di Clovis WHITFIELD
Cardinal Del Monte’s group of paintings by Caravaggio was key to the fame of his collection, and the two musical subjects were singled out by Giovanni Baglione in his biography of the artist. Although the tenor of these paintings has, in modern times, led to a homosexual connotation, this is out of place at Palazzo Madama. The philosophy of the society that Caravaggio encountered as soon he arrived in Rome has hardly been considered in relation to the work he did, but the Insensati [1] – the intellectuals who met at Palazzo Barberini, where the young Maffeo presided – did their best to pursue ideals that were free from religious distractions, and were closer to a secular world view that was based on scientific empirical observation [2]. It should not be any surprise that the intellectuals who brought the moment of Enlightenment were not the standard bearers of the Counter Reformation. Giordano Bruno was the explorer of natura naturans the range of God’s creation in nature, and this coincided with the thought of the filosofi naturali who were concerned with natural phenomena. There was in any case general agreement that the painter’s aim should be to paint from nature., as opposed to the contrived images that had previously been in vogue.
Before the encounter with Del Monte, the cultural environment Caravaggio found himself had the young Maffeo Barberini as a leading personality, who would be the friend and sponsor of the ‘father of modern science’, Galileo Galilei. There was evidently an intellectual continuity when Caravaggio moved to Del Monte, and it remains to be properly detailed. The choice paintings he did at Palazzo Madama were also targeted by the next generation, and more than half of them were bought at the sale of his collection by the young Antonio Barberini, acting for the new Pope, Urban VIII, as the cornerstones of a collection worthy of the name Barberini.
This article will show that the Lute Player, a work that the artist himself regarded as the best piece he ever did, was indeed bought at the 1628 sale by young Antonio, and has a continuous Barberini provenance up to its acquisition by the 3rd Duke of Beaufort, on his Grand Tour in Italy in 1726 – 1727. Instead when Cardinal Antonio died in 1671, its place was taken by an imitation that has none of the stunning naturalism that characterised Caravaggio’s work, cannot be reconciled with the inventory descriptions in the Barberini collection, is of different dimensions, and was introduced as a substitute to disguise the sale of the original, against the terms o the fidecommesso that had been established by the Pope himself before he died in July 1644.
The Lute Player (Fig 1 ) was painted in 1597/98 when Caravaggio was recruited by Cardinal Del Monte, and was one of two musical subjects he devised for his new patron, the other being the Musicians (Fig. 2) now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Apart from being himself a musician playing the chitarriglia , a kind of small lute or guitar, like the one represented in Vermeer’s painting in Kenwood House, the Iveagh Bequest ( Fig. 3).
The Cardinal was passionate about new techniques and artistic methods and materials as a result of his experience in Florence with the painters and craftsmen working for Ferdinando de’Medici, whom he represented in Rome. Rather than showing the painter’s musical experience, it was Caravaggio’s response to the challenges of representation of unfamiliar instruments and playing positions. The subject therefore was an expression of music itself, particularly since the experience of the celebrated lutenist Francesco Canova da Milano (1497-1543) ‘il Divino’, who was famous throughout Europe, playing also with his brother Bernardino singing the canto al liuto.
But just as the costumes Caravaggio chose were from the classical world, echoing the Greek statuary that was so much admired in Del Monte’s circle, this was ancient music from a long time ago, and the instruments were also from the distant past.
The subject was a challenge to represent with unprecedented accuracy the most difficult detail with a technique that was peculiar to his own perception, quite unrelated to any existing style or experience.
Up till then he had applied this method to representing fruit and flowers, which the Cardinal had experienced as he had bought a painting of a Carafe of Flowers, probably in a street market around Easter 1597, without knowing who it was by. This was likely the composition of the detail in the Lute Player (Fig. 4). But there is no mention of this Carafe of Flowers after the 1628 sale.
