. Saint Matthew and the Angel was meant to adorn the of the church of San Luigi dei Francesi; Madonna and Child with Saint Anne (also known as Madonna dei Palafrenieri) for the altar of the Archconfraternity of the Papal Grooms, the “Palafrenieri”, in Saint Peter’s Basilica. Conversion of Saint Paul (first version) and Crucifixion of Saint Peter (first version) for the in Santa Maria del Popolo, as well as Death of the Virgin for the Cherubini chapel in the church of Santa Maria della Scala were also rejected. 260 In a publication written from 1928 to 1934, Roberto Longhi discusses the influence of painters of the Brescian school, and other Lombard artists whom he considered as precedents of Caravaggio. See Roberto Longhi, Quesiti caravaggeschi: I precedenti (1968; reprint, Florence: Fondazione di studi di storia dell’arte Roberto Longhi, 2011).

134 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re the traditional blue mantle atop a red tunic. Instead, she is clothed in a front-lacing red gown of the type worn by working-class women in Rome.261 The dress defines her upper body quite clearly, and then splays over the bier from the waist down, leaving its top invisible and giving the impression that her body floats mid- air. Yet her very physicality is not lessened in any way; the heaviness and substance of her body are brought to the fore; her corporeality is made tangible.

The tie at the neckline is partly undone to reveal a sliver of skin on her chest. Her lifeless, puffy face is turned toward the viewer and a faint halo crowns her dishevelled mane. Her bare feet and thick ankles sprawl past the edge of the bier.

Her right hand rests on her abdomen while her left hand stretches out towards the space of the viewer in the opposite direction of the rest of her body. Her exposed, open corpse is barely contained and transcends the Virgin’s identity. Indeed, if identity is a performed act, then the woman portrayed here can hardly be identified as the Virgin.262 Rather, her performed pose is reminiscent of Christ at his entombment and accentuates her carnal bond to him.

Though her identity is just as rehearsed, the distraught figure of Mary

Magdalene creates a counterpoint to Caravaggio’s iconographically defiant

Virgin. She is seated on a small chair in the nook created by the Virgin’s torso and her extended arm. She dons a contemporary gown with shoulder straps—of the kind seen in Caravaggio’s Portrait of a Courtesan (1597), but in an

261 On the costume of the Madonna, see Roger Hinks, Caravaggio’s Death of the Virgin (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1953), 10. Hinks writes, “the Virgin herself … as befits a woman of middle age, wears the one-piece dress, more or less molded to the figure and laced down the front—the basic garment that an old Roman woman will wear to this day, hardly altered, in the back streets of Trastevere.” 262 See note 44 in the present chapter.

135 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re unembellished cloth—over a white chemise. In contrast to the Madonna and apostles, her feet are not visible. Instead, her ochre dress covers her entire lower half, onto which her upper body is folded. Her head hangs low, putting her tightly braided locks on view. Her pose denotes her affliction at the passing of Mary, and her body appears very contained in comparison to the Virgin’s. She embodies grief, and through her performance, we are able to identify her as Magdalene.

Caravaggio’s formal and iconographical innovations in this painting provoked strong reactions. These were famously recorded by Giulio Mancini,

Giovanni Baglione and Giovanni Pietro Bellori in their respective biographies of the artist. Baglione declared that the “transito di N. Donna” lacked decorum and featured a bloated Madonna (“Madonna gonfia”) with uncovered legs, and was therefore removed.263 Bellori too explains that the altarpiece of the “transito” was taken away from the church because it resembled too closely the bloated corpse of a woman.264 For his part, Mancini speaks of Caravaggio’s Death of the Virgin as having been removed from the altar by the Fathers of the church because the

Madonna closely resembled a courtesan, some dirty prostitute (“qualche meretrice sozza”) with whom Caravaggio had consorted.265

263 Baglione, Vite, 138. Translated in Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, 232. All other English translations of excerpts from Baglione’s Vite are taken from Friedlaender’s monograph. In regards to Death of the Virgin Baglione writes: “Per la Madonna della Scala in Trastevere dipinse il transito di N. Donna, ma perche havea fatto con poco decoro la Madonna gonfia, e con gambe scoperte, fu levata via.” (For the Madonna della scala in Trastevere Caravaggio painted the Death of the Madonna. However, because he had indecorously depicted her swollen and with bare legs, it was removed and bought by the Duke of to be placed in his splendid gallery.) 264 Bellori, Vite, 213. Translated in Wohl/Bellori, Lives, 185. Bellori recounts thus, “La medesima sorte hebbe il Transito della Madonna nella Chiesa della Scala, rimosso per havervi troppo imitato una Donna morta gonfia.” (The Death of the Virgin in the church of the Scala suffered the same fate, removed because he had too closely imitated the bloated body of a dead woman.). 265 Mancini, Considerazioni, 224; Translated in Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, 257. Mancini reports thus, “la morte della Madonna nella Scala, che l’ha adesso il Serenissimo di Mantova fatta

136 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

These accounts indicate how much was at stake in depicting the body of the Virgin. The figure painted by Caravaggio, however, challenged many expectations. Her portrayal as a working-class Roman woman was certainly not in line with conventional iconography, although it accentuates the Virgin’s human nature. Caravaggio’s “reaffirming of the Virgin’s natural death,” as Askew observes, was in harmony with the Counter-Reformatory emphasis on “her conformity to Christ as well as her humanity.”266 Indeed, this identification is essential to the message the altarpiece conveys. Conversely, despite being clearly dead, the Virgin’s body is not presented as a simple vessel. Caravaggio, in fact, has endowed the corpse of the Virgin with special powers, powers that allow her to transgress physical boundaries and resist processes of identification. One is left to wonder whether Mary Magdalene’s closed pose (which could be interpreted as a highly theatrical evocation of grief) is an attempt to shield herself from the potential menace of the Virgin’s cadaver. Indeed, if corpses posed a health threat to those who came in contact with them, this corpse presents a different kind of danger for its viewers. In Olson’s words, Caravaggio’s “Virgin was haunted by

levar di detta chiesa da quei padri, perchè in persona della Madonna havea ritratto una cortigiana [da lui amata, e così scrupolosa, e senza devozione et in particolare appresso que’ buoni Padri.]” (The Death of the Virgin for Sta. Maria della Scala which is now in the possession of the Duke of Mantua and which the fathers had removed from the church because Caravaggio had used a courtesan as the model for the person of the Madonna.) On the “qualche meretrice sozza” see Mancini, Considerazioni, 120; Translated in Hibbard, Caravaggio, 349. “Per descriver una Vergine e Nostra Donna, vanno retrahendo qualche meretrice sozza delli ortacci, come faceva Michelangelo da Caravaggio e fece nel Transito di Nostra Donna, in quell quadro della Madonna della Scala che per tal rispetto quei buon padri non lo volsero” (To portray the Virgin Our Lady they depict some dirty prostitute from the Ortaccio, as Michelangelo da Caravaggio did when he portrayed the Death of the Vrigin in the picture of the Madonna delle Scala, which the good Fathers rejected for that reason.) 266 Askew, Caravaggio’s Death of the Virgin, 23.

137 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re the anxiety of deception and social misrecognition.”267 Several binaries activated by the artist’s use of the presumed dead woman as a model—Holy

Virgin/working class woman (or worse, sexualized whore); spiritual/physical, life-giver/death embodied, etc.—play upon and confuse aspects of Mary’s identity as social and mortal, spiritual and eternal. Yet these tensions don’t fragment the natural unity of the depicted body, which remains highly distinctive and conspicuous to viewers. Eerily naturalistic, her mortal remains perform death by occluding, or at the very least postponing transcendence.

Behind the Virgin’s body, a dozen or so bare-footed apostles in antique garb (a tunic layered with a mantle worn over the shoulders) perform with a different kind of purpose. They are divided in two groups: one half has assembled in the background to speak among themselves, while the others, in the middle ground, are aligned directly behind the Virgin’s body to grieve her loss. Their emotions are conveyed primarily through bodily gestures.268 The apostle at the far right rests his head on his raised left hand and assumes a melancholic pose. Next to him, another apostle is rubbing his eyes with his fists as if crying desperately.

At the centre of the group, an apostle appears to be praying or perhaps singing: his mouth is open and his right hand is raised in a manner similar to the pose of Dirck

267 Olson, “Caravaggio and the Socially Marginal,” 79. 268 Caravaggio’s approach to verisimilitude here is somewhat akin to that of the life-size dioramas of the Sacro Monte in Varallo, Piedmont in that, albeit using very different media (one painting, the other sculpture), there appears to be a focus on the figures themselves, and how they are arranged. The first building and decorating phase of the Sacro Monte in Varallo, including the dioramas, was in fact completed by 1590 and some authors have evoked the possibility that Caravaggio was familiar with the site and must have visited it before making his way to Rome. Langdon suggests that the figures in the Entombment are “reminiscent of the veristic groups of terracotta sculptures that Caravaggio would have seen in the Sacri Monti of ” (see Langdon, Caravaggio, 245). However, the construction of the Lombard Sacred Mounts of Osuccio and Varese began in the seventeenth century only, after Caravaggio’s departure from Milan.

138 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re van Baburen’s Young Man Singing (1622) in Frankfurt (fig. 4.18). Below him, another apostle has fallen to his knees. He clutches his throat with his right hand and holds his forehead with his left hand. The nearly life-sized dimensions of the figures in the painting would have allowed for individual facial expressions to be visible to the viewer. Yet Caravaggio has used gestures and poses to externalize the mindset of the apostles, thus bringing naturalism and performance into play to corporally express sorrow.269

The distinction drawn between the more austere apostles and the more animated ones, a contrast that suggests the body is a thing to be regulated, contributes to the need for the beholder to negotiate conflicting aspects of the

Virgin’s body. The positioning of each figure in the composition and the camouflaging of the apostles’ bodies through heavy draping leaves Mary’s body plainly exposed. However, it appears as though Caravaggio himself attempted to

“regulate” this deeply troubling image by shifting the attention of the viewer from the body of the Virgin to the figures of the grieving apostles, with whom the viewer could identify. To adapt Bruno Latour’s concept of ‘iconoclash’ in terms of the viewer’s constant movement from one image to the next, here it is as if

Caravaggio induces the beholder to move from the iconic image of the body of the Virgin to the representation of the apostles.270 More precisely, the Virgin’s

269 In contrast, the exposed faces show fairly solemn expressions. (1266/67–1337) used the same strategy in Mourning of Saint Francis (1325) in the Bardi chapel of Santa Croce in Florence: the friars surrounding the body of the saint express their grief through emphatic gestures while those standing to the right of the fresco are standing sternly, emotionless. 270 Bruno Latour, “What is Iconoclash? Or is there a world beyond the image wars?” in Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion, and Art, ed. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (Karlsruhe: ZKM Center for Art and Media and Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002), 27– 28. In this essay Latour describes five categories of “iconoclastic gestures.” The second category is represented by those who refuse to stop at any one image, and advocate “moving from one

139 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re body here functions as a mediator redirecting our attention to the range of relatable emotions portrayed. This was the means through which meditation was fostered, thereby deepening one’s experience of faith, as encouraged in Ignatius of Loyola’s (1491–1556) Spiritual Exercises published in 1548.271 However for the Carmelites, who refused to keep Caravaggio’s altarpiece in their church, it was not possible to move past the disquieting image of the Virgin’s bloated corpse.

After it was hung in the Cherubini chapel for what seems to have been a very brief period of time, the Discalced Carmelites of Santa Maria della Scala had the painting removed. It was, however, once again exhibited before it left Rome and found its way into the collection of the Duke of Mantua. In 1607, a young

Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) working in Rome for Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga

(1562–1612) advised his employer to purchase the rejected altarpiece, which had been returned to its patron, Laerzio Cherubini. Before the painting left Rome, it was exhibited at the demand of the Painters’ Guild for one full week at the house of the Mantuan ambassador.272 Artists flocked to see with their own eyes the work that had caused such stir.273 The rejection of the Death of the Virgin, and the events following it, signal, in the words of Keith Christiansen, a “breach that, in the wake of the Council of Trent, frequently separated the concerns of staunch image to the next…. For them, the only way to access truth, objectivity, and sanctity is to move fast from one image to another…. [and they] define iconophilic as those who do not cling to one image in particular but are able to move from one to the other.” 271 Loyola emerged as a religious leader in Rome after forming the (Jesuits) in 1539 and publishing the Spiritual Exercises, a set of Christian meditations and prayers. 272 Giovanni Magno letter to Annibale Chieppo, 31 March 1607, 7 April 1607, in Barbara Furlotti, Le collezioni Gonzaga: il carteggio tra Roma e Mantova (1587-1612) (Cinisello Balsamo, Milano: Silvana, 2003), docs. 720, 721. 273 Stéphane Loire and Arnauld Brejon de Lavergnée, Caravage: La mort de la Vierge; Une Madone sans dignité (Paris: Adam Biron, 1990), 14–15.

140 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re churchmen from the sophisticated taste of leading art patrons educated in the

Humanist culture of the Renaissance.”274 Pictorially speaking, Caravaggio’s paintings “exhibit the fracture between the Christian truth and its visual translation” and in “[thriving] along the lines of a discontinuity between dogma and fiction,” to cite Pericolo, they engender an indeterminacy that, while challenging and disrupting the perception of some beholders, enticed and heightened that of others.275 It also seems that the power with which the body of

Caravaggio’s Virgin is endowed is not as threatening in the private space of the collector’s cabinet as it is in the public space of a church.

In his examination of the crisis of the image in the early-modern period,

Hans Belting argues that during the Reformation, images were purged of their traditional iconic function when they were ejected from churches. Thereafter, they acquired a new purpose as art, especially when exhibited in private cabinets. This is not to say that religious images went through a process of secularization, but rather, that the older concept of image developed into a new and distinct concept of art. Belting explains: “People did not experience two kinds of images but images with a double face, depending on whether they were seen as receptacles of the holy or as expressions of art.”276 Religious subject matter now conveyed an aesthetic, as well as a sacred, raison d’être.

Because Caravaggio’s altarpiece departed so starkly from the cultic images that the clergy and religious orders were accustomed to venerate, it failed

274 Keith Christiansen, Review of Caravaggio’s Death of the Virgin, by Pamela Askew, Zeitschrift Kunstgeschichte 55, no. 2 (1992): 298. 275 Pericolo, Caravaggio and Pictorial Narrative, 209. 276 Belting, Likeness and Presence, 458.

141 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re to fulfil its role as sacred image in the Carmelites’ eyes. The changing function of pictures—from cult image to artwork—required, as part of the Counter-

Reformatory programme, that they provide an “effective presentation of the old image,” according to Belting.277 The detail of the dramatic red curtain in Death of the Virgin speaks to this oscillation between the old and new kind of imagery.

This is echoed in Belting’s belief that the image as art usurped the function of the curtain used for ritual exposition of a holy image, when curtains began to be introduced within images.278 It is also reaffirmed in Victor Stoichita’s assertion that “the motif of the transposed curtain in seventeenth-century painting . . . involved . . . a self-definition of the painting as a painting and contemplation as an unveiling.”279 If we consider these notions, it seems apparent that the curtain in

Caravaggio’s Death of the Virgin reveals the reflexivity of the painting. In other words, it brings to the fore its self-awareness as a transformed, new type of image that operates differently from the old cultic picture, even as it continues to perform a religious purpose.

In this way, the discrepancy between the tastes of sophisticated secular and ecclesiastical collectors, and the day-to-day cultic needs of clergymen and

277 Ibid., 16. 278 Ibid., 488. 279 Victor Stoichita. The Self-Aware Image: An Insight Into Early Modern Meta-Painting, trans. Anne-Marie Glasheen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 258. In this seminal work, Stoichita discusses the ways in which panel paintings, through different pictorial devices such as pictures within pictures and self-portraits within larger compositions, comment on representation and the art of painting, thus making art itself the true subject matter of a picture. It is interesting to note, as Rose Marie San Juan has done in her review of this book, that Stoichita does not address Caravaggio’s case. San Juan argues rightfully that “Caravaggio’s religious images are, of course, the primary example of how imagery located between the boundaries of religious and genre vocabularies was recontextualized within the interests of private collectors. One wonders how such instances of clashing pictorial vocabularies might compare with those discussed by Stoichita.” See Rose Marie San Juan, “Framing the Early Modern Field of Vision,” Oxford Art Journal 23, no. 2 (2000), 175.

142 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re confraternities widened. Hence, the first rejected altarpiece of Saint Matthew and the Angel (1602) for the Contarelli chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi was acquired by Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani; the rejected Conversion of Saint Paul (1600–

1601) (or Conversion of Saul) and Crucifixion of Saint Peter (1600–1601) painted for the Cerasi chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo were both acquired by Cardinal Giacomo Sannessio; while the Madonna and Child with Saint Anne, also known as the Madonna dei Palafrenieri (1605–1606) was promptly removed from its altar in Saint Peter’s and entered the collection of Cardinal Scipione

Borghese.280 Controversies over Caravaggio’s art appear to have perpetuated a divide between the particular ethos of two groups. On the one hand, Cardinals and other cultured connoisseurs from the upper echelons of elite society developed private art collections and avidly sought new forms of painting. On the other hand, lower-ranking members of the clergy and those with a more public mandate and religious orders sought to adorn their churches with images befitting their

280 Baglione, Vite, 137–38; Friedlaender/Baglione, 235. In regards to the Contarelli alterpiece, Baglione’s account states that “il quadro d’un certo s. Matteo, che prima havea fatto per quell’altare di s. Luigi, e non era a veruno piaciuto, egli per esser’opera di Michelangnolo, [il Marchese Giustiniani] se’l prese.” (Giustiniani also took for himself the picture of a certain Saint Matthew which had been destined for the altar of San Luigi, but which no one had liked, simply because it was the work of Caravaggio). Baglione says of the Saint Paul paintings “questi quadri [la Crocifissione di s. Pietro e la Conversion di s. Paolo] furono lavorati da lui in un’altra maniera, ma perche non piacquero al Padrone, se li prese il Cardinale Sannesio” (These pictures [the Crucifixion of Saint Peter and Conversion of Saint Paul] were worked in another manner; but because they did not please the patron, they were taken by Cardinal Sannesio). Finally, he writes of the Palafrenieri altarpiece “fece anche’egli in s. Pietro Vaticano una s. Anna con la Madonna, che ha il Putto fra le sue gambe, che con il piede schiaccia la testa ad un serpe; opera da lui condotta per li Palafrenieri di palazzo; ma fu levata d’ordine de’Signori Cardinali della fabrica, e poi da’Palafrenieri donata al Cardinale Scipione Borghese.” (For St. Peter’s in the Vatican, Caravaggio made a Saint Anne and the Madonna; the Virgin holds the Child between her legs, who, with the foot, crushes the head of the serpent. This work was executed for the Palafrenieri of the palace, but it was removed from the building by order of the Cardinals in charge of the edifice and then given by the Palafrenieri to the Cardinal Scipione Borghese.)

143 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re spiritual practices. While these two approaches to painting intersected, they were differently invested in artistic production.

The fluidity and overlap between these differing types of artistic patronage, however, meant that the production of public art was determined to some extent by the relationships between religious men. For instance, Laerzio

Cherubini’s associations with the Giustiniani brothers and with Cardinal del

Monte could have shaped, to some extent, the commission of his chapel altarpiece for the Discalced Carmelites’ church.281 Commissions could thus involve a range of religious men, sometimes belonging to various religious groups.

This somewhat complex web of ties has also influenced our understanding of Caravaggio’s art. In fact, the ways in which his art connects to the values and beliefs of major religious orders or societies, and to the ideas of their founders specifically, has been a key subject in the literature on the artist.282 For instance,

Joseph Chorpenning investigated the kinship between Caravaggio’s production and the “informal mysticism and humility of Saint Phillip Neri and the

Oratorians” and the “ideas and meditative practices of Saint Ignatius Loyola’s

Spiritual Exercises.”283 The scholar claims that “the Counter-Reformation

281 On the links between Cherubini and the three men see Parks, “On Caravaggio’s Dormition,” 441, 441n6–7. To cite another example, Cardinal del Monte was a member of the Fabbrica di San Pietro to which the Pope had transferred the inheritance of French Cardinal Matteo Contarelli in whose memory Caravaggio’s Saint Matthew cycle was commissioned (see Jacob Hess, “The Chronology of the Contarelli Chapel,” Burlington Magazine 93, no. 579 (June 1951): 46, 192n46). 282 More particularly, scholars have focused on Ignatius Loyola and Philip Neri (1515–1595) who, around 1556, founded the Congregation of the Oratory, a society of secular clergy characterized by their ascetic piety. Walter Friedlaender’s discussion of Caravaggio’s religious milieu in chapter VI of Caravaggio Studies, “Caravaggio’s Character and Religion” (pages 117– 35), provides an introduction to the topic. However, it has been much criticized. See, for instance, Joseph Chorpenning, “Another Look at Caravaggio and Religion,” Artibus et Historiae 8, no. 16 (1987): 149–58. 283 Chorpenning, “Caravaggio and Religion,” 149.

144 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re meditative techniques prescribed that the mediator imagine a religious scene as if it were taking place before him, ‘now,’ or as if he were present at the historical moment, and then participate in it by means of , or, more exactly, their analogues in the imagination. Caravaggio’s religious paintings are the pictorial equivalent of these methods”284

Indeed, I hope to have shown in this section that in Caravaggio’s work spirituality is grounded in embodied experience; that it can only occur in living, acting, feeling subjects. These subjects are reflected in the human figures that live

(and die) in his pictures and that are painted directly, in their turn, from living, acting, feeling bodies (or from an actual corpse). The pictorial shift initiated by

Caravaggio (an answer to Mannerism’s sophisticated compositions, stylistic elegance and complex iconography) corresponded to the tastes of diverse painters and collectors in Rome. However, the characteristics of his style that we assume appealed to them—sensuality, realism, intensity and affect, to name only a few— became matters of contention among religious patrons, resulting in the rejection of several paintings commissioned for churches. The religious communities for which some of his large church paintings were intended were concerned by his idiosyncratic approach to narrative in which the individual human figure subverts iconographic conventions. The Death of the Virgin illustrates well how naturalism, performance and identity intervene in Caravaggio’s treatment of the

Virgin’s (unholy) body to undermine the iconographic tradition and transform it into a new artistic paradigm.

284 Ibid., 150.

145 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

V. Mutations: Early Responses of the Utrecht Caravaggists

Vincenzo Giustinani’s letter on painting cites—along with Rubens and the

Spaniard (c. 1591–1652)—Gerrit van Honthorst, Hendrick ter

Brugghen and Dirck van Baburen as artists who adopted the method of painting

“con l’ogetto naturale davanti.”285 In this section I consider these artists’ reactions to and adaptations of Caravaggio’s extreme handling of bodies by analyzing some of their earliest responses to his work. Ter Brugghen’s Le Havre Calling of Saint

Matthew, Baburen’s Entombment and Honthorst’s Beheading of Saint John the

Baptist feature as cases in point through which I investigate the human figure as a narrative site. These explorations reveal that the Utrecht Caravaggists both questioned and elaborated on Caravaggio’s interest in bodies. At times, comparison with Caravaggio’s work demonstrates reservations about his radical treatment of the human figure. My analyses focus on representations of bodies in a state of flux; transition acts as a common thread linking together the works studied here and connects this section to the rest of the chapter.

Karel van Mander, as discussed above, advised painters to select only the most beautiful aspects when painting from nature. Joachim von Sandrart believed ter Brugghen did just the opposite: “he followed nature and its unpleasant defects in his works very well, but disagreeably,” he remarked.286 A previous owner of ter

Brugghen’s Adoration of the Magi (1619) must have shared Sandrart’s opinion

285 Giustiniani, “Discorso sopra la pittura,” [45]: “Rubens, Gius. Spagnuolo, Gherardo, Enrico, Teodoro, e altri simili, la maggior parte fiamminghi esercitati in Roma.” “Enrico” could also refer to Flemish Caravaggist (1597–1637) who was active in Italy from 1616 to 1625. 286 Sandrart, Teutsche Academie, part II, book 3, 308. “Werken die Natur und derselben unfreundliche Mängel sehr wol; aber unangenehm gefolgt.”

146 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re for he had the rather strange—not to say aberrant—baby Jesus painted over (fig.

2.9).287 The original baby, as Blankert observed, combined the wrinkled, pleated skin of a still embryonic newborn with the size, mass, and of an infant (fig 2.10).288 The corporeal dimension of the figure was clearly a primary concern for Ter Brugghen whose disturbingly fleshy infant metamorphosed, years later, into a smaller, smoother, perfectly shaped, putto-like baby.289

Around the time he created the Adoration, Ter Brugghen painted his first of two versions of the Calling of Saint Matthew (c. 1618–19), based on

Caravaggio’s canvas of the same subject for the Roman church of San Luigi dei

Francesi (figs. 2.11, 2.12). The works depict an episode from the Gospel of

Matthew (Matthew 9:9): “Jesus saw a man named Matthew at his seat in the custom house, and said to him, ‘Follow me,’ and Matthew rose and followed him.” Caravaggio shows the tax collector and four other men sitting around a table attending to their business. Christ and Saint Peter have just entered the scene from the right and approach the table. Christ’s right arm extends forth designating someone, calling him, by a pointing motion that mimics, in reverse, that of Adam in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam (1511–12). A window with open shutter

287 The restoration of the painting yielded a very different kind of baby Jesus under the more recent one. On the restoration, and for “before and after” photographs see P. J. J. Van Thiel, “De aanbidding der koningen en ander vroeg work van Hendrick ter Brugghen,” Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 19, no. 3 (1971): 91–116 and, in the same journal issue, L. Kuiper, “Restauratie- verslag van Hendrick ter Brugghen’s Aanbidding der koningen: Het officiële restauratierapport werd op verzoek van de redactie bewerkt tot een verslag, leesbaar voor belangstellenden,” 117 – 35. Figures 2.5 and 2.6 are reproduced in Kuiper’s article. 288 Blankert, “Caravaggio und die nördlichen Niederlande,” 40. 289 Although it does not address Ter Brugghen’s Adoration of the Magi, Natasha Seaman’s recent monograph on the artist discusses a similar concern, as mentioned in page 30 of this dissertation’s Introduction. By fusing Caravaggio’s pictorial language with Northern archaic motifs and style, she believes that ter Brugghen’s religious paintings engage with their own materiality. See Seaman, Religious Paintings of Ter Brugghen, 2. For her analysis of his two Calling of Saint Matthew compositions see pages 120–24.

147 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re operates as the only marker of space, which remains otherwise undefined. A single beam of light emphasizes the entrance of Christ into the scene and visually connects him to Matthew. Concurrently, the sharp chiaroscuro divides the scene and isolates the two figural groups into two worlds: the divine and spiritual realm of Christ and Peter, and the terrestrial, mundane world of Levi (later Matthew) and the other tax-collectors. Though Caravaggio’s Christ is in complete darkness, the glaring beam of light that illuminates Levi’s new path irradiates from his direction and lights up his bearded face. The anachronistic costumes accentuate the division: the antique cloaks of the barefoot saintly figures contrast with the foppish contemporary dress of Levi’s group. The youth engrossed in the counting of coins at the head of the table and the older, heavily bearded man at the centre of the figural group can be interpreted, I contend, as a young and a mature

Matthew, a clever spin on the ideas of conversion, transition and transformation through bodily mutations.290

Ter Brugghen’s Calling closely follows Caravaggio’s concetto and layout, but also differs from its model in several points. His rendering, in reverse of

Caravaggio’s and more closely cropped, is dense and lacks depth. Ter Brugghen thus reframes the scene around the human figures that fill the small area. Space is articulated in a way that condenses the action and absorbs the viewer; it is softly modulated by a diffuse half-light that leaves Christ, Peter and Andrew in the

290 Nicholas Demarco and Andreas Prater were among the first to question the identification of Matthew with the bearded man in their respective articles “Caravaggio’s Calling of ,” Iris: Notes on the History of Art I (February 1982): 5–7 and “Wo ist Mattheus?,” Pantheon 43 (1985): 70–74. Angela Hass formalized the hypothesis that the youth with his head down represents the future apostle in “Caravaggio’s Calling of Saint Matthew Reconsidered,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 51 (1988): 245–50. The consensus now appears to be that the painting is deliberately ambiguous in regards to Matthew’s identity (see among others Varriano, Caravaggio, 111).

148 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re gloom. Large weighing scales, hefty pouches of merchandise and documents pasted on the wall set the scene in a customhouse as specified in the gospel text.

Placed behind the characters, these situational accessories do not interfere with the action or with the dominance of the human figures over their surroundings.

To the contrary, the shiny gold and silver coins placed on the bright red cloth cascading over the table and the miniature weighing scales precariously hanging over its edge disrupt our awareness and refocus our intentness in the same way that the tattered bespectacled old man (reprised from a character in

Caravaggio’s Calling) and his closest acolyte are absorbed by these same objects.

They immediately direct our attention to the seated figural group and create a circular motion that directs us to inspect each figure beginning with the elderly man. Every hair, dirty nail, wrinkle of the skin, fold or aperture of fabric—so distinctly rendered—begs to be scrutinized. The corporeal presence of the figures is thus made palpable. Likewise, their distinct facial traits and earthy physiognomy make their physicality manifest and impart individuality. Indeed, they form a rather eclectic gathering and their outfits, which differ noticeably from one another—one figure even sports a turban-like headdress—increase the singularity of each. The juxtaposition of the vivid red beret in a thick cloth such as velvet and the light and fluffy white feathers is but one illustration of the refined contrasts of colours and textures Ter Brugghen achieves to emphasize the bodily presence of the figures.

The youth who sports this plumed hat sits with his back to us like his counterpart in Caravaggio’s Calling—an indication that Ter Brugghen studied the

149 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

Roman painting closely—and is clad in a like fashion. Five figures form the tax- collectors group in both versions, but Ter Brugghen has moved the different characters around to propose a slightly different arrangement. In fact, the bespectacled old man, present in both canvases, has, in Ter Brugghen’s version, taken the place of the youth with lowered head in the Contarelli canvas, eliminating the ambiguity of the so-called young Matthew. Behind him is a turbaned, moustachioed man while a youth stands between him and a bearded figure. We understand this last character to be Matthew. With a gesture of surprise, he unmistakably points to himself, in opposition to the finger “neither curved and foreshortened nor raised towards himself” that confounds viewers of

Caravaggio’s Calling.291

Ter Brugghen has also replaced Christ’s Michelangelesque gesture by a less mannered, less emphatic motion of the hand, thereby purging his painting of the iconic allusion to the Sistine Chapel image. Nevertheless, his work remains heavily indebted to Roman art given its Caravaggistic—but very idiosyncratic— mode.292 Ter Brugghen has also abandoned Caravaggio’s use of raking light to isolate Christ. He has nevertheless singled him out by turning the two apostles away from the scene, leaving Christ alone to call Matthew. In truth Christ, Peter and Andrew are set apart from the group of tax-collectors by their heavy,

291 Hass, “Saint Matthew Reconsidered,” 247. Hass describes the gesture of the bearded man in Caravaggio’s painting as such. 292 Ter Brugghen introduces in this image elements adapted from earlier Netherlandish sources such as Jan van Hemessen’s (c. 1500–c. 1575) and Marinus van Reymerswaele’s (c. 1490–c. 1567) respective representations of the Calling of Saint Matthew. He does so also in his 1621 version of the same subject kept at Utrecht’s Centraal Museum. This calls forth the need to adjust the composition to the conservative tastes of the Utrecht market, although the patron and original location of the painting remain unknown. See Slatkes and Franits, Ter Brugghen, 16, 123.

150 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re amorphous cloaks (worn over long tunics) that seem to negate their bodies, as well as by their stoic, hieratic poses that deny their corporeality. Combined together, these visual strategies present a legible, unambiguous narrative. In this manner, Ter Brugghen avoided the potential for misidentification offered by

Caravaggio’s painting. Matthew—or Levi, his previous self—was, it should be reminded, a sinner of the worst kind: a greedy usurer. Like the bloated cadaver of the Madonna, Caravaggio endowed Matthew with powers that needed to be regulated. While the Italian painter seemingly resorted to doubling him through the depiction of a young Levi and a mature Matthew as I proposed above, Ter

Brugghen could not afford to confuse the matter, for religious identity and the subject of conversion were particularly momentous issues in the Netherlands at this time, particularly in Utrecht where the Calling was painted.293

Contrary to Ter Brugghen, Dirck van Baburen’s first known works were created in Rome. An intense attention to bodies and corporeality is instantaneously perceivable in his early work, particularly in his most important

Roman painting, Entombment of Christ (c. 1617), an altarpiece painted for Pietro

Cussida’s chapel in the church of San Pietro in Montorio.

Baburen’s altarpiece is very close to Caravaggio’s design for the same representation: they share an analogous composition, comparable figural groupings and similar character types among other things (figs. 2.13, 2.14).

Painted for the Roman church of the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri, Santa Maria in

Valicella (or Chiesa Nuova), Caravaggio’s altarpiece is characterized by the same

293 For sources on the topic of conversion in the visual arts of Utrecht in the seventeenth century see page 22 of this dissertation’s Introduction and note 128 in Chapter One.

151 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re intense interest in bodies I described earlier in the chapter. The sharp chiaroscuro, which obfuscates the background and conceals the setting, the extreme close-up view, and the life-size format are all visual ploys to focus our attention on the six figures. The composition unfurls in a vortex-like movement around the nude, muscular body of Christ. His astonishing physical presence can be understood, I contend, as a visual trope for Jesus as God made flesh. Inert, his full weight bears down as Saint John and Nicodemus struggle to carry the body. We can synesthetically feel Saint John’s fingers prod into Christ’s side wound. Likewise, the engorged veins in his right hand and forearm evoke blood flow.

Conventionally ageless, the Virgin Mary is here portrayed as a middle- aged woman. The coif on her head frames her face; the deep wrinkles on her forehead and pronounced nasolabial lines—physical markings of the passage of time—confirm her corporeal mortality. The corporeity of Mary of Cleophas and

Mary Magdalene is, instead, substantiated through performance: the former holds her arms up in the air in a display of outward emotion and the latter’s closed position expresses inward grieving.

The painting presents interpretive challenges in regards to subject matter.

Because of the difficulty of identifying the setting and the action, the exact episode from the Passion of Christ depicted in this altarpiece has been a topic of disagreement. It has been alternatively understood as the deposition from the cross, as the laying of Christ’s body on the stone of unction, and as the entombment proper—three contiguous, but distinct moments in time. Each interpretation generates its own symbolic meaning: Christ as the cornerstone of

152 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re the Church, the anointment of Christ’s body as a devotional Pietà, and the entombment of Christ as transubstantiation.294 In every case, the body of Christ assumes a central function.

Contrary to Caravaggio, Baburen’s altarpiece is more explicit in regards to narration. The same number of figures as in the Chiesa Nuova Entombment is grouped around a structure that reads very clearly as a sarcophagus. The stone coffin situates us temporally and identifies the scene as a true Entombment despite the lack of setting. Two bearers struggle to position Christ’s body in the tomb; a shroud, of which a piece is visible in the gap between Christ’s torso and his right arm, appears to have been placed inside the sarcophagus. Here too, his nude body stands out as a result of the defined musculature and lifeless grey flesh contrasted with the bearers’ warm skin tones. While Saint John appears in the same position as in Caravaggio’s painting, the figure of Nicodemus has turned into Joseph of

Arimathea by donning a rich (contemporary) costume that befits a man of his standing, a rich man. The presence of Joseph, who donated his own tomb for the burial of Christ, is significant because of his close connection to Jesus’ body.

According to the Gospels, he claimed the body of Christ from Pilate after the crucifixion and, with the assistance of Nicodemus, took it down from the cross,

294 Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, 89–95; Mary Ann Graeve, “The Stone of Unction in Caravaggio’s Painting for the Chiesa Nuova,” Art Bulletin 40, no. 3 (September 1958): 223–38; Georgia Wright, “Caravaggio’s Entombment Considered in Situ,” Art Bulletin 60, no.1 (March 1978): 35–42. Friedlaender interpreted the motion of the bearers as a downward movement to lay the body onto the stone slab, thereby taken to be the stone of unction. Graeve concurs with Friedlaender’s suggestion, adding that the entrance to a tomb is depicted at the left of the canvas as seen in the eighteenth-century line engraving of the altarpiece showing a doorway on the left, with plants growing out of it. In contrast, Wright believes the position of Nicodemus indicates an outward and downward lowering into a grave below the slab. Contrary to Graeve, she does not distinguish a tomb entrance at the far left nor does she accept the identification of the stone slab as the stone of unction given it lacks its traditional attributes.

153 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re wrapped it in fine linen he had purchased, applied myrrh and aloe on it, and then carried it to the burial site he had prepared for his own body (Luke 23:50–53,

Mark 15:43–46, Matthew 27:57–60, John 38–42). His careful, precise handling of

Christ’s corpse in this picture is a reminder of his close connection to his physical remains.

On the floor next to the sarcophagus lie some of the instruments of the passion: the crown of thorns, the hammer and nails that served for Christ’s crucifixion, and the pincer used to remove the nails. The inclusion of these instruments shows that the painter—perhaps as Caravaggio may have also intended—did not wish to divorce this precise episode from the preceding moments of the passion of Christ. In addition, it conjures up Christ’s physical torment, but his beautiful body remains inviolable in this image, and thereby anticipates the resurrection. In other words, and quite paradoxically, it resists violence. In contrast to the stiff, but open body of Christ painted by Caravaggio, his posture here—a slumping forward which causes his head to fold onto his chest—closes off his body while still allowing it to be displayed to viewers.

