The End of Caravaggio

What the exhibition allowed me to observe for the first time, however, was how close the Milan Emmaus is to the National Gallery's Salome with the Head of John the Baptist, by consensus dated late, usually to 1609 (Fig. 4). The similarity extends even to the physiognomy of Christ in the Emmaus, apparently identical to the decapitated John the Baptist in the London painting. The late works include many such repeated figures and faces, and as most of the scholars working on this late period have pointed out, such resemblances are not at all conclusive evidence of dating to the same period or place of execution. The role of Caravaggio's models and his reliance on visual memory is a major issue raised by the late works, and I will come back to it below. But the Milan Emmaus and the Salome have in common, most importantly, in addition to the similar physiognomies, a related painting technique: both of these works, as well as The Denial of Saint Peter and The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula (Figs. 5, 6), share the same thin, abbreviated, and brushy facture and a similar manner of dissolving the contours of bodies into darkness. This change of technique, away from the architectural solidity of his Roman bodies and their hard, clear contours, was probably not a result of flight and haste in 1606 but a conscious choice on the part of the artist. (David Stone very usefully points out that the abbreviated technique in The Beheading of John the Baptist, painted during the stay on Malta, can hardly be viewed as the result of speedy execution; he had a good, long, peaceful time in which to complete it.) (2) And it seems to me that Caravaggio primarily made that choice to alter the way he painted after leaving Malta, in his last two years, in Sicily and during his second stay in Naples.

In London, the personal, tragic, and confessional tone introduced by this initial comparison, which juxtaposed the two Emmaus paintings as Rome and not-Rome, was underscored by the twilit darkness of the exhibition space. This staginess would have been forgivable except that it made some of the larger paintings very difficult to see. Less drama, more light was called for. Instead, the drama was emphasized all the more by the decision to set off the Galleria Borghese's David with the Head of Goliath in a small room to itself at the very end of the exhibition. As if evading the open question of whether the painting was done in Rome in 1606 or in Naples in 1610, the show presented this depiction of Caravaggio's self-portrait in the bloodied head of Goliath as the culmination of his career, the ultimate confession, the transparent representation of his life in art. This staging of the painting was visibly and audibly appreciated by the masses of viewers who packed in, day after day, to admire it.

In both venues, it was the Malta period that was least represented. The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist from the Co-Cathedral of St. John in La Valletta is simply too large and fragile to travel (although in Naples a full-scale digital reproduction of this and other missing works was added to the section of documentation at the end of the show). The Louvre's Portrait of Alof de Wignacourt, depicting the Grand Master of the Order of Knights of St. John of Malta, the greatest of Caravaggio's known portraits, is also not in a state to travel. These gaps made for an imbalance between exhibition and catalog, since some of the most interesting recent work on this period, offered in the catalog's essays and entries, has focused on Caravaggio's aborted career as a knight in the Order of St. John and as a man thus all the more in touch with the highest and most powerful aristocracy on the Italian peninsula.