This was the same time that his colleague, Cardinal Federico Borromeo, bought the Basket of Fruit (Detail, Fig 5) (now in the Ambrosiana, Milan) and both realised that this was an exceptional painter.
According to an anecdote recalled by the Bolognese painter Guercino and told to Malvasia [3], it was when Caravaggio was brought to Palazzo Madama, that he told the Cardinal that it was he who had painted this Carafe of Flowers, and he would do other versions of it for him. So this virtuosity in painting dal naturale or from life was what Caravaggio’s reputation was founded on, now he would turn to incorporating the challenging detail present in the musical context of his new patron. His description of a valent’huomo’ as a painter così in pittura valent’huomo che sappi depengere bene e imitar bene le cose naturali [4]. These would be the two paintings that Baglione described in his 1642 biography (Fig. 1 The Lute Player, Private Collection) and Fig 2, Musicians , Metropolitan Museum, New York ) exceptional pieces that were dal naturale, which meant that they were from life. (Fig 6 passage from Baglione, Vite dei pittori, 1642, p. 136).
A picture dealer in Baglione’s account, Maestro Valentino,[5] lived round the corner from Cardinal del Monte ‘so Caravaggio chanced to meet Cardinal Del Monte who much enjoyed paintings, and gave him lodging and hospitality so that he put himself back together, and for the Cardinal painted a some young musicians from life, rather well, and a young man playing the Lute, that seemed altogether true to life with a carafe full of water with flowers in , in which there was a window mirrored, shown quite clearly along with other reflections of that room through the water, and on those flowers there was a lively dew painted with with exquisite detail. And this (he said) was the best piece he ever painted’. It was unusual, for artists were concerned with making things recognisable rather than true to life. But as Castelvetro maintained in his translation of Aristotle’s Poetics [6], it was much more difficult to achieve a naturalistic likeness than to convey meaning. Many Cinquecento artists spoke of this imitation of reality as being their aim, to reproduce accurately and recognisably details of costume and jewellery, and facial likeness, from Frans Pourbus to Scipione Pulzone, but Caravaggio had a reputation for making appearance much more lifelike, and the successive protectors of the Accademia di San Luca, Cardinals Del Monte and Borromeo noticed this exceptional talent.
The attention to detail, the minutiae of nature, was also central to the approach of Federico Cesi and his Accademia dei Lincei, named after the keenness of sight of the Lynx. The ‘hyperrealism’ was the touchstone of Caravaggio’s art, achieved with the relatively new medium of oil paint instead of tempera. This was what what Maffeo Barberini, and then Del Monte and Borromeo appreciated. Maffeo was an active supporter of those who were involved in what was known as natural magic, a friend and of admirer of Galileo, although his support has been overshadowed by his later persecution of him after the publication of Il Saggiatore (1623). The company he kept with the Insensati has yet to be taken into account, mainly because of the imperative that dominated the revival of his art, a century ago, to view it from a Christian point of view.
Caravaggio’s perception was an huge advance in the discovery of what the familiar world looked like, but it is clear that this was not reached by a conscious application of a different order of vision. It is easiest to understand in the comparison of analog and digital communication. The similarity with telephony may be helpful, analog phones are limited because they depend on physical copper connections, transmitted on copper wire, while digital ones acquire the full range of sound and tone, and avoid the tyranny of line. Caravaggio worked to capture all the nuances of tone and colour, and not the anatomical structure of his subjects, so that an impression is built up of all the hints of seeing and their relative significance to the brain. Bellori reports that he could not paint a single brushstroke without the model in front of him [7] and we have to accept that his technique was not based on recollection, but was subject to the same associative agnosia that meant when his brother came to see him in Rome, he did not recognise him [8]. The advantage he cultivated (for perception is a level playing field) was in an undiscovered area of consciousness, and the four or five years he spent facendo ritratti as Bellori described, [9] were akin to the practice of a Mozart or a McEnroe.
