Caravaggio: Reflections and Refractions ed. by Lorenzo Pericolo and David M. Stone (review)

Michelangelo Merisi de Caravaggio was one of the most enigmatic and seemingly contradictory figures in art history. His sublime images took on religious topics towards the end of his life that appeared to be at odds with his naturalistic style, antisocial behaviour, and violent demise. This has led to many apocryphal, trivial, and rehashed studies of Caravaggio. Editors Lorenzo Pericolo and David M. Stone ask ‘why write another book on Caravaggio?’ Their answer: to improve the scholarship on this great Renaissance artist. Caravaggio: Reflections and Refractions originated from an organised panel on Caravaggio for the Renaissance Society of America in 2009. The book consists of fourteen essays that holistically create a new in-depth study of Caravaggio, his work, his followers, and his place in art history.

Attribution of Caravaggio’s work has been problematic and in the 1980s many mediocre works were attributed to him, often from minor technical evidence such as visible incisions in the canvas. Stone’s essay considers the important problem of connoisseurship. Throughout the world, exhibitions and collections of paintings have been attributed to Caravaggio that he most certainly did not paint. Stone points to the importance of connoisseurship since ‘we risk losing the painter we supposedly cherish if specialists failed to voice their opinions and challenge attributions’ (p. 26). This highlights the importance of reanalysing Caravaggio’s techniques. Larry Keith’s essay demonstrates how Caravaggio continually changed his techniques and styles to suit the subject of the image. This reveals that it is imperative to expand the concept of Caravaggio’s technique beyond pigment and layer structures in evaluating his work. Keith Christiansen expands on Caravaggio’s techniques and demonstrates that our concepts of the master painter’s far-from-uniform style have continued to change as scholarship, particularly in regard to his techniques, has advanced.

Erin E. Benay examines Caravaggio’s Doubting Thomas. Painted in 1602, it was a relatively uncommon topic in Roman art and one that was vilified by John Calvin who claimed that the stupidity of Thomas was astonishing and monstrous. However, Catholic reformers saw Thomas’s action in a different light. The painting was commissioned by Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani who, Benay claims, sought new ways of engaging with the divine. She believes that Caravaggio’s unconventional painting reflects the religious practices of both the Roman cult of St Thomas and the relic of the Holy Shroud that infused a rich spiritual meaning into his painting.

Francis Gage also believes that Caravaggio was deeply influenced by a contemporary mysticism, but claims that Caravaggio’s scandalous Death of the Virgin was symptomatic of his style. He reputedly used a prostitute for the model of the Virgin, a fact he did not attempt to disguise. This highly inappropriate representation of the sacred raises questions about Caravaggio’s religion, leaving it open to debate despite his increasing number of religious paintings at the end of his life.

Catherine Puglisi discusses Caravaggio’s visualisation of music: ‘Caravaggio’s talking pictures pushed the bounds of the mute art of painting, like the word pictures in poetry or the tone poem in music’ (p. 118). Steven F. Ostrow considers the earthly and naturalistic qualities of Caravaggio’s Angels that are conceived as liminal creatures caught between the sacred and the profane. This combination of visually naturalistic, the structural components of his religious narratives, and their incompatibility in Caravaggio’s paintings is further discussed by Jonathan Unglaub. These contradictory and incompatible elements are highlighted by Philip Sohm’s examination of Caravaggio as anti-Michelangelo and the Antichrist. Caravaggio attempted to emulate Michelangelo’s reported eccentric and unconventional personality; however, by doing so he may have coincidentally assisted in establishing Michelangelo’s reputation as a ‘barbarian’.

Next, the followers of Caravaggio are considered. Richard Spear demonstrates that Caravaggio’s work was in limited supply and obtained high prices, but his followers...