Caravaggio, as we have seen so far, manipulated the concept of body and its function within narrative. His Martyrdom of Saint Matthew painted for the

Contarelli chapel elaborates yet another methodology (fig. 2.16). It is a rather violent, startling scene in which the saint’s reaction and pose is not in line with conventional portrayals of martyrdoms.295 In traditional narrative painting,

295 X-rays of the Martyrdom on the left wall of the chapel show the presence of an “underpainting” that was later painted over by Caravaggio in favour of the less violent representation known today (fig. 2.15). See Olson, “Caravaggio’s Martyrdom of Saint Matthew,” 108.

154 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re martyrs are generally shown in an arrested pose, passively subjected to their tormentors, oblivious to their brutality, and in a contemplative attitude suggestive of the nobility of the sacred body. Caravaggio’s Matthew, by contrast, already struck once by the executioner’s sword, has fallen to the ground, arms wide open, and stares at his assailant, a quasi-nude muscular and fearsome man who towers over the weakened saint. Caravaggio’s portrayal of Matthew goes against the notion of displaying “an active, virtuous, and noble body, the ostensible organizing principle of narrative painting (istoria) as defined by the fifteenth- century art theorist Leon Battista Alberti,” as Olson asserts.296 This effect destabilizes the narrative in the same way that Matthew’s tumble shakes the viewer. Confronted by his imminent death, Matthew appears confused and helpless—a disheartening vision for contemporary spectators.

In truth, Caravaggio inverts the traditionally central portrayal of the martyr as a heroic and anatomically truthful masculine figure. It is the idealized figure of the executioner that operates as the principal demonstration of the male anatomy, whereas the martyr’s body, collapsed and wounded, remains concealed by his vestments. The physical assault inflicted on him in this image undermines

Matthew’s sanctity. He extends his right hand toward an awkwardly foreshortened angel that seems to have burst out of the backdrop through a dense cloud rather than having descended from the heavens. But Matthew is unable to escape his assailant’s grip in order to reach for the martyr’s palm, a symbol of

296 Ibid.

155 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re victory of the spirit over the flesh. He remains, for the purposes of this painting, trapped in his earthly body.

On the other hand, Honthorst reverses the inversion performed by

Caravaggio in an altarpiece of the Beheading of Saint John (1618) for a private chapel in the Roman church of Santa Maria della Scala, for which Caravaggio’s

Death of the Virgin had been commissioned (fig. 2.15).297 In this other martyrdom image, Honthorst returns to Alberti’s notion of the heroic virtuous male body as the pivotal figure in narrative painting. Paradoxically, his Saint John can be compared to the figure of the muscular assailant in Caravaggio’s Martyrdom of

Saint Matthew.

While Caravaggio’s composition is densely compressed from all sides, the main action in Honthorst’s Beheading takes place in the bottom section of the canvas. A small number of figures form an inverted triangle. The saint is located at the tip of the upturned pyramid; he is closest to the viewer. At the right, the brutish executioner brandishes his weapon; at the centre, the kneeling saint is composed in prayer; and at the left and her maidservant focus intensely on the action that is about to unfold. An angel occupies the upper part of the canvas and provides the verticality necessary to the traditional altarpiece format, which is twice as tall as it is wide. Much like the angel in Caravaggio’s second

297 Megna, “Gherardo della Notti a Roma,” 92–93. The chapel belonged to Giovanni Battista Longhi who worked as an accountant for the Carmelites’ Casa Pia with Laerzio Cherubini, the jurist who had ordered Caravaggio’s Death of the Virgin, rejected eleven years prior to Honthorst’s commission. Longhi, who died in December of 1610, was buried in his chapel. In 1617 his executor, Maurizio Sanzio—presumably with the authorization of the Carmelites— commissioned the altarpiece of the martyrdom of Saint John, Longhi’s patron saint, from Honthorst, who executed it the following year. The employment of a follower of Caravaggio for the execution of an altarpiece for a chapel in the same church where his Death of the Virgin was meant to hang is likely not entirely accidental. Connecting this new canvas to the notorious history of the rejected Cherubini altarpiece would have conferred special cachet to the Longhi chapel.

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Saint Matthew and the Angel, this angel hovers above the scene as if held by a string.298 The winged creature enters the scene from the top left corner, providing a focus for the otherwise empty space. Its left arm extends onto the central vertical axis of the canvas to bestow a hardly visible crown (of laurel possibly) onto the head of the Baptist. Hence, the palm frond of martyrs is substituted by something closer to a crown of fame and immortality.

Positioned on this same axis, the body of the Baptist—whose torso is not entirely dissimilar from that of Matthew’s assailant—is thus linked with the celestial world of the angel. In the moment depicted, however, the kneeling saint is still firmly grounded to the earth by the sprawling drapery of his red cloak and his heavy sheepskin, which together form an amorphous block over his lower body. Contrary to Caravaggio’s martyrdom image examined above, Honthorst’s

Beheading returns to a more virtuous portrayal of the central figure. His Baptist adopts a pious attitude and kneels in intense prayer. His visage is tranquil and composed, showing that he accepts his faith. He appears unmindful of the immediate action that is in the process of occurring. He is in control and concentrated in prayer. Moreover, the pendulous swing of the executioner, the arrested gaze of Salome and her maidservant onto the solemn figure of the saint, as well as the floating angel momentarily suspend the temporality of the episode and draw our attention to the idealized, classical body of the heroic Baptist.

The artificial lighting provided by a lantern and a torch offers a soft and diffuse luminosity to the night scene that differs from the stark chiaroscuro of

298 For remarks on the “theatrical” positioning and attitudes of the actor-like figures in Honthorst’s Beheading, see Lorizzo, “Spiritualità Carmelitana,” 161.

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Caravaggio’s religious works.299 Honthorst’s characteristic use of artificial light sources provides a naturalistic pattern of light diffusion that helps build visually graspable forms and unifies all the planes. This stands in opposition to

Caravaggio’s discontinuous patchy surfaces created by harsh contrasts between arbitrarily un-gradated light and areas of utter darkness.

Despite looking to Caravaggio’s Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, Honthorst mitigates many of the perplexities with which Caravaggio’s viewers are confronted by electing a more conventional approach to narrativity and the body while still retaining some of the elemental characteristics of the Caravaggistic style. While producing an image that was in keeping with the current

Caravaggistic fashion, Honthorst avoided the oft-controversial ambiguities of

Caravaggio’s corporeal works by staying true to the traditional principles of istoria. In doing so, he provided the church with an image in which religious content and aesthetic presentation were consistent with one another, while still participating in an artistic trend. Surely, Honthorst’s interpretation of the

Caravaggistic style made him an attractive choice for Roman patrons: his

Beheading, in fact, successfully combines the novel style of Caravaggio with a traditional composition and iconography.

In closing this section, it seems appropriate to reiterate Albert Blankert’s division of Dutch Caravaggism into two poles: the first is based on the idealized nature Honthorst formalized, while the second, situated at the other extreme, corresponds to the brutish (“ugly”) nature Ter Brugghen exemplifies. The two,

299 Whereas the intensity of Caravaggio’s light remains equal throughout a painting, Honthorst’s light weakens gradually.

158 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re asserts Blankert, are intrinsically connected.300 Together, the work of Honthorst,

Baburen and ter Brugghen encompasses the entire cross-section of human nature and physicality from its most heroicized and poeticized appearance to its most objectionable and repulsive appearance, thus dissolving the fixity of the human form, and spirit by extension.

VI. Conclusion

Recognizing the role performed by the human figure in Caravaggio’s oeuvre is vital to understanding the pictorial shift he carries out through his work.

While in the conventional istoria artists endeavoured to order, idealize, and contain bodies and the spaces they occupy, Caravaggio thrust the human figure— sometimes in its most abject form—front and centre by showing it open, vulnerable and in extremis and, in doing so, revealed the unstable nature of pictorial space. Through processes of role-play, identities and bodies become distorted, corrupt, even mangled in a sense. The refusal of these bodies to conform to ideal, classical or mannerist conventions of representation makes them potentially dangerous and powerful. Reminders of these powers abound in

Caravaggio’s compositions. He did not attempt to eschew anxieties about bodies that resisted discipline and defied proper bodily decorum. Instead, he exposed and exacerbated them through various depictions of physical violence, death, grotesque malformations and impropriety. The deconstruction and reconstruction of bodies he carries out in painting echo and feed into the unfixed identities of the

300 Blankert, “Caravaggio und die nördlichen Niederlande,” [147].

159 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re figures depicted. The blurring of pictorial boundaries (between sacred and secular or between history and genre, for instance) confuses, in turn, social boundaries.

Caravaggio’s approach to bodies as performative entities capable of generating meaning through their active corporeality, a central component in his conception of painting, overtly affirms the significance of materiality to spirituality. Returning to Belting’s line, “people did not experience two kinds of images but images with a double face, depending on whether they were seen as receptacles of the holy or as expressions of art,” this quote expresses the increasing gap between the spiritual and material world and its impact on painting’s potential to contain the spiritual in the post-Reformation period. By foregrounding corporeality as a narrative locus, Caravaggio called attention to painting’s own materiality and to its new role within this shifting terrain.

As this chapter explained, the Utrecht Caravaggists did not fully embrace

Caravaggio’s twists of temporal and narrative ambiguity in religious painting. In

Rome as in Utrecht, their sacred paintings cleverly modulate the deliberate inconsistencies of Caravaggio’s religious narratives and hence stabilize some of the anxieties they create. By re-shaping in part the mode of signification of the representations, the Utrecht Caravaggists appealed to Italian patrons who sought stylistic and iconographic originality, but only within the bounds of their expectations vis-à-vis religious art.

As for Roman Catholic Utrechters, whose hope to restore Roman

Catholicism was as politically motivated as any other power struggle, religious

Caravaggistic painting linked them to powerful leaders in Rome. It also re-

160 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re asserted traditional Roman Catholicism while breaking with the somewhat depraved Mannerist religious narratives for which the Utrecht school had been known up to this point and within which the human figure (nudes for the most part) played an aestheticized, accessory role evidenced by the bit-part given to

Christ’s baptism in a composition by Abraham Bloemaert on this theme, to cite only one example (fig. 2.17).301

Picking up on Caravaggistic visual tropes that play up corporeality and performativity, the Utrecht Caravaggists nevertheless exploit the human figure as the focal point of narrative. Their secular production is also shaped by this very fixation as this dissertation attempts to show. Their isolated half-figures provide an appropriate case study for investigating the length to which their work is vested in the human figure as the single most significant form. Let us consider, in closing, Johannes Vermeer’s Young Woman Seated at a Virginal (c. 1670–1672), a representation of a full-length female figure in a clearly defined and distinct domestic décor in which Dirck van Baburen’s Procuress (1622) (or a copy of it) hangs on the wall of the room (figs. 2.18, 2.19). In the flesh, Baburen’s picture is much larger than Vermeer’s, allowing the Caravaggist to produce three life-size half-figures. Visibly interested in bodies as narrative sites, Baburen presses the three figures right up against the pictorial surface, thus excluding any type of temporal or spatial contextualization. The format, extreme close-up, and lack of depth and setting initiate an intimate, yet up-front dialogue with the viewer, and

301 Incidentally, Bloemaert’s composition cockily greets the beholder with a pert derriere as a focal point in the middle of the canvas, in addition to the cheeky nudes. For even more prominent examples of accessory nudes in a religious painting see Cornelis van Haarlem’s version of the same subject in figure 1.13, which clearly constituted a source for Bloemaert’s painting of the same subject.

161 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re suggest possibilities of viewership vastly different from Vermeer’s Young Woman

Seated at a Virginal. One can’t help but wonder how Vermeer’s young woman would engage with the three painted figures if she could move about the space she occupies and what type of dialogues their imposing presence would provoke her to take up.

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Chapter Three Embodiment and Performance in Caravaggistic Secular Narrative

I. Introduction

Chapter Two addressed concerns about the body (fragmentation, incompleteness, corruption) as manifested in Caravaggio’s paintings and the

Utrecht Caravaggists’ early work, as well as in writings about them. The present chapter reprises the argument of transformation as both an iconographic and thematic key to understanding the workings of pictorial narrative in Caravaggistic painting. It posits Caravaggio’s compelling explorations of embodiment and performance in his secular pictures as transformative acts that turn painted figures and incarnate viewers into actors. To operate, the mode of narration requires human bodies (pictorial and actual) to enact a performance. Considering the performance of characters and beholders, as well as the performance of the painter, this chapter conceives of Caravaggistic narrative as a collective collaboration of all the aforementioned actors in the construction of a plot.

The active roles played by disguise, trickery, and artifice in Caravaggio’s early painting practices form a primary line of inquiry. Caravaggio, as Lorenzo

Pericolo puts it, “juggles with the realistic components of his own pictures by pleasingly uncovering their intrinsic fictitiousness.”302 Using Chapter Two’s arguments about realism and naturalism as groundwork, I will show that

Caravaggio’s early realism is two-fold: it entails the practice of naturalism—or the art of depicting things as realistically as possible—while simultaneously

302 Pericolo, Caravaggio and Pictorial Narrative, 58.

163 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re unveiling these same objects as sheer illusions.

Indeed, “appearances can be deceiving,” a popular theatrical premise since the Renaissance, not only acts as a central theme in some of Caravaggio’s early secular paintings, but also emerges as an integral part of his modus operandi in the first part of his career.303 Drawing on the theatrical trope that recurs in so many of the writings about Caravaggio’s art, I pull evidence out of contemporary and modern literature to show how the artist’s early works align themselves with the cultures of theatre and entertainment, thus connecting the works further to the matters of embodiment and performance. I view the painter’s allusions to the world of entertainment, both high and low, as a representational strategy that appealed to art collectors who sought novel approaches to painting, as well as images that were skilfully painted and also compelling, amusing and clever. The inherent involvement of the collector-beholder in the creation of pictorial narrative was certainly a large part of the appeal of Caravaggio’s early secular production. By soliciting the engaged participation of viewers—patrons primarily—the Italian artist turned his paintings into a form of entertainment. As a matter of fact, the embodied viewing practices entailed in these works assert the creative act of viewing.

I begin my investigation with Caravaggio’s half-length representations of single male youths. Located somewhere at the juncture of genre, low-life painting, myth, and even portraiture, works like Sick Bacchus (c. 1593) have posed

303 Gail Feigenbaum offers a useful comparative study on the subject of dupery in Caravaggistic imagery in her essay “Gamblers, cheats, and fortune-tellers,” in Philip Conisbee, ed., and His World, exhibition catalogue (Washington: , 1996), 149– 181.

164 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re interesting interpretive challenges.304 I am, however, less concerned with attempts to categorise these works, or to interpret their iconography than other scholars have been. Instead, I propose a reading in which their naturalism is put into question by the very structure of the paintings. This reading brings to the fore a performative mode of representation that is taken up in the Dutch half-length single-figured secular paintings that are the subject of Chapter Four. Reflections on the act of impersonation underpin my analysis and further associate these pictures with the games of identification their conflicting realistic and theatrical forms invite us to play.

These same games continue in Caravaggio’s multi-figured compositions.

Hence, Section Three of this chapter extends the discussion to the Italian painter’s half-length secular works of the mid 1590s, Fortune Teller and Cardsharps, works in which a variety of high and low sources mix. The two paintings have

304 The subject matter of the so-called Sick Bacchus has been discussed at length. The title—from the Italian “bacchino malato”—has played a significant role in our understanding of the painting. It was coined by Roberto Longhi, an early Caravaggio scholar. In 1927, Longhi identified the painting as a self-portrait produced while the artist was suffering from an illness in “Precisioni nelle gallerie italiane: La Galleria Borghese, Michelangelo da Caravaggio,” in Opere complete II- I: Saggi e Ricerche 1925–1928 (Florence: Sansoni, 1967), 304–306; see also Avigdor W. G. Posèq, “Caravaggio and the Antique,” Artibus et Historiae 11, no. 21 (1990): 164n28. Posèq’s own short discussion on the Sick Bacchus and its classical influences can be found on page 151 of the above cited article. It is interesting to note that in her biography of the artist, Helen Langdon qualifies the painting as a “theatrical work.” She does not, however, offer an explanation for using this term; this emphasises the point made in Chapter Two about the pervasion of the theatre analogy in the literature on Caravaggio. See Langdon, Caravaggio, 69. According to Giovanni Baglione, the artist used a mirror in order to depict himself: “[Caravaggio] fece alcuni quadretti da lui nello specchio ritratti. Et il primo fu un Bacco con alcuni grappoli d’uve diverse, con grande diligenza fatte; ma di maniera un poco secca.” ([Caravaggio] made some other small pictures which were drawn from his own reflection in a mirror. The first was a Bacchus with bunches of various kinds of grapes executed with great care but a little dry.) See Baglione, Vite, 136, translated in Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, 234. Two mirrors (one convex) appear in an inventory of Caravaggio’s possessions drawn in 1605 (see Sandro Corradini and Maurizio Marini, “‘Inventarium omnium et singulorum bonorum mobilium’ di Michelangelo da Caravaggio ‘pittore,’” Artibus et historiae 14, no. 28 (1993): 162). Corradini and Marini discuss, in this article, the significance of mirrors in Caravaggio’s work.

165 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re been interpreted as scenes extracted from Roman street and tavern life.305

However, Pericolo, who does not accept these to be “random segments of reality,” expresses a different point of view. “First and foremost they are compositions,” he writes, “by this I mean that they are fictive systems of visual signs and as such their configuration springs from an act of artistic invention, and not of mechanical reproduction.”306 Pericolo’s statement prompts a reconsideration of the conventions in which the two images are rooted and a rethinking of the diverse acts of cultural appropriation Caravaggio carries out through them. Returning to the question of transformation and changing identities, I suggest that the artist used themes central to popular comedy in these serio-comic pictures to comment on the art of disguise, thus linking embodiment, performance and painting.

If the world of the streets and the activities of the lower urban strata were a vital source for Caravaggio’s first paintings, the learned and refined realm of elite entertainment constitutes the topic of a small group of musical paintings he devised after the comically-inclined Fortune Teller and Cardsharps. Defined as lyrical, works like Lute Player express nobler sentiments and translate the sensual melodiousness of music onto the canvas.307 Nevertheless, the musicians that are the subject of the pictures analysed in Section Four are as marginal as cardsharps and fortune tellers even if their appearance and occupation appear more

305 See for instance Langdon, Caravaggio, 89. 306 Pericolo, Caravaggio and Pictorial Narrative, 22. 307 Elizabeth Cropper connects Caravaggio’s early secular works and the lyrical poetry of Gian Battista Marini (1569–1625) rooted in affective sentiment. She argues that Caravaggio’s musical paintings—which, like Marino’s poetry, make a direct appeal to the senses without resorting to dramatic action—are more indebted to the late sixteenth-century culture of lyrical music and poetry, than to the tradition of allegory. See Cropper, “The Petrifying Art: Marino’s Poetry and Caravaggio,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 26 (1991): 193–212, esp. 196.

166 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re distinguished and decorous. Indeed, these paintings, which likely represent castrated male singers, are inhabited with anxieties about transgressive corporeality and mutable identities. Taking the identity shift that castrated men undergo as a starting point, the section addresses how their deformed bodies can, through performance, reclaim an identity and position themselves as narrative sites. Because of their very difference, castrati occupy a uniquely malleable site for the play with and projection of identity like other marginal figures such as dwarves, buffoons, and even “natural fools.”

The chronological organisation of sections Two, Three and Four of this chapter allows me to highlight ways in which Caravaggio’s early development is to some extent tied to the art market, and to private patronage in particular. A cursory exploration of some of the ways he navigated the Roman art market before obtaining his first public commissions thus runs through these sections.

The explorations taken up in sections Two, Three and Four steer me toward the work of other Caravaggists working in Rome, namely Orazio

Gentileschi (1563–1639) and Bartolomeo Manfredi (1582–1522) whose reconfigurations of Caravaggio’s compositions into scenes of merrymaking centre on forms of popular entertainment. Their works probe the question of embodiment and highlight the performative and transformative operativity of painting. Here again, I aim to reveal how an approach that focuses on bodies and performance enables Caravaggists like Manfredi and Gentileschi to engage with narrative in ways that challenge the conventional idea of istoria as theorised by

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Alberti, for whom a harmonious composition that guided viewers through a clear scenario was the crux of narrative.

This aspect of their work is critical in arguing for a correlation between the half-length single-figured secular paintings of the Utrecht Caravaggists and the type of large genre scenes in which Manfredi specialised. This chapter aims to map out the means by which secular Caravaggistic painting (especially

Caravaggio’s, but also Manfredi’s and Gentileschi’s) embraces a narrative rationale that centres on embodiment and performance. Together, the different sections illustrate how the Caravaggistic art on which Utrecht secular half-figures are based forms a system in which representation and viewership are conceived as bodily activities that integrate perception, thought, emotion, and the senses.

II. In Bacchus’ Disguise: Caravaggio’s Half-Length Male Youths

The production of the Utrecht Caravaggists commences with multi-figured history paintings more suited to commissioned public works and then moves toward single-figured genre pictures as the Dutch artists begin creating works for the Dutch art market. Conversely, Caravaggio’s first known works are easel paintings consisting of single figures. Small, figural and secular works such as

Boy With a Basket of Fruit (c. 1593) and Sick Bacchus (c. 1593) were naturally appropriate for private collections (figs. 3.1, 3.2). However, they seem to have stayed in the studio of Giusepppe Cesari (Cavaliere d’Arpino) until 1607, the year following Caravaggio’s departure from Rome. They entered the collection of

Cardinal Scipione Borghese that year, when the churchman’s uncle, Camillo

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Borghese (1550–1621), Pope Paul V (elected 1605), had the contents of Cesari’s studio seized after the artist was arrested for tax arrears. These paintings—

Caravaggio’s earliest known works—were produced for the open market with the intention, most likely, of attracting the attention of a patron.308

Several of Caravaggio’s early works produced for private spaces draw on diverse pictorial genres, and exploit the slippages between these different modes of representation to build meaning and narrative. The paintings he created in the first part of his career resist classification and to some extent disregard the hierarchies of figurative art established in the sixteenth century. For example, his

Boy with a Basket of Fruit and Sick Bacchus are works that borrow the conventional half-length and life-size format of portraiture. They are marked, like portraiture, by the insistent presence of the sitter/model. They also assimilate aspects of genre painting and , which were gaining foothold in Italian art at the beginning of Caravaggio’s career.309

In both pictures, the contrast between smooth skin and tightened musculature, echoed in the tension between the delicacy of the white fabric and the sharp folds of the garments, induces a sensuous atmosphere that is coupled

308 Baglione writes that Caravaggio’s earliest known canvasses were created soon after the young artist ceased working with Cesari and was trying to make it on his own: “Indi provò a stare da se stesso, e fece alcuni quadretti” (After this he tried to get along on his own and made some other small pictures.) See Baglione, Vite, 136; Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, 234. 309 These first known works are close to the hybrid pictorial genre of some Venetian precedents under which might fall Giorgione and Titian’s portraits of courtesans and other women often shown with elements of still life. For studies on early comic and genre scenes in North Italian painting that can be considered among Caravaggio’s primary precedents see Thomas Fusenig, Liebe, Laster und Gelächter: Komödienhafte Bilder in der italienischen Malerei im ersten Drittel des 16. Jahrhunderts (Bonn: Romanistischer Verlag, 1997); Chriscinda Claire Henry, “Buffoons, Rustics, and Courtesans: Low Painting and Entertainment Culture in Renaissance Venice” (PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 2009). Sheila McTighe’s article “Foods and the Body in Italian Genre Paintings, about 1580: Campi, Passarotti, Carracci,” Art Bulletin 86, no. 2 (June 2004), 301–323, discusses North Italian genre scenes (with a focus on food) that also count among Caravaggio’s precedents.

169 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re with a penetrating psychological mood emanating from the engrossed, yet isolated subjects illuminated against a plain dark background. The ruffled curly hair, slight grins, and tilted heads turned three-quarters to the left convey a sense of playful mischievousness that is amplified by the seductive gazes of these young boys, who proffer fruit as they invite us to share in sensual pleasures offered by painting. Albert Blankert has observed that Caravaggio’s meticulous adherence to the depiction of nature had the contrary effect of making the unnaturalness of his constructs visible.310 There is indeed a marked tension between naturalism and artificiality in Caravaggio’s work that, in my opinion, is expressly built into his pictures as a visual strategy.

Indeed, Caravaggio’s descriptive pictorial mode, to use Svetlana Alpers’ term, operates by showing things as illusionistic representations of natural objects.311 His art does not depict nature per se but, rather, imitates nature through its re-creation.312 This is what Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani described as “to paint di maniera and with the example from nature before oneself.”313 The presence of the sitter manifests itself forcefully through anecdotal painted details: a sickly complexion and conspicuously dirty fingernails of Sick Bacchus fulfil the

310 Blankert, “Caravaggio und die nördlichen Niederlande,” 24. 311 Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), xxi. Alpers wrote in reference to Caravaggio’s Crucifixion of Saint Peter, among works by other artists, that, “the stilled or arrested quality of these works is a symptom of a certain tension between the narrative assumptions of the art and an attentiveness to descriptive presence. There seems to be an inverse proportion between attentive description and action: attention to the surface of the world described is achieved at the expense of the representation of narrative action.” 312 Caravaggio’s own words, “imitate natural objects well,” recorded in the transcript of a libel suit filed against him, should be remembered here. For the full quote and a reference see page 116 and and note 19 in Chapter Two of this dissertation. 313 See note 26 in Charter Two of this dissertation.

170 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re same task as the “narrative incidents” examined in Chapter Two.314 His contrived and somewhat mannered pose is a desired effect. Similarly the black bow, which only seemingly holds his classicizing garment together, has been premeditatedly placed onto the awkwardly cumbersome and constricting stone slab. Thus, Sick

Bacchus, whether or not a self-portrait, is seen by the viewer as a Roman street boy in the guise of Bacchus, rather than as a representation of the ancient God of

Wine himself.315 Through an unresolved tension between myth and reality, Sick

Bacchus delivers an amusingly transgressive critique of mythological iconographies that titillated art collectors.

A similar strategy is deployed in the Boy with a Basket of Fruit, which evokes an actual street fruit vendor even as the indistinct setting fails to explicitly call up the Roman streets. This is echoed in Keith Christiansen’s assertion that it seems likely that “Caravaggio painted a picture like the Boy with a Basket of Fruit directly from a model, probably, with no intervening .”316 The scholar invokes many technical clues, but visual evidence also points to this, I think. For instance, the deliberate slip of the shirt calculatingly exposes the boy’s right shoulder, which is illuminated by a powerful shaft of light that casts unnatural shadows.317 The figure holds his basket of fruit uncomfortably tightly against his

314 See page 124 and note 39 in Chapter Two of this dissertation. 315 For discussions on the subject matter of the painting, see note 3 of the present chapter. 316 Christiansen, “Caravaggio and ‘L’esempio,’” 422. 317 Ibid. Christiansen explains that in the Boy with a Basket of Fruit “the brushwork has a variety of touch and direction—especially in the drapery areas—such as one would expect in a picture painted from life. The contours are less sharply delineated than in later, more elaborate compositions. In fact, what has been read as an expression of Caravaggio’s reputed homosexuality—the supposedly solicitous gaze of the model—perhaps should be viewed as the byproduct of his pictorial method. The glazed look of the boy is the unavoidable consequence of his having had to hold a contrived pose for the artist.” As for the classicizing costumes Stella

171 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re body so that it becomes one with his torso. The factitious arrangement of the fruits betrays their illusionistic character, and the rigid neck and shoulder muscles of the young lad are exaggeratedly tense, as if being held in a pose. Caravaggio has shrewdly put Boy with a Basket of Fruit and Sick Bacchus on view for beholders by exacerbating the immediacy of their flesh. Moreover, the indeterminacy of the setting calls attention to the space of the painting as a fictive pictorial space.

Though analyses of Boy With a Basket of Fruit and Sick Bacchus tend to focus on the so-called naturalism of these images, I believe there is also something to be said for their synthetic character and simulated realism. The isolated subjects, removed from any possible context—staged as it were—seem, as Caravaggio’s contemporaries often condemned, entirely disconnected from narrative.318 These cabinet pictures are grounded in the new type of image introduced in the last chapter. Conveying a clear message does not appear to be their primary function. Rather, embodiment and performance combine here to awaken our senses and, through perception, make us connect with the model whose very presence is the true subject matter of the picture.

Works of this kind need not tell a story in the manner of Alberti’s istoria, but fulfil instead an aesthetic, sensory purpose. The only frames of reference provided are the models’ costumes and the few objects with which they pose. The

Mary Pearce offers a discussion on how the attires in these early paintings recall antique garbs, see “Costume in Caravaggio’s Painting,” Magazine of Art 47 (April 1953): 147, 153. 318 Pericolo, Caravaggio and Pictorial Narrative, 4. Pericolo writes, “obsessively and systematically, seventeenth-century artists and art theorists pour out their intolerance of, and revulsion at, Caravaggio’s half-figures: these segments of bodies that, in their opinion, because they are blown out of proportion in a close-up view through vehement lighting, are fated to be disconnected or ill-coordinated in regard to pictorial fiction.”

172 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re mythological associations and allegorical meanings of the fruits in both pictures

(as well as the ivy wreath in Sick Bacchus) are not inconsequential, but in regards to composition they serve as formal props, accessories for the half-length figure in pose. These props do not provide a sufficient narrative thread even if, for instance, they allude to mythological subject matter as in Sick Bacchus; they merely supply clues that the viewer must then piece together to complete the representation. The questions the images might bring up, and the discussions they might prompt, are more significant than discovering their exact meanings, which always remain debatable.

In this respect, Caravaggio’s half-length almost life-size single secular figures are effectively open-ended images—like those of the Utrecht

Caravaggists, as Chapter Four will show. They are phenomenological things, objects in which image (or the model, its synecdochic equivalent) and viewer are connected. The viewer’s perception is powerfully called upon by the mirroring of his or her body with that of the sitter in attendance. The all’antica costumes are just that: not antique dress, but garments that appear vaguely classicizing without pretending to be more specific than this. Nevertheless, the costumes allow the sitters to put on a new persona. Avigdor Posèq argues, in fact, that these early works re-enact antique- or Bacchic-themed actor performances held in the private of Roman Cardinals.319 Whether they do so cannot be established, but the two images are certainly replete with issues of theatrical disguise and deception.

319 Avigdor W.G. Posèq, “Bacchic Themes in Cavaraggio’s Juvenile Works,” Gazette des Beaux- Arts 115 (March 1990): 113–20. Mina Gregori made a similar argument with regard to Caravaggio’s Uffizi Bacchus (c. 1595) connecting the work to all’antica pagan celebrations

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These images clearly address the viewer differently than Albertian painting does. I believe their open-endedness made them especially appealing to the Utrecht Caravaggists, who recognised that these figural subjects could potentially interest a broad range of Dutch viewers. Moreover, their compositional syntax—essentially, a close-up of a (life-size, or nearly life-size) single half- figure set in an unarticulated space—allowed for cabinet-sized formats. This increased the replicable potential and marketability of pictures of individual life- size half-figures produced by the Utrecht Caravaggists in the third decade of the seventeenth century.

III. Sleight of Hand: Serio-Comic Trickery in Caravaggio’s Fortune Teller

and Cardsharps

After this initial production, Caravaggio moved toward multi-figured genre pictures with half-length characters around 1594. These early canvases attracted the attention of Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, one of Rome’s most discerning patrons of the arts and sciences. Del Monte, whose seal is stamped on the back of the Fortune Teller (c. 1594) and Cardsharps (c. 1594), acquired these paintings from Caravaggio’s dealer-friend Costantino Spata (figs. 3.3 and 3.4).320

Set against an undifferentiated background and bathed in diffuse light, the prevalent in Rome in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. See Mina Gregori, “Caravaggio dopo la mostra di Cleveland,” Paragone 263 (January 1972), 46. 320 , “Fresh Light on Caravaggio’s Earliest Period: His ‘Cardsharps’ Recovered,” Burlington Magazine 130, no. 1018 (January 1988): 21; Langdon, Caravaggio, 84 and 399n21. It was Giovanni Baglione who wrote in 1642 that Cardinal del Monte purchased some of Caravaggio’s early works from a dealer near San Luigi dei Francesi whom he names ‘Maestro Valentino.’ See Baglione, Vite, 136 and for the English translation, Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, 234. This ‘Maestro Valentino’ was identified as dealer Costantino Spata by Sandro Corradini and Maurizio Marini in “The Earliest Account of Caravaggio in Rome,” Burlington Magazine 140, no. 1138 (January 1998): 25–28.

174 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re respectively three-quarter-length and half-length figures in Fortune Teller and

Cardsharps play on traditions of comic performance. The two canvasses put characters from a comic register into play in a humorous situation that, as noted by Helen Langdon, would have appealed to del Monte given that they were reminiscent of the popular theatre in which the Cardinal delighted.321 Barry Wind too stresses “the theatrical point of departure” for works like Fortune Teller and

Cardsharps, asserting that “Caravaggio’s presumed commitment to nature in

[these pictures] is actually conflated with theatrical content.”322 In these paintings, naturalism allows Caravaggio to uproot viewers’ expectations of humorous imagery and stock types and to poeticise the comic theme of deception.

This approach, which I describe as serio-comic—based on the spirit of serio-ludere that permeates sixteenth-century court life and theatre—blends a realistic and a theatrical mode of representation, as Wind intimates. Both the painter and the characters he stages in Fortune Teller and Cardsharps engage in deceitful tactics that disrupt viewing patterns established by Albertian narrative, in which the plot is clearly laid out for beholders. Fittingly, these early images thematize the slipperiness of identity, and their figures play on the shifting boundaries of self and other. This section re-evaluates Fortune Teller and

Cardsharps’ theatrical sources to bring forth the ways in which performative bodily practices produce meaning in them. It also reflects on how, through their common theme of deception, these first multi-figured pictures take up again the

321 Langdon, Caravaggio, 84. 322 Barry Wind, “A Note on Card Symbolism in Caravaggio and His Followers,” Paragone 475 (September 1989): 15.

175 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re subject of unstable identities explored in Caravaggio’s Boy with a Basket of Fruit and Sick Bacchus and that constitute one of the artist’s chief lines of inquiry.

Fortune Teller presents a comical, but meaningful anecdote that centres on the subject of deceit. In it, a foppishly dressed youth is having his palm read by a charismatic young woman in a gypsy outfit. As the young man smugly gazes into the gypsy’s vibrant eyes, he fails to realise that she is slipping his ring off his finger. Their costumes are intrinsic to the enactment carried out; they provide a medium for marking a specific identity onto their bodies while by the same token unveiling these identities as performed. The young man’s extravagant costume— particularly the feathered hat—and self-assuredness reveal him to be an unwise youth of a higher social class than his counterpart.323 The fortune teller for her part is associated with social marginality and transgression. Caravaggio’s rendering of this paradoxical figure reunites Cesare Ripa’s two distinct portrayals of the female gypsy (“zingana” or “zingara”): Ripa interprets her first as an emblem of poverty (“povertà”) because of her slyness, and second as an emblem of comedy (“Commedia”) because of her furtive, deceptive, and absurd nature.324

323 Fortune Teller marks the introduction in Caravaggio’s art of the eccentrically-dressed, boastful, and dandy male that became a staple Caravaggistic type. 324 Cesare Ripa, Iconologia (Rome, 1603; reprint Milan: TEA, 1992): 58, 360. Ripa describes the emblem of “Commedia” as a “Donna in habito di Cingara: ma il suo vestimento sarà di varii colori; nella destra mano terrà un cornetto da sonar di musica, nella sinistra una maschera, & ne’ piedi i socchi. La diversità de’ colori nota le varie, & diverse attieni, che s’esprimono in questa sorte di poesia, la quale diletta l’occhio dell’intelletto, non meno che la varietà dei colori diletti l’occhio corporeo” while the emblem of poverty is described as “Donna vestita come una cingara col collo torto, in atto di dimandare elemosina....rappresentasi in forma di Cingara, per non si trovare la più meschina generatione di questa, la quale non hà ne robba, ne nobilità, ne gusto, ne speranza di cosa alcuna.” I borrow the reference to Ripa’s “povertà” from Langdon, Caravaggio, 86.

176 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

Caravaggio’s Fortune Teller recreates such stereotypes of lower-class behaviour, but also draws on forms of popular performance.325

Though present in Rome during this period, gypsies belonged to some extent to the world of theatre and comedy.326 Their recurrent appearances in the

Commedia dell’arte and in zingaresche, popular street plays starring gypsy characters, exemplify this trend.327 Born out of a genre of poetry that flourished in the sixteenth century, this type of play was launched as early as the 1520s, gained in popularity throughout the century, and was particularly prevalent during carnival.328 Zingaresche were in fact played on carnival floats, but also on every street corner if we are to believe Jean Jacques Bouchard (1606–1641), a French traveller who wrote in 1632 that “all across Rome many excesses thrive, there being no street corner where there isn’t a small comedy with two or three characters, called zingaresca.”329 This form of entertainment could have provided

Caravaggio with an archetype for his Fortune Teller.