He not only had a prodigious talent but he worked assiduously to develop it
‘è faticosamente uscito dal povertà mediante il lavoro assiduo, tutto afferrando e accettando con accorgimento e ardire’
as Carel van Mander wrote in 1603 [10].
We do know that his perception was substantially different from that of other artists. It set him apart and he was generally regarded as ‘difficult’ because he did not share any of their techniques, or their subjects. Asked to paint an Angel, he could not do so because he had not seen one.
The Barberini had reason to be jealous of Del Monte, he had made great intellectual advances, especially in the area that was called natural philosophy, that included alchemy, distilling, medicine, the study of plants, of antiquity, the refinement of glassmaking, iconography but also what would later be called experimental philosophy, which was the study of perception. It was not until the seventeenth century that images were discovered in eyes, and the incredible accuracy of Caravaggio’s replication of what he saw was sensational. His predecessor (in Del Monte’s favour) had painted everything with minute attention to detail, even recording a reflection in his sitter’s eye, but this now seemed to be just recording costume and jewellery. The concern with appearance was not only the study of the variety of species that his colleague Federico Cesi and the members of his Accademia dei Lincei kept encountering, but also the unexpected sight of features brought to consciousness by means of the telescope and the microscope, like the detail of the anatomy of the bee. But all previous representation stemmed from experience, it was not possible to separate what the eyes see from the mechanism of memory that actually contributes the major part of visual perception. (Fig 7 Detail of glass carafe, Boy bitten by a Lizard, National Gallery, London) and the daisy in his bunch if flowers. (Fig. 8, detail of Lute Player, glass carafe)
Sixteenth century artists (as opposed to philosophers) were desperate to capture appearance as they thought it really was, but could not actually achieve it because of the insistent contamination of ‘top-down’ information, in other words from recollection. Caravaggio’s peculiar channel of sight meant that he could only work from ‘bottom-up’ perception, and he compensated for his deficit by revealing all the signals that arrived on the retina, rather than complementing them with what he had already seen, the equivalent of what has been called the ‘innocent eye. It was the completion of what was imagined, from Aristotle’s Poetics, to be the perfect representation of things as they are, superior even to that achieved with perspective. No explanation of Caravaggio’s sensational naturalism had emerged, but this made the works themselves even more desirable, and the Barberini evidently wanted to get their hands on them.
The opening passage of Federico Cesi’s broadsheet on bees Apiarium published to coincide with the 1625 Jubilee, reminded us that Pliny himself ‘knew that nature is never more complete than in its smallest parts’. Apart from the reference to the emblematic Barberini bees, this reflected the curiosity of Maffeo’s generation for the minutiae of nature. It would help that his eldest son, by then Secretary of State, was appointed executor of Del Monte’s estate (with Ferdinando de’ Medici’s eldest son) , for the sale ‘all’incanto’ was expedited despite the express instructions of the testator. The process was started immediately after Del Monte’s death in August 1626, and it was evidently a major priority for the new Pope, Urban VIII, to secure the credit for the tremendous intellectual achievements that Del Monte had made.
The Lute Player and the Musicians that Baglione saw at Del Monte’s are also a conscious attempt to relate to ancient music [11]. but the scores are music that chanced to be there rather than chosen with an intended meaning. The music that is prominently featured is from an earlier period, the instruments are out of date and so damaged that they were unplayable. The musicians are in classical togas and tunics that would have been seen as Greek
They were an amazing evocation of classical times, with a technique so real that it was almost incredible. The execution is meticulous, always based on the subject he had in front of him, and it was for Caravaggio, just as much application to paint a good picture of flowers, as of figures, tanta manifattura gli era fare un quadro buono di fiori, come di figure as Vincenzo Giustiniani reported. [12] The Lute Player is a key work corresponding with his description in his Discorso sulla pittura : ‘Fifth [technique] that of knowing how to paint flowers, and other details, when the painter needs to be able to capture following the first technique in which he needs to manage his colours and appreciate the impact they have , in order to capture the character of the whole variety of shapes and varied illumination, and it turns out to be extraordinarily difficult to take these considerations and effects into account, for anyone who does not possess this facility of painting, and above all it demands extraordinary patience’.
