Caravaggio and his self-portraits

After reading the rather brilliant ‘A face to the world: On self-portraits’ by Laura Cumming, it got me thinking about my favourite artist Caravaggio and his few self-portraits. I’m not an expert by any means, but I find the man and his art endlessly fascinating, and so here I shall put my gurgled little brain farts.

The Taking of Christ (c. 1602)

 

Here Caravaggio shines light on the scene, helping the faceless men in glowing black armour to capture Christ. As both character and artist, he is the bringer of light. It’s tempting to suggest he is invoking the original bringer of light himself, Lucifer, but I really don’t think that was why he placed himself in the painting. He’s by no means an innocent bystander, but he isn’t the instigator either. It’s notable that the faces of the men apprehending Christ are obscured, but the painter’s isn’t. His is lit up by the lamp in his hand, looking on the scene with open mouthed awe. It’s an incredible painting. The look on Christ’s face as Judas kisses him is subtle but poignant, his clasped hands pushing away from him as though he wants to push away from the treacherous Judas. Even the traitor himself in his moment of betrayal seems a piteous figure; the lines on his face suggesting the enormity of what he’s done has suddenly dawned on him, far too late. St John’s mouth is open in a silent scream, attempting to flee but his blood red cloak has been snatched by a soldier. Smack bang in the middle of the painting is the soldier apprehending Christ. His ominous black armour is gleaming, all the more threatening because we can’t see his expression. And on the far right, there is Caravaggio, lighting the way. As both artist and character he is shedding light on the scene. He allows the soldiers to find Christ, but he’s also showing us this regrettable sight. His light makes him complicit, but without it we wouldn’t be able to see the betrayal.  The artist is looking at the scene with fascination, the way any one of us might be looking upon the scene if we were there instead. 

 The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew (1599-1600)

Unlike most of Caravaggio’s paintings, this is a busy scene, with many characters, all fleeing and falling away from Matthew and the assassin. All but one, that is. An angel leans down, arm outstretched to Matthew and he reaches up towards him, his arm clasped by the assassin. Amidst the chaos is the painter. Caravaggio places himself far away from anyone else, fleeing like the others. He doesn’t have a look of horror or fear on his face like them, however. Mid-flight, his body is already turned away but his head is twisted back towards Matthew.  He’s looking on the scene with regret, but he’s not going to help the fallen man. Caravaggio was portraying a biblical scene so it would be wrong to paint himself rescuing Matthew from the assassin, but why paint himself in this unheroic way? Why paint himself at all? 

David with the head of Goliath (c. 1605 – c. 1610)

David with the head of Goliath has often been cited as being painted towards the end of Caravaggio’s life, but there is a decent argument for it being painted not long after he arrived in Naples, having fled Rome, a price on his head. Was this painted as a bargaining tool? It ended up in the collection of Caravaggio’s former patron, Scipione Borghese who had protected Caravaggio before when he had been in hot water. The self-portrait is not of the victor, David, but the dripping, mangled head of Goliath. Was it Caravaggio’s way of offering his head in painting so he could keep it in life? Or was it painted shortly before his death, the painter lamenting his violent life, feeling remorse for the choices he made? I’m more inclined to think it was painted not long after he was exiled, purely because David seems to have been modelled on Caravaggio’s assistant, Cecco Boneri. Cecco and Caravaggio seemed to part ways after Naples, the young boy with the pouting lips didn’t appear in any other paintings after Caravaggio left for Malta. Caravaggio painted the subject of David and Goliath several times. But he chose to portray himself in just one. The earliest painting (c.1599) is different from the others in its set-up, but in its intimacy it feels closest in spirit to the self-portrait. In the 1607 painting Goliath is more generic than in the later painting, the David more exultant, less pitying. The self-portrait is the version that sticks in the memory. 