In his recent review on the gypsy as a source for the many portrayals of fortune tellers in the Roman works of French Caravaggist Simon Vouet (1590–

325 Feigenbaum’s “Gamblers, cheats, and fortune-tellers,” 149–181, summarizes well the variety of sources that are encapsulated in Caravaggio’s early serio-comic works. 326 According to Martin Clayton, gypsies arrived in Western Europe from the Balkans in the early fifteenth century and began to appear in Western art in the last two decades of the century. He identifies a drawing by (pen and ink, 260 x 205 mm, , inv. no. RL 12495) as an early example, showing A Man Tricked by Gypsies. See Martin Clayton, Leonardo da Vinci: The Divine and the Grotesque (London: , 2002), 96–99. See also Clayton’s article “Leonardo’s Gypsies, and the Wolf with the Eagle,” Apollo 155, no. 486 (2002): 27–34. 327 Langdon, Caravaggio, 86. 328 Paolo Toschi, Le origini del teatro italiano (Turin: Boringhieri, 1955), 588, 592–93. 329 Jean-Jacques Bouchard, Journal I Les confessions: Voyage de Paris à Rome; Le carnaval à Rome, ed. Emanuele Kanceff (Turin: Giappichelli, 1976), 153. “Par toute Rome, où il vit quantité d’extravagances, n’y ayant coing de rue où il n’y eust ou bien une petite comedie à trois ou quatre personages, qu’ils appellent zingaresca.” My translation.

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1649), Olivier Bonfait brings to the fore a significant point when he suggests a connection between the Caravaggistic half-length comedic paintings of the 1620s and the fact that burlesque or “ridiculous” street comedies of the same period were often written to be played on carts, thus showcasing only the top half of the actors.330 Hence, even the format of Caravaggio’s Fortune Teller can be associated with a particular theatrical convention.331 It is also interesting to note, as Paolo Toschi demonstrates, that comedic zingaresche are derived from a lyrical genre of poetry. In fact, Toschi points out that gypsy fortune tellers were portrayed as manipulative, sly and deceptive creatures even in the earliest comedic and poetic forms of zingaresche.332 This type of cross-fertilisation of literary genres is reflected in Caravaggio’s partly comedic and partly serious pictorial rendering.

If Caravaggio’s image was meant to be associated with the zingaresca—in both its forms as a lyrical literary genre and as comic street theatre—its dual comical and poetic character becomes even more significant and conspicuous.

Furthermore, the Fortune Teller exemplifies Caravaggio’s constant adaptation and transformation of existing cultural forms. In Todd Olson’s opinion,

“Caravaggio’s source material for the zingara was one of the sites of elite appropriation of the carnivalesque” and “Cardinal del Monte would have had first-hand knowledge of the zingara as a theatrical figure for elite

330 Olivier Bonfait, “Commedia dell’arte et scènes de genre caravagesques: ‘Les diseuses de bonne aventure’ de Simon Vouet,” in Blandine Chavanne and Emmanuel Guigon, eds., Simon Vouet: Les années italiennes, 1613–1627, exhibition catalogue (Paris: Hazan; Nantes: Musée des beaux arts; Besançon: Musée des beaux arts et d’archéologie, 2008), 60. 331 On the other hand, Fortune Teller’s format is also somewhat related to portraiture conventions and to its explorations of character through close-up studies of sitters. 332 Toschi, Origini del teatro italiano, 591.

178 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re consumption.”333 Despite the low culture from which he drew inspiration,

Caravaggio’s Fortune Teller appears to be elaborated with this elite audience in mind, and conceives of its topic in a serio-comic way by blending realistic and ludic aspects. The artist reconciled ephemeral low forms of entertainment with their earlier poetic source, and turned them into expensive luxury goods that took the intellectual and recreational pursuits of its audience into consideration.

In addition, Caravaggio breaks with earlier Northern European visual conventions depicting foolish lovers and ill-matched pairs, of which Lucas van

Leyden’s woodcut of a Tavern Scene is an emblematic example (fig. 3.8). 334 In this Dutch print a young man in fancy dress, a young woman (a prostitute) and an old hag (a procuress) sit around a table in a tavern. The man is seduced by the harlot, while the old woman, who slips coins to a boy standing in a doorway, drinks from her glass. A fool that appears in the window behind the couple warns the viewer (with a proverb in a nearby banner) to “watch the way the wind blows”

([w]ach. hoet. varen. sal.). In contrast, the participatory workings on which the

Fortune Teller’s narrative construct is based blows apart the moralizing stance that images of deceit like Van Leyden’s Tavern Scene literally spell out.

333 Todd Olson, “The Street Has Its Masters,” 72. 334 Friedlaender speculated in 1955 that “the young Caravaggio had certainly seen half-figure compositions similar to the Ill-Assorted Lovers by Quentin Massys, and Jan van Hemessen’s Loose Company during his youth in Lombardy, or in central Italian collections; he may actually have seen the Money Changer and His Wife by Marinus van Roymerswaele in Florence.” See Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, 82. For a recent discussion on how late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Northern genre imagery informed Caravaggio’s Fortune Teller see Pericolo, “Equal and Unequal Lovers” in Caravaggio and Pictorial Narrative, 142–55. Pericolo surveys a cluster of Northern images that fall into the iconographic tradition of lovers and so-called ill- matched pairs with which Caravaggio can be assumed to have been familiar. The scholar’s suggestion that Caravaggio’s Fortune Teller can be read as an “anti-betrothal” (i.e., “a comic visual antithesis of a lyrical commitment”) is particularly compelling. Incidentally, Caravaggio must have known some of Lucas van Leyden’s more intriguing secular inventions. The characters in Caravaggio’s Youth with a Basket of Fruit, Sick Bacchus, Fortune Teller and Cardsharps, for instance, all present similarities to Van Leyden’s engraving Young Man With a Skull (fig. 3.9).

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Caravaggio does away with the outward warning and moralistic tenor typical of

Netherlandish lowlife subjects. He moves the scene from the fixed setting of a tavern into an indefinite fictional space, thereby liberating the enactment from a recognizable pejorative context. The neutral context of Caravaggio’s Fortune

Teller allows the beholder to assemble his or her own frame of reference while calling up some of the theatrical conventions discussed earlier and with which the painter’s audience would have been acquainted.

This sort of interdependent interpretative approach gains from the creative input of beholders. The viewer is expected to reconstruct the plot by piecing together the clues supplied by different performative subterfuges such as costumes, evocative interplay of hands, and deceptive facial expression.

Moreover, the paintings’ life-size format, absence of setting, and pervasive presence of human figures provide a mirror effect for the beholder-participant that entices and beguiles him or her further. To cite Alpers on the work of Rembrandt, the viewer is “left uncertain as to where reality ends and fiction begins, and even precisely what, if any, the fiction might be.”335 This is part of the deceptive games

Fortune Teller plays. In truth, deception operates on more than a level in this work: the dupery enacted by the gypsy betokens Caravaggio’s illusionistic power as painter as well as the image’s dissimulative tactics to first mislead the beholder and then coerce him or her to play a part in the plot. Disguise and recognition, themes so central to Commedia plots, work in Fortune Teller to deceive the

335 Svetlana Alpers, Rembrandt’s Enterprise: The Studio and the Market (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995): 7. In this passage, Alpers discusses Rembrandt’s Jewish Bride, c. 1667 of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

180 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re viewer by cloaking the painter’s performance in illusionistic naturalism.336 The deceit the foppish youth faces is, by extension, reflected in the visual tricks

Caravaggio plays on his cultured audience by turning a comic, moralistic topic into a poetic conundrum. A hackneyed topic is thus made novel again. In fact,

Christiansen suggests that by avoiding the element of burlesque that characterises the Commedia dell’arte plots, Caravaggio’s works differentiate themselves from the Caravaggists’ more “theatrical” treatments of the same themes.337 The artist’s

“practice of exploiting the world around him,” he continues, “[gave] new life to timeworn subjects.”338

Deception is also the theme in the Fortune Teller’s companion painting,

Cardsharps.339 Here too, a naive youth in a sumptuous costume is being duped.

His attire made of a dark lustrous fabric, with puffed sleeves and a matching hat, and the delicate embroidered white trim on his collar and around his wrists give him a refined appearance. The youth is pitted against two mercenaries in boldly coloured striped garments of clashing patterns and shades. Here too, costumes reveal and reinforce the act of performance and inscribe bodies with social identities. In fact, the mercenaries’ costumes appear to be have been drawn from

336 Langdon, Caravaggio, 86. In her description of Commedia dell’Arte, Langdon writes, “many of these comedies are intrigues of disguise and of recognition.” 337 Keith Christiansen, A Caravaggio Rediscovered: (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1990), 19. Christiansen’s comment refers, for instance, to the burlesque character of Simon Vouet’s Fortune Teller in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada (inv. no. 6737). He says, “in [Vouet’s painting], for example, the comic element of the scene has been heightened through the addition of two characters, one of whom fleeces the gypsy while the other mocks the credulity of her well-dressed customer. The manner in which the latter looks out at the viewer enhances the theatrical character of the picture.” 338 Ibid., 48. 339 Although the two paintings do not form a pair of pendants, they have traditionally been thought of as companion paintings because of their cognate subject matter and common early provenance, among other things. For a history of through documents and its recent re-discovery see Denis Mahon, “Caravaggio’s ‘Cardsharps’ Recovered,” 10–25.

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Cesare Vecellio’s 1590 costume book De gli habiti antichi e moderni.340 More precisely, they are reminiscent of the “soldato disarmato” (disarmed soldier) and, as noted by more than one scholar, of the “bravo venetiano et d’altre città d’Italia”

(Mercenary from Venice and other Italian cities) (figs. 5 and 6).341 In fact, the older baro (cheat or cardsharp), who appears tattered and unclean, is very close in type to Vecellio’s “bravo venetiano” (Venetian soldier). His costume includes a jerkin with a delicate twig pattern darkened by dirt. Unbuttoned, it lets his grimy chemise show through at the belly. His yellow and black striped sleeves could not be any less harmonious. A black cloak rests on his left shoulder in the same way

Vecellio’s “bravo venetiano” wears his. Although his lower garment is not visible, one can imagine it to be similar to the burgundy and gold breeches the younger cheat wears, with diagonal stripes identical to the pattern on the breeches of the “bravo venetiano.” His brutish unshaven face with upward curling moustache and dark brow is peculiarly akin to the “bravo venetiano.” In fact, both turn and tilt their heads and look downward, but in reverse of one another.

In the late sixteenth century, bravi—disarmed soldiers or soldiers of fortune who, for wages, served and protected their patrons in any way necessary—were regarded as bandits and violent ruffians.342 In his forceful painting The Bravo (1516–17), Titian possibly shows one of these lowly brutes

340 Cesare Vecellio, De gli habiti antichi e moderni (Venice, 1590), nos. 133, 134. 341 See for instance Mahon, “Caravaggio’s ‘Cardsharps’ Recovered,” 22n82 and Christiansen, Lute Player, 17. 342 Christopher Black, Early Modern Italy: A Social History (London/New York: Routledge, 2002), 99.

182 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re viciously attacking an unsuspecting young man (fig. 3.7).343 This type of disreputable character was mirrored in the Commedia dell’arte character-type

Capitano, based on mercenary soldiery of the sort that often occupied Italy in this period.344

Caravaggio’s younger baro assumes the same position as Titian’s Bravo, albeit reaching behind him with his right hand instead of his left. Most importantly, he is seen reaching for the cards tucked in his breeches, not for his dagger, as in Titian’s picture. The inclusion of the main baro in a scene of unsophisticated trickery at a game of cards—a popular but dishonorable pastime—alongside a ludicrously sinister accomplice, whose torn gloves only emphasise his absurd nature, confirms that he too belongs to a comic register. The contrast between the loutish farcical characters and the beautiful naive youth further stresses the comical aspect of the scene. Nevertheless, in her study of the connections between some of Caravaggio’s youthful secular paintings and the poetry of Giambattista Marini (1569–1625), Elizabeth Cropper links the

Cardsharps “with the sophisticated culture of artifice and the rarefied celebration of sensual pleasures in which Caravaggio actually worked.”345 Compositionally, the half-length life-size format, vivid colouring, and tactile effect of fabrics and

343 Lorenzo Pericolo convincingly draws attention to this painting as one of two Venetian prototypes for Caravaggio’s young baro in the Cardsharps, the other one being a fresco in the Fondaco dei Tedeschi by Titian known to us through two prints. Pericolo believes that Caravaggio saw a version of the Bravo identical or comparable to Titian’s or to a lost Giorgione that inspired Titian’s painting. See the section “Patterns of Assault” in Caravaggio and Pictorial Narrative, 164–69. The subject matter of Titian’s painting is, however, the subject of debates. Various scholars argue for an episode from classical history rather than a contemporary reference. See Paul Joannides, Titian to 1518: The Assumption of Genius (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 248, who identifies the scene as Caius Lucius’ homosexual advance and assault upon Trebonius. 344 Christiansen, Lute Player, 19. Christiansen connects the baro to the Commedia character Capitano. 345 Cropper, “Marino’s Poetry and Caravaggio, 198. See also note 6 in the present chapter.

183 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re textures give the painting a sensuous appeal reminiscent of Venetian paintings like Titian’s Bravo, a seductively violent picture that is emulated in Cardsharps’ psychological drama of trickery. The intentional vacillation between a comic and a sensual register assuredly enticed the sophisticated taste of Cardinal del Monte, whose collection the Utrecht Caravaggists likely viewed while in Rome.

Here again, like in Fortune Teller, a traditionally low-life comic subject is inflected by the sensual appeal and materiality of the painting, and turned on its head by a rousing approach to narrative that seeks the physical and intellectual contribution of the beholder. Once more, the work of early sixteenth-century

Dutchman Lucas van Leyden serves as a point of comparison.346 Van Leyden’s half-length multi-figured paintings Fortune Teller (c. 1508), Card Players (c.

1520), and Chess Players (c. 1508) are among some of the allegorical genre paintings that can be considered precursors to Caravaggio’s two Fortune Tellers and Cardsharps (figs. 3.10 to 3.12). Additionally to subject matter, Caravaggio’s

Fortune Teller and Cardsharps share some critical traits and visual strategies with

Van Leyden’s multi-figured genre scenes: unarticulated, dark backgrounds accentuate the psychological mood, while costumes, colour, pattern and texture provide visual interest and stimulate the senses. An emphasis on physiognomies, facial expressions and gestures plays up the drama in both painters’ compositions; it underscores and articulates the intrigue.

In Fortune Teller and Chess Players, Van Leyden’s main groups are surrounded by small crowds that occupy the rest of the pictorial surface and help

346 See note 33 in the present chapter.

184 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re situate the scene in a public space. By contrast, Caravaggio isolates the key action

(fortune telling, card playing) by not providing any material context. In this way, he pushes viewers beyond the bounds of normative viewing practices into a participatory mode that entails sensory and cognitive engagement. In this regard,

Caravaggio’s Fortune Teller and Cardsharps function similarly to Van Leyden’s half-length multi-figured gaming scenes in which the viewer is offered a place at the table and is compelled to participate in the action corporally and cerebrally.347

Caravaggio too expects viewers to decipher the gestures of the characters as if participating physically in the scene, piece together the action, and thus complete the image. Caravaggio’s challenging of Albertian narrative by presupposing an active and engaged viewer indubitably accentuated the appeal of his works for collectors seeking art of a novel and sophisticated kind. The substitution of dramatic action with the beholder’s own contribution to narrative content corresponded to connoisseurs’ desire for a reciprocal relationship with painting, in which pictorial construct and viewership equally create meaning. Narrative, as intended by Alberti, was to be ongoing and active. In these open-ended images, by contrast, narrative is at a standstill; it has effectively been suspended, displaced by the collaborative performance of painter, characters and beholders.

Because Fortune Teller’s and Carsharps’ pictorial play with duplicity and dissimulation impede conclusions from being drawn easily to bring about

347 In “The Play of Perception in Early Genre Imagery: The Card Games of Lucas van Leyden” (conference paper, annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, Montreal, QC, March 24–26, 2011), Jessen Kelly examined the simulated experience of play put forward in the paintings of Lucas van Leyden depicting card games, which position the viewer at the game table. North Italian precedents are also found in the paintings of Girolamo Romanino (c. 1484–after 1562)—a poorly preserved fresco fragment of c. 1541 shows card players around a table. See Alessandro Nova, Girolamo Romanino (Turin: Umberto Allemandi, 1994), no. 84 (fig. 212); Feigenbaum, “Gamblers, cheats, and fortune-tellers,” 155–56 (fig. 6).

185 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re narrative completion, these paintings contravene the Albertian pictorial tradition in that the elements within the picture do not diligently guide the beholder. These images, in fact, call for active—as opposed to contemplative—viewership. In exchange, the beholder is, as part of his or her journey of discovery, led astray by the deceitful tactics that make up the plot and by painting itself in the process of trying out various interpretations. In so doing, these images—which, it should be remembered here, depict figures engaged in entertainment (fortune telling, card playing), and derive their subject matter from other kinds of entertainment

(theatre, lyrical poetry)—become in and of themselves a form of entertainment for viewers. This sort of play on entertainment meant to amuse beholders is also articulated in the Utrecht Caravaggists’ secular half-figures, which inveigle viewers to engage in a conversation with them, listen to the music they play, or to eat the food they offer.

IV. Freaks of Nature: Caravaggio’s Musical Performers and the Lyricism of

Marginality348

Turning his interest away from forms of public sociability and towards forms of private sociability, Caravaggio explores a different kind of entertainment in the pictures analysed in this section. Following his early serio-comic pictures, which aroused the interest of his first patron, the artist refocused his attention on earnest representations of higher forms of amusement and sensual delight for his

348 The expression “lyricism of marginality” is borrowed from Michel Foucault who wrote in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 301, “the lyricism of marginality may find inspiration in the image of the outlaw, the great social nomad, who prowls on the confines of a docile, frightened order.” It is here used to evoke the attractiveness of strangeness and the poetical implications of otherness and transgression.

186 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re first private commissions. Indeed, scenes that evoke street life give way to the elevated themes of chamber music and love in his two Lute Players of c. 1595 and c. 1597 (figs. 3.13 and 3.14). Besides pointing out Caravaggio’s own experience of elevation from living on “the mean streets” to living in a Cardinal’s palace, this subject matter was suitable for privately commissioned, privately consumed works. Owned by Vincenzo Giustiniani and Cardinal del Monte, these musical pictures would have been accessible to the Utrecht Caravaggists in Rome.349

Indeed, Caravaggio’s Lute Players had a significant influence on the

Caravaggistic musicians created in Utrecht in the 1620s.350 The objectives of this section are to overturn received viewpoints about Caravaggio’s Lute Players’ rapport with naturalism, to investigate how they establish the body as a locus of narrative, and to expose the inner workings of performance within the pictures. In the process, questions about the body and identity that will inform my analysis of

Utrecht half-figures in the last chapter of this dissertation are also sketched out.

In both versions of the picture, a life-size young male lute player in a diaphanous white chemise is seated alone behind a table. A darkened wall serves as a sole backdrop, while an angled streak of light provides luminosity. Painted around 1595, the Giustiniani version features a vase of flowers, fruits, a violin and bow. The part-books to four madrigals by Jacob Arcadelt (c. 1500–1568), choirmaster of the papal chapel in Rome from 1539 to 1549, also lie on the bare

349 Lute Player, c. 1595 today in the Hermitage Museum was painted for Marchese Giustiniani while Lute Player, c. 1597 that is part of the Wildenstein collection in New York was painted for Cardinal del Monte. Del Monte also possessed Musicians (c. 1595), a concert of youths featuring a lute player as its central figure. 350 Albert Blankert signals the role played by Caravaggio’s Lute Player as a prototype for the innumerable half-length Caravaggistic musicians from Utrecht. See Blankert, “Caravaggio und die nördlichen Niederlande,” 20, 34.

187 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re marble table.351 In the version created for del Monte around 1597, the table is covered with a red carpet on which rest three musical instruments: a small spinet

(or spinettino), a recorder, and a violin. The parts for a polyphonic madrigal by

Florentine composer Francesco Layolle after Petrarch’s “Lassare in velo” are visible, as are those for Franco-Flemish polyphonic madrigal composer Jacques

Berchem’s “Perche non date voi.”352 X-rays of the del Monte Lute Player show a underneath the spinet. It covers the same fruit still life seen in the

Giustiniani version, demonstrating that the two canvases were initially quite similar.353

The models, their attire, their posture, and the positioning of their hands are nearly identical in the two paintings. While the scores are different—as are the lutes, albeit only slightly—the madrigals share a common theme: intense devotion.354 Hence, the identifiable musical notations enhance the suitability of the subject matter to Caravaggio’s two prestigious patrons. Moreover, the lutes in the two Lute Players were possibly modelled from del Monte’s collection of

351 Franca Trinchieri Camiz, “Music and Painting in Cardinal del Monte’s Household,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 26 (1991): 218. Elizabeth Cropper refers to Thomas Bridges’ Ph.D. dissertation “The Publishing of Arcadelt’s First Book of Madrigals,” 2 vols (Harvard University, 1982) for an account of the identification of Arcadelt’s music in the Hermitage Lute Player. See Cropper, “Marino’s Poetry and Caravaggio,” 210n32. For the texts of these madrigals by Arcadelt, see the appendix in Christiansen’s publication Lute Player. 352 Camiz, “Del Monte’s Household,” 218. Francesco Layolle or Aiolli (c. 1475–c. 1540) wrote sacred music in the Franco-Flemish polyphonic style; for a biography see Dizionario biografico degli italiani I, “Francesco Aiolli” (Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1960), accessible online http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/francesco-aiolli_(Dizionario-Biografico)/. Jacques Berchem (c. 1505–1567) was also active in Italy. For a biography see Dizionario enciclopedico universale della musica e dei musicisti: le biografie III, “Jachet de Berchem” by Domenico Morgante (Torino, UTET, 1986). 353 Christiansen, Lute Player, 38. See particularly figure 24 in Christiansen’s publication for an X ray photograph. 354 Camiz, “Del Monte’s Household,” 218.

188 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re instruments.355 Visibly, the descriptive nature of Caravaggio’s musical paintings can be associated to the vital place held by music in Roman cultivated circles.

Caravaggio’s Lute Players clearly possessed special appeal at Palazzo

Giustiniani and Palazzo Madama, del Monte’s residence, households in which music was central. Giustiniani, who was deeply invested in music, had commissioned Caravaggio’s Amor Vincit Omnia (1602), an allegorical painting with a musical theme and an erotic charge, which he considered to be the showpiece of his collection: so much so that a curtain was drawn in front of it to increase the effect of revelation.356 He also authored a treatise—Discourse on

Music (1628)—that discusses new vocal and instrumental styles of music.357 In it, he refers to chamber music performances of the kind Cardinal del Monte organised in his camerino, a room devoted to music.358 Christiansen believes these gatherings to have been “elaborate, combining hunting, theatrical displays, and the staging of or comedies with musical interludes (intermedi),

[while] others must have been quite informal.”359 Since del Monte himself played the guitar and sang, and since his circle included the famous composers Emilio de’ Cavalieri (1550–1602) and Luca Marenzio (1553–1599), a participatory spirit

355 Camiz, “Del Monte’s Household,” 216. 356 German painter and art historian Joachim von Sandrart indicates that the painting was exhibited in a room that contained over one hundred pictures, but that to his advice, it was covered with a drape of green silk and shown only at the very end of visits. See Sandrart, Academia, 190. See also Dennis P. Weller, ed., Sinners and Saints, Darkness and Light: Caravaggio and His Dutch and Flemish Followers, exhibition catalogue (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art), 19. 357 Vincenzo Giustiniani, “Discorso sopra la musica de’ suoi tempi,” translated in Nigel Fortune, “Giustiniani on Instruments,” Galpin Society Journal 5 (March 1952): 50. 358 Langdon, Caravaggio, 107. 359 Christiansen, Lute Player, 45.

189 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re can be imagined to have characterised the performances that took place at Palazzo

Madama.360

The Lute Players appear to be embedded within this culture, but they also hark back to Venetian solo musicians and concert scenes, a “peculiarly north

Italian . . . genre with a history extending back to the late fifteenth century and encompassing a variety of traditions,” writes Christiansen.361 The Giorgionesque pendant paintings known as Impassioned Singer and Singer with Flute provide an interesting point of comparison in regards to theme, composition and interpretation (figs. 3.15 and 3.16).362 Set against a neutral background, the half- length white-clad figures occupy the entire picture plane, which is modulated by a soft but effective chiaroscuro. Here too, the figures are manifested through

360 Maurizio Marini, Caravaggio: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio “Pictor Praestantissimus”; La tragica esistenza, la raffinata cultura (Rome: Newton Compton, 1987), 32; Posèq, “Bacchic Themes,” 113, 119n2. The Cardinal asserted in a letter to a friend “io suono di chitariglia e canto alla spagnuola” (I play guitar and sing like a Spaniard). See also Luigi Spezzaferro, “La cultura del Cardinale del Monte e il Primo Tempo del Caravaggio,” Storia dell’arte 9/10 (1971): 68. For more on del Monte’s passion for music see Camiz, “Del Monte’s Household,” 213–26. 361 Christiansen, Lute Player, 23. For a study of these traditions Christiansen suggests seeing the article by Patricia Egan, “‘Concert’ Scenes in Musical Paintings of the Italian Renaissance,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 14 (Summer 1961, no. 2): 184–95. Christiansen adds that del Monte possessed two “‘Venetian’ music pieces” which, in his opinion, could have served as part of the inspiration in commissioning the paintings Musicians and Lute Player from Caravaggio. The scholar points out that del Monte’s 1627 inventory lists at least four other contemporary pictures with musical themes, including a lost concert scene by Gerrit van Honthorst described in the aforementioned inventory as a candle-lit scene showing a woman playing a ‘Spanish’ guitar and two men singing and playing on lutes. See Christiansen, Lute Player, 25–26. 362 Seeing that the attribution to Giorgione and early dating of these paintings have been largely contested by scholars, I refer to them as “Giorgionesque.” Chriscinda Henry notes that while Alessandro Ballarin, in Le siècle de Titien: l'âge d’or de la peinture à Venise, ed. Michel Laclotte, exhibition catalogue (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1993), 344–47 is in favour of attributing the pair to Giorgione, Jaynie Anderson, Giorgione: The Painter of ‘Poetic Brevity’ (Paris and New York: Flammarion, 1997), 340 and Michel Hochmann, “Genre Scenes by Dosso and Giorgione,” in Dosso’s Fate: Painting and Court Culture in Renaissance Italy, ed. by Luisa Ciammitti, Steven F. Ostrow, and Salvatore Settis (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 1998), 67, reject the attribution. See Henry, Low Painting and Entertainment Culture in Renaissance Venice, 133n120.

190 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re extreme close-ups, neutral backgrounds and attention to gestures, facial expression, and tactility. The result is two images that are infused with an element of pathos (more so in Impassioned Singer) that is akin to the sensory depictions of musicians that Caravaggio devised for Giustiniani, whose family had Venetian origins, and for Venetian-born Cardinal del Monte. The Cardinal especially sought pictures that called to mind the work of Giorgione and Titian; his collection included a painting of a “musica” attributed to the first, and four works believed to be by the second.363

The pastoral accent of the all’antica costumes worn by Caravaggio’s lute players as well as the madrigal scores depicted in these works connect them further to Venetian musical painting.364 In Lute Players, the traditional bucolic setting associated with pastoral subjects—like that of Titian’s

(c. 1510), to evoke a well-known example—is replaced by elements of still-life.

Fruits, vegetables and flowers, all present in both Lute Players, as well as the caged finch (probably in reference to song) and the recorder in the del Monte version, all serve as substitutes.365 In fact, the recorder in art is traditionally

363 Christiansen, Lute Player, 16, 51n23. In this publication, Christiansen reminds us that Bellori was among the firsts to evoke the giorgionesque character of Caravaggio’s Cardsharps (see page 12). In writing of it as well as of Penitent Magdalene and Rest on the Flight into Egypt (both in the Galleria Doria-Pamphilj), Bellori asserted, “sono questi li primi tratti del penello di Michele in quella schietta maniera di Giorgione con oscuri temperati” (these are the first strokes of Michele’s brush in that pure manner of Giorgione, with tempered dark passages). See Bellori, Vite, 204; Bellori/Wohl, Lives, 180. 364 Christiansen argues that “Caravaggio’s singers do not impersonate a specific character, but their dress seems nonetheless to conform to conventions for pastoral or classical subjects, as would be appropriate for pictures with an allegorical intent.” See Christiansen, Lute Player, 47. Madrigals were especially conducive to the musical articulation of poetic text, and were often linked to the tradition of the pastoral. 365 Franca Trinchieri Camiz, “The Castrato Singer: From Informal to Formal Portraiture,” Artibus et Historiae 9 (no. 18, 1988): 176. Camiz postulates the caged finch as a reference to song. The scholar adds that “a caged bird could also be a reminder of a craze, prevalent at that time, for birding or capturing birds to be kept in the house and in appropriate ‘uccellerie’ in the garden for

191 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re associated with pastoral, as is the violin, present in both Lute Players as well as in

Musicians (c. 1595).366 Assuredly, Caravaggio’s musical representations explicitly solicit the senses through the overt figurative—as opposed to symbolic—invocation of smell, taste, hearing, touch and sight. This denotes a distinct approach to subject matter based not on an allegorical interpretation but on the experiential memory of the viewer and its ability to elicit emotions.367 By activating the bodily and synesthetic involvement of beholders, the pastoral still- lifes in Caravaggio’s Lute Players effectively supplant the Albertian function taken up by bucolic settings in traditional pastoral narratives and which serve to determine the interpretive course of the viewer. The significance of the sensory contribution of the viewer to the form of narrativity proposed in Lute Players appealed to Caravaggio’s patrons, who sought works that were reminiscent of

Venetian musical imagery, but which also offered an element of newness that related to their current reality and prompted them to connect with images in ways rarely experienced before.

one’s own personal ‘diletto musicale.’” She also posits that “Caravaggio’s caged bullfinch might … also be a very poignant reference to the castrato condition, whose manhood was sacrificed for the very same musical aim for which birds were deprived of their sight.” Another suggestion about the meaning of the finch is offered on page 180 of Camiz’s article. For his part, Keith Christiansen refers to Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia to explain the presence of the bird: “[Ripa] notes that ‘the nightingale was a symbol of Music for the varied, suave, and pleasing melody of its voice, since the ancients perceived in the song of this bird the perfect science of music, that is a voice now low, now high and everything needful to please.’” See Christiansen, Lute Player, 41. 366 Alison McNeil Kettering, “Rembrandt's Flute Player: A Unique Treatment of Pastoral,” Simiolus 9, no. 1 (1977): 34. 367 On a related note, Cropper puts forward an understanding of the painting that “begins by challenging the status of these works as ‘genre’ paintings,” a reading shared by Christiansen who claims that “this approach to allegory as “dressed up” genre constituted the novelty of Caravaggio’s picture, and accounts in large part for the ambiguous nature of the image, which in fact works visually neither as an allegory nor as a piece of genre.” See Cropper, “Marino’s Poetry and Caravaggio,” 211n38; Christiansen, “Caravaggio and ‘L’esempio,’” 423.

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This mode promotes a sense of connection to the lute players, whose own physical involvement in the production of narrative is just as crucial to the operativity of the image. Based on the model’s features, Franca Trinchieri Camiz hypothesises that, without being proper portraits, Caravaggio’s Lute Players are meant to depict a “newly emerging musical personality of the period,” that of the castrato.368 Following Christiansen’s observation that Caravaggio’s effeminate models are not necessarily an expression of homosexual proclivity, Camiz proposes that the “sexual ambiguity in the Lute Player may, therefore, also relate to how Caravaggio meant the subject to be perceived,” that is, in her opinion, as a castrato singer like Pietro Montoya, who also lived in del Monte’s Palazzo

Madama around the time the paintings were executed.369

Camiz’s hypothesis strikes a cord with Caravaggio’s proclivity for transformed, decapitated, monstrous bodies explored in Chapter Two. Castrati, singers who were castrated before puberty to preserve the soprano or contralto range of their voice, lacked testosterone. If performed before puberty, castration prevented a young male’s larynx from being transformed. This alteration of the standard course of physical development provoked a radical transformation of the physique. The castrati’s limbs grew unusually long as did the bones of their ribcage. Though they had no facial hair, lush locks adorned their heads. Rounded

368 Camiz, “Del Monte’s Household,” 219–24. 369 Christiansen, “Caravaggio and ‘L’esempio,’” 423; Camiz, “Castrato Singer,” 172. In relation to Caravaggio’s effeminate models, Christiansen argues that “it is as though Caravaggio had [for the Uffizi Bacchus] read or had been told of ancient descriptions of Bacchus—for instance … ‘a little boy with a form beautiful as girl’s’ as recorded by in the Metamorphoses (III.554–56; 607)—and then the painter sought the requisite model and provided him with the proper attributes.”

193 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re faces and thicker hips and thighs made them all the more womanlike.370

Essentially, their strange constitutions, androgynous features and childlike voices turned them into freaks. Hence, they embodied beauty and the grotesque simultaneously. They embodied also the invisible, that which is missing. We are thus reminded of Caravaggio’s interest in bodies, particularly misshapen bodies, and in putting them on show. Interestingly, the Latin verb monstro (to show), which constitutes the etymology of the word “monster,” refers to the early understanding of monsters as signs or portents that disrupt the natural order. The eighteenth-century writer and playwright Francesco Albergati Capacelli (1728–

1804) denounced castrati as a social aberration. “The time has come to stop sacrificing these wretched victims, he wrote. Is it not enough that a throat and the

[lure of ] luxury should expose the lives of so many people to such calamities? . . . that people should nevertheless want to reduce men to vile disgusting monsters simply to have their ears tickled with a little aria?”371

Paradoxically, the practice of pictorial naturalism in Caravaggio’s musical pictures places emphasis on the unnatural. In truth, these paintings are just as perverse as his serio-comic paintings, which play on the idea of nature and naturalism to trick viewers and deceive them. Likewise, Caravaggio’s naturalistic or descriptive representations of musical performers reveal the hidden abject

370 For Camiz’s physical description of castrati see Camiz, “Castrato Singer,” 174. For a historical and cultural outlook on castrati in the Baroque era see the section “Voices of the Angels: The Papal Castrati and the Birth of Opera” in Piotr O. Scholz, Eunuchs and Castrati: A Cultural History (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2001) and John Rosselli, “The Castrati as a Professional Group and a Social Phenomenon, 1550–1850,” Acta Musicologica 60 (May–August 1988): 143–79. 371 Francesco Albergati Capacelli, Il ciarlator maldicente, in Scelta di commedie e novelle morali, 2 vols., ed. Antonio Ravelli (London: Giuseppe Cooper [n.d., probably 1794]), 2: vii–viii, quoted in Martha Feldman, “Denaturing the Castrato,” The Opera Quarterly 24, nos. 3–4 (summer– autumn 2008): 178.

194 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re nature of the attractive beings they portray by accurately rendering their idiosyncratic physiognomy, which, ironically, is shaped by the absence of testicles. The pictures’ intense physicality also works to evoke that which cannot be depicted: the angelic voices of castrati, their most beautiful aspect. Ultimately, the body is inscribed with narrative content, which viewers must decode in order to fully grasp the semantic contraption Caravaggio creates.

According to Camiz, the possibility of the performers being actual castrato singers accounts for the staged quality of the images and for the presence of props.372 This effect is also noted by Posèq who, conversely, believes that the props and all’antica costumes in Musicians signify that the sitters are amateur actors.373 Instead of interpreting the empirical realism that characterises

Caravaggio’s musical works as indicating staging, I regard it as evidence of

Caravaggio’s insistence on objects and bodies (beautiful and strange at once) as repositories of meaning. The lute players’ performance allows for narrative significance to take shape before the viewers’ eyes. Beholders are responsible for making sense of the immediacy of Lute Players—their tricking us into feeling the presence of flesh and blood sitters (whether they actually sat for the creation of the paintings or not). Indeed, through their corporeality, the lute players are, on the one hand, connected to the world of performance that Caravaggio recreated

372 Camiz, “Castrato Singer,” 174. Camiz also writes in another article that Caravaggio’s portrayals of singers “involve ‘dressing up’ the sitter and ‘staging’ the musical performance by means of a set of props that suggest a subtle allegorical context.” See Camiz, “Del Monte’s Household,” 222. 373 Posèq, “Bacchic Themes,” 113. Keith Christiansen also says in regards to the artifice in The Musicians that the “same sort of equivocation between the realistic intent of painting from actual models and the artifice of an evidently predetermined composition can be observed, though in the reverse sense, in the rendering of the drapery. There can be little doubt that Caravaggio arranged loosely-fitting shirts on his models to achieve his desired effect.” See Christiansen, “Caravaggio and ‘L’esempio,’” 423.

195 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re for his music-loving patrons, thereby “pictorializing the process of enactment,” to use Genevieve Warwick’s expression.374 On the other hand, the enactment can only come about if viewers fully assume their own roles in the plot.

Reflecting on the castrato’s liminal identity, it seems that yet another type of enactment is also at work, that of performative gender. In his analysis of

Balzac’s novella Sarrasine, Roland Barthes suggests that the forceful and compelling voice of the castrato Zambinella restores the character’s virility.375 In light of the conflictual social and sexual identity of castrati, the actual performance of a castrato as depicted by Caravaggio can thus be thought of as an enactment and affirmation of the castrato’s identity. This reinforces the suggestion that Caravaggio utilises the body as a narrative site, thus operating a new form of narrativity that is grounded in engaged viewership. If viewers hold the key to activating narrative in Caravaggio’s musical paintings, they must carry out their own performance in unison with the lute players to bring the scenario to completion. The workings of performance in these pictures are important to recognizing the mechanisms on which Utrecht half-figures rely to address their viewers, as Chapter Four will explain.