This was the application Caravaggio had, when he according to Bellori, spent four or five years ‘facendo ritratti’ in other words, working from nature[13]. The apprenticeship that he undertook in Milan was really that of a bottega d’arte, rather than necessarily painting figures, learning gestures and narrative, and the training was limited to applying himself to replicating appearance. So the subjects he had painted were mainly of fruit and flowers, (Fig. 11 Detail from the Boy with a Basket of Fruit, Galleria Borghese)
Decorative detail like these features represent would generally have been painted in tempera or fresco, this was a real virtuoso performance – in oil paint. An instance of his extraordinary performance, reproducing a still-life, had caught the eye of the Cardinal’s colleague, Federico Borromeo who bought the Basket of Fruit he would bequeath to the Ambrosiana. He had been even before Del Monte the Protector of the Painters’ Academy, the Accademia di San Luca. Caravaggio painted a similar Basket of Fruit on a Stone Table for the young Chierico di camera, Maffeo Barberini, as well as other ritratti that demonstrated his extraordinary ability to reproduce these subjects from life. (Fig 12, detail gloves from Fortune Teller, Louvre)
The example of these paintings would show how things actually looked, with a seamless depiction that looked as though no brushwork is involved, so polished it even looks more realistic than the camera obscura images that G.B. Della Porta (and others) had conjured up. One of the reasons why this originality was long denied was actually in part the result of the changed perception Caravaggio achieved, for although it was undeniable that this appearance was convincing, if it really looked like that, it came to be regarded as only a mechanical job reproducing it. and copying was anathema to the idea of artistic invention.
The description Giovanni Baglione made of the pictures Caravaggio painted after he was rescued from destitution in 1597, emphasises how special they were, and it is clear that for this author they were veritable milestones in his career, in his technique ritratti dal naturale – from life. Rescued from the street and from sleeping in rags on the plinth of the statue of Pasquino, the artist needed to prove himself and show exactly what he could achieve to satisfy his new patron. We now know (from Celio’s recently discovered biography (1614) that he was first set to do versions [14] of a couple of earlier paintings that he had missed buying, (and we know from Mancini that the original Fortune Teller (now in the Louvre) was sold for eight and half scudi). But the next two pictures, the Musicians and the Lute Player were described by Baglione in some detail, (see above, Fig. 6) more than any others in the biography. It might seem as though these were completed during his patron’s absence, for after the painter arrived in the summer of 1597, Del Monte was to accompany the Pope on the excursion to reclaim Ferrara for the Church, with all of the Curia and more than 3000 others from Rome, returning only towards the end of 1598. In any case these paintings were obviously exemplary, and Caravaggio himself (as reported by Baglione) regarded the Lute Player as the best piece he had ever done (‘il più bel pezzo, che facesse mai’). The achievement is the pinnacle of his philosophy, for as Bellori relates, ‘he declared that he was so faithful to the model that he did not invent a single brushstroke, for these were not his but part of nature herself’ [15]
There would be however two versions of the Lute Player, by Caravaggio himself, and this has caused some confusion. Baglione’s enthusiastic description of the one done for Del Monte is testimony to the success the work had with the patron, who famously restricted access to it and the rest of his collection, because he believed copies reduced the value of the originals. There were many imitations, and a large proportion of the Caravaggesque pictures that this revolution spawned were of musical subjects, a direct result of these Del Monte paintings. There are however few documentary references to the pictures themselves and the Cardinal’s security was obviously effective inmpreventing copies being made [16]. So the existence of a second version (running counter to the Longhian dogma [17] that the artist never repeated himself) seems an exception, Apart from the Del Monte original that Baglione saw and admired, there was a second picture, documented in Vincenzo Giustiniani’s inventory of his collection, that he himself drew up in 1637, as an overdoor
‘Un quadro sopra Porto con una mezza figura d’un Giovane the sona il liuto con diversi frutti e fiori e libri di musica dipinto in tela alta palmi 4, largo 5 1/2 in circa con la sua cornice negra profilata et rabescata d’oro [di mano di Michelangelo da Caravaggio] [18].