Why has Caravaggio chosen to portray himself as Goliath and not David? If we forget the idea of painting as bargaining tool, why place yourself in the villain’s role, defeated? It’s very telling that David is not triumphant, but looking towards the head with compassion. Is Caravaggio lamenting at the way his life has turned out? Considering Caravaggio’s alleged preferences, it’s not much to a stretch to see these two sad figures in sexual terms; David’s phallic sword rests against his thigh as the young man gazes despondently at the bloody head in his hand. Caravaggio and Cecco were rumoured to have been sleeping together, and seeing the two of them here, it’s easy to believe. But sexual or not, these two characters have an intimate bond, and here forever they are entwined. Youth and age, virtue and sin, victory and defeat all become one and the same. 

Caravaggio and Bacchus

As with David and Goliath, Caravaggio painted the god of wine more than once. His handling of the subject is very different in these two paintings. For the 1595 portrait, Caravaggio’s friend and fellow painter Mario Minniti posed for him. The earlier painting however was a self-portrait.  In the Minniti Bacchus, the young god is a pretty, tempting boy, face flushed and eyes heavy-lidded. He offers a glass of wine to you, and the tug on his belt suggests he’s offering more besides. The self-portrait; Young sick Bacchus, shows the artist as he looked when suffering from Malaria. His skin is a sickly hue, his eyes showing dark shadows. Caravaggio could clearly pout with the best of them, but you wouldn’t want to steal a kiss from those pale lips. Where Minniti was all pouty lips and come hither eyes, keen to share the wine with you, Caravaggio is hugging the grapes to himself, turning away from you, the hangover to Minniti’s pissed up romp. It’s been recently discovered that Caravaggio painted a mini self-portrait in the Minniti version too. The artist was found in the reflection of the carafe, his tiny portrait shows the artist at the easel, enforcing the idea that it is all fiction. 

 

The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula (1610)

As Ursula is shot at point blank with an arrow, looking down with shock at it impaled in her breast, stood behind her in the shadows is the last known self-portrait of Caravaggio. His head is tilted towards the light, mouth gasping. Towards the end of his life, his paintings got darker and darker, feeling more oppressive, as though there’s no hope for salvation, yet here he is, in the light. His eyes aren’t wide open, aghast, but slanting closed, almost as though he had been impaled by the arrow. Not long before painting this, Caravaggio had been attacked when leaving a house of ill repute, said to have been disfigured so badly he was almost unrecognisable. He is clearly recognisable here but he looks noticeably more tired than we’ve previously seen him. The light shines brightly on the face of the artist, and it’s his face we see most of. Has he finally found the salvation he seemed to desperately crave in his later years? Who knows. Caravaggio’s art was often ambiguous, but nothing in his art was an accident. So what’s the purpose of the self-portrait this time? What character does he play? Unlike previous self-portraits, his role within the scene isn’t fixed. Villain, victim, onlooker, it’s unclear whether he’s any of these, and because of this ambiguity it seems the most poignant. Throughout his life, Caravaggio played many roles, but 400 years on we still don’t have a full picture of the man, and most likely never will. He remains a mystery, hidden in the shadows.

Caravaggio’s self-portraits are never flattering. Considering he was known to be a very proud and arrogant man, he was keen to embody characters in his paintings with less than stellar characteristics. Because so little is known of him, it’s difficult to understand where he stood on religion, or indeed anything. I think the self-portraits are all very telling. In the biblical paintings especially, Caravaggio never paints himself as the hero, or the wronged man. He may have had plenty of vanity when it came to his talent and his status (much is told of his swaggering) but in these strange and sad glimpses of the artist, he has no vanity. He is aiding Judas’ betrayal of Christ, fleeing from Matthew’s murder, plays the defeated Goliath and the sickly, putrid Bacchus. He is no hero in these paintings. But he’s no villain either. Merely human, flawed like the rest of us.   

I’ll leave you with this story of Caravaggio. He entered a church in Sicily and was offered holy water. He asked what it was for and the reply was; “for washing away your venial sins”.  “Then it is of no use”, the painter replied, “For mine are all mortal”.