374 Geneviève Warwick, “Introduction: Caravaggio in History,” 20. 375 Roland Barthes, S/Z (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974), 109–10. Barthes offers this interpretation in his analysis of Balzac’s novella Sarrasine, in which the male protagonist experiences an erotic fascination for a castrato. For a criticism of theories that pay little attention to the body of the castrato see Roger Freitas Freitas, “The Eroticism of Emasculation: Confronting the Baroque Body of the Castrato,” Journal of Musicology 20, no. 2 (spring 2003): 196–249. Freitas argues against an interpretation of castrati’s voices as bodiless and denounces the reluctance to address the “potentially disturbing castrato body” (201).

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V. ‘Ne coscie ne gambe:’ Anatomy of a Crippled Narrative

This section turns to the works of other influential Caravaggists working in Rome:

Bartolomeo Manfredi and Orazio Gentileschi, both active in the first decade of the seventeenth century.376 It explores primarily the migration of Caravaggio’s secular half-figured characters into the work of Manfredi and Gentileschi. This peripatetic passage of entertainers from Caravaggio’s paintings into those of

Manfredi and Gentileschi, the earliest Caravaggists, speaks to the issue of transformation with which this dissertation is concerned and initiates the figures’ movement into the work of the Utrecht Caravaggists. The idea of mobile figures is counteracted by anxieties about the body and its fragmentation expressed in contemporary criticism of Caravaggism. This section explores these issues as they relate to action and narrative in pictures by or in the style of Manfredi. Manfredi’s work provided Northern Caravaggists with a distinctive model of secular

Caravaggistic imagery that, through a set compositional formula, lent itself to replication. My consideration of this new model seeks to shift our understanding of Caravaggistic genre painting from a form of imitation to a process of repetition and transformation.

Manfredi’s Bacchus and a Drinker (c. 1608–1610), a work that serves as a point of connection between Caravaggio’s early Bacchic figures analyzed in

Section Two and the Utrecht Caravaggists’ numerous drinkers, is one of the

376 Born in Ostiano, near Mantua, Manfredi moved to Rome c. 1605, the year preceding Caravaggio’s departure from the city. His earliest extant painting, Chastisement of Cupid (Chicago Art Institute), already deeply influenced by the Caravaggistic idiom, is dated to c. 1607. For his part, Gentileschi, who was eight years older than Caravaggio, was already in Rome by Caravaggio’s arrival. He began absorbing the Caravagistic idiom before 1605.

197 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re painter’s first allegorical-mythological works (fig. 3.17). As such, it signals a shift in Manfredi’s oeuvre away from religious subjects that occurs around the time of

Caravaggio’s death. Similarly to Caravaggio’s Bacchic paintings, Bacchus and a

Drinker straddles history and genre painting. The figures of Bacchus and a drinker, illuminated by dramatic chiaroscuro and clothed in costumes from two different time periods, are shown in a spectacular close-up, before a bare and indistinct background. The half-length god and drinker face each other as the former squeezes the juice of a wine grape into his acolyte’s glass. The very limited number of figures, the close-up view, the lighting, and the indistinct setting—typical Caravaggistic compositional choices—structure the image in a manner that disrupts traditional pictorial narrative. This effect is further fostered by the interaction of a mythological character with a contemporary character.

Their intense physicality, reinforced by idiosyncratic physiognomies, compellingly professes the presence of live models. A furry hide draped over part of Bacchus’ body leaves the right-hand side of his chest entirely bare and exposed to the sharp light that shines towards him. Heightened sensuality arises from the contrasting tactility of the fur and the god’s smooth skin. The proximity of the two figures as well as the gesture of pressing grapes and the action of drinking wine amplifies the sensory dimensions of the picture. Like Caravaggio’s Uffizi

Bacchus, Manfredi’s Bacchus and a Drinker has been connected to the tableaux vivants that unfolded during the Bacchic rituals for which the —a

Society of Dutch and Flemish painters in Rome—were known (fig. 4.3).377

377 Giuseppe Merlo in Arnauld Brejon de Lavergnée et al., Dopo Caravaggio: Bartolomeo Manfredi e la Manfrediana Methodus, exhibition catalogue (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1987),

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Certainly, the physical presence of the figures, anachronistic costumes, and lack of context suggest a deliberate disassociation from historicity while affirming the performative operativity of the picture. Manfredi’s Bacchus and a Drinker carries on the transformative act initiated by Caravaggio’s early Bacchic figures through which painting is no longer confined to historical precision, but is based in an ahistorical conception of time. Instead, Bacchus and a Drinker constructs an allegorical time-space through the transformative function of performance, which is underlined by the motif of turning grapes into wine by the squeeze of a hand.

Gentileschi’s work, for its part, can also be associated to the performative and transformative processes active in painting. Gentileschi metamorphoses

Caravaggio’s Lute Players into the first known Caravaggistic single half-length female musician: the Young Woman with a Violin of c. 1612 (fig. 3.19).378 The figure could possibly represent Saint Cecilia, patroness of musicians. Her distinctive physiognomy and strong corporeal presence, however, distinguish her from comparable contemporary representations of the same subject like Guido

Reni’s (1575–1642), in which Saint Cecilia’s physicality is idealised and her rigid pose and pale complexion are reminiscent of classical statuary (fig. 3.20). Unlike

Reni, whose saint is firmly centred in the middle of the canvas, Gentileschi thrusts

60. The Bentvueghels were likely formed around 1620, making the connection to Manfredi’s Bacchus and Drinker untenable. However, other similar celebrations were known to have taken place. See note 18 of the present chapter. For an illustration of the Bacchic ceremonies staged by the Bentvueghels see the anonymous painting at the Rijksmuseum depicting an Initiation of a Bentvueghel in Rome, c. 1660 (oil on canvas, 95.5 x 134 cm, inv. no. SK-A-4672). 378 Leonard Slatkes and Wayne Franits ascribe the introduction of female musicians in Caravaggistic painting to Gentileschi and acknowledge the special significance of his Young Woman with a Violin to the art of the Utrecht Caravaggists. As the scholars point out, “although Caravaggio introduced the single-figure musical picture into the vocabulary of Roman art with works like his Lute Player of circa 1596, the great Italian innovator seems never to have painted a single-figured female musician.” See Slatkes and Franits, Ter Brugghen, 203.

199 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re his fleshy model right up against the picture plane and positions her on an incline.

A destabilizing effect thus ensues from the composition, which also crops her left arm. The role of embodiment and performance in this canvas are accentuated by the appearance of the same model as Mary Magdalene and Judith in other works by Gentileschi (figs. 3.21 and 3.22).379 The divide between conventional portrayals of the saint like Reni’s and the material manifestation of Cecilia that

Gentileschi proposes point to the multivalence of this picture and connect it more closely to Caravaggio’s musical prototypes as well as the Utrecht Caravaggists’ musicians. The mood that Gentileschi’s Young Woman with a Violin exudes is akin to the sensitive but ambiguous interpretations of musicians offered by

Caravaggio.380 It effectively turns a common female type into a poetic representation that commits the viewers’ cognitive and sensory engagement.

The transformational and performative processes reprise in Gentileschi’s work commissioned by Scipione Borghese for the loggia of the Casino delle Muse at Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi in Rome executed in 1611–12, around the same time as the Young Woman with a Violin (figs. 3.23 and 3.24).381 In these fresco decorations, female musicians and muses entertain viewers from behind a balustrade. Visible only from the waist up, the figures are important to the Utrecht

Caravaggists’ work, as witnessed in Gerrit van Honthorst’s 1622 fresco of a

379 These later paintings, which replicate the positioning of the Young Woman with a Violin, fail to evoke the presence of the model in the way the earlier canvas does. 380 Female musicians were a popular theme in Northern Italian painting, beginning with Andrea Solario (ca. 1465–1524) and Bartolomeo Veneto (active 1502, died 1531) in the early sixteenth century. For an example by the former see entry 198 (Portrait of a Woman with a Lute) in David Alan Brown, Andrea Solario (Milan: Electa, 1987), 258–259, and for an example by the latter see entry 29 (Female Lute Player) in Pagnotta, Bartolomeo Veneto: l’opera completa (Florence: Centro Di, 1997), 218–220. 381 Gentileschi collaborated with Agostino Tassi (c. 1579–1644) for this project. Tassi, a specialist of perspective, painted the illusionistic architectural structure or quadratura.

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Musical Group on a Balcony (fig. 3.25).382 Famous for being the earliest existing

Dutch illusionistic painted ceiling, performers of this kind inspired by Gentileschi clearly held a privileged place in Honthorst’s work seeing that the Musical Group fresco was painted on the ceiling of the artist’s own house in Utrecht.

Manfredi’s only known composition with a single bust-length figure,

Gypsy with Tambourine (c. 1613–15), provides another prototype for the half- length musicians the Utrecht Caravaggists repeatedly produced.383 The work, which interestingly completes Manfredi’s move towards secular painting, also straddles more than one pictorial genre and is ambiguous in regards to meaning.384 The small canvas features a closely cropped bust-length female figure holding a tambourine up in her left hand (fig. 3.18). She has been interpreted as a gypsy—a motif Manfredi later developed in his well-known Fortune Teller (c.

1616/1617).385 When Roberto Longhi (1890–1970) first identified Manfredi’s

Gypsy with Tambourine in 1943, he discerned the sensual materiality of the picture.386 Similarly, Giuseppe Merlo considered the immediacy conveyed by the spontaneous touch, as well as the expressive bravura with which Manfredi depicts

382 For more on the influence of Gentileschi’s Casino delle Muse on Honthorst’s work see Ward Bissell, Orazio Gentileschi and the Poetic Tradition in Caravaggesque Painting (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1981): 68–69. 383 Merlo in Brejon de Lavergnée, Manfredi e la Manfrediana Methodus, 70. No other secular bust- or half-length single-figured easel paintings by Manfredi are known. 384 The painting, then in the collection of the Marchese de Masi, was sold at auction on 28 March 2006 in Florence at Pandolfini, Arredi e dipinti antichi provenienti da una collezione Toscana, lot 306, when it entered the Uzielli Collection in Geneva. It is currently on the art market again with dealers Grassi Studio in New York. For more information on it see Brejon de Lavergnée, Manfrediana Methodus, cat. no. 7 and Nicole Hartje, Bartolomeo Manfredi (1582-1622): ein Nachfolger Caravaggios und seine europäische Wirkung : Monographie und Werkverzeichnis (Weimar: VDG, 2004), 322-23. 385 The painting (oil on canvas, 122.2 x 154 cm) is part of the collections of the Detroit Institute of Art (inv. no. 79.30). 386 Roberto Longhi, Ultimi studi sul Caravaggio e la sua cerchia (Firenze: Sansoni, 1943), 49.

201 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re the torsion of the gypsy’s neck, and the inviting sensuality of her facial expression.387 The dynamism Merlo notes is offset by the tension between the figure’s three-quarter profile to the right and her stiff upper body turned in the opposite direction. This tension recalls the rigid pose of Caravaggio’s Boy with a

Basket of Fruit. Like this Boy, Manfredi’s gypsy is a sentient creature. Her luminous flesh is the high point of the picture and accentuates the structuring role of light, which allows the figure to emerge from complete darkness. While reddish tones confer life to her cheeks, the pale skin of her upper body draws attention to her exposed chest. A sash draped across it plays on the idea of hiding and revealing her bosom. Likewise, the disunity of her torso from its missing lower half reveals a friction between presence and absence.

Manfredi’s partly disembodied, yet fully materialised Gypsy with

Tambourine appears as though she could have been sliced out of a composition like Manfredi’s c. 1616–18 Denial of Saint Peter (fig. 3.26).388 As a tavern scene featuring a biblical episode, the Denial can be linked to Caravaggio’s Calling of

Saint Matthew. Manfredi’s invenzione for this work replicates the play between genre painting and history painting proposed by Caravaggio’s Calling. In

Manfredi’s Denial, the biblical plot has become entirely secondary; it is reduced to an incident. The composition draws the viewer into the scene by leaving an opening at a small table on which three men are playing dice, a strategy seen earlier in the paintings of Lucas van Leyden. Our glance is then diverted to the

387 Merlo in Brejon de Lavergnée, Manfredi e la Manfrediana Methodus, 70. 388 Incidentally, the small easel painting could have appealed to a clientele who appreciated the artist’s large tavern scenes, but of lesser means than the collectors for whom Manfredi created the latter.

202 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re left by a woman trying to call the attention of one of the dice players to a confrontation in the background between an older man, Peter, and soldiers. Her foreshortened left arm extends into the space, and her pointing finger carries our focus over to the saintly figure. The right side of Peter’s face is highlighted. His head forms a pyramid with those of the young woman and the dice player at the left, a device meant to further guide the viewer toward the biblical episode. The placement of the main soldier more or less in the centre of the canvas, behind the opening between two dice players, is another such device. Different compositional mechanisms function to bring the viewer’s notice to the biblical episode amidst the contemporary tavern scene. This way of subtly articulating the religious within the everyday becomes obvious when one thinks of this image not as secularizing a sacred theme but, instead, as inserting religious intrigue into a genre scene.

Manfredi’s Denial can be construed as a transitional work. It establishes a compositional and representational kinship between Caravaggio’s Calling and

Manfredi’s entirely secularised tavern scenes. This construct allows us to reconcile the Utrecht Caravaggists’ half-length secular figures with the Calling of

Saint Matthew in such a way that these figures are understood not as decontextualized heads and torsos but as constituents of an idiom, and as participating in an artistic convention not limited to Caravaggio’s early genre pictures. From this standpoint, Manfredi’s assemblies of musicians, drinkers and game players act as a catalyst.

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Manfredi recast the archetypal composition of Caravaggio’s Calling into strictly secular tavern scenes that were then repeated by other Caravaggists, most notably by French painters Valentin de Boulogne (1591–1632) and Nicolas

Tournier (bapt. 1590–before 1639), and Flemish painter Nicolas Regnier (c.

1590–1667). By entirely secularizing the theme of Caravaggio’s archetype,

Manfredi schematised and popularised large-scale assemblies of life-size figures in three-quarter-length taking part in some form of entertainment: music, gambling, fortune telling, eating and drinking are among the most reiterated.

Unfolding around a central motif—a table or other large object serving as a makeshift table—these merrymaking companies became a staple of Caravaggism.

Hence, Manfredi’s worldly reinterpretation of Caravaggio’s musicians, cardsharps and gypsies into large merrymaking companies of half- or three-quarter figures commonly referred to by Italian scholars as riunioni (assemblies or companies) can be considered as a connecting point between Caravaggio’s early secular work and Caravaggistic half-figures from Utrecht.389

In his 1675 Teutsche Academie, the seventeenth-century German art historian and painter Joachim von Sandrart (1606–1688) coined the expression

‘Manfrediana Methodus’ (‘Manfredi manier’ in German) to describe Manfredi’s

389 For an assessment of the influence of Manfredi’s low-life genre scene on Northern Caravaggism see Hartje, Bartolomeo Manfredi. As one of very few monographs on Manfredi, Hartje’s study provides a good basis on Manfredi’s impact, but “Hartje largely ignores the question of whether or not the closely-knit group of foreign artists living in Rome influenced one another independently or, for that matter, how they influence Manfredi,” as Berverly Louise Brown points out in her Review of Bartolomeo Manfredi (1582–1622): Ein Nachfolger Caravaggios und seine europäische Wirkung. Monographie und Werkverzeichnis by Nicole Hartje, Burlington Magazine 148, no. 1240 (July 2006): 492.

204 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re companies.390 Manfredi, “imitated life with great truth,” writes Sandrart, “and mostly depicted half-figures life-size; he also devoted himself particularly to representing conversations, card-players, banquets, soldiers, and similarly accomplished works.”391 Sandrart—who while in Rome was a guest in Vincenzo

Giustiniani’s household—highlights the formulaic Manfredian treatment of merrymaking scenes, which encompassed a predetermined set of subject matters, a naturalistic pictorial approach, and an archetypal compositional scheme.392

Drawn from Caravaggio’s Calling of Saint Matthew, this compositional scheme enabled Manfredi to create a group of canvases that transmuted

Caravaggio’s progressive illustration of religious conversion into representations of mundane life and low people. Curiously, Manfredi’s concerts, assemblies of drinkers, and card or dice games are imbued with a melancholic sense of the passing of time that clashes with the type of scene they depict. In Tavern Scene

390 Sandrart, Academia Todesca/Teutsche Academie, part II, book 3, 301 (my translation). The art historian employed the term “Manfredi manier” in his biography of the Flemish Caravaggist (1591–1651) in the German edition of the Teutsche Academie. The term “Manfrediana Methodus” appears in the Latin edition of 1683, Accademia Nobilissimae Artis pictoriae (Nuremberg and Frankfurt, 1683). Sandrart explained that Segher’s work “was so close to Manfredi’s manner that their pictures seemed almost by the same hand. In this way he painted gatherings of soldiers playing cards, musicians with instruments and other pictures with half- length life-size figures aptly taken from life that in comparison to the actual objects appear even more real than nature and are illuminated the way nature intends it.” (wodurch er des Manfredi Manier so nahe kommen/ daß es fast eine Hand schiene; Auf solche Weis hat er zu Antorf etliche Conversationen der Karten spielenden Soldaten/ Musicanten mit Instrumenten/ und andern Lebens-großen halben Bildern so wol nach dem Leben gefärtiget/ daß sie neben den berühmtetesten alda wol bestunden/ auch etliche andere dergestalt verfinsterten/ daß sie mehr flache Wasser-Farben oder illuminirt schienen/ als was die Natur erforderte). 391 Sandrart, Academia Todesca/Teutsche Academie, part II, book 2, 190. Sandrart writes, “Er imitirte das Leben mit gröer Warheit und mahlte meist halbe Figuren in Lebens-Gröe begabe sich auch absonderlich auf Ausbildungen der Conversationen Spielen Gastungen Soldaten und dergleichen vollkommeren Werken deren viel zu sehen gewesen aber meist nacher Holland zu den Kunst-liebenden Koymann in Amsterdam.” This passage has been translated into Italian but not into English. I here use Lorenzo Pericolo’s translation from Caravaggio and Pictorial Narrative, 19. 392 According to some sources, Sandrart was a guest of Giustiniani’s. See for example Eric Jan Sluijter, Rembrandt and the Female Nude (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006), 213.

205 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re with a Lute Player (c. 1612–14), four men—three drinkers and a lute player—are seated around a table in a semicircle (fig. 3.27). Three more men are standing around them; one is bringing a piece of food to his mouth, while another is drinking from a wicker wine jug. The third one is serving wine from another such jug to the only figure looking out at the viewer: the seated fellow at the right. This fellow holds up his wine goblet with his left hand, while his right arm rests comfortably on the table in a relaxed pose that brings attention to his colourful costume and projecting sword. The seven figures are cramped, disposed as in a frieze, in a very shallow space delimited only by a flat neutral background.

Interaction between the characters is minimal, though the two men in the middle are staring intensely to their right, outside the picture, in an expression of astonishment. The lighting is very dim, illuminating the figures’ faces and hands only.

The disconsolate tone—“splenetic” to use Mina Gregori’s term—clashes with the theme.393 On the other hand, it makes the otherwise low-life subject seem nobler and perhaps more appropriate to the taste of distinguished Roman collectors.394 Manfredi replaces the rowdy manners of drinkers and tavern musicians with a range of casual attitudes to create more versatile images.

Building on Caravaggio’s narrative strategy and descriptive mode of

393 Mina Gregori, “Dal Caravaggio al Manfredi,” in Brejon de Lavergnée, Manfredi e la Manfrediana Methodus, 13. 394 As Feigenbaum points out, the earliest tavern scenes in Western art were inspired by the parable of the prodigal son as he squanders his inheritance in lowly locales. However, with time, tavern scenes became detached from the story, beginning in Italy in the late sixteenth century. Merry-making scenes by or in the style of Manfredi, I argue, should be viewed within this new secularized tradition as there is no apparent reference to the biblical episode in them. See Feigenbaum, “Gamblers, cheats, and fortune-tellers,” 150.

206 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re representation, Manfredi effectively substitutes mood for istoria, hence creating a semantically open image.

The range of attires worn by the characters, which calls up the practice of actors costuming, activates the transformative and performative functionality of the image. The elaborate accoutrements, in fact, are what constitute the figures’ individuality. However, if in certain theatrical traditions such as the Commedia dell’arte, costumes are signifiers of particular full-fledged characters, in

Manfredi’s paintings, they are descriptors of character-types. Hence, these become essential to differentiating the figures and marking their bodies with an identity. Indeed, the costumes become a vital tool in the articulation of narrative, yet by being so conspicuous they reveal themselves as props, or as Pericolo argues in regards to Caravaggio’s painting, “when clothes and objects appear in

[his] pictures, they accordingly exhibit their ‘existential’ fragility, as if their being well-travelled could demystify their fictiveness: their being stock-props in an istoria.”395

It becomes apparent that the many colours, fabrics, constructions, designs, and ways of wearing the various garments make for an infinite number of combinations that enable models to take on a different character in every painting.

For example, a pair of tie-in cream brocade sleeves with a crisscross pattern of dark ribbon and a pair of red tie-in sleeves with matching wrist buttons are worn by different models in the paintings Tavern Scene with a Lute Player, Concert, and Card Players, but combined with a different outfit every time (figs. 3.27 to

395 Pericolo, Caravaggio and Pictorial Narrative, 64.

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3.29). The fact that the bearded drinker in Tavern Scene with a Lute Player wears the matching jerkin to the cream brocade sleeves worn by the lute player in the same picture denotes a deliberate attempt at mixing up attires and increasing the disorder associated with merrymaking.

The interplay of assorted attitudes the different characters adopt adds to the feeling of disarray. Manfredi, in fact, assembles a variety of stances and demeanours; this is what Gregori refers to as Manfredian “patchwork.”396 The impression of collage is possibly due to the “naturalistic” method prevalent among Caravaggists of using live models to the detriment of drawing practices.397

For Gregori, this results in the figures coming into view individually. Manfredi’s

Uffizi Concert (c. 1614–16) illustrates this very effect of disconnect between the characters (fig. 3.28). The compositional syntax as a whole also shows incongruity, thus bringing us back to the idea of a disjointed narrative. I argue that this very characteristic of Manfredi’s companies is central to the formation of a new brand of Caravaggistic genre painting put forward by Utrecht painters in which the character-types contained in Manfredi’s half- or three-quarter-length concerts, guardrooms, and tavern scenes are isolated into single-figured compositions. Manfredi’s carefully crafted assemblies of musicians, soldiers, and

396 Gregori, “Dal Caravaggio al Manfredi,” 24. In explaining why Caravaggio refused to work in fresco, Denis Mahon referred to the artist’s way of painting “pezzo per pezzo” (bit by bit, in a piecemeal fashion), a description that is akin to Gregori’s idea of “patchwork” as a defining aspect of Manfredi’s canvases. See Denis Mahon, “Egregius in Urbe Pictor: Caravaggio Revised,” Burlington Magazine 93, no. 580 (July 1951): 233n96. 397 Keith Christiansen observed the same effect in Caravaggio’s Musicians. “The composition reads as a collage of individually posed models, and to some extent that is how it must have been produced…. For an artist who had, up to this point, primarily painted individuals, half-length figures, this piecemeal approach may have seemed an acceptable solution to the problem of a multi-figure, allegorical composition, though its limitations are apparent.” See Christiansen, “Caravaggio and ‘L’esempio,’” 423.

208 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re gamblers can just as easily be disassembled. Indeed, his compositions can be dissected in as much as their figures appear put together as in a mise en scène.

In his examination of the work of Valentin de Boulogne, which was deeply indebted to Caravaggio, and perhaps even more so to Manfredi, Pericolo seems to align himself with Gregori’s description of Manfredi’s approach as

“patchwork.” In his view, the narrative disconnections in Valentin’s Merry

Company with Fortune Teller (1631) cannot be denied (fig. 3.30). Here too, the analogy of theatre prevails in explaining the effect of “assemblage” or

“patchwork” that make patent “its ‘artificiality’—that is,” Pericolo writes, “its staging of actors that, compositionally interdependent, are nevertheless disconnected in separate groups without a unitary plot to keep them together.”398

To sum up in his words, “there is no unity of action whatsoever. . . . the numerous actors . . . recite their own soliloquies.”399

Seventeenth-century commentators made similar observations. Carlo

Cesare Malvasia’s Felsina Pittrice, a written history of Bolognese painting introduced in this dissertation’s Introduction, reports that the Bolognese classicist painter Francesco Albani could not tolerate Caravaggio’s style or imitations of it because he saw it as devoid of istoria or narrative. Albani’s objection is directed at Caravaggistic secular half-figures and expresses apprehension about fragmentary bodies.

But I will say that as it only appears from the waist up, [the figure] is disconnected from the thighs, rid of the legs and the ground it stands on, bereft of perspective, concepts, and expression, and this is what I

398 Pericolo, Caravaggio and Pictorial Narrative, 541. 399 Ibid., 545.

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need to say initially about invention. Come on! Since half-figures have no thighs, no legs, no draperies to reveal the painter’s quality, how much he knows of perspective, who executed it, they are very disconnected. And then, there is the strict obligation not to represent idle acts, just as poets do not introduce words without a purpose, which on the contrary are signifying, intelligible and appropriate.400

Figures without thighs and legs, “ne coscie ne gambe,” are incapable of performing actions, according to Albani’s criticism. His hostility takes aim at the type of figures found in Manfredi’s companies of soldiers, drinkers, musicians, card players, and dice players. He is unsympathetic towards Caravaggistic assemblies of half-figures because, in his opinion, they fall short of conveying narrative content. Following the painter-critic’s reasoning, narrative in pictures made up of half-figures is fractured or crippled. Indeed, Albani associated what he described as impaired narrative with the depiction of fragmentary bodies. In

Albani’s analysis, therefore, half-figures are just as aberrant as Caravaggio’s goitrous woman in Crucifixion of Saint Andrew, and his deformed Mary

Magdalene.

Furthermore, three-quarter- or half-length figures in Manfredi’s companies bask in recreational activities, something that Albani takes issue with in this other passage:

I won’t speak of certain figures that don’t know what they’re doing; if any of them was asked about their doings, and if let’s say they were

400 Malvasia, Felsina Pittrice, 246. “Mà che più? Essendosi introdotto una mezza figura in scena, si fà passare per un’opra intiera, io dirò che questa viene disubligata (mentre è sola del mezzo in sù) dalle coscie, libera è dalle gambe, dal piano, ove posa, libera dalla prospettiva, da i concetti, & dall’espressioni, e quello dovevo prima dall’inventioni.… Ma dico io! Non si essendo nelle mezze figure ne coscie ne gambe, ne I piani che dano a conoscere qual sia il Pittore, come ei s’intenda di prospettiva, chi hà operato; sono molto disobligati. Poi vi è l’obligo stretto di non fare atto che sia otioso cosi come il Poeta non mette parole in darno, anzi significanti intelligibili, e proprie.” Translated in Pericolo, Caravaggio and Pictorial Narrative, 16.

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animated and able to answer questions, they’d say for sure: “I’m a figure idling like that, and still I know that Raphael would have represented me in another attitude, and I wouldn’t even be idling.” It is certain that painters, just like poets, must account for what they do and represent; suppose that one opens ’s poem and reads any octave; one will learn that nothing is without purpose, every word is significant, and everything acts and is appropriate to the subject; painting should be like this—that is, executed with appropriate and signifying actions pertaining to the subject and hence intelligible.401

Pertinence and appropriateness are clearly vital to Albani. Based on Alberti’s concept of istoria, painters were encouraged to depict a variety of figures performing a narrative so long as each of them remained relevant to the subject matter.402 Certainly, eating, drinking, and forms of entertainment such as music and gambling did not constitute suitable pictorial subject matter. In other words, a focus on the pleasures of the body, on embodied subjects, perverted painting itself.

Albani uses the metaphor of the mute/speaking figure to illustrate what he interprets as the absence of narrative: in his view, the three-quarter and half- length figures displayed in indolent poses do not tell a story. He is not entirely incorrect in that the intention of genre scenes is not to recount a tale, but to present the viewer with a tranche de vie. In turn, the viewer is expected to supply

401 Malvasia, Felsina Pittrice, 253–54: “Io non parlo poi di certe figure, che non si sà che cosa si faccino, e à chi li addimandasse à ciascheduna, che cosa fanno, e che fossero come dire annimate, e che havessero facoltà di dare risposta à chi le interrogasse, certo potriano dire io sono una figure, che me nè stò così in darno, e sò ancor io che Raffaelle m’havrebbe per avventura disposta meglio e non mai otiosa, certo è che il Pittore così come il Poeta deve render conto di quello che fà e rappresenta.… Così vorebbe essere la Pittura cioè fatta con atti propri significanti indirizzati come hò detto al sogietto, & intelligibili.” Translated in Pericolo, Caravaggio and Pictorial Narrative, 17. 402 Sinisgalli, Alberti: On Painting, 60. Alberti writes, “In painting, therefore, both the multiplicity of bodies and color is pleasing. I will say that historia in which old men, younger men, youths, boys, women, maidens, children . . . will be present in their own places is very rich. And I will appreciate every richness provided that it conforms to what one speaks about. . . . so an appropriate number of bodies in a historia confers dignity; variety carries beauty.

211 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re the plot by piecing together the narrative elements. Naturally, an everyday scene does not necessitate a set story line because viewers are able to fill in the blanks through experiential knowledge.403 Genre painting substitutes the viewer’s reading of a fixed narrative for the viewer’s participation in the creation of it.

Moreover, the lack of setting in Caravaggistic secular painting certainly amplified

Albani’s impression of narrative deficiency. Essentially, Caravaggistic painting confounded Albani by asking viewers to piece together the narrative elements worked into compositions. In other words, critics like Albani resisted

Caravaggistic painting’s call for the beholder to participate in the re-creation of the istoria by reconstituting the deconstructed narrative.

If, like Marina Mojana writes in her analysis of Valentin de Boulogne’s last known painting, a Manfredian merry company “casts all the actors from

Valentin’s theatre as it happens in the end of the play, when the interpreters come on stage to bid farewell to the public,” the actors continue to move from one canvas—or stage—to another, and resume their performances for new audiences

(fig. 3.30).404 And so, the cast of characters introduced by Caravaggio metamorphose as they migrate to the work of Manfredi, Gentileschi, and other

Caravaggists like Valentin. In each scenario, figures take on different personae.

The characters reprise some existing roles and create new ones in the

403 As Feigenbaum notes, works like Caravaggio’s early secular paintings are set partly in reality, partly in theatrical conventions, but “purport to record neither every-day life nor a performance.” Hence, it is my contention that viewers’ experiential knowledge of both reality and literary or theatrical forms are called upon when viewing scenes like those proposed by Manfredi. See Feigenbaum, “Gamblers, cheats, and fortune-tellers,” 155. 404 Marina Mojana, Valentin de Boulogne (Milan : Eikonos, 1989), 178: “Il dipinto mette in scena tutti gli attori del teatro del Valentin, come avviene alla fine della rappresentazione, quando gli interpreti escono alla ribalta tutti insieme per salutare il pubblico.” Excerpt translated in Periocolo, Caravaggio and Pictorial Narrative, 541.

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Caravaggistic half-figures devised in Utrecht, as the final chapter of this dissertation will clarify.

VI. Conclusion

Among other things, this chapter explored the many transformative qualities of

Caravaggistic secular painting. These are also discernible in the manipulations undertaken to overthrow the conventions of genre painting and viewers’ expectations in regards to it. Though the paintings discussed above showcase low figures or scenes of common, everyday life, the troubling intermixing of realism and theatricality that characterises them calls into question the naturalism of what is being so intently displayed. For example, Caravaggio plays with the ideas of nature and artifice by using performance to conceal and reveal different forms of deception. Contrived behaviours and recurring stock theatrical types, costumes, and props, cast doubt on the boundaries of the familiar.

In exploring this dimension of Caravaggio’s and other Caravaggists’ secular painting, I have emphasised that their works take on a subversive form that reaches beyond traditional iconography and Albertian narrative because, as

Todd Olson puts it, their “pictorial artifice was in many ways enmeshed in social identities that were subject to historical transformation.”405 Unresolved conflicts about identity and the materiality of bodies confront the viewer with a disquieting indeterminacy and leave him or her in a state of uncertainty with regards to the nature and meaning of a representation. Instabilities such as these complexify and

405 Todd Olson, “The Street Has Its Masters,” 76.

213 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re problematise viewing practices and modes; they both undermine the beholder’s perception and solicit interpretive input. The deconstructed narrative of

Caravaggistic paintings seeks to activate the role of the beholder in viewing processes.

By scrutinizing the fraught operativity of embodiment in Caravaggio’s,

Gentileschi’s and Manfredi’s paintings, I was able to explicate differently the sustained tension between natural and theatrical modes of representation that typifies their secular work. To suggest, like Pericolo does, that “Caravaggio transgresses genre-based codes in ways that are almost imperceptible, in some cases subliminal [with] manipulations . . . even more pervasive in that they do not impose themselves upon the viewer at once [but] act latently by ensnaring beholders into images that feel all too ‘natural,’ [and] whose interpretation is punctuated by subtle twists and wondrous indeterminacy, by visual sleights of hand and shifts of narrative logic,” prompts a clarification of the function of performance within painting.406 Bringing the performative nature of representation to the fore exposes the interconnectedness of realism and theatricality, and provides a new understanding of Caravaggio’s persuasive power of association.407 Faced simultaneously with the entrenched presence of the human figure and the performative enactments models are called to carry out for the sake of representation, the beholder’s own act of viewing becomes a crucial performative part of the creation of pictorial and narrative unity.

406 Pericolo, Caravaggio and Pictorial Narrative, 93. 407 The expression “power of association” draws on Bruno Latour’s a definition of power as the ability to bring others to perform actions. See page 26 in this dissertation’s Introduction and 26n12 for the reference.

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Clearly, this casting about for new ways of fabricating visual narrative— unavoidably yielding to some ambiguity—solicited the active participation of viewers. By moving beyond the normative boundaries of representation and viewership, Caravaggistic secular painting was able to take beholders by surprise and hold their attention. The Utrecht Caravaggists partook in this strategy by re- fashioning the secular works of Caravaggio, Gentileschi and Manfredi into a distinct pictorial sub-genre of Dutch painting, to which I turn next.

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Chapter Four The Usual Suspects: Re-staging Caravaggistic Archetypes in Utrecht

I. Introduction

Gerrit van Honthorst’s exuberant Merry Violinist with a Wineglass (1623) emphatically leaps out from behind a hanging carpet, through a wall opening, and into the viewer’s space (fig. 4.1). The smiling half-figured man brandishes a wine glass, as well as a violin and bow. Life size, the violinist occupies most of the picture plane, and instigates a dialogue with his beholder whose attention he holds insistently by fixing his eyes on him or her, thereby indicating his awareness of their presence. The Merry Violonist sweeps aside the bright red Oriental rug with his left arm and, with his right arm, breaks the line of the window frame or balustrade behind which he stands. While heightening the illusionism of the pictorial space, the figure’s performative movements also draw attention to the devices put in place to create fictional depth. Moreover, details like his unsightly open mouth and red cheeks, deep expressive facial lines, thick eyebrows, flowing curly hair, full beard, and exaggerated body language play up his overwhelming corporal presence. Combined with his intent but playful gaze, it causes an effect of self-consciousness that prompts many interrogations about this type of painting, especially in regards to the modes of viewership it establishes. How does it address the beholder? And, more generally, how do isolated secular half-figures set within unarticulated spaces create narrative content? The line of reasoning built up across the preceding chapters of this dissertation helps to answer these interrogations in the present chapter.

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Hence, this final part of the thesis analyses the response of the Utrecht

Caravaggists to Caravaggio’s (as well as to Bartolomeo Manfredi’s and Orazio

Gentileschi’s) secular half-figured compositions in view of the function, examined thus far, of corporeality and performance in their painting practices. It is concerned with questions of viewership and, based on the investigations of the previous chapters, provides a fresh understanding of the secular half-figures that make up a large segment of Utrecht’s Caravaggistic output.

As a conceptual tool, Gilles Deleuze’s notion of “theatre of repetition” is useful for reflecting on key formal and iconographic features shared by the paintings under consideration, and on the reflexive responses they solicit from viewers. Deleuze theorizes the “theatre of repetition” in terms of the “experience

[of] pure forces, [of] dynamic lines in space which act without intermediary upon the spirit, and link directly to nature and history, with a language which speaks before words.”408 This experience can be connected to the familiar tropes— invitations to revelry and sexual subtexts are among those studied below—

Utrecht’s Caravaggistic secular half-figures employ to activate viewers’ narrative participation. To operate, a “theatre of repetition” relies on the coercive power—

“terrible power” in Deleuze’s words—of the “apparatus of repetition” to engage various agents (artists, models, beholders) in the creation of meaning.409

Given the serialised products created in Utrecht, this chapter argues for a two-fold understanding of repetition. One the one hand, it operates as a form of branding as the Utrecht Caravaggists seek to put a stamp on Dutch art with a

408 Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 12. See also pages 32–33 in this dissertation’s Introduction. 409 Ibid.

217 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re distinctive mode of pictorial expression. On the other hand, repetition activates a process of recognition and engagement through the replication of familiar forms.

These functions are complicated by the fact that realism is repetitive in nature, given that it strives to repeat forms seen in nature. Nevertheless, repetition should be recognized as a potential process of change. This chapter accordingly emphasizes how the meaning of images can be altered through repetition.