This travelled to Paris with many Giustiniani pictures at the end of the eighteenth century, and was bought by Tsar Alexander I in 1808. We admire the bravura of the Hermitage version (Fig 13), but it remained unfinished, with no detail in the place of the glass carafe and its reflections, and no dewdrops on the flowers that Baglione so much admired [19]. The detail of the glass carafe (Fig. 14) is stylistically consistent with the glass vessels that the ‘Master of Hartford (Fig 15) painted .
The detail is very similar,, and I have argued that it was Caravaggio’s turcimanno Prospero Orsi [20], who sold a painting of this description to Duke Angelo Altemps in 1612[21]. the first occasion when the subject of the Lute Player with a carafe of flowers, by Caravaggio, is mentioned.
The artist himself did not always replicate the more extravagant detail, in the replica he did of the original Fortune Teller for Del Monte (now in the Capitoline Museums) he did not repeat the spectacular and central detail of the bravo’s pair of gloves (see Fig..12), and Hermitage painting was left unfinished in several other important details. This more cursive handling, with fewer layers of preparation, meant that the Hermitage version was not finished even without the flowers (which as we see them today are manifestly by another hand ) and less preparation, less insistent detail as in the shirt. The information (given in the recently discovered biography by Gaspare Celio [22] that Caravaggio painted a picture of a Lute Player in Prospero Orsi’s house suggests that this was prompted by his ‘turcimanno’ as Baglione called him, to whom he was indebted not only because of his introduction to Del Monte, but because he had purchased some of his pictures at the beginning of his own activity as a picture dealer.
He still had many of them as the artist was about to return to Rome from his adventures in Naples, Malta and Sicily , and after it emerged that Caravaggio had died attempting to return to Rome, he put them on the market. The work Prospero sold in 1612 was evidently from his stock, for by then he had become more of a dealer [23] than a painter, and produced for sale a number of early Caravaggios, including subjects of fruit and flowers, that he had bought when the decorations of Palazzo Petrignani were dispersed in 1596/97 [24]. So it was that on 1st September 1612 Duke Giovanni Angelo Altemps bought four paintings from Orsi, including two by Caravaggio, for the not inconsiderable sum of 155 scudi, and later inventories of his collection describe two Caravaggios, a Boy bitten by a Lizard, and the painting of a Lute Player. It had been completed, at least with the addition of the flowers, which were not mentioned by Celio when he saw Caravaggio painting this subject at Prospero’s house.
Caravaggio’s work was becoming better-known, and it is more likely than not this was a real original that Orsi had sold in 1612, accompanied as it was with a version of the Boy bitten by a Lizard, a work also painted more than a decade earlier. The Altemps inventories are in fact full of pictures by Caravaggio that were bought from Orsi, some of them named explicitly and some that seem likely, including subjects of fruit and flowers that clearly came from the earlier period of Caravaggio’s career.[25] as well as a Boy bitten by a Lizard. They had been decorations for the grandiose palazzo that Fantino Petrignani had partly built by 1596, and their subjects were inventions by the artist himself, as Petrignani was generally an absentee patron and so this gave wide scope to Caravaggio’s invention, which was still largely secular. The young Duca d’Altemps bought them as ready-mades.
There is so far no other contemporary description of the Lute Player, so Celio’s mention of seeing Caravaggio paint one in Prospero’s house is especially interesting. Baglione’s was the first account of the subject to be published, and was probably written in the 1620s although the Vite dei pittori was not printed until later (1642), possibly as a result of the sale of Del Monte collection in 1628. We expect that a Caravaggio should have commanded a lot more than the 60 scudi that the Altemps version was valued in 1620 (in 1618/20 however it was valued 100 Scudi [26]; Prospero Orsi had not yet fully succeeded in promoting pictures by his ‘discovery’ that were regarded as decorative, to the values we know from later. Cesare Crispolti’s Boy peeling Fruit[27] was only estimated in 1608 at three scudi; Mancini wrote however of a Fortune Teller that had been bought, in 1613, for 300. It does seem possible that the Altemps painting was the work that Giovanni Angelo had bought in 1612, and was therefore for sale along with much of the Duke’s collection after his death in 1620, a time when Giustiniani (probably Cardinal Benedetto) also bought the Caravaggio Portrait of Fillide Melandroni that used to be in Berlin until 1945, to accompany the other paintings his brother had commissioned and bought. .Altemps’s extravagance is illustrated by his purchase from Cardinal Scipione Borghese of the Palazzo di Montecavallo on the Quirinal for 115,000 scudi, only to have to sell it three years later for less than half that sum.
It was generally thought, up till 1985 that the painting described by Baglione was the one now in the Hermitage, and had somehow migrated from the Cardinal’s collection to the neighbouring palazzo of Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani, who was also much struck by the works of this artist. But their histories do not coincide, and some of the features Baglione most admired in the picture he saw are not present in the Hermitage version, which certainly came from Palazzo Giustiniani. In 1985 Karin Wolfe demonstrated[28] that there had been two authentic paintings of the subject. The Giustiniani version is first described in the inventory drawn up by Vincenzo Giustiniani himself in 1637 (he died December 27 of that year.) So there had to have been another Lute Player, that was until then unaccounted for.
There are differences between the two versions (Hermitage (H) and ex-Badminton (B). The eyes in (B) (Fig.16 ) are slightly out of line, and the left eye is closer to the nose in (H), (Fig. 17) and the facial features like the lips, oral commissures (corners of the details of head, Hermitage and Londonmouth) the philtrum, the mentolabial sulcus (underlip) and the dimple of the chin, are slightly more pronounced in (B);
the corrections are in line with the artist’s attempt to makes the face more balanced, as if the original observation did not coincide perfectly and needed correction. Caravaggio’s observation was of a limited area at a time, and the move to an adjacent area sometimes turns out to be slightly disjointed, as we can also see in the recently exhibited Portrait at present exhibited in Palazzo Barberini. It does not look as though this replication was done by a tracing with oiled paper, as was often the practice for copies; Caravaggio’s replicas are not mechanical and features in them always turn out to be slightly displaced.
There is an obvious pentimento in the central daisy in (B), which actually occupies the place it has in (H), a few corrections, such as the adjustment to the right cuff (not present in (H) which equally does not have the shift of the ear, visible in the IRR and X-ray of (B). Although the IRR shows a similar network of underdrawing, it is less detailed in (H), and generally the ground is less worked in that version, with a thinner preparation.
Many minor variations, like the string hanging from the pegbox of the lute, and the more pronounced furrows in the shirt in (B). (Fig. 18 ) compares with the more fluid handling in (H) Fig. 19)
The pigments in both paintings are essentially the same, and in both there is exposure ‘a riserva’ of the ground: some of the area occupied by the figure was evidently laid out with a grey preparation, exposed to the left under the wrist, and also visible next to the neck.