Moreover, it also explains how the innovative mode of address of

Caravaggistic half-figured paintings from Utrecht articulates different forms of association. While a number of connections involving artists, patrons, viewers and even pictorial characters were brought forward in previous chapters, I here explore how some of these connections interact, and to some extent, shape viewing modes as a result of the narrative shifts they generate. Ultimately, this final chapter aims to show ways in which relationships between the art of

Caravaggio and that of the Utrecht Caravaggists, relationships between prints and paintings, between the figures that populate them, and with their viewers dovetail in this unique body of works, which was created within a time span of less than ten years.

Section Two takes its cue from the visual prototypes found in Caravaggio’s,

Manfredi’s, and Gentileschi’s work and looks at the makeover they undergo through the work of the Utrecht Caravaggists. These permutations provide familiar archetypes for Dutch audiences, who are thereby encouraged to identify with characters. Hence, this dissertation’s broader interest in mobile, changing identities is explored in this section. The mix of low figures in the Utrecht

218 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

Caravaggists’ secular works can be made sense of through the idea of a cast of characters that take on different personae as they move from one canvas to another.

Around 1625, images of these familiar figures begin circulating also in printed form, thus complexifying viewing modes and engaging broader audiences.

When taken as a group, engravings after the Utrecht Caravaggists’ half-length single-figured secular paintings form an isolated cluster of Dutch Caravaggistic printed imagery.410 Yet, they have never been analysed as a body of works. To address this omission, Sections Three and Four examine the output of engravings published from 1625 to about 1630 after the Utrecht Caravaggists’ half-length single-figured secular pictures. My analysis focuses on investigating how these prints function in regards to viewership, and how they interrelate with other art forms. I propose a new way of articulating these structures that breaks with past studies, and brings to light unexplored connections. I consider accompanying verses and their aptitude to further alter viewing modes and change perception.

Versification as a vector of narrative is the focus of these sections’ explorations.

Consequently, these textual variations through which prints take on a new guise form a primary interest of Section Four. While this section can only consider part of these alterations, the Appendix provides a complement by inventorying several variants.

The distinctive body of works this chapter examines constitutes the initial impetus for this dissertation. Ultimately, this chapter, as well as the work

410 For an explanation of the significance of this group of prints see the first section of the Appendix.

219 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re undertaken thus far, seeks to restore the significance of images disregarded as derivative, tangential and repetitive. By drawing attention to their sheer number, by uncovering their sources, discovering the various forms of connections they establish, and reconstructing the novel modes of viewing through which they generate meaning, this chapter and overall dissertation propose a new way of considering the secular single-figured works of the Utrecht Caravaggists.

II. Rehearsing Real Life: Turning Gods into Drinkers, Castrati into Street

Musicians and Saints into Whores

In the previous chapter I noted that Joachim von Sandrart defined the

“Manfrediana methodus” as a visual formula that assembled drinkers, players and musicians around a table to form a merrymaking scene. These figures, as Sandrart underlined and as Albani criticised, are normally depicted in half-length. The

Utrecht Caravaggists, I explained, decomposed Manfredi’s notorious assemblies into individual bust-length and half-length figural canvases.411 These, in turn, hark back to their original sources: Caravaggio’s half-length secular compositions.

Although the Utrecht paintings are embedded in an Italian—more precisely

Roman—pictorial convention, this section shows that they can be seen as a response to Dutch viewers’ expectations by engaging their interests in this type of picture. Subject matter thereby diversified as the Utrecht Caravaggists recognised the potential appeal of such compositions and created a unique strain of Dutch

411 We also saw in the previous chapter that Manfredi had an important following among other Caravaggists: Valentin de Boulogne, Nicolas Regnier and Nicolas Tournier all copied and made their own versions of Manfredi’s gathering scenes. However, their assemblies were produced mostly after the Utrecht Caravaggists had already returned to the Netherlands. See note 10 in this chapter for an explanation of Honthorst’s rapport with large merrymaking scenes.

220 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

Caravaggistic imagery. Through this metamorphosis, the Utrecht paintings reassess their original Italian sources, and connect with Dutch pictorial traditions in ways that have not been investigated before. In the following paragraphs, I illustrate this process with the help of secular half-figures by Gerrit van

Honthorst, whose oeuvre is the largest and most varied among the Utrecht

Caravaggists.

Looking at one of his earliest pictures of this type, Smiling Young Man

Squeezing Grapes (1622), the pictorial and conceptual relationship between

Utrecht half-figures and Caravaggio’s earliest works, Boy with a Basket of Fruit and Sick Bacchus, takes on its full meaning (fig. 4.2). While the two deliberately ambiguous Roman paintings are reconciled in Caravaggio’s fully resolved Uffizi

Bacchus (c. 1595), Honthorst’s Smiling Young Man Squeezing Grapes proposes a sophisticated synthesis of all three Bacchic figures (figs. 3.1, 3.2, 4.3).412 The figure’s proximity to the picture plane—which it occupies entirely—asserts the narrative significance of the body, whereas the single action it executes emphasizes performativity as a means of narrative. This is a scheme replicated from Caravaggio’s first paintings, and accentuated in Honthorst’s even more closely cropped framing of the subject matter. The Dutch painter makes his quotation clear by borrowing the all’antica costumes, muscular constitution, and partly exposed upper bodies of the Roman specimens. More specifically, the shape of Smiling Man’s bare shoulder espouses, in reverse, the sensuous trapezius

412 Looking at all three of Caravaggio’s works in sequence, a narrative appears to develop in that while the fruit vendor proffers a variety of produce to his viewers, the Sick Bacchus has elected grapes, which he clasps in his hands, close to himself. In the Uffizi picture, in contrast, a fully identifiable Bacchus holds a delicate wide drinking vessel filled with wine over a bowl of overripe fruit, as if signifying the prominence of the sweet nectar over the perished fruits.

221 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re of the Boy with a Basket of Fruit, which, I argued, pointed to an overt form of simulated realism. Like him, he holds a vessel to his chest with his right arm.

Only, instead of carrying fruits, he firmly squeezes a bunch of grapes in his left hand, as if quoting Manfredi’s Bacchus and a Drinker, but compressing them even more violently between his fingers (fig. 3.17).

Indeed, Honthorst’s rendering is a complex citation of Caravaggio’s early

Bacchic figures and fruit vendor, but also of Manfredi’s Bacchus and a Drinker.

Comparing the facial features of Honthorst’s Smiling Man with those of

Manfredi’s Bacchus provides sufficient evidence that the former references the latter. With their double chins, wide-flared lips, toothy grins, prominent smile lines, droopy-tipped noses, round faces, and wide set eyes, the two figures share obvious physiognomic similarities. By referencing Manfredi’s Bacchus and a

Drinker, Honthorst transfigures the Italian Bacchus into a new Dutch prototype, which generated the prolific imagery of topers (merrymaking drinkers) that begin to appear in Utrecht starting in 1623. As such, Smiling Young Man Squeezing

Grapes can be thought of as a bridge between the earlier Bacchic figures of

Caravaggio and Manfredi, and later Utrecht works like two paintings titled Merry

Violinists with a Wineglass, both dated 1624 (figs. 4.4, 4.5). These new drinking characters seamlessly infiltrate the panorama of Dutch genre imagery, and were popular with both local patrons and elite foreign collectors judging from Ter

Brugghen’s Bass Viol Player with a Glass (1625) purchased by Charles I of

England in the years following its creation (fig. 4.6).413

413 Ter Brugghen’s Bass Viol Player with a Glass is documented for the first time in Charles’ collection in the late 1630s, and was possibly purchased on his behalf by Sir Dudley Carleton

222 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

It is equally important that, like Manfredi’s Bacchus, Honthorst’s Smiling

Man is extracting juice from wine grapes, an act described as a representation of excess by Linda Freeman Bauer.414 By replicating the playful mischievousness of the Roman models, the figure crushing grapes does not intend, in my opinion, to sublimate excesses, but instead expresses the body as a site of transgression, change, and unstable essences. The symbolic meaning of the crushing of grapes is far less critical to this dissertation than its significance as a transformative operation that stresses the performative function of painting and of the figures within it, as proposed in the previous chapter. It is by means of this performance and metaphorical transformation that the Smiling Man converts Roman Bacchic models into characteristically Utrecht topers.

Pushing this process of performance and transformation further, Honthorst combines Caravaggio’s and Manfredi’s ahistorical conundrums into a construct that continues to favour the performative role of the human figure over iconographic exactitude. Acting and posing are proclaimed as inherent to representational processes in Smiling Young Man Squeezing Grapes, in which

Honthorst clothes his model in all’antica garbs, but dresses his head with a feathered beret that has nothing to do with either antique or contemporary costumes. Rather, the beret is a theatrical prop that “belongs to the realm of

before the latter’s death in 1632. See Benedict Nicolson, Hendrick Terbrugghen (London: L. Humphries, 1958), cat. no. A35; Bok and Kobayashi, “New Data on Ter Brugghen,” 14, 14n59; Slatkes and Franits, Ter Brugghen, 31–32, 188 (under cat no. 73). 414 Linda Freeman Bauer, “Moral Choice in Some Paintings by Caravaggio and His Followers,” Art Bulletin 73, no. 3 (Sept. 1991): 391–98. Her argument concerns the subject matter of the Getty Museum’s Bacchante with an Ape (1627) by Ter Brugghen. See note 16 in the present chapter for more on this work.

223 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re entertainment,” as Judson remarks.415 Another clue to identifying the figure as a performer is the slight di sotto in su perspective said to indicate, as in many of

Honthorst’s single half-figures, the positioning of the artwork “high on the wall to simulate the appearance of an actor.”416 Looking at it from below gave viewers the impression the figure stood on stage to perform. The physical presence of the figure with its anachronistic costume and lack of context function as a deliberate disassociation from recognizable classical figures like Bacchus, while concurrently forging direct links to contemporary performance and entertainment.

However, by omitting any type of contextualization, the painting does not project the viewer into the space of a theatre where he or she can indifferently watch the entertainer at a distance; instead the vivid painted figure confronts the beholder with his immediate presence as if to engage in a one-on-one interactive performance.

An analogous narrative strategy is employed in one of the best known

Caravaggistic half-figures from Utrecht: Honthorst’s Merry Violinist with a

Wineglass, with which I began this Chapter (fig. 4.1). This painting dismantles ideas about the staticity of works adhering to a fixed model of representation.417

In addition, it challenges the archetypal composition on which this very model is

415 Judson, Honthorst, 195. 416 Ibid. 417 As mentioned in note 126 of Chapter One of this dissertation, Honthorst, while in Italy, had himself produced a few large Caravaggistic tavern scenes with musicians of the type Manfredi first devised. It seems Honthorst did not isolate the merrymakers from his larger compositions until 1623, the year Merry Violinist with a Wineglass was painted. See Judson and Ekkart, Honthorst, 190. Honthorst’s Rijksmuseum Merry Violonist (signed and dated 1623) is his earliest known example of single figure (see Judson and Ekkart, Honthorst, 16). After this point, genre painting became a staple of his repertoire. The same is true of Ter Brugghen and Baburen, for whom no genre scenes are known prior to their return from Italy, although it should be remembered that the former’s Italian production is completely unknown while the latter’s is known only through a handful of religious works.

224 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re based: Caravaggio’s Lute Players. The Dutch artist’s critique is nowhere more apparent than in the use of an oriental rug as a stage curtain. Because it is startlingly reminiscent of the red rug in Caravaggio’s del Monte Lute Player, I argue Honthorst’s Merry Violinist openly cites the Roman picture and concurrently turns it on its head (fig. 3.14). Whereas the rug in Caravaggio’s painting serves to display musical instruments and madrigal part-books—objects of knowledge and love—Honthorst’s rug-curtain articulates a dissident theatrical response. By calling to mind the visual strategies of theatre and farce, the rug- curtain stresses the staged construct representation entails, on the one hand, and, on the other, expresses a parodic take on Caravaggio’s Lute Player. In a sense, it boldly pokes fun at the act performed by the castrato in Caravaggio’s painting by effectively unveiling and presenting Honthorst’s thoroughly masculine figure.

Contrary to Caravaggio’s castrato, Honthorst’s rustic type is physically inscribed with the virility castrati are condemned to reclaim and recite time and again by using their powerful voices to affirm their male identity, as I explained in the previous chapter.418

Furthermore, when compared to the singing castrato’s plump lips, parted to produce an angelic, seductive sound, the Merry Violinist’s toothy grin lets out a subversive laugh that seems to satirise Caravaggio’s painting.419 Their respective musical instruments differ in a similar manner. The del Monte castrato has elected

418 For more on this see page 196 in Chapter Three of this dissertation. 419 Exposed teeth and gums in genre painting indicate, according to Wayne Franits, an inferior societal group (see Judson and Franits, Ter Brugghen, 52). On the other hand, bouts of laughter were considered therapeutic in the early modern period, “breaking up the black bile that could congeal into melancholy,” as Angela Vanhaelen writes in Comic Print and Theatre in Early Modern Amsterdam: Gender, Childhood, and the City (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), 86, 86n62.

225 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re the lute over the spinet, recorder, and violin that lay before him. His choice is not random, for the lute was considered in the seventeenth century as the foundational and primary musical instrument—the “queen” of all instruments.420 In contrast, violins were played at peasant or family gatherings, and at popular festivals in the

Netherlands. For the viewer of the painting, the association with popular forms of entertainment would have been evident.421

Similarly to Caravaggio’s two Lute Players, Honthorst’s Merry Violinist with a Wineglass addresses the viewer in a direct, unsettling way. It forcefully commands his or her attention through strategies of representation that hinge on embodied viewership as much as on embodied pictorial portrayals. The picture (or the figure in it) and the viewer are enmeshed in a concomitant performance through which a scenario is composed. Even so, Honthorst’s Merry Violinist distorts the exalted rapport of devotion instilled by Caravaggio’s Lute Players; instead, it tempts the viewer with lowly enticements, supplanting spiritual love with carnal excesses. Honthorst thus replicates and reconsiders Caravaggio’s intermixture of realistic and theatrical modes of representation.

The plot is determined by the viewer’s reaction to the violinist’s incitement to make merry. The berkemeier glass in his left hand holds the key to the outcome. Filled mid-way with wine, it seems to cheekily signify that some

420 Ian F. Finlay, “Musical Instruments in 17th-Century Dutch Paintings,” Galpin Society Journal 6 (July 1953): 54. The German Composer Michael Praetorius (1571–1621) called the lute “fundamentum et initium” of all music, while another contemporary writer described it as “Reginam musicorum instrumentorum omnium.” 421 Finlay, “Musical Instruments in 17th-Century Dutch Paintings,” 56. De Jongh and Luijten, Mirror of Everyday Life, 201, 203n7–8, specifies that previous to being regarded as a suitable instrument for polite society towards the end of the seventeenth century, the violin was reserved for street and tavern musicians, and was thereby associated with rowdy merrymaking and dancing.

226 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re drinking has already taken place, and that more is to come. The berkemeier’s visible thorn-like prunts on its stem are not strictly ornamental, but allow the greasy hands of a tipsy reveller like the Merry Violinist to easily grip the glass.422

The viewer is provoked to ponder whether the glass is half-full—an invitation to join in the merrymaking—or whether it is half-empty—an incitement to turn away from the violinist’s prickly proposition.

In a related painting, Singing Elder with a Flute (1623), Honthorst’s concept can be seen, once again, to reference and playfully mock Caravaggio’s

Lute Players (fig. 4.7). Given the subject matter, date, size, format, and structure behind which the figure stands, Singing Elder with a Flute has been associated with Merry Violinist with a Wineglass.423 Like the Italian Lute Players he is singing from part-books, but his inability to recite his song without reading the parts, and the pince-nez clipped to his nose—likely a sign of foolishness and false

422 Johann Mathesius (1504–1565), who was a pastor in a glassmaking district of western Bohemia, is as noted for being a friend and biographer of Luther as he is for a sermon on glassmaking in which he deplored, “nowadays, one applies buttons, prunts and rings to glasses to make them sturdier. Thus they can be held more easily in the hands of drunken and clumsy people.” See Johann Mathesius, Die Predigt vom Glasmachen (1562), quoted in Edward Dillon, Glass (London: Methuen, 1907), 253. 423 Jay Richard Judson had suggested in an early publication that the two works were pendants (see Judson, Gerrit van Honthorst: A Discussion of His Position in Dutch Art (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1959), 109), a theory refuted in Cornelia Moiso-Diekamp, Das Pendant in der holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt am Main and New York: P. Lang, 1987), 346 (under 2B). In his 1999 catalogue raisonné of Honthorst’s paintings, Judson was visibly preoccupied by the idea of pairs and pendants in his many attempts to connect paintings in twos. However, similarity in size and composition can also be ascribed to the repetitive processes the production of half-figured secular paintings in Utrecht entailed. That said, figures that face each other are more likely to form pairs than those who look out at viewers. Hence, Judson evoked the possibility that Honthorst’s Merry Violinist with a Wineglass and Singing Elder with a Flute could have been part of an allegorical series representing (see Judson and Ekkart, Honthorst, 190–91). Works like the Getty Museum’s Bacchante with an Ape (1627) by Ter Brugghen, which likely represented Taste in the series of Five Senses offered as a prize at the Delft archery competition of 1631 along with 4 other senses by other Utrecht painters, are more easily categorized as allegories because of their fanciful character, which departs from the usual realism of Caravaggistic secular half-figures.

227 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re knowledge—identify him as an amateur entertainer.424 His costume, which pre- dates the seventeenth century and seems to reference a style observable in Van

Leyden’s works, for instance, lays emphasis on the actor’s pretence (see figs.

3.10–3.12). In this way, his attire and spectacles become tools of ridicule and parody.

Moreover, Honthorst’s Singing Elder—who does not make eye contact with his audience—is wholly immersed in his performance. A parallel can be found in the work of Jan Steen (1626–1679) whose rederijkers are also absorbed by the texts they recite (figs. 4.8 and 4.9). By offering an altered vision of a solo singer holding an instrument, Honthorst’s close-up representation of an older, wrinkled, and amateurish performer challenges the archetype provided by

Caravaggio with a hint of typically Honthorstian self-irony.425 Concomitantly, it offers Dutch audiences a more familiar character-type and a more familiar form of performance. A visual comparison of Honthorst’s Singing Elder with a Flute and

Merry Violinist with a Wineglass with Steen’s two representations of Rederijkers at a Window instantaneously points to parallel modes of popular entertainment.

Rederijkers (rhetoricians) were members of amateur dramatic societies that offered public performances throughout the Low Countries. Steen’s paintings in which a rederijker surrounded by his peers recites a lyric or song out of a

424 Spectacles in Dutch imagery of the seventeenth century often implied foolishness, false knowledge, and moral blindness. See Charles E. Letocha, “Early Prints Depicting Eyeglasses,” Arch Ophthalmol 120 (November 2002): 1577–80. 425 Generally speaking, Honthorst’s half-figures are more boastful and naughty than those of Baburen, Ter Brugghen and Bloemaert, which stresses their tongue in cheek humour.

228 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re window or balcony depict or draw on these popular performative practices.426 By extension, the vine-covered window and draped balcony in Steen’s representations relate to the unusual settings in which Honthorst situates his

Singing Elder and Merry Violinist. If these two characters were not meant to depict actual rederijkers, they openly draw on conventions of popular performances in the same way that Caravaggio’s Lute Players draw on the private recitals at which castrati often sang.427

Honthorst’s work revisits the structures of impersonation that provided a basis for Caravaggio’s single-figured secular paintings. A similar reworking of

Caravaggistic types can be seen in Honthorst’s paintings of half-length female figures. In Chapter Three, I described how Orazio Gentileschi metamorphosed

Caravaggio’s Lute Players into the first known Caravaggistic single half-length female musician: the Young Woman with a Violin of c. 1612 (fig. 3.19). Although construed as a representation of Saint Cecilia, a transitory quality transpires from

Gentileschi’s figure, making us aware of her carnal condition. Despite casting a common female model, Gentileschi’s rendering remains elegiac by recalling the virtuous Cecilia, a second-century Roman martyr who preserved her virginity

426 For more on how Steen’s work connects with Chambers of rhetoric (Rederijkerskamers), as these dramatic societies were known, see Mariet Westermann, The Amusements of Jan Steen: Comic Painting in the Seventeenth Century (Zwolle: Aanders Uitgevers, 1997); S. J. Gudlaugsson, The Comedians in the Work of Jan Steen and His Contemporaries (Soest: Davaco, 1975); Albert Heppner, “The Popular Theatre of the Rederijkers in the work of Jan Steen and His Contemporaries,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 3, no. ½ (Oct., 1939–Jan. 1940): 22–48. 427 Gudlaugsson had suggested as early as 1938 that Honthorst’s Merry Violinist was possibly a rhetoricians’ fool dressed in a late-Burgundian theatre costume. See S. J. Gudlaugsson, Ikonographische Studien über die Holländische Malerei und das Theater der 17. Jahrhunderts (Würzburg: K.J. Triltsch, 1928), 30, 68. In a similar proposition, Hermann Braun, evoked the possibility that the Merry Violinist represented the jester Monsieur Peeckelhaering. See Hermann Braun, “Gerard und Willem van Honthors” (PhD Dissertation, Göttingen, 1966). See also Judson, Honthorst, 190, for a brief summary of the arguments.

229 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re through her marriage. The music this saint played as a prayer to God on the day of her betrothal, however, does not resonate from Honthorst’s depiction of a coquettish Young Woman Playing a Violin (1626). This decidedly unsaintly figure holds her bow using the French grip characteristically employed for playing popular dance music (fig. 4.10).428

Though Honthorst’s playful violinist bears a certain resemblance to

Gentileschi’s saintly musician, Honthorst’s figure concurrently calls up models of

Dutch courtesans, and thus belongs equally to the world of brothels (see fig. 4.11, for instance).429 Half-length portraits of courtesans are known from Crispijn van de Passe’s Le miroir des plus belles courtisanes de ce temps (A Looking Glass of the Most Beautiful Courtesans of These Times), a printed gallery of such portraits first published in 1630.430 On the volume’s frontispiece appears a brothel interior decorated with the portraits of available courtesans from which patrons are asked to make their selection (fig 4.12).431 These portraits enacted sexual significations, and thereby proclaim the potency of images.

428 In the French grip, the right thumb is placed below the hairs of the bow, as opposed to between the hairs and the stick. See De Jongh and Luijten, Mirror of Everyday Life, 201; Louis Peter Grijp, “Survey of Musical Instruments,” in Music and Painting in the Golden Age (The Hague, 1994), 365. 429 It was Honthorst who created the first depictions of single-figured female musicians in Utrecht, rather than Baburen or Ter Brugghen, as had been the case with male musicians. See Slatkes and Franits, Ter Brugghen, 203 (under cat. no. A81). 430 This volume featured courtesans from across Western Europe and was printed in four languages: French, Dutch, English, and German. The title page, however, was printed in the first three languages only. 431 In a memoir of his travels, French dramatist Jean François Regnard described thus in 1681 how brothel patrons in Amsterdam based their choice on portraits of available courtesans: “Il n’y a peut-être point de lieu après Paris où le libertinage soit plus grand qu’à Amsterdam; mais ce qui est de particulier, c’est qu’il y a de certains lieux où demeurent les Acoupleuses, qui gardent chez elles un certain nombre de Filles. On fait entrer le Cavalier dans une Chambre, qui communique à plusieurs autres petites Chambres, dont vous paiez les Portes et au-dessus le Portrait, et le prix de la Personne qu’elle renferme; c’est à vous à choisir, et on ne fait point sortir l’original que vous n’aiez paié le prix de la taxe: tant pis pour vous si la copie a été flâtée.” A. de Marsy, Voyage de

230 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

Likewise, Young Woman Playing a Violin makes an appeal to her viewers.

A seductive gaze, an enticing smile, a plush feathery headdress, and an alluring outfit made of bright glistening fabrics are all visual ploys calling to mind the worldly tricks she turns. Using these accessories as lures, the life-size body of the female violinist is provocatively marked as the locus of visual and carnal pleasure. The two are intrinsically connected here and contribute to the production of narrative matter, or put differently, of an enacted fantasy. Viewers are drawn into the picture by the colourful cloth bow at her waist that holds her garment together, a strategy used by Caravaggio in his Bacchic pictures. Above it, her right hand, which holds another type of bow, is positioned over her bare breast. If the viewer accepts the invitation to make sweet music with her, she will wilfully reveal her bosom. Narrative is thus shaped by the sexed body of the violinist and the contingent exchange that ensues. Through erotic possibilities, the image offers the beholder more than what is made visible through painting.

In this way, Honthorst’s Smiling Man, Merry Violinist, Young Woman

Playing a Violin, and other Utrecht secular half-figures engage their beholders in a reciprocal performance, prompting them to enact a narrative. Examples of multipart performances are also known. Two paintings of single-figured female musicians were possibly displayed side by side in the gallery of Stadtholder

Frederik Hendrik (1585–1647), Prince of Orange, at Noordeinde Palace in The

Hague. These works operate on the same basis as the works analysed above (figs.

Regnard en Flandre, en Hollande, en Danemark et en Suède (1681) (Paris: A. Lemerre, 1874), 38–39. See also Seymour Slive, Frans Hals, vol. I (London: Phaidon, 1970), 91–92; Judson, Honthorst, 179.

231 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

4.13, 4.14).432 Because the attention of the women in the pictures seems to be directed at someone other than the viewer, the two works together create a network of gazes; thus the mechanisms for fabricating narrative are altered in that a single beholder is no longer the only other player. Though the two do not make eye contact, they interact with each other as one musician-courtesan appears to be sounding a note on her guitar for the other, who is tuning her lute.433

Hendrick ter Brugghen’s Fife Player and Flute Player of 1621, two of the earliest Caravaggistic half-figures created in Utrecht, are even more in tune with one another (figs. 4.15, 4.16).434 The musicians, each framed by comparable nondescript backgrounds, face one another while playing their respective instruments, practically ignoring the beholder. Whereas the first is clothed in a similar fashion to the tax payer in Ter Brugghen’s Le Havre Calling of Saint

Matthew, the other sports an attire that is consistent with Dutch representations of

432 Both listed in the 1632 inventory of Noordeinde Palace as hanging in His Excellency’s gallery, the two figures are cited as hanging together for the first time in a 1793 catalogue. See Judson, Honthorst, 176–77 (under cat. no. 222). According to Judson, it seems unlikely that these two works were originally hung together with Honthorst’s 1624 Concert (Oil on canvas, 168 × 178. Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. no. INV 1364) as proposed originally by Albert de Mirimonde, “L’accord retrouvé de Gerrit van Honthorst,” La Revue des arts 10, no. 3 (1960): 105. Interestingly, Judson insists on not calling representations of musical groups ‘concerts’ because most don’t imply the presence of an audience (see Judson, Honthorst: A Discussion, 199). Instead, I would argue that even representations of single musician find an implicit audience in the beholder. 433 Judson, Honthorst, 177 (under cat. no. 222). 434 Whereas Flute Player is signed and dated “HTB (monogram) rugghen fecit 1621,” Fife Player is signed “HTB” (monogram) but undated. A production date of 1621 can be inferred for it. Abraham Bloemaert’s earliest single half-length genre figure in the Caravaggistic style, a Flutist, also dates from 1621 (oil on canvas, 69 × 57.9 cm. Utrecht, Centraal Museum, inv. no. 6083B). This popular theme goes ultimately back to Giorgione and to Lucas van Leyden as Alison McNeil Kettering notes in The Dutch : Pastoral Art and Its Audience in the Golden Age (Totowa, N.J.: Allanheld, 1983), 37–38. See also Roethlisberger and Bok, Bloemaert and Sons, 222 (under no. 285. However, it is unclear who of the Utrecht Caravaggists introduced this typology (see Blankert, “Caravaggio und die nörlichen Niederlande,” 34).

232 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re shepherds (figs. 2.11, 4.17).435 Based on opposing differences—particularly the instruments and costumes—as well as corresponding neutral settings, a seemingly unbroken common provenance, and consistently matching canvas sizes, the two compositions can be imagined to form a pair.436 If the first one conveys the idea of an urban musician, the other reflects a rural ideal; the two “link the shepherd and the tavern entertainer,” as Alison McNeil Kettering writes.437 Together, and with the complicity of spectators, they play a concert.

435 For a contemporary example of a shepherd’s costume in Utrecht imagery see Crispijn de Passe’s print of the shepherd Coridon in figure 4.17 after a painting by the late Utrecht Caravaggist Jan van Bijlert (c. 1597–1671). De Passe used the image in his painting manual Della luce del dipingere et disegnare (Amsterdam, 1643). Kettering also identifies Ter Brugghen’s Flute Player as a shepherd (see Dutch Arcadia, 35). As for the costumes worn by the Fife Player and the tax payer, they are evidently not those of seventeenth-century Dutchmen. Nevertheless, it is unclear what their origin and function are. In S. J. Gudlaugsson, The Comedians in the Work of Jan Steen, 40, 44, Gudlauggson identified this type of dress with slashed sleeves, breeches and feathered hat as a colourful sixteenth-century Burgundian costume used in Dutch seventeenth- century theatre. More recently, Jonathan Bikker, Gianni Papi, and Nicola Spinosa. The International Caravaggesque Movement: French Dutch and Flemish Caravaggesque Paintings from the Koelliker Collection (London: Robilant + Voena, 2005), 32, 44, affirmed that such costumes were erroneously categorized as Burgundian theatrical dress and related instead to the bravi Caravaggio and Manfredi portrayed. Hence, they write, “such costumes likely serve as a distancing device, removing the picture and its ‘inappropriate’ subject matter from the realm of the every day,” with which Blankert, “Caravaggio und die nörlichen Niederlande,” 24–25, appears to concur, adding that such costumes were not considered typical, but instead marked the figure as absurd or old-fashioned. Interestingly, the striped garments worn by Caravaggist ruffians could possibly signify their marginal status. On this, see Franits, Baburen, 134, who refers to Michel Pastoureau, The Devil’s Cloth: A History of Stripes and Striped Frabic, translated by Jody Gladding (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991) for an account of the long pictorial and literary history connecting stripes and marginal social groups. Moreover, in his emblem book Sinnepoppen (Amsterdam, 1614), 154, Roemer Visscher illustrates a dandy that is “only good for playing a bit of music,” as Elizabeth Alice Honing writes in “Country Folk and City Business: A Print Series by Jan van de Velde,” Art Bulletin 78, no. 3 (Sept. 1996): 525, 525n64 and “to display himself in a parade,” to continue with Visscher’s own words. He is dressed in a similar fashion to Caravaggistic tavern goers. 436 Both paintings were recorded as measuring 73.1 x 56.6 cm in sales in 1768, 1819, and 1834 and both measure 70 x 50 cm today. Leonard Slatkes believed the two compositions were, in fact, created as a pair. See Slatkes, Baburen, 176–77 (under cat. nos. A61 and A62). Today the pair hangs in Kassel’s Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister. 437 Kettering, Dutch Arcadia, 36. In “Über das Musizieren in der spätmittelalterlichen Stadt,” in Das Leben in der Stadt des Spätmittelalters (conference proceedings of the International Kongress Krems an der Donau, 20–23 September 1976) (Vienna, 1977), 119, n34, Helmut Hundsbichler discusses the contrast between urban and rural cultures, and situates within this contrast, the opposition between “urbanitas and “rusticitas” in music. See also Paul Vandenbroeck,

233 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

By isolating concert musicians, topers, and courtesans into single-figured compositions, the Utrecht Caravaggists mediated the excessive feasting that typifies representations of kermises prevalent in Dutch art, and Caravaggistic merry companies. Plucking characters from centuries-old performative and pictorial traditions, they re-constituted these through a complex narrative apparatus that integrates viewers into a collaborative mode of corporeal signification. Despite their intricate performative possibilities, the paintings themselves remain quite simple in their configuration. With their fairly easily replicable scheme, median format, and accessible subject matter, the widespread appeal of these paintings is evidenced by their sheer numbers.438

In the process of translation through which these types of paintings moved from a Roman context to a Dutch context, their protagonists transform: typically

Dutch stock characters emerge out of the archetypes provided by Caravaggio and already partly altered by Manfredi and Gentileschi. The stock characters of traditional Dutch genre paintings, are given a fresh outlook and new topicality by the Utrecht Caravaggists. By way of repositioning themselves, set apart from the

Roman patronage system in which they began their careers and into a production structure mostly based on potential markets developing in Utrecht and across the

Low Countries, the Utrecht Caravaggists re-contextualized secular half-figures.

This is in line with the “trend in the northern Netherlands at the beginning of the

“Verbeeck’s Peasant Weddings: A Study of Iconography and Social Function,” Simiolus 14, no. 2 (1984): 85n29, 101n138. 438 As Slatkes writes, “judging from the numerous replicas, copies, versions, and variant versions of [these] pictures … it is clear that the demand for [these] works was rather high.” See Slatkes and Franits, Ter Brugghen, 52. Compared to both history paintings and multi-figured genre paintings of equal size, secular single-figured paintings would have been less expensive.

234 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re seventeenth century away from allegorical personification and towards the type- casting of exempla,” as Hessel Miedema expressed it.439 By participating in the elaboration of a Dutch convention while at the same time introducing a foreign mode of pictorial expression, Utrecht Caravaggism was able to appeal to local and international interests.

III. Recast: Caravaggistic Half-Figures in Print

The Utrecht Caravaggists took cues from the Roman street, curial, and aristocratic life depicted by Caravaggio in Boy with a Basket of Fruit and Lute

Players and gave this mode of representation a local resonance. Dirck van

Baburen’s Young Man Singing—a representation of a street singer, perhaps accompanied by the weary sound of a worn-out lute portrayed in a companion painting—illustrates this transformation (figs. 4.18, 4.19).440 This next section entertains the idea that as migrant performers, these figures are called to move from one art form to another.

The perpetual displacement introduced above moves our understanding of these figures, prompting us to reconsider repetition as a means of establishing distinctive new modes of signification. The medium of print provides these figures with another platform from which to perform their antics. Viewed as a group, printed Caravaggistic single half-figures present themselves as a series of

439 Hessel Miedema, “Realism and Comic Mode: The Peasant,” Simiolus 9, no. 4 (1977): 207. 440 Described as a “travelling singer” in Jochen Sander and Bastian Eclercy “Einleitung (Introduction),” in Caravaggio in Holland, 11, the figure bears the signs of a less than noble life- style: uncombed hair, unevenly shaven beard, suntanned face, outdated outfit. Leonard Slatkes’ and Wayne Franits’ respective arguments regarding Baburen’s Lute Player as a possible pendant to Young Man Singing are formulated in Slatkes, Baburen, 89 and Franits, Baburen, 134. Franits also describes in detail, on the same page, the “shabby” state of the lute in Baburen’s Lute Player.

235 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re acts. Though each character assumes a different identity, they all perform some kind of entertainment. By setting them within the realm of amusement rather than allegory, this section seeks to locate these prints in a more relevant context than has hitherto been proposed. It thereby uncovers how, in combining a new form of realism with contemporary forms of entertainment, the Utrecht engravings invested centuries-old festive figures with a modern sense of comic relief.441 More precisely, explicit connections to some of the most popular entertainment genres in early seventeenth-century song, pastoral, and even carnival music, are brought to light.

These correlations—all intelligible to contemporary Dutch audiences— provide interpretive frameworks that cleverly compensate for the lack of conventional setting in these engravings. Though entirely divorced from their usual accomplices and familiar milieus (inns, brothels, carnivals, and kermises), individual printed half-figures are re-contextualized through their performative acts. Through this process, they re-connect to one another, and also create links with beholders. In other words, low-life characters and viewers are brought together, thus breaking social, pictorial, and spatial hierarchies. Not unlike their life-size painted counterparts, their negation of the social spaces where activities of entertainment normally take place contributes to the porosity of boundaries.

Conversely, by negating borders, this imagery insistently calls attention to them.

In this manner, printed figures, by way of a medium that crossed class, gender,

441 On the topic of realism and the comic mode in seventeenth-century Dutch art see Svetlana Alpers, “Realism as a Comic Mode: Low-life Painting Seen through Bredero’s Eyes,” Simiolus 8, no. 3, (1975–1976): 115–44.

236 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re and spatial boundaries, redrew the rapports with viewers instituted by the paintings they reproduce.442

A painting by Honthorst and a print which replicates it illustrate the network of connections established by this type repetition (figs. 4.20, 4.21). Old

Woman Singing Street Songs (mid 1620s) adopts the usual compositional format of Caravaggistic half-figures. In it, a bust-length bespectacled woman singing from an illegible loose sheet she holds in her hands occupies a plain dark background. Her disagreeable appearance is typified by a hook nose, a prominent chin, scanty dentition, cavernous wrinkles, and stout hands, thus presenting yet another counterpoint to the singing Lute Players Caravaggio proposed a little over two decades earlier, as well as to Honthorst’s own attractive musical courtesans.

With this other age-old stock Netherlandish figure, Honthorst introduces the rustic elderly type into the cast of Caravaggistic characters that move about the pictorial stage set up in Utrecht. Though construed as a satirical allegory of Hearing (one of the five senses), this old crone is better understood as part of the dramatis personae put together by the Utrecht Caravaggists in their individual half- figures.443

442 Mostly used to interpret paintings to which they relate on the basis of verses in their lower margins, these prints have not been studied in and of themselves (one exception is De Jongh and Luijten’s entry on Theodor Matham’s Young Woman Playing the Violin after Gerrit van Honthorst in Mirror of Everyday Life, 199–203, under cat. no. 38). It should be duly noted that these prints were not necessarily made in close collaboration with the painters whose work they reproduce. Consequently, they are better understood as autonomous works which function independently of the paintings and differently from them. Much more affordable than paintings, they did not share the exact same audience, which makes them all the more worth investigating. For a similar opinion see Wayne Franits, “Genre Painting by the Utrecht Caravaggisti and Its Contemporary Reception,” 406n4. 443 Josua Bruyn, et al, A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings I (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1982), 403; Josua Bruyn, “Jung und alt-Ikonographische Bemerkungen zur ,” in Hendrick Hendrick ter Brugghen und die Nachfolger Caravaggios in Holland, edited by Rüdiger Klessmann.

237 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

The printed version, in contrast to the painting, is informed by text that enables the figure to be read at a level other than allegorical. By way of text, she addresses the viewer in a direct manner, not unlike the Caravaggistic works studied up to now, though with a slightly different narrative strategy. Because the physical impact of the painted life-size figures cannot easily be replicated in a small format, print makers developed alternative modes of engaging viewers.444

The engraving, in fact, clearly connects the figure to contemporary low forms of entertainment. Judging from the (engraved) sheet from which keywords can be deciphered, she is singing festive songs.445 The print explicitly reproduces a music sheet with two songs by Dutch poet and playwright Gerbrand Adriaensz Bredero

(1585–1618), known for his realistic and farcical literary style, which inspired a number of Dutch pictorial artists.446 The first song, the eponymous “Arent Pieter

Gijsen,”—written in a coarse dialect like many of Bredero’s poems—is part of a group of songs the author markets as amusing entertainment (“boertige

(Braunschweig: Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, 1988), 69; Judson and Ekkart, Honthorst, 183 (under cat. no. 230). Suggested by Bruyn, the idea that Honthorst’s figure is an allegory of Hearing seems to be supported by Judson accordingly to the title under which the painting appears in his catalogue raisonné of Honthorst’s oeuvre (i.e. Old Woman Singing Street Songs (Hearing)). 444 Section IV further elaborates on these strategies of address. 445 The markings on the painted sheet of music do not spell out any actual words unlike those in the print, which otherwise repeats Honthorst’s composition in a reasonably precise manner. 446 Both songs were published as part of the posthumous edition of Bredero’s Boertig, amoureus en aandachtig groot liedboek (Amsterdam: Cornelis Lodowijcksz, 1622). For a more recent edition see F. H. Matter, G.A. Bredero’s Boertigh, amoreus, en aendachtigh groot lied-boeck (’s- Gravenhage: Tjeenk Willink and Noorduijn, 1979). The writing on the sheet in the print spells out: “LIEDEKEN / Stem / Arent pieter / Fobert / EN / Lobbe” (A LITTLE SONG / Voice / Arent pieter / Fobert / EN / Lobbe). For other examples of artworks that use Bredero’s oeuvre as a source see Elizabeth Alice Honig, “Country Folk and City Business: A Print Series by Jan van de Velde,” Art Bulletin 78, no. 3 (Sept. 1996), 511–26 (particularly, 523–25, and 523n58 for two other references on the same subject by S.J. Gudlauggson); Linda Stone-Ferrier, “Gabriel Metsu’s Vegetable Market in Amsterdam and Its Relationship to a Bredero Farce,” Artibus et Historiae 13, no. 25 (1992): 163–80; P.J.J. van Thiel, “Moyaert and Bredero: A Curious Case of Dutch Theatre as Depicted in Art, Simiolus 6 (1972–73): 29–49.

238 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re vermakelijcheyt”).447 It tells the story of a young and debonair city dweller and five of his companions who attend a rural celebration in Vinkeveen, a village in the province of Utrecht. Intending to observe peasant revels, the group inevitably winds up joining in on excessive drinking, dancing and frolicking. When a fight erupts, one local is killed and six others injured, prompting the town crier to contend, “take heed of the lesson: avoid peasant festivities.”448 Drawing on a form of amusement popular with seventeenth-century Dutch urbanites—that of watching country folk—this tale warns against the dangers of judging, ridiculing, and ultimately mingling with the rural class.449 By physically and symbolically overstepping the bounds of his own class by partaking in peasantry parties, Arent

Pieter Gijsen was guilty of inordinatio, of disrupting the social order.450

Though not specifically portrayed as a peasant, Honthorst’s singer—made all too real by the painter’s descriptive treatment of her physicality—is associated to another marginalized group: elderly lower class types.451 The elderly peasant’s physiognomy and perceived propensity to behave irrationally was often used as comic motif in pictorial representation. In this way, the withered Old Woman

447 Alpers, “Realism as a Comic Mode,” 117 (and 140–41 for the transcript and translation of Bredero’s preface to his collection of poems in which he explains the function of these works and his use of “rustic” language); Hessel Miedema, “Realism and Comic Mode: The Peasant,” Simiolus 9, no. 4 (1977): 214; Dennis P. Weller, : Painter of the Dutch Golden Age (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 2002), 38. The last sentence of the song, which contains the moral of the story, is not, however, written in dialect. 448 Weller, Molenaer, 38. 449 Svetlana Alpers, “Bruegel’s Festive Peasants,” Simiolus 6, no. ¾ (1972–1973): 174. As Weller, Molenaer, 38, testifies, several other contemporary songs feature this theme. 450 In Cornelis Verbeeck’s (c. 1590–c. 1637) peasant weddings, it is the peasants who are guilty of inordatio by playing the musical instruments of the higher classes (see Vandenbroeck, “Verbeeck’s Peasant Weddings,” 118). 451 The engraver responsible for this print, Cornelis Bloemaert, son of Abraham Bloemaert, aptly rendered the figure’s physiognomy. See the first section of the Appendix for more on Cornelis Bloemaert.

239 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

Singing brings up questions about the anatomy of social distinctions and the slippages entailed by such categories, as beholders are caught between being a spectator, and singing along to the beldam’s familiar tune. Contemporary Dutch viewers’ engagement with the unlikely songster—and with viewing practices more generally—are problematized in Arent Pieter Gijsen’s own engagement in peasant watching, and, in fine, in his partaking in their rowdy celebrations. In other words, the establishment and overstepping of social bounds both divide and unite the pictorial character and the viewer, who can either concern him- or herself—like the town-crier in Bredero’s tale—with the didactic significance of

Arent Pieter Gijsen’s fate as sung by the old crone, or take advantage of the moment to participate in the entertainment she offers.452

This choice is exactly what appears to be at stake in the figure’s crude admonishment to those who would be tempted to mock her singing, rather than join with her. This cautionary invitation, which takes the form of a verse engraved in the margin below the printed image, proclaims:

Die met mijn spot gaet vrij van hier, Ick sing een deun op mijn manier. (He who makes fun of me goes free from here, I sing a tune in my manner.)453

Through her act of singing “Arent Pieter Gijsen,” which interrogates conventions of social behaviour, Old Woman Singing challenges the hierarchies of social order, to which she, herself, is subjected. In doing so, this portrayal of an old hag is imprinted with a comic realism that crossed over all levels of society. The verse

452 As Svetlana Alpers suggests, Bredero’s poems “unabashedly invite us, the readers to partake of what … we can call a pleasurable feast.” See Alpers, “Realism as a Comic Mode,” 121. 453 Translated in Roethlisberger and Bok, Bloemaert and His Sons, 521 (under cat. no. CB4); Judson and Ekkart, Honthorst, 183 (under cat. no. 230).

240 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re that accompanies the image echoes her dismissal of social norms, and calls for harmony between performer and viewer, to which the latter must contribute by crooning along. By considering the figure’s summons and Bredero’s song in ways not explored before—and thereby showing how they resonate with one another— we are able to move past an allegorical or iconographic interpretation.

Intertextuality and intermediality are also useful for understanding the interrelations established by two other single-figured prints after Honthorst:

Young Woman Playing the Violin (1626) and Merry Violinist Holding a

Wineglass (1627) (figs. 4.22, 4.23).454 Though not conceived as pendants from the outset, the two prints make contact with one another through the Latin verses in their lower margins, both signed by Dutch writer and historian Peter Schrijver

(1576–1660), better known by his Latinized name Petrus Scriverius.455 As a man of letters, Scriverius possessed vast knowledge of classical and contemporary literary material, which he astutely blended in the captions devised for the above- mentioned prints, positioning them within a current literary and visual trend: the pastoral.456

454 Unlocated, Honthorst’s painting reproduced in the engraving Young Woman Playing the Violin is known through a handful of painted copies. Judson and Ekkart, Honthorst, 180 (under cat. no. 226). 455 The lack of visual connection between the printed figures and the two different production dates cast doubt on the pair having been conceived as pendants. Nevertheless, they share the same engraver (and painter), mise-en-page, typescript, inscriptions and dimensions. That they may have been paired as an afterthought is evidence by their mutually referential captions. For more on Scriverius, see P. Tuynman, “Petrus Scriverius, 12 January 1576–30 April 1660,” Quærendo 7, no. 1 (winter 1977): 4–45. 456 Pastoral, the artistic expression of an idealized image of rural life, surfaced as a prevailing musical, literary, and theatrical genre in Western Europe at the turn of the seventeenth century. The literary pastoral mode took root in the Netherlands in the first decade of the century, and by the 1620s, pictorial artists produced the first pastoral works in the Netherlands. The Utrecht Caravaggists, and the Utrecht school at large, contributed significantly to this pictorial trend. Baburen and Honthorst were in fact the first to put into image scenes from the most popular of Dutch pastoral plays in their paintings Granida and Daifilo of 1623 and 1625 respectively, which

241 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

The female-figured print boasts,

Vultu, voce, chely, vestitu prodiga Phyllis. Pamphile, quid credas hanc sibi velle? virum. (What, Pamphilus do you think the prodigal Phyllis wants. With her face, voice, instrument and attire? A man).

And the male-figured print responds,

Pamphilus insani percussus flore Lya’i, Sic amat. et quorsum? sic quoque Phillis amat. (This is how Pamphilus loves, as drunk as a fool on Bacchus. And what for? Ah well, that’s how Phyllis loves too!)457

The names Pamphilus (from the Ovidian elegiac comedy Pamphilus) and Phyllis

(from Ovid’s Heroides) do not appear in the same works of Ovidian literature.458

It is Scriverius who connects Pamphilus the lover and Phyllis the shepherdess in these, thereby pastoralizing the two engraved figures and connecting them through erotic verses.

Even though she wears her shepherdess dress and broad-brimmed hat decorated with flowers, this violin-playing Phyllis has been lured to the big town by a city slicker.459 As the verse verbalizes, she beguilingly plays her violin—

depict passages from Pieter Cornelisz. Hooft’s (1581–1647) Granida written in 1605 and published a decade later. For more on the Dutch pastoral mode see Kettering, Dutch Arcadia. 457 Both verses are translated in De Jongh and Luijten, Mirror of Everyday Life, 201. In Judson and Ekkart, Honthorst, 180 (under cat. no. 226), 190n2 (under cat. no. 240), the somewhat awkward translations read: “Phyllis luxurious in facial expression, voice, violin and dress. What do you think Pamphilus that she really wants? A husband” and “Pamphilus under the influence of the flower of the foolish Lyaeus (wine of Bacchus). So in love, and for what? So Phyllis loves also.” 458 For other classical sources using Phyllis as the name of a shepherdess see De Jongh and Luijten, Mirror of Everyday Life, 201, 203n11. 459 In poet Daniel Heinsius’ “Pastorael” of 1616, Phyllis, Kettering says, was “corrupted by the pernicious ways of The Hague, seduced by a stedsejonker (well-to-do ‘city slicker’), transformed into a creature who is wild, undisciplined, and fickle.” See Kettering, Dutch Arcadia, 51, and 143n28 for a Dutch transcript of the said poem by Heinsius; Judson and Ekkart, Honthorst, 180. Despite being dressed in the fashion of a shepherdess, this female figure shares the features of Honthorst’s courtesan violinist analysed in the previous section. Her prominent eyes, rounded medium-arched eyebrows, small open toothful mouth, rounded double chin, and thick neck are fairly similar. If not one and the same, the two models certainly share an air of familiarity.

242 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re connotatively standing in, perhaps, for the female body—to seduce him.460 He, in the fancy urban outfit and plumed beret associated with Caravaggistic inn scenes, interrupts the melody, looking away and nonchalantly squeezing the violin under his arm to enjoy a tall flute of wine and get “drunk on Bacchus.” Building on the imagery submitted to him, Scriverius’ verses read like a repartee to Bredero’s process of “clothing city sins in country dress.”461 In these prints’ reversed masquerade, the country is cloaked in urban wickedness. So too are the poet’s wits—spiffily composed in the more civilized Latin, as opposed to the boorish vernacular tongue spoken by Bredero’s rural savages.462

This devious dressing up hides ugly truths, however, for Phyllis’ charms—

“her face, voice, instrument and attire,” in Scriverius’ own words—are decoys.

Occasionally portrayed as “conniving and deceitful” creatures in Dutch contemporary literature, as Kettering notes, shepherdesses like Phyllis can be seen to perform a travesty of sorts through their tuneful acts, not unlike Caravaggio’s

Fortune Teller, who, through telling fortunes robs her patron of his riches.463 In the end, Phyllis’ lustful eyes looking out at the viewer, rather than at her lover,

460 Could the symbolism of the bow as male genitalia and of the violin as the female body be at work here? According to Maiko Kawabata, “Virtuoso Codes of Violin Performance: Power, Military Heroism, and Gender (1789-1830)”19th Century Music 28, no. 2 (2004): 104, “the violin [in the eighteenth century] stood in for a young woman’s body, which the player coaxed to sound.” For an example of a violin’s eroticized meaning in sixteenth-century Dutch art see De Jongh and Luijten, Mirror of Everyday Life, 201. 461 This is how Alpers describes Bredero’s method of disguising city dwellers in peasant dress and re-naming them in order to camouflage his reprimands on their misbehaviour, as the writer himself explains in his preface to his Groot lied-boeck. See Alpers, “Realism as a Comic Mode,” 117, 142. 462 Bredero was a strong defender of Dutch vernacular against Latinizers. Within this debate, he tried to emphasize Amsterdam and Waterland dialects over the dominating Brabant dialect from the south, which had established itself as the primary literary language in the Netherlands in this period (see Alpers, Realism as a Comic Mode, 120). Scriverius’ Latin verses could also imply that the engraver and poet sought to appeal to more educated audiences. 463 “Conniving and deceitful” shepherdesses such as Margriet from Theodore Rodenburg’s Trouwen Batavier (1601) are present in Dutch literature, writes Kettering, Dutch Arcadia, 50.

243 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re betray her unfaithfulness. In contrast, the painted female Lute Player, which was likely originally paired with Honthorst’s painted Merry Violinist Holding a

Wineglass, is engrossed in her rapport with her male counterpart; “her face, voice, instrument and attire,” face him, not the viewer (figs. 4.24, 4.25).464 Given the absence of physical correlation between the two printed figures (and given the fact they must have been sold as autonomous engravings), their relationship remains solely textual, thereby giving male and female beholders a chance to play the part of the seducee.465

In the print Boy with Rumbling Pot (c. 1625) after Abraham Bloemaert, exchanges, costuming, and performance are still very much part of the mechanism of address, though another type of seduction is at work (fig. 4.26). The child’s endearing smile, tender gaze, and flushed cheeks will make fools of viewers. For

Marcel Roethlisberger the portrayal is in line with Bloemaert’s typically more

“gentle brand of Caravaggism.”466 Quite the contrary, the following analysis shows that the figure elicits the boisterous disruptiveness of carnival. The Boy with Rumbling Pot, I contend, forms an even more raucous retort to the rowdy

Caravaggistic musicians of Bloemaert’s pupils, for compared to the melodious

464 Sharing dimensions, and provenances as far as 1764, these two canvases are believed to form a pair (see Judson and Ekkart, Honthorst, 180, 189–90, cat nos. 240 and 226). In Honthorst’s original composition, the Merry Violinist faces right, and thus makes contact with the female Lute Player. Hence, the relationship between the two canvases and their respective figures is clear, and immediately apparent. Had the engraver reversed the original design for Honthorst’s Merry Violinist on his matrix, the figure would have faced his ad hoc partner. A copy of the print in the opposite direction, that is to say in the same direction as the painting, can be found at the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD, or Netherlands Institute for Art History), but the sheet has been trimmed passed the margins and delivers no further information (RKD images, box ONT G76 as after Honthorst). This copy is not listed in Judson and Ekkart’s catalogue raisonné, nor is it in Hollstein. See the Appendix for further information. 465 Seeing that the two prints were created in different years, they were likely sold separately. 466 Roethlisberger and Bok, Bloemaert, 266 (under cat. no. 398).

244 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re violins of the Utrecht merrymakers, the boy’s rumbling pot, or rommelpot (a friction drum), sounds like a pig’s grunt.467 The body of the home-made instrument consists of an earthenware pot or jug, partly filled with water, to which is attached a stretched membrane pierced in its middle by a stick standing erect.468

Extended over the sound box, the membrane is made to vibrate through the friction of the stick as it is pulled to and fro, thereby creating a hideous rumbling sound.469 The suggestive connotations of the rommelpot were expressed in Jan

Steen’s erotically charged self-portrait as a rommelpot player with his wife

Margriet fingering a recorder (fig. 4.27).470

The rommelpot’s membrane was most frequently made from pork bladder, a traditional attribute of carnival’s fool.471 Pig bladders were always at hand in the days before carnival since slaughtering often took place one to three weeks before

467 Its sound can be heard on the recording “’K Heb Zolang Met De Foekepot Gelopen” track no. 5 on Folksongs and Dances of the Netherlands, with various artists, produced by Will Scheepers MP3, Folkway Records, 1963, FW04036. The rommelpot is also known as foekepot. 468 James Blades, “Percussion Instruments of the Middle Ages and Renaissance: Their History in Literature and Painting,” Early Music 1, no. 1 (January 1973): 16. 469 Finlay, “Musical Instruments in Dutch 17th-Century Paintings,” 62–63. The homemade instrument has been mistakenly identified as a mustard grinder, causing authors to misinterpret the subject matter of Bloemaert’s composition as far back as 1702 in Florent Le Comte, Cabinet de singularités d’architecture, peinture, sculpture, et gravure (Paris, 1702. Reprint, Minkoff, 1972), 243 (as “broyeur de moutarde”); Pierre François Basan, Dictionnaire des graveurs anciens et modernes depuis l’origine de la gravure (Paris: De Lormel, 1767), 58 (as “Le moutardier”); Karl Heinrich von Heinecken, Dictionnaire des artistes dont nous avons des estampes III (Liepzig: J.G.I. Breitkopf, 1778–1789), 34 (as “Le fou du mardi gras,” and “broyeur de moutarde.”) See Roethlisberger and Bok, Bloemaert and His Sons, 266 and this dissertation’s Appendix. 470 For more on Steen’s “dissolute self-portraits,” see the section “The Party Guests That Never Leave: Steen and Van Mieris,” in Ingrid A. Cartwright “Hoe schilder hoe wilder: Dissolute Self- Portraits in Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish Art (PhD dissertation, University of Maryland, 2007), 193–202, especially 193–99. 471 While Blades (see note 61 above) indicates that the membrane is made of parchment, Finlay (see note 62 above) specifies it normally consists in a stretched pig’s bladder. For the pig’s bladder as fool’s attribute see Herbert Schwedt, review of Narrenidee und Fastnachtsbrauch. Studien zum Fortleben des Mittelalters in der europäischen Festkultur, by Werner Mezger, Asian Folklore Studies 52, no. 1 (1993), 216, as well as the publication reviewed.

245 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

Shrove Tuesday—just enough time for the bladders to dry.472 The association of the rommelpot to Mardi Gras festivities dates far back. Pieter Brueghel’s (c.

1525–1569) Battle of Carnival and Lent (1559) famously features a rommelpot player and a bell-ringing fool accompanying beer-barrel-riding Prince Carnival— a personification of Shrove Tuesday (fig. 4.28). As Brueghel’s painting shows, the resounding bawl of the rommelpot in the village streets signalled the start of pre-Lenten decadence. In the city it was also adopted by beggars like Frans Hals’

(c. 1581–1666) roving Rommelpot Player (c. 1618–1622), because of its rudimentary construction, and unsophisticated playing mechanism (fig. 4.29).473

The fool’s foxtail worn by Hals’ destitute street musicians further connects the musical instrument to pre-Lenten celebration, as does the verse on Rommelpot

Player on Shrove Tuesday, a print issued as part of the series Wayfaring

Musicians (fig. 4.29):

Op vasten avont Loopt menich Sotje Om duytjes gnorren op t’Rommel potje (Many fools run on Shrove Tuesday Give up a few pennies to hear the rumbling pot.)474

But if the rumble of the rommelpot was so displeasing to the ear, why would one pay to listen to it? Perhaps the alms given to rommelpot players were more accurately meant to dispel indigent performers and their shrilling instruments. As

472 Ferd. J. de Hen. “Folk Instruments of Belgium: Part I,” Galpin Society Journal 25 (July 1972): 107–8. 473 Finlay, “Musical Instruments in Dutch 17th-Century Paintings,” 62. 474 My translation.

246 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re the Dutch song goes, “I have run so far with the rommelpot and still no money to buy bread. Give me a penny and I’ll be off.”475

The child in the print after Bloemaert’s composition pesters his audience for a different kind of favour. The verse below him implores,

Siet de Vastel-avonts Sot Comt hier met de Rommelpot, Hoort hem singen, lieve man Geeft een koeckjen wt de kan (Look here, the fool of Mardigras Comes with the rumbling pot, Hear him sing, dear man, Give a cookie from the jar)476

Making a rommelpot is child’s play, so in order to win his cookie, the young boy quirkily accessorises himself with the fool’s accoutrements: a string of sausages across his chest, a foxtail with a bell on his back, and a beer jug dangling from his belt.477 The swanky plumed berets of the Caravaggistic tavern-goers have been replaced with a makeshift fool’s headdress on which a wooden spoon, playing cards, and tassels act as whimsical frills.478 Nevertheless, the full bird’s wing on this cocky boy’s hat outshines the feathered caps of Caravaggistic topers.

The household tradition of children going door to door on Shrove Tuesday to play the rommelpot and solicit a handout might have seemed innocent, but it

475 “k’ Heb zo lang met de rommelpot geloupe, k’ Heb ge geld om brood te koupe, rommelspotterie rommelspotterie Geef mich een oortschen, dan goan ich verbie,” is noted as being recited in the Dutch town of at Lent. See De Hen, “Folk Instruments of Belgium: Part I,” 109. 476 Translated in Roethlisberger and Bok, Bloemaert and His Sons, 266 (under cat no. 398). 477 Schwedt, review of Narrenidee und Fastnachtsbrauch ..., 216. 478 The wooden spoon and playing cards could possibly be prodigal references. In fact, Vandenbroeck, “Verbeeck’s Peasant Weddings,” 96, notes that the wooden spoon “was a symbol of greed, gluttony and waste.” In Brueghel’s Battle of Carnival and Lent, playing cards lay on the soil (fig. 4.28). The disguised figure behind the rommelpot player, also wears a hat decorated with a wooden spoon, as does Steen in his self-portrait as a rommelpot player (fig. 4.27).

247 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re initiated youngsters to the immoderations of Mardi Gras.479 Children masqueraded as fools, and even played the part of vagabond musician, in order to fool their audience into feeding them prodigal amounts of biscuits.

Furthermore, the engraving Boy with Rumbling Pot engaged in yet another kind of seduction to persuade prospective buyers to acquire an impression of the print. Indeed, as the largest of the half-figured Caravaggistic prints available in the second part of the 1620s—nearly double the size of any of these same prints, and hence more expensive—Boy with Rumbling Pot had to work twice as hard to seduce potential buyers. In purchasing an impression, collectors were enticed into their own game of gratification on the one hand, and of distraction, on the other hand, in procuring enjoyment and entertainment. But the sweet-faced boy plays down the swine-like sound of the rommelpot, and of carnivalesque letting-go in which people of all levels of society indulged.

By calling to mind diverse amusements like carnival, pastoral, and popular songs, the prints analysed above recast the troupe of Caravaggistic performers they reproduce into a distinct narrative mode. Through its close operative relationship to text, the print medium supplies the figures with another communicative strategy that, in addition to addressing viewers directly, summons their knowledge of a whole cross section of cultural references. In taking part in the narrative process, versification assumes a role in the performance, and additionally lessens potential ambiguity by opening up interpretive paths. The

479 This tradition is represented in Jan van de Velde’s versified print after ’s Shrovetide (see De Jongh and Luijten, Mirror of Everyday Life, 230–1, fig. 4). Bredero too mentions this tradition in his play Moortje (III, 4th scene): “Hier schort niet dan een blaas, of so een romel-pot, om voor der luyer duer te rasen en te singhen” (This apron is not a bladder but a rumbling pot, racing from door to door to play music and sing) (my translation).

248 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re prints, then, act as a site where the relationship between Caravaggistic performers and between them and their audience is reconfigured, and repositioned onto more familiar territory.

By way of conclusion, let us consider how the Caravaggistic half-figured print Man Eating Ham (1625) evokes a Roman archetype, but also carries familiar significations for local audiences (fig. 4.31). Like his urban companions, the furrowed-faced peasant dons a fancy plumed beret, but a beer jug and cured ham have taken the place of wine flutes, berkemeiers, and violins. By taking on the manners of Caravaggio’s Boy with a Basket of Fruit and Sick Bacchus (figs. 3.1,

3.2)—who, like him, are positioned in three-quarter profile to the right, show off their shoulders, clutch their victuals tightly, faintly open their mouths and stare straight out at the viewer—Man Eating Ham winks jokingly at his Roman pictorial ancestors.480 The print does so visually, but also by way of versification, showing Sick Bacchus his own hearty remedy (beer and ham), and accordingly rhyming,

Ick ben gesont, daer toe wat graeg. Dit sijn reckt pillen voor mijn maeg. (I am healthy, moreover I have some appetite. These are the right pills for my stomach.)481

Out of the mouth of this common rusticated type, the unpretentious poem probably rang true for Dutch audiences, for whom peasants were primary actors

480 The Caravaggistic printed figure is the only one who wears his garment off-the-shoulder. Judson, interpreting the painted version of this composition, took the shaft of light coming from the figure’s upper right and falling diagonally on his naked shoulder, and his left arm bent at the elbow, to be recollections of Caravaggio’s Sick Bacchus. See Judson and Ekkart, Honthorst, 186 (under cat. no. 234). By considering the print and its verse, as I have done here, the idea can be pushed further. 481 Translated in Roethlisberger and Bok, Bloemaert and His Sons, 521 (under cat. no. CB2); slightly different translation in Judson and Ekkart, Honthorst, 185 (under cat. no. 234).

249 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re in life’s comedy. As a contemporary commentator observed, “comedies sprang lustily onto the stage, with lighthearted battles amongst the scum of the folk: shepherds, farmers, labourers, innkeepers, landladies, procuresses, prostitutes, midwives, sailors, spendthrifts, beggars and toadies, in fields, forests, huts, shops, inns, pubs, on the street, in alleys and slums, in the meat hall and the fish market; the chatter that goes around there is true to life, and the outcome farcical and pleasant.”482 Though Dutch Caravaggistic half-figured prints form a local company of actors, the customary farcical scenery, absent from the imagery itself, is generated in the viewer’s mind through familiar topoi and versification.

IV. ‘Ik sing op mijn manier’: Transformation through Versification

The print Old Woman Singing Street Songs after Honthorst illustrates how the addition of text to a pre-existing image can entirely change our understanding of it.483 In the previous section, I demonstrated how textual appendages can create links between previously unrelated images, and problematize social and gender relationships. For instance, despite not being specifically connected to any other image, another versified half-figured print provides a counterpoint to the Old

482 Cornelis van der Plasse, whose remark from 1638 is cited here, published the works of Bredero. Translated in Vanhaelen, Comic Print and Theatre in Early Modern Amsterdam, 4. Originally quoted in E.K. Grootes, Het Literaire Leven in the Zeventiende Eeuw (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984), 64. “De blijspelen sprongen lustig op het toneel, met de lichsten slag en het schuim des volks: harders, boeren, werkluiden, warden, waardinen, koppelaarsters, snollen, vroedwijen, bootsgezellen, opsnappers, schooisters en panlikkers; op akkers in bossen, in hutten, in winkels, herbergen, kroegen, op straat, in steegjes en slopjes, in vleeshuis en op vismarkt; de praatjes die daar omgingen, na den man, d’uitkomstem kluchtig en geneogelijk.” 483 Though authors have more often than not used the verses on the prints studied here to interpret the paintings they reproduce, it should be remembered that the original image exists independently of it, and even precedes it most often.

250 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

Woman Singing “a tune in her manner.”484 In it, a shepherd flutist after Dirk van

Baburen offers a reaction to the old crone’s obnoxious singing by exclaiming (fig.

4.32),

De fluijt gaet soet, tgeluijt is eel, Maer heer hoe klinckt een out wijfs keel. (The flute plays sweetly, the sonority is healthy, But Lord, how does an old wife’s throat sound!)485

Even if the two images are possibly unrelated, and function independently of one another, verses allowed contemporary viewers to draw textual connections between the different figures, much in the same way I have been doing in an effort to bring to light an interconnected cast of characters.

The idea of versification as connector explored in the last section triggers interrogations about the slippages in signification that occur when verses are modified. When looked at closely, the alterations to verses on different variants of a same composition bring the agency of text all the more to the fore, and emphasize the entertainment provided by textual play. Through this other set of complex interrelations, the body of Caravaggistic half-figured prints from Utrecht takes on another dynamic. Whereas the last section concerned itself with the creation of associations through versification, the following section is interested in ways in which alterations to verses redefine the nature of these connections. By exploring textual variations in variants and copies of prints, I draw attention to the persistence of these artistic forms and to their transformational character, thus

484 See page 240 of the present chapter for the full verse of Old Woman Singing Street Songs. 485 Translated in Roethlisberger and Bok, Bloemaert and His Sons, 520 (under cat. no. CB1).

251 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re adding another dimension to the creative repetition in which the imagery of the

Utrecht Caravaggists engages.486

Two mirror prints of a Man with Wineglass and Violin after Hendrick ter

Brugghen provide a case in point (figs. 4.33, 4.34). In both engravings, the

Caravaggistic tavern entertainer holds a violin and bow in one hand and a brimful berkemeier in the other. Seen in three-quarter profile, the merrymaker looks straight out at the viewer and exhibits an intoxicated smile. Toothy, bearded, and red-nosed, this model is typical of Ter Brugghen’s coarse male type.487

Despite being likely by the hand of the same engraver, the two prints bear different verses in their bottom margins.488 Scriverius penned the following Latin couplet for the Dutch version of the print:

Si noctis venerilla fidem non servet amanti, Ut ingulet curas, hac miser arma capit. (Should Venerilla not preserve the faith of the night for her lover In this way the poor man arms himself to kill off his anxiety.)489

Once more, Scriverius’ verse is informed by existing literature: Dutch Latinist

Johannes Secundus’ (1511–1536) Elegies.490 One of these amatory elegies, Ad

486 Copies and variants are noted in the Appendix. The number of early copies in circulation speaks to the popularity and wide appeal of Caravaggistic single-figured prints. 487 Although the original painting is lost, its composition survives in a Dutch private collection workshop replica (see Slatkes and Franits, Ter Brugghen, 276, under cat. no. W22). Moreover, the same model appears in the same costume in an autograph painting in the Koelliker collection in Milan (see Slatkes and Franits, Ter Brugghen, 205, under cat. no. A83). The figure in the Koelliker painting is positioned slightly differently, and the violin is seen from the back. 488 It seems quite probable, as De Jongh and Luijten, Mirror of Everyday Life, 266, 267n9, proposes, that the second print is a repetition by the original engraver himself, Theodor Matham. In fact, it could date from his Parisian period given the French verse. See also Slatkes and Franits, Ter Brugghen, 276, under cat no. L38 (replica 2). The dimensions are off by just about ten millimetres less in height and length. 489 The translation and meaning of Scriverius’ Latin verse was kindly provided to me by Dr. Paul Murgatroyd of McMaster University, to whom I extend warm thanks. His publication The Amatory Elegies of Jean Second, trans. by Paul Murgatroyd (Leiden, Boston, Köln: Brill, 2002) proposes the very first English translation of Johannes Secundus’ elegies, to which Scriverius makes reference in his verse. See the following note for more on Secundus.

252 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re somnum (Sleep), is dedicated to his Spanish mistress, Venerilla, to whom

Scriverius’ verse alludes.491 The couplet references a passage in which Venerilla does not turn up for an assignation with Secundus, as promised. Thus, the disenchanted lover in the print—who, through versification, assumes the position of Secundus—engages in merrymaking in order to entertain himself.492

In the slightly later variant, Scriverius’ learned poetry transmutes into the

French refrain,

Je veux mourir au Cabaret Entre le blanc et le clairet (I want to die at the Cabaret Between the white and the claret)493 from a song ascribed to contemporary French poet François Maynard (1582–

1646).494 While the first line of the verse is easily interpreted, the second line is a

French expression meaning to be slightly inebriated (“between the white and the

490 Secundus is recognized as the first prominent Latin poet of The Netherlands. Originally published posthumously by his brothers Hadrianus Marius (1509–1568) and Nicholas Grudius (1503/4–1570) at Hermann Borculus in Utrecht, Secundus’ works were published again in the seventeenth century by Scriverius himself who produced not one, not two, but three editions in his lifetime (1619, 1631, and 1651). Yet, the connection between the poet’s verse for the print under consideration and Secundus’ Elegies appears to have gone unnoticed until now. 491 Ad somnum evokes the battle against sleep Secundus must fight in order to win the love of his girlfriend Venerilla. Fast asleep, Venerilla’s slumber is anti-erotic, and should be reserved for old wives and ugly girls (elegy 2.9, verses 59–60). The only sleep Secundus tolerates is the one that follows lovemaking. See Virginie Leroux, “Refuge ou rival? Sommeil élégiaque et écriture du ‘dormir-veille’ chez Jean Second et ses modèles,” Camenae 5 (Nov. 2008), http://www.paris- sorbonne.fr/IMG/pdf/Article_Leroux.pdf. 492 For the passage see Elegy 2.2. 493 My translation. This variant print bears no other inscription, and the connection to a French song (see note below) has not, to my knowledge, been proposed before now. 494 The song appears as by Maynard in Bulletins de la Société des compositeurs de musique 4 (Paris, 1866), 232–33. See this publication for a more complete French transcript of the song. It also appears to have been partly published as early as 1628 in Le Parnasse des Muses, ou recueil des plus belles chansons à danser, recherchées dans le cabinet des plus excellens poëtes de ce temps (Paris, 1628; repr. Brussels, 1864), 40 (under “chanson 13”), but without the author’s name.

253 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re claret”).495 Narrated in the first person, Maynard’s song relates a tavern drunkard’s passion for his nectar of choice—wine—which he expounds thus:

Dès que la nuit reprend son tour, Je m’enferme dans la taverne, Et n’en pars jamais que le jour Ne fasse pâlir ma lanterne: Je veux mourir au cabaret Entre le blanc et le clairet. (….) Il faut désormais que mon bec Soit toujours plongé dans le verre, Mon gosier dût-il mettre à sec Toutes les caves de la terre: Je veux mourir au cabaret Entre le blanc et le clairet.

(As soon as night falls I lock myself into the tavern And I leave only when the light of day Makes my lantern fade away I want to die at the Cabaret Between the white and the claret (….) Now my lips must always Be immersed in a goblet My gullet must have drained All the cellars in the world I want to die at the Cabaret Between the white and the claret)496

In the engraved French verse then, wine plays the role of the enchantress, effectively taking the place of the long-awaited Venerilla; the tavern, or cabaret, serves as love nest. The lover spends the entire evening and night with his luscious and faithful mistress, his lips wholeheartedly devoted to her. As her sweet elixir pumps through his veins, so one carnal excess gives way to another in this clever adaptation of a Dutch print for French audiences.

495 A wine described as “clairet” or claret is a very lightly coloured red wine. To be “between the white and the claret,” or between two wines, signifies that one is tipsy. 496 My translation.

254 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

In an original French-versed print and its later Dutch variant, the opposite conversion takes place. Drawing from two single-figured paintings by Honthorst in which a laughing violinist makes a vulgar gesture called the forearm jerk, and a smiling courtesan holds up an obscene image, the engraving shows a grinning man in three-quarter profile making a forearm jerk while holding up a miniature portrait of a woman in his right hand (figs. 4.35, 4.36, 4.37).497 The French verse declares,

Comme seul je suis possesseur De ce pourtraict de ma Maitresse, Ainsi le suis-je de son Coeur, Puisque seul Elle me caresse: Tu le peus bien voir comme moy Du reste ce n’est pas pour toy.

(As I am the only one to possess This portrait of my mistress Thus, her heart also belongs to me Because only she caresses me You can see it as well as me As for the rest, it does not concern thee.)498

The verse proclaims the man’s rights over his mistress, of which the miniature portrait operates as a metonymical stand-in.499 The ways in which the male figure possesses his mistress are anticipated in the forearm jerk’s sexual connotations.500

497 The two paintings don’t appear to be related to one another, but that should not prevent us from considering how they combine in the print under consideration. The obscene image held by the courtesan is of a naked woman with her back to her viewers. The ledge she sits on is inscribed with the words “Wie kent mijn nears van afteren” (who knows my ass from behind?). See Judson and Ekkart, Honthorst, 173–74 (under cat no. 215). For Judson’s entry on the male figure see pages 186–87 (under cat. no. 236) in the same publication. For other Dutch depictions of the forearm jerk see De Jongh and Luijten, Mirror of Everyday Life, 314–17. 498 My translation. 499 Could the printmaker (Theodor Matham) be making a statement about invention in this original composition? The fact that he signed the print with the appendage “fe. et sculp.” could confirm so. 500 See Desmond Morris et al., “Forearm Jerk Meanings,” in Gestures, Their Origins and Distribution (New York: Stein and Day, 1979), 80–92.

255 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

Contrary to images in which the viewer is invited to partake in some activity or another, this print’s verse, in essence, asks its viewers to avert their gaze from the sexually charged image, and from the image within the image (the mistress’ portrait). The verse and the forearm jerk elicit erotic reflections, but also simultaneously scorn the peeping viewer’s impure thoughts.501 In a way, the verse articulates the fine line between looking and voyeurism, and between loving and possessing. This is significant in that these bounds are in perpetual flux for art audiences, and for collectors particularly.

The Dutch variant, in reverse of the French-versed print, is less suggestive in its versification (fig. 4.38).502 It gently taunts viewers by asking,

Heeft ijemant oijt gesien soe schoonen velt Goddin als in dees schilderij mijn nijmph die ick bemijn. (Has anyone ever seen such a beautiful goddess of the fields As the in this painting, whom I love).503

This Dutch verse is markedly less risqué than its French counterpart; despite the superlatives used to describe her, the woman whose portrait is displayed is sexualized in less overt ways than in the French verse. In comparing her beauty to that of creatures that exist in myths only, the verse assuages the ardour of her admirer. Used as a distancing device, the Dutch verse suggests a sentimental ideal rather than carnal love. Meanwhile, the explicit significance of the forearm jerk seems to have been lost in translation.

501 Like the fig, the forearm jerk can also express scorn and contempt. See the above source, as well as De Jongh and Luijten, Mirror of Everyday Life, 315, 317n8. 502 With the exception of the curtain in the top left corner, the image is essentially identical. The print bears no other inscription than its verse, making it difficult to establish exactly where and by whom was it produced, and who supplied the verse. 503 Translated in De Jongh and Luijten, Mirror of Everyday Life, 315.

256 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

As I have argued thus far, versification—in part through the repetition of rhythm—carries narrative matter. Thus, by deconstructing the ways in which verses probe their different audiences, I aim to challenge the idea that these images speak for themselves. For the viewer must not only visualize the performance executed by the depicted figure, but must also comprehend the intertextual play of the prints in order to re-form mentally the imaginary scenario.

Pushing this idea further, the section above reconstitutes how (linguistic) alterations to verses can reconfigure rapports between images and viewers.

In addition, multi-lingual versification such as that found on the print

Bagpipe Player leads to many convolutions as Dutch-literate and Dutch/Latin- literate viewers read the following verses (fig. 4.39):

Naribus his fervens nunquam bene sudor olebit, Dum juvat agricolas utriculari melos (The stinging sweat will never smell good to this nose As long as playing melodies on the pipes rejoices the peasants.)

In ploech noch spadij en heb ich sin, soo lang ick hier min duijtien win (I care neither for the plough nor for the spade As long as I earn here my pennies.)504

These were composed by Utrecht city physician Hendrick de Roij, a nephew of

Bloemaert’s second wife. De Roij also authored Latin distiches for Bloemaert’s set of sixteen prints Otia delectant (1620s), in which peasant leisure is seen in a favourable light, as essential to good work, and as beneficial to the peasants as long as it does not grow into laziness and sloth. The Bagpipe Player rests somewhere in between, judging from De Roij’s verses: too lazy to work the land,

504 Translated in Roethlisberger and Bok, Bloemaert and His Sons, 268 (under cat. no. 399).

257 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re he prefers to play music for those who do so. His disdain for rural labour is clear in either verse, but depending on whether one reads the Latin verse or the Dutch verse, his motive for playing the bagpipes differs. Is he entertaining peasants to earn his bread, or is he entertaining himself by watching them “rejoice” and dance?505 The earthy character is neither the pastoral rogue nor the poet Kettering describes.506 Could this unsophisticated musician who mishandles the bagpipes be instead a city dweller dressed up as a rustic, who has come to the countryside to be entertained by the true peasants?507

The print doesn’t give up any secrets, but by way of this section’s counter- proposal to the use of reproductive versified prints as a means of decoding paintings, I hope to have showed that rather than mechanically explaining images, verses complexify viewers’ interplay with them.

V. Conclusion

In the third decade of the seventeenth century, Caravaggistic half-figures abounded in Utrecht. Looking at these, an entire cast of characters from lower

505 Traditionally a shepherd’s instrument used to soothe the flocks, the bagpipes were also played in country feasts, and dances. See Fred. J. de Hen. “Folk Instruments of Belgium: Part II,” The Galpin Society Journal 26 (May 1973): 112. 506 Kettering, “Chapter Three: Pastoral Rogues and Poets: Single-Figure Half-Length Representations of Shepherds,” in Dutch Arcadia, 33–44. 507 Placed awkwardly one next to the other, the hands of this bagpiper could hardly properly finger the chanter, on which the hands should be positioned one below the other so that the fingers can be spread out to cover all eight holes. In Abraham Bloemaert’s original composition (oil on panel, 86.5 x 68 cm. Salzburg, Residenz Galerie, inv. no. 530) the model is holding the bagpipes incorrectly, that is with the drones on the left shoulder instead of the right (see Fred. J. de Hen, “Folk Instruments of Belgium: Part II,” 112.) Was Bloemaert unfamiliar with the way bagpipes were played? That seems unlikely given that his depiction of the instrument itself, is detailed and accurate. His pupil Hendrick ter Brugghen’s preceding examples of bagpipers are, in contrast, technically exact. In the print after Bloemaert’s Bagpipe Player, the drones are placed on the correct shoulder given that the image is in reverse of the painting it reproduces.

258 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re sections of Dutch society comes to life. This imagery is characterized by minimal pictorial contextualization, that is to say that it isolates its subject matter—the human figure—from its milieu. Cut off from the social spaces in which they normally entertain others (brothels, inns, kermises, etc.), the performers enter into an intimate tête-à-tête with viewers. By omitting any reference to contextual spaces of amusement and distraction, this type of imagery relocates pleasure onto bodies. Through a distinct mode of address, viewers are privy to the act, ultimately becoming complicit players. By means of this performance, a narrative structure takes shape. Therefore, the works, as considered here, cast viewers not as voyeurs, but as full actors; the characters, on the other hand, detached from their usual surroundings, are able to enter our world.

Direct links to several overlapping forms of entertainment combine in this distinctive imagery: motifs borrowed from music, literature, festive traditions, and age-old amatory games come together to compose a scenic sequence. In producing this group of images, the Caravaggists and the engravers who reproduced their work created a paradigmatic world that played out on the border between reality and fiction, and opened into a realm of possibilities.

Contemporaneously, they appropriated the bodies of entertainers to perform their own artistic act, ultimately using sophisticated artistry to provide a divertissement that posited image-making as the highest and most illusionistic kind of entertainment, one that could elate the senses (sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch)

259 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re by bringing music, comedy, sex, drinks and food to viewers, in addition to aesthetic delectation, and intellectual stimulation.508

Despite depicting bodily excesses, these ludic representations of merrymaking, singing, lusting, and carnivalesque amusement in many ways elude moralistic implications by licensing an acceptable form of imaginary letting-go via a unique configuration of character–viewer interaction. The provocative push and pull between desire and renunciation, though inherently present, is nevertheless partly remedied as a result of inventive play-acting by means of which the viewer is invited or coaxed into taking on different personae, and engaging in role-play.

While the paintings are characterized by a strategy of direct address, the versification of engravings expands this strategy onto new horizons as

Caravaggistic figures move from one medium to the other. Building upon the narrative structure described above, the addition of verses can modify, enforce, and undermine meaning, as well as generate new ones. Across time and space, verses often mutate, adding another layer to existing understandings and interpretations. Hence the motley crew of stock figures created by the Utrecht

Caravaggists find themselves perpetually playing a variety of comic, parodic, or erotic roles, as beholders are willingly or unwillingly pushed into assuming new personae.

508 Similar points are brought forward in Thijs Weststeijn’s analysis of seventeenth-century art theory The Visible World: Samuel van Hoogstraten’s Art Theory and The Legitimation of Painting in the Dutch Golden Age (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press). For instance, Philippe de Mornay (1549–1623), whom Van Hoogstraten (1627–1678) cites in his treatise, emphasized the role of the senses in filling the mind with “images from the visible world” (116–17), and Van Hoogstraten’s concept of “beweeglijkheid” underlines the role of the mind and of imagination in effecting a moment of realisation and involvement in viewers (185–91).

260 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

This continuous process of transformation and of morphing in and out of identity is key to making sense of Utrecht’s Caravaggistic half-figures.

Considering them as a troupe of migrating performers, moreover, affords a cohesive and comprehensive perspective by drawing together these individual characters. Playing off of dynamic instabilities intrinsic to multiplicity, these works use repetition to move between realistic and comic modes. In this way, the pictures prompt consideration of Deleuze’s constructive reasoning that “repetition belongs to humour and irony; it is by nature transgression or exception, always revealing a singularity opposed to the particulars subsumed under laws, a universal opposed to the generalities which give rise to laws.”509 Conceiving of

Caravaggistic half-figures as changing characters confirms Deleuze’s idea of repetition as a productive process. But it also pushes it further by revealing the transformative power of repetition, and the viewer’s role in activating it. Baburen,

Honthorst, and Ter Brugghen were able to fashion a unique kind of Caravaggistic imagery that operated according to its own rules, and established a multi-layered participatory (but intimate) mode of viewership that has not been investigated until now.

509 Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 5.

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Conclusion

Across the four chapters of this thesis, different manifestations of unstable identities were considered: artistic self-fashioning, physical and spiritual transformations, deceptive imposturing, and the role-playing of performers. In each of these instances, identities appeared to be uncertain and perpetually in flux.

In the last artwork analysed, a Bagpipe Player who presents himself as a low-life musician can also be construed as a deceitful slicker disguised as an idling peasant (fig. 4.39). In an almost exactly contemporary painting by Hendrick ter

Brugghen, a similar Bagpipe Player (1624) favours a sleek beret over the peasant’s worn out hat (fig. 5.1). Moreover, he wears his shirt off-the-shoulder, in the manner of all’antica garb. Unlike the more mature Bagpipe Player who openly addresses viewers by looking straight out at them, and by acting as a first- person narrator in the engraved verses below him, Ter Brugghen’s musician turns away from his audience and presents himself in strict profile. Thus, a change of clothes and attitude turns a roguish bagpipe player into the “pastoral poet” Alison

McNeil Kettering describes.510

By looking at shared features as well as subtle differences in Utrecht’s

Caravaggistic half-figures of the 1620s, this thesis proposes an interpretation of this corpus of works in which differences and repetitions not only co-exist, but also work together towards a transformative aesthetic and narrative fluidity. In the words of Elizabeth Cropper, “repetition and variation testify to originality, serving to reinforce the novelty of the original, to reinforce the notion of authorial

510 See note 99 in Chapter Four of this dissertation.

262 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re possession, and to confirm each artist’s mastery of artifice.”511 Building on this viewpoint, I attempted to situate invention within repetition. The versatility of these half-figures and their intrinsic replicative nature enhanced their appeal to contemporary viewers.512

This unique strain of paintings, which feature a whole set of performers, enabled the Utrecht Caravaggists to reach varied audiences in their homeland and beyond, and to have a wide legacy in Dutch art.513 This imagery, in fact, contributed to the emergence of a fundamental branch of genre painting in the

Netherlands heralded by the likes of (1609–1660), and Frans Hals

(c. 1581–1666) in such works as Gypsy Girl or Peeckelhaering (both 1628–30)

(fig. 5.2).514 Rembrandt’s (1606–1669) —portrait heads featuring expressive faces or bust/half-length stock figures in costume—draw on the figures analysed in Chapter Four of this dissertation.515 The latest tronie by Rembrandt to be identified likely portrays the artist himself, and therefore problematizes well

511 Cropper, “Marino’s Poetry and Caravaggio,” 194. 512 The record breaking sale of Ter Brugghen’s Bagpipe Player (fig. 5.1) at auction in 2009 confirms their appeal for modern audiences too. The price of 10,162,500 USD (premium) attained by this paintings at the sale held at Sotheby’s New York on 9 January 2009 (lot 40) is the highest ever achieved by a work of the Utrecht Caravaggists at auction. The painting was put up for sale by the heirs of Dr. Herbert von Klemperer (1878–1951) to whom the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne restituted the painting in July of 2008. The painting now hangs in Washington’s National Gallery. See also Sander, Eclercy, Dette, eds, Caravaggio in Holland, 8. 513 Baburen and Ter Brugghen died shortly after their return to Utrecht while Honthorst became a portraitist, operating under a classicist style. Locally, the impact of the Utrecht Caravaggists lived on in the work of the late Caravaggist Jan van Bijlert, whose work is defined as softer, less vulgar and somewhat less dynamic in comparison. After 1650, Van Bijlert’s work appears to be dedicated chiefly to portraits as well (see Janssen, Jan van Bijlert, 62). 514 Blankert, “Caravaggio und die nördlichen Niederlande,” 37 posits that Caravaggistic half- figures from Utrecht provided a model for Frans Hals’ and Judith Leyster’s half-figures. In fact, Judson and Ekkart, Gerrit van Honthorst, 189–190 suggests that it may have been Theodoor Matham’s prints after Honthorst’s half-figures that inspired Frans Hals “to paint his allegorical genre scenes representing single-figure musicians and merry drinkers beginning in 1626–27.” 515 Slatkes and Franits, Hendrick ter Brugghen, 165 argues that “it is exactly those new expressive elements [of Utrecht Caravaggistic half-figures] that transcend the typical tronie type and thus attract the attention of the young Rembrandt.”

263 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re the complex issues at work in these inscrutable objects by combining a tronie with a self-portrait (fig. 5.3).

Similarly, the half-figures of the Utrecht Caravaggists appropriate the format reserved for portraits, thereby subverting and destabilizing notions of identity that portraiture creates. Through complex processes of borrowing and interrogating conventions of portraiture and genre painting, Utrecht’s

Caravaggistic half-figures paved the way for new and inherently ambiguous types of painting, such as tronies. In this way, the original band of personages crafted by the Utrecht Caravaggists multiplied and transformed into a host of Dutch characters.

By crafting a distinct visual model, the Utrecht Caravaggists spearheaded a new typology in Dutch art. This affirmation runs counter to the widespread perception of the Utrecht Caravaggists as “non-Dutch” artists.516 Recovering these painters’ place within Dutch artistic and visual traditions has been a driving force for writing this dissertation. Chapters One and Four especially demonstrated the extent to which their work appropriated Italian visual modes and adapted them in combination with long-standing Dutch cultural and visual traditions.

Tracing the two traditions out of which the Utrecht Caravaggists worked

(Dutch and Italian), allowed me to bridge the local/international divide. In this

516 For opinions of the Utrecht Caravaggists as “non-Dutch” see Albert Blankert and Leonard Slatkes, eds., Holländische Malerei in neuem Licht: Hendrick ter Brugghen und seine Zeitgenossen, exhibition catalogue (Braunschweig: Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum; Utrecht: Centraal Museum, 1986), under cat. no. 29. The 1933 catalogue of the collections of Utrecht’s Centraal Museum emphasized the international character of Utrecht painting and pitted it against what was conceived as the “real national style that was achieved in Haarlem in the early 17th century.” See De Jonge, Catalogus der schilderijen. Comparable opinions were still being formulated seventy years later in Maarten Prak, “Guilds and the Development of the Art Market,” 249, in which Utrecht is labeled as the least Dutch artistic tradition based on the Italianate styles that flourished there and on a propensity for history painting.

264 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re way, my dissertation calls for a re-evaluation of the connections between

Caravaggio and the Utrecht Caravaggists. I addressed this by re-thinking the nature of Caravaggism, its aesthetics, and its relation to viewership. More particularly, I chose not to focus on stylistic choices (like chiaroscuro and decontextualization) per se, but instead considered them as visual strategies put to work to accentuate the single most conspicuous element of Caravaggistic painting: bodies. I also shifted my attention from theatricality (an effect) to performativity (a visual strategy based on embodied representation). In so doing, the narrative function of Caravaggistic bodies came to light, and I was able to show how Caravaggio—and the Utrecht Caravaggists after him—reclaimed the body as a narrative site.

This thesis thus shows how three Dutch Caravaggists proposed a counterpoint to the Mannerist aesthetic prevalent in Dutch cities like Utrecht and

Haarlem in which a multitude of naked bodies often strut about, contributing very little to narrativity (for examples see figs. 1.11 and 2.17, and for examples from

Haarlem see figs. 1.13 and 1.14). By dressing up figures or costuming them, and focusing on them through other means such as close-ups, cropping, lighting, segregation, and address, Gerrit van Honthorst, Dirck van Baburen and Hendrick ter Brughen provided a new visual model. This model drew on earlier Northern conventions pioneered by artists like Quinten Metsys and Marinus van

Reymerswaele and combined it with a relevant foreign aesthetic.

The idea of mobile identities introduced in Chapter One prompted a reflection on the transformative processes at work in Caravaggistic art: those

265 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re inherent to bodies and representation, and embedded in images, and those that turn Caravaggio’s Roman works into an acceptable Dutch form of imagery. It also afforded me a fresh way of thinking of Caravaggistic painting as a stage on which different types of protagonists (painters, painted figures, etc.) move about, change disguises as needed, and perform acts. This mapping about of movement, identity shifts and performance in Caravaggism restored corporeality as a vital leitmotif in the development of Utrecht Caravaggism as recounted in this dissertation, as well as in Caravaggistic narrative. In turn, this prompted a phenomenological re- consideration of Caravaggistic narrative and corporeity in view of how these two concepts activate perception, the senses, and consciousness.517

With these investigations, my thesis interrogates the common opinion that the Caravaggists never achieved the psychological depth of Caravaggio’s paintings.518 Because their audience was different, the Utrecht Caravaggists’ artistic project differs from Caravaggio’s. Nevertheless, their interpretation of a pictorial mode rooted in corporeity creates a performative platform, a virtual space that fractures boundaries between representation and beholder. The new and challenging forms of viewership thus generated foreshadow the split hypothesized by Michael Fried between theatricality and absorption in the eighteenth century,

517 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge, 2005), esp. 408. 518 For an example of this take see Judson and Ekkart, Gerrit van Honthorst, 7. Judson’s criticism is aimed at all Caravaggists, saying that “although these artists borrowed Caravaggio’s concepts, they never possessed Caravaggio’s gift for reproducing a direct, warm and human religious scene. Caravaggio’s followers, he continues, attempted to imitate his chiaroscuro effects, however, they were unable to achieve the psychological penetration of the human element which Caravaggio had attained with such vividness through his use of color and light. Caravaggio’s disciples did not understand the spiritual profundity of their ‘master,’ and for this reason, they cannot be too closely associated with the genius from Lombardy.”

266 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re which, as this dissertation shows, is already operating in the secular half-figures of the Utrecht Caravaggists.519

This same tension is carried through into Vermeer’s celebrated domestic scenes. In his depiction of what Michael Fried would describe as “absorbed” musicians in (c. 1664) and of a “theatrical” Young Girl at the

Virginal (1670–72)—who, contrary to the Concert musicians, acknowledges the viewer—the Delft painter can be seen to negotiate different pictorial approaches to narrative and address (figs. 5.4, and 2.19).520 The full-size extrovert prostitute, her client, and a procuress in the painting by Baburen that hangs on the wall in both of Vermeer’s pictures emerge as vicarious stand-ins for the Delft painter’s minute, distant and restrained figures contained within structured and well- defined spaces (fig. 2.18). Looking at Vermeer’s small, intimate, yet remote representations, one can’t help but wonder how the painter himself was prompted by Baburen’s painting when faced with it. Perhaps part of the answer can be found in the artist’s own early rendition of the subject: a large painting with a tight grouping of full-scale exuberant and lustful figures that seem to want to rupture the space between the painting and beholders (fig. 5.5). Indeed, the figures burst out of the pictorial plane at the left and at the top, and form a contiguous mass of bodies that eliminates any sense of depth in the top half of the canvas.

While they can’t be contained by the confines of the canvas, the rug-covered

519 See Michael Fried, Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), in which the eighteenth-century propensity for painted characters that ignore the beholder by either being absorbed in quiet activities or by giving way to self-abandonment is contrasted with “theatricality” or a self-consciousness of viewing. 520 For more on Vermeer’s Young Girl at the Virginal and Baburen’s Procuress see pages 55–56 of Chapter Two of this dissertation.

267 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re balustrade interposes itself in front the unruly, groping characters, as if to keep the sins of the flesh at bay from viewers.

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Appendix

I. Utrecht and Caravaggistic Prints

Printmaking did not gain a foothold in Utrecht until 1611 when artists separated from the saddlers’ guild to form the guild of Saint Luke. This event prompted significant shifts in artistic practices in the city. Most importantly, it encouraged artists to establish their business in Utrecht. Hendrick Goudt (1583–1648) settled in the city that same year, and entered the guild as engraver, as did Crispijn de

Passe I (c. 1565–1637) who moved there in 1612 from Cologne where he had been operating his printmaking business.521 De Passe’s business grew as his children, Crispijn II (c. 1597–c. 1670), Willem (1598–1637), and Magdalena (c.

1600–1638), engaged in the family activity before moving to other countries or before marrying in the case of Magdalena.522

The establishment of the De Passe workshop in Utrecht allowed Abraham

Bloemaert’s son, Cornelis (1603–1692) to study engraving with Crispijn I instead of becoming a painter like his brothers Hendrick (c. 1601–1672) and Andriaen (c.

1609–1666).523 Sometime during the first half of the 1620s, Bloemaert entrusted his son Cornelis with printmaking activities and made him his primary

521 Spicer, “The Role of Printmaking in Utrecht,” 106. 522 Crispijn de Passe II engraved four designs by the late Utrecht Caravaggist Jan van Bijlert (c. 1597, died 1671) as part of his ambitious treatise Della Luce del dipingere et disegnare of 1643, which contains numerous prints after celebrated paintings, and plates showing anatomical details. The four plates after Bijlert represent Arcadian and mythological subjects: Coridon (fig. 4.17), Silvia, Mars and Cupid, and Venus and Cupid. All are shown in half-length. 523 Bloemaert’s fourth and last son, Frederick (c. 1616–1690) also became an engraver but, as noted by Marten Jan Bok, his work is generally referred to only as comparing poorly to Cornelis’ oeuvre. See Roethlisberger and Bok, Bloemaert and His Sons, 527.

269 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re engraver.524 In the decade that followed, he engraved nine half-length single- figured secular prints after paintings by the Utrecht Caravaggists and his father.

Of these prints, three are dated 1625 while the others are undated. Cornelis’ stay in Paris from 1630 to 1633 could explain the French privilege on some of his prints, though not necessarily so. Five more Caravaggistic half-length single- figured prints by Cornelis after (lost) pictures by his father depict religious characters.525

Theodor Matham (1605/6–1676) is the only other contemporary engraver to have reproduced half-length single-figured secular compositions by the Utrecht

Caravaggists: two after Honthorst and one after Hendrick ter Brugghen.526

Matham also authored at least two half-length Caravaggistic prints of his own design.527 In addition, other printmakers copied the Caravaggistic single-figured prints engraved by Cornelis Bloemaert and Theodor Matham. Seventeenth- century copies are noted in the catalogue below.

Only a handful of multi-figured prints after the Utrecht Caravaggists were published in the first half of the seventeenth century. Only two after genre scenes

524 Before this, Abraham collaborated with Jan Saenredam (1565–1607) in Assendelft, Jacob Matham (1571–1631) in Haarlem, Willem van Swanenburg (1580–1612) in Leiden, and Boëtius A. Bolswert (c. 1585–1633) in Amsterdam because Utrecht offered no opportunity to work with professional engravers until 1612. 525 Because of their close similarity in style and composition to the half-length single-figured secular prints, Roethlisberger suggests the first four were created c. 1625 and the fifth one c. 1622–1630. See Roethlisberger and Bok, Bloemaert and His Sons, cat. nos. 286–89, 291. 526 Matham was born in Haarlem to Jacob Matham, one of the engravers with whom Abraham Bloemaert had collaborated earlier in his career. Jacob had received his apprenticeship from his stepfather Hendrick Goltzius who had married the young Jacob’s mother in 1579. Naturally, Jacob then taught Goltzius’ techniques to his own sons, Adriaen (1599–1660), Jan (1600–1648), and the better known Theodor, who went on to engrave the works of a wide array of artists and, most notably, the collections of the Giustiniani sculpture gallery in Rome and of the Reynst brothers, Gerrit and Jan, in Amsterdam. 527 Matham’s two original half-length Caravaggistic prints could have been issued in France during his stay there.

270 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re are known: Crispijn de Passe I’s Backgammon Players after Baburen and

Laughing Man with a Glass of Wine, a Laughing Girl Behind after Gerrit van

Honthorst.528 Reproductive prints after history paintings are also rare. Willem de

Passe’s Saint Jerome in a Landscape with a Lion is the only known one after

Hendrick ter Brugghen.529 The anonymous early seventeenth-century etched rendition of Dirck van Baburen’s Entombment altarpiece in the Pietà chapel in the church of San Pietro in Montorio in Rome also appears to be the only print after this artist’s history paintings to have been possibly produced during his lifetime.530 As for Honthorst, we know of at least two multi-figured history paintings from his Caravaggistic period that were the subject of contemporary prints: Pygmalion and Galatea, engraved by Magdalena de Passe, and

Lamentation, engraved by (1603–1658) for Mgr. Triest (1577–

1657), Bishop of Ghent, who commissioned the altarpiece reproduced in Pontius’ print.531 The scarcity of other types of prints after the Utrecht Caravaggists confirm the singularity of half-length single-figured secular prints after the

Utrecht Caravaggists’ paintings.532

528 These two prints were published in Rotterdam as part of a set of four prints depicting the Four Temperaments. Baburen’s composition serves to illustrate the choleric temperament because of the alleged damaging effect of games, while Honthorst’s composition features as the Sanguine temperament. The set’s other two prints reproduce compositions by Adriaen van de Venne (Melancholic temperament) and Crispijn de Passe I himself (Phlegmatic temperament). See Hollstein nos. 94–97 ad under C. de Passe I. 529 See Slatkes and Franits, Ter Brugghen, cat. no. R9. Ter Brugghen’s painting is not known, but an inscription engraved on the print gives the composition to him. 530 See Franits, Baburen, 89–90 (cat. no. A3 Replica 1; fig. 59). The Rijksmuseum’s impression is no. RP-P-1878-A-481. 531 Judson and Ekkart, Gerrit van Honthorst, under cat. nos. 134 (fig. 59) and 66 (fig. 29). The Rijksmuseum’s impression of Pygmalion and Galatea is no. RP-P-1997-110. 532 A smaller group of prints by Cornelis Bloemaert in the same vein were issued in the same period. They employ the same format, but show boys and animals. See Hollstein 292–296.

271 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

II. Catalogue of Utrecht Caravaggistic Half-Figured Secular Prints

The works below are organized by engraver, with Teodoor Matham’s work appearing first, followed by Cornelis Bloemaert’s prints.

Reproductions correspond to the first listed impression.

The original prints are all engravings.

Dimensions are given height by length.

Signatures, dates, and privileges are noted in the inscriptions. Inscriptions are engraved in the margin below the image unless otherwise noted. The French privileges noted were all granted by Louis XIII (1601–1643).

Verses are all engraved in the margin below the image. Only known verse sources are noted.

References are given in their abbreviated form. Complete references can be found in the “Cited Works.” Literature lists are not necessarily exhaustive.

Lists of impressions are not exhaustive either. They represent a sample only.

Only copies from the seventeenth century are listed.

Abbreviations AVS: Atlas van Stolk BM: BNF: Bibliothèque nationale de France MBVB: Museum Boijmans van Beuningen MET: Metropolitan Museum of Art RKD: Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (box numbers only) RM: Rijksmuseum

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Merry Violonist Holding a Wineglass, 1627 Engraved by Theodor Matham Platemark: 210 × 159 mm; image: 192 × 153 mm

After Gerrit van Honthorst Merry Violonist Holding a Wineglass, 1624 Oil on canvas, 84 × 67 cm , Hermitage Museum (no. 717)

Inscriptions: “G. Honthorst pinx.; “T. Matham Sculp.”; Ludebat Harlemi. P. Scriverius. 1627.”

Latin verse by Petrus Scriverius (1576–1660): “Pamphilus insani percussus flore Lya’i, / Sic amat. et quorsum? sic quoque Phillis amat.”

Verse translation: “This is how Pamphilus loves, as drunk as a fool on Bacchus. And what for? Ah well, that’s how Phyllis loves too!”

Literature: Hollstein no. 39; Judson, Gerrit van Honthorst, 66n2, 139, 227; Jongh and Luijten, Mirror of Everyday Life, 201 (fig. 5); Judson and Ekkart, Gerrit van Honthorst, cat. no. 240 copy 2 (pl. 121).

Impressions: RM no. RP-P-BI-5571; RKD images ONT 676 (in reverse of original; lower margin trimmed off); Fitzwilliam Museum no. 23.I.10-5.

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Young Woman Playing a Violin, 1626 Engraved by Theodor Matham Platemark: 213 × 160 mm; image: 199 × 155 mm

After Gerrit van Honthorst Unknown painting

Inscriptions: “G. Honthorst pinx.”; T. Matham sculp.”; Ludebat extempore / P. Scriverius. 1626”

Latin verse by Petrus Scriverius (1576–1660): “Vultu, voce, chely, vestitu prodiga Phyllis. / Pamphile, quid credas hanc sibi velle? virum.”

Verse translation: “What, Pamphilus do you think the prodigal Phyllis wants. With her face, voice, instrument and attire? A man.”

Literature: Hollstein no. 41 and Hollstein (after Gerard van Honthorst) no. 29. Judson Gerrit van Honthorst, 66n2; Braun, “Gerard und Willem van Honthorst, 210, 211 (no. 70); Kettering, Dutch Arcadia, 141–42n4; Jongh and Luijten, Mirror of Everyday Life, cat. no. 38 (fig. 5); Judson and Ekkart, Gerrit van Honthorst, cat. no. 226 copy 1 (pl. 127). Dekiert, “Musikinstrumente und ihre Bedeutungen,” 71–72 (fig. 37).

Impression: RM no. RP-P-OB-23.327.

Copy A (same direction) Unknown engraver, before 1636 Published by French printmaker Charles David (c. 1600–c. 1636) Platemark: 208 × 149 mm No inscription French verse: “Lors qu’a la violle je marië / Les mignards accens de ma voix / Je fais naistre une desir au Roix / Douir ceste douce harmonië / Et aux charmes de ma beauté / sacrifier leur liberté” Verse translation: “When I play the violin and sing along with my melodious voice, I make kings long to hear this sweet harmony and give up their liberty for my beautiful charms.” Impression: BNF (see Jongh and Luijten, Mirror of Everyday Life, 201, fig. 2).

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Copy B (same direction) Unknown engraver, unknown date Published by Jean Leblond (1590/94–1666) Platemark: 313 × 222 mm Inscription: “Par leblond” Impression: BNF (See Jongh and Luijten, Mirror of Everyday Life, 201, fig. 3).

Note: Matham also repurposed the composition in another print and framed it with an elaborate border (see Hollstein no. 49 or Rijksprentenjabinet inv. nos. RP- P-OB-23.312 and RP-P-OB-23.313).

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Man With Wineglass and Violin, c. 1626–1627 Engraved by Theodor Matham Platemark: 215 × 157 mm; image: 196 × 150 mm

After Hendrick ter Brugghen Lost painting

Inscribed: “H. Terbrug. pinx.”; “T. Matham sculp.”; “Ludebat / P. Scriverius”

Latin verse by Petrus Scriverius (1576–1660): “Si noctis venerilla fidem non servet amanti; / Ut ingulet curas, hac miser arma capit.”

Verse translation: “Should Venerilla not preserve the faith of the night for her lover. In this way the poor man arms himself to kill off his anxiety.”533

Literature: Hollstein no. 45; Jongh and Luijten, Mirror of Everyday Life, 266 (fig. 3) (copy A); Slatkes and Franits, Hendrick ter Brugghen, cat. no. L38 replica 1 (fig. 73).

Impressions: RM no. RP-P-1882-A-6434 ; RKD images ONS 800 Hendrick ter Brugghen 3, folder 6 (2 impressions, 1 of which is printed backwards).

Copy A (in reverse) Engraved by Theodor Matham ? Platemark: 202 × 149 mm; image: 190 × 146 mm French verse from François Maynard (1582–1646): “Je veux mourir au Cabaret / Entre le blanc et le cleret” Verse translation: “I want to die at the cabaret between the white and the claret” Impression: RM no. RP-P-2000-181

533 Translation provided by Dr. Paul Murgatroyd of McMaster University.

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Man with Miniature Portrait, mid/late 1620s (?) Engraved and designed by Theodor Matham Platemark: 207 × 147 mm; image: 191 × 144 mm

Inscriptions: “Theod. Matham fe et sculp” in upper left corner of image; “David ex.” in lower right corner of image; “Avec privilege du Roy.”

French verse: “Comme seul je suis posseleur / De ce pourtraict de ma Maitresse, / Ainsi le suis-ie de son Coeur, / Puisque seul elle me caresse: / Tu le peus bien voir comme moy / Du reste ce n’est pas pour toy.”

Verse translation: “As I am the only one to possess this portrait of my mistress, thus, her heart also belongs to me, because only she caresses me. You can see it as well as me, as for the rest, it does not concern thee.”

Literature: Jongh and Luijten, Mirror of Everyday Life, 315 (fig. 3) as by Theodor Matham (copy A).

Impression: RM: no. RP-P-2000-180.

Copy A (in reverse) Unknown engraver (Theodor Matham ?), unknown date Platemark: 206 × 163 mm; image: 196 × 159 mm Inscriptions: none visible Dutch verse: “Heeft ijemant oijt gesien soe schoonen velt Goddin / als in dees schilderij mijn nijmph die ick bemijn.” Verse translation: “Has anyone ever seen such a beautiful goddess of the fields as the nymph in this painting, whom I love.” Impression: RM no. RP-P-1889-A-14846.

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Man with Wineglasss, c. 1625–1629 Engraved and designed by Theodor Matham Platemark: 210 × 170 mm

Inscriptions: “Theod. Matham fecit [a Paris(?)]” in upper right corner of image; “Avec privilege du Roy”; “Vanmerlen ex.”

French verse: “Tous ses rubis que nous mettons / Au rang des pierres pretieuses / Quest-ce: si nous les comparons / A ces gouttes delicieuses / Qui peuvent, comme dons devins / Rappeller des mors les humains.”

Verse translation: “What are rubies and costly gems compared to these delicious drops, which like divine gifts, can revive humans”534

Literature: Jongh and Luijten, Mirror of Everyday Life, 266 (fig. 5).

Impressions: RM no. RP-P-2003-47; Albertina (Vienna) no. HB 84, fol. 61, no. 102.

534 My interpretation differs from Jongh and Luijten, Mirror of Everyday Life, 266, which offers the following translation: “What are rubies and costly gems compared with the divine gifts [ruby- red and liquid] that make us think of death.”

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Flutist, 1625 Engraved and published by Cornelis Bloemaert Platemark: 182 × 112 mm; image: 140 × 111 mm

After Dirck van Baburen Lost painting

Inscriptions: “Theodorus Baburen pinxit. / C Bloem: sculp / et excud: A. 1625”

Dutch verse: “De fluijt gaet soet, tgeluijt is eel, / Maer heer hoe klinckt een out wijfs keel.”

Verse translation: “The flute plays sweetly, the sonority is healthy, but Lord, how does an old wife’s throat sound!”

Literature: Hollstein no. 284; Le Blanc no. 284; Heinecken, Dictionnaire des artistes II, 5 as “Un homme à demi-corps & en bonnet tenant une flute”; Mariette, Abecedario I, 45. Nicolson, “Postcript to Baburen,” 540 (fig. 36); Slatkes, Dirck van Baburen, cat. no BI (fig. 39); Bok, “Origin of the Flute Player,” 138; Bruyn, “Jung und alt-Ikonographische Bemerkungen zur tronie,” 69, 71 (fig. 84). Nicolson, Caravaggism in Europe, 55 (fig. 1060); Roethlisberger and Bok, Bloemaert and Sons, cat no. CB1 (fig. CB1); Franits, Dick van Baburen, 182 (cat. no. W6 Replica 1, fig. 67).

Impressions: RM no. RP-P-BI-1440; RM no. RP-P-BI-1439 (before the engraver’s signature).

Copy A (in reverse) Unknown engraver, after 1625 Published by Abraham van Waesberge Platemark: 181 × 111 mm; image: 137 × 110 mm Inscriptions: “Theodorus Baburen pinxit.”; “Abram van Waesberghen Excud.” Dutch verse: same as original with slightly different spelling of “tgeluijt” (’tgheluijt). Impression: RM no. RP-P-1889-A-15008.

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Old Woman Singing Street Songs, 1620s Engraved and published by Cornelis Bloemaert Platemark: 182 × 114 mm; image: 140 × 111 mm

After Gerrit van Honthorst Old Woman Singing Street Songs, c. 1621. Oil on canvas, 65 × 50 cm. Haarlem,

Inscription: “G.V.Honthorst. pinxit.”

Dutch verse: “Die met mijn spot gaet vrij van hier, / Ick sing ein deun op mijn manier.”

Verse translation: “He who makes fun of me goes free from here, I sing a tune in my manner.”

Literature: Hollstein no. 297; Judson, Gerrit van Honthorst, 226 (under cat. no. 158); Bruyn, “Jung und alt-Ikonographische Bemerkungen zur tronie,” 69, 70 (fig. 82); Nicolson, Caravaggism in Europe, 128 (fig. 1258); Roethlisberger and Bok, Bloemaert and Sons, cat. no. CB4 (fig. CB4); Judson and Ekkart, Gerrit van Honthorst, cat. no. 230 Copy 5 (pl. 131a); Dekiert, “Musikinstrumente und ihre Bedeutungen,” 90, 92 (fig. 53); Janssen, Grijsaards in zwart-wit, 288.

Impressions: RM no. RP-P-BI-1437; AVS no. 10996 (Van Stolk no. 2111) .

Copy A (same direction) Engraved by Cornelis van Dalen (1602–1665), c. 1630 Platemark: 181 × 111 mm; image: 138 × 110 mm Inscription: “G.V.Honthorst pinxit.” Dutch verse: same as original with minor differences in spelling of “sing” (sinch) and “ein” (een). Impression: BM no. F,3.123 ; RM no. RP-P-1889-A- 15009.

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Copy B (in reverse) Unknown engraver, unknown date Published by Isack Houwens Image: 139 × 108 mm Inscription: “Isack Houwens Excudit” Dutch verse: “Die met myn spodt gaet vry van hier / Ick Sing een deuntien op myn mannier.” Impression: AVS no. 10997 (Van Stolk no. 2112).

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Old Woman with an Empty Purse, c. 1625–1633 Engraved and published by Cornelis Bloemaert Platemark: 156 × 113 mm; image: 132 ×111 mm

After Gerrit van Honthorst Old Woman with an Empty Purse Whereabouts unknown

Inscriptions in lower margin: “Cum privil. Regis Christ. Mi”; H. de Roy M. / cum privil. Regis christ.mi. / G.V.Honthorst pinx: C. Bloemaert Sculp: et exc:”

Latin and Dutch verses by Hendrik de Roij (1598–1679): “Dic mihi quis curis animum maioribus angit, / Flaccidus, an pleno Sacculus ore tumens. / Seg wie is meer met sorgh ghequelt, / Die maer de beurs heeft, off het gelt?”

Verse translations: “Tell me who burdens the mind with greater worries, the one with a flaccid purse or one bursting with gold? / Tell me who burdens the mind with greater worries, the one who has but the purse, or the money?”

Literature: Hollstein no. 299; Judson, Gerrit van Honthorst, 62n3, 63–64n5, 224 (under cat. no. 156). Blankert and Slatkes, Holländische Malerei in neuem Licht, 61 (fig. 58). Bruyn, “Jung und alt-Ikonographische Bemerkungen zur tronie,” 71, 74 (fig. 91). Nicolson, Caravaggism in Europe, 128. Roethlisberger and Bok, Bloemaert and Sons, cat. no. CB3 (pl. CB3); Judson and Ekkart, Gerrit van Honthorst, cat. no 228 copy 4 (pl. 130); Jongh and Luijten, Mirror of Everyday Life, 194 (fig 7); Sander, Eclercy, and Dette, eds. Caravaggio in Holland, 162–63 (cat no. 31, fig. 31).

Impressions: BM no. F,3.122; RM no. RP-P-BI-1441; Städel Museum no. 49676; RKD images ONS 800/Gerrit van Honthorst #3.

Copy A (in reverse) Unknown engraver, after 1625 Published by Cornelis Visscher (c. 1629–1658) Platemark: 165 × 115 mm; image: 131 × 108 mm Inscriptions: “E. [sic] van Honthorst pinx. / CV(monogram)isscher excudebat.” Dutch verse: “Seg wie is meer met sorgh gequelt, / Die maer de beurs heeft off het gelt” Impression: RM no. RP-P-BI-1442.

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Copy B (in reverse) Unknown engraver, after 1625 Published by F. Karelse Platemark: 145 × 122 mm; image: 128 × 114 mm Inscription: “F. Karelse Excu.” Dutch verse: “Seght, Wie is meer met Sorgh gequelt / Die maer de buers Heeft of het gelt” Impression: RM no. RP-P-1905-2830.

Copy C (in reverse) Unknown engraver Platemark: 168 × 122 mm; image: 144 × 116 mm Dutch verse: “De Giericheyt is Arm. en nimmermeer te vreden. / Haar herte niet verslaat, voor sy is overleeden.” Verse translation: Avarice is poor and never content, Its heart unrequited unto death.” Impression: RM no. RP-P-OB-102.81.

Copy D (in reverse) Unknown engraver, c. 1630–33 Published by Pierre Mariette (1596–1657) Inscription: “G.V. Honthorst pi:”; “Mariette excudit.” Latin and Dutch verses: same as originals with minor differences in spelling of “angit” (anget), “tumens” (tumen), and “off” (of). Impression: RKD images ONS 800/Gerrit van Honthorst #3.

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Girl Lighting a Lantern, c. 1625 Engraved by Cornelis Bloemaert Platemark: 114 × 90 mm; image: 106 × 88 mm

After Gerrit van Honthorst ? Unknown painting

Inscription:: “HB” [monogram of (c. 1601–1672)] in upper right corner of image.

Dutch verse: “De Meijt sal om haer Meester gaen / Sij steeckt at vast de keersen aen”

Verse translation: “The girl will go to her master, she already lights the candle.”

Literature: Hollstein no. 300 (as Cornelis after Honthorst); Le Blanc no. 300; Heinecken, Dictionnaire des artistes III, 34 as “Une servant avec une lantern par C. Bloemart” as after Abraham Bloemaert; Roethlisberger and Bok, Bloemaert and Sons, cat no. CB5 (fig. CB5).

Impression: RM no. RP-P-BI-1435.

Note: It is unclear whether the composition is after Gerrit van Honthorst or Hendrick Bloemaert.

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Man Eating Ham, 1625 Engraved and published by Cornelis Bloemaert Platemark: 213 × 157 mm; image: 192 × 154 mm

After Gerrit van Honthorst Man Eating Ham, c. 1622–1623 Oil on canvas, 83 × 69 cm Avignon, Musée Calvet

Inscriptions: “G. v. Honthorst. pinxit.”; C. Bloem: sculp et excu: Ao 1625”

Dutch verse: “Ick ben gesont, daer toe wat graeg. / Dit sijn reckt pillen voor mijn maeg.”

Verse translation: “I am healthy, moreover I have some appetite. These are the right pills for my stomach.”

Literature: Hollstein no. 298; Le Blanc no. 298; Le Comte, Cabinet des singularités, 243 (under page 77) as “Un grotesque, il mange & a son pot entre les bras”; Judson, Gerrit van Honthorst, 228 (under cat. no. 164); Slatkes, Dirck van Baburen, 161 (under cat. no. E29); Roethlisberger and Bok, Bloemaert and Sons, cat. no. CB2 (fig. CB2); Judson and Ekkart, Gerrit van Honthorst, cat. no. 234 copy 4 (pl. 134).

Impressions: BM no. 1868,0612.1388; RM no. RP-P-BI-1420.

Copy A (in reverse) Cornelis van Dalen ? (1602–1665), c. 1635–1660 Published by Justus Danckerts (1635–1701) Platemark: 223 × 158 mm; image: 193 × 153 mm Inscription: “Iustus Danckers Exc.” Verse: “Toback en the is cost, sijdt onse pietie kaij, maer ick segh ham en bier, dat smeert het keeltje fraij.” Impressions: MBVB no. BdH 19236 (PK); RM no. RP-P- BI-1421 (lower margin trimmed off).

Copy B (in reverse) Unknown engraver, unknown date Platemark: 221 × 162 mm Inscription: “G. van Honthorst, in.”; “AB. Ex.” Dutch verse: same as original with minor differences in spelling of “sijn” (syn), “reckt” (recht), and “mijn” (myn). Impression: BM no. 1903,0421.1.

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Copy C (in reverse) Unknown engraver, unknown date Inscription: cut off from examined impression Dutch verse: same as original with some spelling differences. Impression: RKD images 800/Gerrit van Honthorst/3.

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Boy with Rumbling Pot, c. 1625 Engraved and published by Cornelis Bloemaert Platemark: 316 × 239 mm; image: 289 × 233 mm

After Abraham Bloemaert Boy with Rumbling Pot, c. 1625 Oil on canvas, 91.5 × 72.5 cm Kremer collection

Inscriptions: “Abrahamus Bloemaert pinx”; “C. Bloemaert sculp: et excud:”

Dutch verse: “Siet de Vastel-avonts Sot / Comt hier met de Rommelpot, / Hoort hem singen, lieve man / Geeft een koeckjen wt de kan”

Verse translation: “Look here, the fool of Mardigras comes with the rumbling pot, hear him sing, dear man, give a cookie from the jar.”

Literature: Hollstein no. 287; Le Blanc no. 287; Le Comte, Cabinet des singularités, 243 (under page 77) as “broyeur de moutarde”; Basan Dictionnaire des graveurs anciens et modernes, 58 as “Le Moutardier”; Heinecken Dictionnaire des artistes III, 34 as “Le fou du mardi gras, demi-figure, jouant du rommelpot... On le nomme aussi broyeur de moutarde”; Nicolson, International Caravaggesque Movement, 23; Nicolson, Caravaggism in Europe, 65; Roethlisberger and Bok, Bloemaert and Sons, cat. no. 398 (fig. 561); Jongh and Luijten, Mirror of Everyday Life, 231 (fig. 5); Sander, Eclercy, and Dette, eds. Caravaggio in Holland, 126–27 (cat no. 13, fig.13).

Impressions: RM no. RP-P-BI-1444; AVS, no. 10658 (Van Stolk no. 1058; lower margin trimmed off); Städel Museum no. 9180.

Copy A (in reverse) Engraved by Cornelis van Dalen (1602–1665), c. 1635 Image: 273 × 277 mm Impression: MBVB no. MB 2959 (PK).

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Bagpipe Player, c. 1630 Engraved and published by Cornelis Bloemaert Platemark: 227 × 163 mm; image: 199 × 160 mm

After Abraham Bloemaert Bagpipe Player, c. 1625–1630 Oil on panel, 86.5 × 68 cm Salzburg, Residenzgaleries (no. 530)

Inscriptions: “H. de Roij M.”; “Abraham Bloemaert pinx”; “Corneli Bloemaert sculp et exc”; “cum privil. Regis Christianissimi.”

Latin and Dutch verses by Hendrik de Roij (1598–1679): “Naribus his fervens nunquam bene sudor olebit, / Dum juvat agricolas utriculari melos / In ploech noch spadij en heb ick sin, / soo lang ick hier min duijtien ubin”

Verse translations: “The stinging sweat will never smell good to this nose as long as playing melodies on the pipes rejoices the peasants / I care neither for the plough nor for the spade as long as I earn here my pennies.”

Literature: Hollstein no. 291; Le Blanc no. 291; Le Comte, Cabinet des singularités, 243 (under page 77) as “joueur de flute ou de musette”; Huber and Stimmel, Catalogue raisonné du cabinet d’estampes, 90 as “Un homme en Espagnol jouant de la cornemuse”; Pariset, Georges de la Tour, pl. 8 (fig. 4); Nicolson, International Caravaggesque Movement, 23; Nicolson, Caravaggism in Europe, 65; Roethlisberger and Bok, Bloemaert and Sons, no. 399 (fig. 564); Sander, Eclercy, and Dette, eds. Caravaggio in Holland, 126–27 (cat no. 12, fig.12).

Impression: RM no. RP-P-BI-1443; Städel Museum no. 9182.

Copy A (in reverse) Unknown engraver, unknown date Published by Abraham Bloteling (c. 1640–c. 1690) Platemark: 204 × 160 mm; image: 189 × 157 mm Inscriptions: “A. Bloemaert in.”; “ABlootel: ex” Latin verse (no Dutch verse): same as original with minor difference in spelling of “utriculari” (utriculare) Impressions: BM 1996,1103.6; RM no. RP-P-1889-A- 14403.

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Copy B (in reverse) Unknown engraver, unknown date Published by Cornelis Danckerts (c. 1603–c. 1656) Plate: 218 × 162 mm Inscriptions: “A. Bloemaert pinxit”; “C. Danckerts excudit” Dutch and Latin verses: same as original with some spelling differences. Impression: MET no. 49.95.539.

Copy C (in reverse) Unknown engraver, unknown date Published by Joannes de Ram Inscriptions: “Ioannes de Ram / Excudit.” Dutch verse (no Latin verse): “In Ploegh noch Spaey en heb ick Sin, / Soo langh ick hier mee duijtjes win.” Impression: RKD images ONS 280 A. Bloemaert.

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Avarice, 1625 Engraved and published by Cornelis Bloemaert Platemark: 195 × 140 mm; image: 172 × 136 mm

After Abraham Bloemaert Unknown painting

Inscriptions: “AVARITIA” in upper centre of image; “ABloemaert pinxit. Corn: Bloem: sculp. et excud A.1625” along bottom of image.

Latin verse: “Ah! quid opes avidae prosunt loculiq’z repleti! / Dextera avaritiae semper egena manet.”

Verse translation: “What good are greedy wealth and filled drawers? The good side always remains free of avarice.”

Literature: Hollstein no. 286. Heinecken, Dictionnaire des artistes III, 33; Bruyn, “Jung und alt-Ikonographische Bemerkungen zur tronie,” 70, 73 (fig. 88); Nicolson, International Caravaggesque Movement, 23; Roethlisberger and Bok, Bloemaert and His Sons, under cat. no. 395 (fig. 557); Jongh and Luijten, Mirror of Everyday Life, 192 (fig. 1); Janssen, Grijsaards in zwart-wit, 235.

Impression: RM no. RP-P-BI-1424.

Copy A (same direction) Engraved by Cornelis van Dalen (c. 1602–1665), c. 1635 Platemark: 195 × 142 mm Inscriptions: “AVARITIA” in upper centre of image; “ABloemaert pinxit. CVD [monogram] sculp” along bottom of image. Latin verse: same as original with a slightly different spelling of “manet” (mant). Impressions: RM no. RP-P-1887-A-12110; BM no. F,3.121 (as engraved by Charles David; lower margin trimmed off).

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Copy B (in reverse) Unknown engraver, unknown date Published by Isack Houwens Platemark: 195 × 140 mm Inscriptions: “Bloemaert inventor”; “Isack Houwens Excudit” Dutch verse: “De Giericheijt is arm en nimmermeer te vreden / Haer herte niet versaet voor sij is overleeden.” Verse translation: “Avarice is poor and never content, its heart not satisfied until it dies.” Impression: RM no. RP-P-1887-A-12082.

Copy C (in reverse) Attributed to Salomon Saverij (1593/1594–1683) Published by Salomon Saverij Platemark: 183 × 141 mm; image: 164 × 135 mm Inscriptions: “Mensche Licke Liefde”; “S. Savery Excudit” Impression: MBVB no. BdH 8562 (PK).

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Old Woman Praying, before 1630 Engraved by Cornelis Bloemaert (1603–1684) Platemark: 235 × 155 mm; image: 211 × 151 mm

After Abraham Bloemaert Unknown composition

Inscriptions: “A. Bloemaert pinxit”; “Corn: Bloem. / sculpsit.”

Latin verse: “Quod trochus est puero, iuveni venabula, firmae / AEtati gladius, pietatis id arma senectae.”

Verse translation: “What the toy hoop is to the child, the hunting-spear to the youth, the sword to mature age, this old age is the weapon of piety [the rosary].”

Literature: Hollstein no. 300a; Heinecken, Dictionnaire des artistes III, 34 as “Vieille femme à mi-corps, les mains posée sur une chauferette…” ; Slatkes, Dirck van Baburen, 163 (under cat. no. E37 as by Bartsch); Bruyn, “Jung und alt- Ikonographische Bemerkungen zur tronie,” 71, 75 (fig. 92); Bruyn, A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, 273 (fig. 2); Roethlisberger and Bok, Bloemaert and Sons, under cat. no. 485 (fig. 667); Janssen, Grijsaards in zwart-wit, 179.

Impression: RM no. RP-P-BJ-1422; Fogg Art Museum no. H.300a.

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Figures

293 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

0.1 Gerrit van Honthorst, Woman Tuning a Lute, 1624. Oil on canvas, 81.5 × 64.5 cm. Montreal, Museum of Fine Arts (acquired 2013).

0.2 Gerrit van Honthorst, The Duet, 1624. Oil on canvas, 78 × 94.5 cm. Previously Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; sold Christie’s, New York, 5 June 2013 (lot 108).

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0.3 Quentyn Metsys, Ill-Matched Lovers, c. 1520/1525. Oil on panel, 43.2 × 63 cm. Washington, National Gallery (inv. no. 1971.55.1).

0.4 Marinus van Reymerswaele, Two Tax Gatherers, 1540? Oil on panel, 94.1 × 77 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre, on loan from the Ministère des Finances.

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1.1 Joost Cornelisz. Droochsloot, Panorama of Utrecht, c. 1650–65. Fig. Oil on canvas, 224.3 × 64.2 cm. Utrecht, Centraal Museum (inv. no. 2298).

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1.2 Jan van Scorel, Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, 1524–26. Oil on wood, 114 × 85 cm. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum.

1.3 Jan Gossart, Neptune and Amphitrite, 1516. Oil on panel, 191 × 128.4 cm. Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie (inv. no. 648).

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1.4 Raphael, Portrait of Pope Julius II, 1511. Oil on polar, 108.7 × 81 cm. London, National Gallery (inv. no NG27). 1.5 Copy after Jan van Scorel, Portrait of Pope Paul VI, 1524–26. Oil on panel, 93 × 73.6 cm. Utrecht, Centraal Museum (inv. no. 2244).

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1.6 to 1.8 Jan van Scorel, Lokhorst Triptych, c. 1526. Oil on panel, 79 x 147 (middle panel), 81.4 x 65.2 (left interior wing), 81.5 x 65.7 (right interior wing). Utrecht, Centraal Museum (inv. no. 6078).

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1.9 Frans Floris, Fall of the Rebel Angels, 1554. Oil on panel, 303 × 220 cm. Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten (inv. no. 112).

1.10 Abraham Bloemaert, Fall of the Rebel Angels, c. 1600. Black chalk, pen and brown ink with grey wash and white highlights on paper. Utrecht, Centraal Museum (inv. no. 9322).

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1.11 Abraham Bloemaert, Apollo and Diana Punishing Niobe by Killing her Children, 1591. Oil on canvas, 249.5 × 203 cm. Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst (inv. no. KMSsp342).

1.12 Hendrik Goltzius after Bartholomeus Spranger, Mars and Venus, 1588. Engraving, 44.2 × 32.7 cm. Hollstein 321.

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1.13 Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem, Baptism of Christ, 1588. Oil on canvas, 170.5 × 206 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre (inv. no. RF 1983-25).

1.14 Hendrik Goltzius, Fall of Phaeton (from the series Metamorphoses), c. 1588. Pen and red-brown ink, brush and brown wash, heightened with white, 16.5 × 25.3 cm. New York, Metropolitan Museum (inv. no. 1992.376).

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1.15 Abraham Bloemaert, Landscape with the Prophet Elijah in the Desert, 1610s. Oil on canvas, 72 × 97 cm. St. Petersburg, Hermitage Museum (inv. no. 6802).

1.16 Crispijn de Passe II, Frontispiece to Van’t light der teken en schilder konst, 1643. Engraving.

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1.17 Gerrit van Honthorst, Crucifixion of Saint Peter, after Caravaggio, 1616. Pen and brown ink and wash on paper, 38 × 26.5 cm. Oslo, National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design (inv. no. NG.K&H.B.15597).

1.18 Caravaggio, Crucifixion of Saint Peter, 1600. Oil on canvas, 230 × 175 cm. Rome, Church of Santa Maria del Popolo.

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1.19 Dirck van Baburen, Christ Washing the Feet of the Apostles, c. 1617–18). Oil on canvas, 199 × 297 cm. Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie (inv. no. 462).

1.20 Dirck van Baburen, Capture of Christ with the Malchus Episode, 1615–16. Oil on canvas, 125 × 95 cm. Florence, Fondazione di studi di storia dell’arte Roberto Longhi.

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1.21 Jan van Scorel (?), Christ Blessing, c. 1520–30. Oil on panel, 52 × 39 cm. Madrid, Museo del Prado. 1.22 After Jan van Eyck, Salvator Mundi, 15th century (?). Oil on panel. Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie.

2.1 Caravaggio, Medusa, 1597. Oil on canvas mounted on wood, 60 × 55 cm. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi.

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2.2 Caravaggio, Taking of Christ, c. 1602. Oil on canvas 133.5 cm × 169.5 cm. Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland (inv. no. L.14702).

2.3 Caravaggio, Doubting Thomas, 1601–1602. Oil on canvas, 107 cm × 146 cm. Potsdam, Schloss Sanssouci.

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2.4 Caravaggio, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, c. 1598. Oil on canvas, 173 cm × 133 cm. Madrid, Museo Thyssen- Bornemisza (inv. no. 81).

2.5 Caravaggio, Martha and Mary Magdalene, c. 1598. Oil on canvas, 100 cm × 134.5 cm. Detroit, Art Institute (inv. no. 73.268).

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2.6 Caravaggio, Death of the Virgin, 1606. Oil on canvas, 369 × 245 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre (inv no. INV 54).

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2.7 Carlo Saraceni, Death of the Virgin (first version). Current location unknown.

2.8 Carlo Saraceni, Death of the Virgin (second version), 1610. Oil on canvas, 459 × 273 cm. Rome, Church of Santa Maria della Scala.

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2.9 Detail, before restoration of Hendrick ter Brugghen, Adoration of the Magi, 1619. Oil on canvas, 132.5 × 160.5 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum (inv. no. SK-A-4188).

2.10 Detail, after restoration of Hendrick ter Brugghen, Adoration of the Magi, 1619. Oil on canvas, 132.5 × 160.5 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum (inv. no. SK-A-4188).

311 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

2.11 Hendrick ter Brugghen, Calling of Saint Matthew, c. 1618–19. Oil on canvas, 152 × 195 cm. Le Havre, Musée des beaux-arts André-Malraux (inv. no. 77-7).

2.12 Caravaggio, Calling of Saint Matthew, 1599–1600. Oil on canvas, 322 × 340 cm. Rome, Church of San Luigi dei Francesi.

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2.13 Dirck van Baburen, Entombment of Christ, c. 1617. Oil on canvas, 222 × 142 cm. Rome, Church of San Pietro in Montorio.

2.14 Caravaggio, Entombment of Christ, 1602–1603. Oil on canvas, 300 × 203 cm. Rome, Pinacoteca Vaticana.

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2.15 Gerrit van Honthorst, Beheading of Saint John, c. 1617–18. Oil on canvas, 324 × 215 cm. Rome, Church of Santa Maria della Scala.

2.16 Caravaggio, Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, 1599–1600. Oil on canvas, 322 × 340 cm. Rome, Church of San Luigi dei Francesi.

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2.17 Abraham Bloemaert, Baptism of Christ, 1602. Oil on canvas, 60.3 × 77.4 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (inv no. 3340).

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2.18 Dirck van Baburen, Procuress, 1622. Oil on canvas, 101.5 × 107.6 cm. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts (inv. no. 50.2721).

2.19 Johannes Vermeer, Young Woman at a Virginal, c. 1670–72. Oil on canvas, 51.5 × 41.5 cm. London, National Gallery (inv. no. NG2568).

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3.1 Caravaggio, Boy with a Basket of Fruit, c. 1593. Oil on canvas, 70 × 67 cm. Rome, Galleria Borghese.

3.2 Caravaggio, Sick Bacchus, c. 1593. Oil on canvas, 67 x 53 cm. Rome, Galleria Borghese.

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3.3 Caravaggio, Fortune Teller, c. 1594. Oil on canvas, 115 × 150 cm. Rome, Musei Capitolini.

3.4 Caravaggio, Cardsharps, c. 1594. Oil on canvas, 94 × 131 cm. Fort Worth, Kimbel Art Museum (inv. no. AP 1987.06).

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3.5 Bravo veneziano (no. 134) from Cesare Vecellio’s De gli habiti antichi e moderni (Venice, 1590). 3.6 Soldato disarmato (no. 133) from Cesare Vecellio’s De gli habiti antichi e moderni (Venice, 1590).

3.7 Tiziano Vecellio, The Bravo, 1516–17. Oil on canvas, 75 × 67 cm. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum.

319 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

3.8 Lucas van Leyden, Tavern Scene (Prodigal Son), c. 1517. Woodcut from two blocks, 67 x 48.5 cm. Hollstein 193.

3.9 Lucas van Leyden, Young Man with a Skull, c. 1519. Engraving, 18.4 × 14.5 cm. Hollstein 174.

320 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

3.10 Lucas van Leyden, Fortune Teller, c. 1508. Oil on panel, 24 × 30.5 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre (inv. no. RF 1962-17).

3.11 Lucas van Leyden, Chess Players, c. 1508. Oil on oak, 27 × 35 cm. Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie.

3.12 Lucas van Leyden, Card Players, c. 1520. Oil on panel, 28.8 x 39.5 cm. Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, no. 221 (1971.9)

321 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

3.13 Caravaggio, Lute Player, c. 1595. Oil on canvas, 94 × 119 cm. St. Petersburg, Hermitage Museum (originally Giustiniani collection).

3.14 Caravaggio, Lute Player, c. 1597. Oil on canvas, 102 x 129.9 cm. New York, Wildenstein collection (originally Del Monte collection)

322 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

3.15 Giorgione (?), Impassioned Singer, c. 1508–1510. Oil on canvas, 102 × 78 cm. Rome, Galleria Borghese.

3.16 Giorgione (?), Flute Player, c. 1508–1510. Oil on canvas, 102 × 78 cm. Rome, Galleria Borghese.

323 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

3.17 Bartlomeo Manfredi, Bacchus and a Drinker, c. 1608–1610. Oil on canvas, 132 × 96 cm. Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica di Palazzo Barberini (inv. no. 1012).

3.18 Bartolomeo Manfredi, Gypsy with Tambourine, c. 1613–15. Oil on canvas, 65 × 59 cm. New York, with Grassi Studio, 2013 (previously Marchese de Mari collection, Florence).

324 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

3.19 Orazio Gentileschi, Young Woman with a Violin (Saint Cecilia), c. 1612. Oil on canvas, 83.5 × 97.8 cm. Detroit, Detroit Institute of Art (inv. no. 68.47).

3.20 Guido Reni, Saint Cecilia, 1606. Oil on canvas, 95.9 × 74.9 cm. Pasadena, North Simon Museum (inv. no F.1973.23.P).

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3.21 Orazio Gentileschi, Mary Magdalene, 1621–24. Oil on canvas, 82.3 × 68.5 cm. London, with Whitfield Fine Arts, 2013.

3.22 Orazio Gentileschi, Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes, 1621–24. Oil on canvas, 134.6 × 157.5 cm. Hartford, Wadsworth Atheneum (inv. no. 1949.52).

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3.23 and 3.24 Orazio Gentileschi and Agostino Tassi, Casino delle Muse, c. 1611–12. Fresco. Rome, Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi.

327 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

3.25 Gerrit van Honthorst, Musical Group on a Balcony, 1622. Oil on panel, 308 × 102.5 cm. Los Angeles, Getty Museum (inv. no. 70.PB.34).

328 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

3.26 Bartolomeo Manfredi, Denial of Saint Peter, c. 1616–18. Oil on canvas, 166 × 232 cm. Braunsweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum (inv. no. 495).

3.27 Bartolomeo Manfredi, Tavern Scene with a Lute Player, c. 1612–14. Oil on canvas, 129.5 × 190.5 cm. London, with Trafalgar Galleries, 2004. Current location unknown.

329 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

3.28 Bartolomeo Manfredi, Concert, c. 1614–16. Oil on canvas, 130 × 190 cm. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi (inv. no. 1890–4359).

3.29 Bartolomeo Manfredi, Card Players, c. 1610–20. Oil on canvas, 130 × 191.5 cm. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi (heavily damaged in the 1993 Uffizi bombing).

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3.30 Valentin de Boulogne, Merry Company with Fortune Teller, 1631. Oil on canvas, 190 × 265 cm. Vienna, Liechtenstein Museum.

4.1 Gerrit van Honthorst, Merry Violinist with a Wineglass, 1623. Oil on canvas, 107.2 × 88.3 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum (inv. no. SK-A-180).

331 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

4.2 Gerrit van Honthorst, Smiling Young Man Squeezing Grapes, 1622. Oil on canvas, 83.3 × 66.7 cm. Worcester, Worcester Art Museum (inv. no. 1968.15).

4.3 Caravaggio, Bacchus, c. 1595. Oil on canvas, 95 × 85 cm. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi.

332 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

4.4 Gerrit van Honthorst, Merry Violinist with a Wineglass, 1624. Oil on canvas, 84 × 66.5 cm. St. Petersburg, Hermitage Museum.

4.5 Gerrit van Honthorst, Merry Violinist with a Wineglass, c. 1624. Oil on canvas, 83 × 68 cm. Madrid, Thyssen-Bornemisza (inv. no. 1986.21).

4.6 Hendrick ter Brugghen, Bass Viol Player with a Glass, 1625. Oil on canvas, 104.8 × 85.1 cm. London, (inv. no. 1260).

333 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

4.7 Gerrit van Honthorst, Singing Elder with a Flute, 1623. Oil on canvas, 107.5 × 85.5. Schwerin, Staatliches Museum.

4.8 Jan Steen, Rhetoricians at a Window, c. 1661–66. Oil on canvas, 75.9 × 58.6 cm. Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art (inv. no. 512). 4.9 Jan Steen, Rhetoricians at a Window, c. 1655. Oil on panel, 72 × 60 cm. Worcester, Worcester Art Museum (inv. no. 1954.22).

334 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

4.10 Gerrit van Honthorst, Young Woman Playing a Violin, 1626. Oil on canvas, 84.5 × 66 cm. The Hague, Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis.

4.11 Hendrik Goltzius, Courtesan, 1606. Black, white and red chalk on grey paper, 24 × 19 cm. St. Petersburg, Hermitage Museum.

335 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

4.12 Crispijn de Passe II, Two Men in a Brothel (Frontispiece of Le miroir des plus belles courtisannes de ce temps), 1630. Engraving, 11.2 × 15.1 cm. Hollstein 183.

4.13 Gerrit van Honthorst, Woman Tuning a Lute, 1624. Oil on canvas, 83 × 67 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre (inv. no. INV 1369). 4.14 Gerrit van Honthorst, Female Guitar Player, 1624. Oil on canvas, 82 × 68 cm. Fontainebleau, Musée national du château (inv. no. INV 1368).

336 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

4.15 Hendrick ter Brugghen, Fife Player, 1621. Oil on canvas, 71.3 × 56 cm. Kassel, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (inv. no. GK 179). 4.16 Hendrick ter Brugghen, Flute Player, 1621. Oil on canvas, 71.5 × 56 cm. Kassel, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (inv. no. GK 180).

4.17 Crispijn de Passe II after Jan van Bijlert, Coridon, from De Passe’s Van’t light der teken en schilder konst (Amsterdam, 1643).

337 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

4.18 Dirck van Baburen, Singing Young Man, 1622. Oil on canvas, 71 × 58.8 cm. Frankfurt am Main, Städel Museum (inv. no. 2242).

4.19 Dirck van Baburen, Lute Player, 1622. Oil on canvas, 71.2 × 58.5 cm. Utrecht, Centraal Museum (inv. no. 11481).

338 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

4.20 Gerrit van Honthorst, Old Woman Singing Street Songs, c. 1621. Oil on canvas, 65 × 50 cm. Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum (inv. no. OS I-225).

4.21 Cornelis Bloemaert, after Gerrit van Honthorst, Old Woman Singing Street Songs, mid 1620s. Engraving. Hollstein 297.

339 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

4.22 Theodor Matham, after Gerrit van Honthorst, Young Woman Playing a Violin, 1626. Engraving. Hollstein 41.

4.23 Theodor Matham, after Gerrit van Honthorst, Merry Violinist Holding a Wine Glass, 1627. Engraving. Hollstein 39.

340 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

4.24 Gerrit van Honthorst, Lute Player, 1624. Oil on canvas, 84 × 66.5 cm. St. Petersburg, Hermitage Museum.

4.25 Gerrit van Honthorst, Merry Violinist Holding a Wineglass, 1624. Oil on canvas, 84 × 66.5 cm. St. Petersburg, Hermitage Museum (inv. no. 717).

341 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

4.26 Cornelis Bloemaert, after Abraham Bloemaert, Rommelpot Player, c. 1625. Engraving. Hollstein 287.

4.27 Jan Steen, Rommelpot, c. 1660. Oil on panel, 32.8 × 26.1 cm. Manchester, Art Gallery (inv. no. 1979.503).

342 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

4.28 Detail from Pieter Brueghel I, Battle of Carnival and Lent, 1559. Oil on wood, 118 × 164 cm. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum.

4.29 Frans Hals, Rommelpot Player, c. 1618–1622. Oil on canvas, 106 × 80 cm. Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum (inv. no. ACF 1951.01). 4.30 Claes Jan Vischer after Jan van de Velde, Rumbling Pot Player, c. 1620–1641. Engraving. Hollstein 132.

343 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

4.31 Cornelis Bloemaert, after Gerrit van Honthorst, Man Eating Ham, 1625. Engraving. Hollstein 298.

4.32 Cornelis Bloemaert, after Dirck van Baburen, Flutist, 1625. Engraving. Hollstein 284.

344 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

4.33 Theodor Matham, after Hendrick ter Brugghen, Man with Wineglass and Violin, c. 1626–1627. Engraving. Hollstein 45.

4.34 Attributed to Theodor Matham, after Hendrick ter Brugghen, Man with Wineglass and Violin, late 1620s(?). Engraving. Not in Hollstein.

345 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

4.35 Gerrit van Honthorst, Merry Musician with Violin under His Left Arm, 1624. Oil on canvas, 81.3 × 63 cm. New York, with Otto Naumann, 2001.

4.36 Gerrit van Honthorst, Smiling Girl Holding an Obscene Image, 1625. Oil on canvas, 81.3 × 64.1. St. Louis, City Art museum (inv. no. 63:1954).

346 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

4.37 Theodor Matham, Man with Miniature Portrait, late 1620s(?). Engraving. Not in Hollstein.

4.38 Theodor Matham, Man with Miniature Portrait, 1630s (?). Engraving. Not in Hollstein.

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4.39 Cornelis Bloemaert, after Abraham Bloemaert, Bagpipe Player, c. 1625. Engraving. Hollstein 291.

5.1 Hendrick ter Brugghen, Bagpipe Player, 1624. Oil on canvas, 100.7 × 82.9 cm. Washington, National Galiery (inv. no. 2009.24.1).

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5.2 Frans Hals, Peeckelhaering, 1628– 30. Oil on canvas, 75 × 61.5 cm. Kassel, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen

5.3 Rembrandt van Rijn, Rembrandt Laughing, c. 1628. Oil on copper, 23.75 × 17cm. English art market, 2013.

349 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

5.4 Johannes Vermeer, Concert, c. 1664. Oil on canvas,72.5 × 64.7 cm. Whereabouts unknown (stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in March 1990).

5.5 Johannes Vermeer, Procuress, 1656. Oil on canvas, 143 × 130 cm. Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (inv. no. 1335).

350 Re-forming Images Sonia Loredana Del Re

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Alpers, Svetlana. The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983.

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———. “Realism as a Comic Mode: Low-life Painting Seen through Bredero’s Eyes.” Simiolus 8, no. 3, (1975–1976): 115–44.

———. Rembrandt’s Enterprise: The Studio and the Market. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Anderson, Jaynie. Giorgione: The Painter of ‘Poetic Brevity.’ Paris and New York: Flammarion, 1997.

Askew, Pamela. Caravaggio’s Death of the Virgin. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.

Baglione, Giovanni. Le vite de’ pittori, scultori et architetti dal pontificato di Gregorio XIII fino a tutto quello d’Urbano VIII. Rome: 1649. Reprint, Velletri: Arnaldo Forni, 1924.

Baldriga, Irene, ed. “Fiamenghi che vanno e vengono non li si puol dar regola.” Paesi Bassi e Italia fra Cinquecento e Seicento: pittura, storia e cultura degli emblemi. Sant’Oreste: Apeiron, 1995.

Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Translated by Richard Miller. New York: Hill and Wang, 1974.

Basan, Pierre François. Dictionnaire des graveurs anciens et modernes depuis l’origine de la gravure. Paris: De Lormel, 1767.

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Bellori, Giovanni Pietro. The Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors and Architects. Translated by Alice Sedwick Wohl. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

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———. Le vite de’ pittori, scultori et architetti moderni. Rome: 1672. Reprint, Bologna: Arnaldo Forni, 1977.

Belting, Hans. Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art. Translated by E. Jephcott. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.

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———. Het Gulden Cabinet vande edel vrij Schilder const. Antwerp, 1661.

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———. Review of Caravaggio’s Death of the Virgin, by Pamela Askew. Zeitschrift Kunstgeschichte 55, no. 2 (1992): 297–302.

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———. Musikanten in der Malerei der niederländischen Caravaggio-Nachfolge: Vorstufen, Ikonographie und Bedeutungsgehalt der Musikszene in der niederländischen Bildkunst des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts. Münster: Lit, 2003.

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