It is useful to compare details, for they look rather different despite being obviously closely modelled one on the other, and there is more definition in one, more ‘feathering’ and exploitation of transparency. As with the second version of the Corydon in the Capitoline Museum, the background (which is there painted only half-way up the canvas[29]) the ground is left exposed in large areas of the upper part of the canvas, as is evident in the recent conservation report [30]
The two Lute Players are of slightly different dimensions, the ex-Badminton canvas (B) being 96 by 121, while the Hermitage version (H) is 94 by 119 cm, and during the recent cleaning and restoration[31] it was recognised that it has lost a few centimetres, as evidenced by the fact that the violin scroll is intersected by the edge of the canvas, as also some of the flowers on the left. So they were originally much the same size, but as Caravaggio did not use tracing on oiled paper to replicate it, there are modest differences. Both paintings have a similar ground, but the preparation has given rise to chemical conflicts with the upper layers in (H) that are extensively documented in the Hermitage 2017 account of the restoration. The glazes are stronger in (B) and the paintwork is there generally more complex. In both pictures there is a grey preparation underneath the figure that remains exposed, ‘a riserva’ ,adjacent to the player’s neck, where the layer underneath is still visible, and especially at the left-hand cuff of the shirt. (Fig. 20)
This is also a feature of the left hand of the lute player in the Musicians, which also has an area of grey preparation (Fig. 21) left bare, while the profile of the right-hand figure in the Cardsharps (Fort Worth, Kimbell Museum) also shows this same ground[32]. There are a number of short incisions in the paint surface in (B) and none seen in (H); these are a characteristic Caravaggio technique, seemingly to mark the position of the model, to return to in subsequent sessions-. Only a few corrections, although the central daisy in (B) exists as a pentiment just above it[33], in the position it has in (H), and the correction of the right hand cuff of the shirt in (B) is not repeated in (H).
A correction to the lobe of the ear is seen in (B), (Fig. 22) a frequent occurrence as the artist seems to have started a design with an important accent that sometimes needed adjustment.[34]
The face is slightly turned away from us in (H) with the right cheek noticeably reduced, while the eyes in (H) are in line; in (B) the left eye is slightly displaced, corrected in (H). The artist realised that his original observations were displaced, and the eyes in (H) look at us with the same gaze rather than with a slight squint. The major difference between the two versions is of course the absence of the detail in the glass carafe, where (B) has the reflections of a window (left) with the stems of the flowers and water droplets on the outside of the glass. (Fig.23)-
These reflections [35] of the window to the left are also repeated in the reflection at the back of the water on the right, where they are modulated in tone because of the refraction through the liquid, and were the qualities that Baglione admired. The flowers in (H) seem to be by a different hand[36] and do not have the dewdrops seen by Baglione in Del Monte’s painting, although they are prominent on the fruit on the table. In practice it is evident that the flowers in (H) are basically repeated from (B) and so not from life (dal naturale), although there are several changes. The definition and finish of (B) is more pronounced, as if this was intended to be an image without visible brushwork, while (H) remains more painterly. The tight finish was also evidently the original appearance of the Musicians, which can only be imagined because of the damage that it has suffered. It does look as though the Hermitage painting was painted more quickly and was left unfinished, with important details omitted.
Infrared reflectography is particularly useful in revealing the sequence of the artist’s progress, because the procedure succeeds in revealing the stages of his painting. Contrary to the long-held belief that he did not draw, the forms are generally outlined, and these lines, generally in a thin but dark oil paint, applied with a fine brush, are quite obvious in the IRR. Caravaggio started with bold indications of elements like the ear and mouth, (Fig, 24 , Fig. 25) and evidently needed a framework for continued observation that did not have a graphic foundation.
Both versions have a pronounced horizontal marker for the mouth, which is then given the shape of the lips in a ‘Cupid’s Bow’ configuration. The same observation is seen in the IRR of the central Lute player in the Musicians. (Fig. 27), but this first definition of the mouth clearly reflects the different attitude of the face, which is there turned slightly to the right. The creases in the skin are also defined, and although some of these lines are omitted in the Hermitage version, it is clear that he replicated it from the first version, even repeating the shadow of a dish in which the fruit was placed (a pentimento of a feature that was evidently painted over).
The IRR shows that the visible contours and folds of the rest of the composition are also mapped, and this determined the subsequent recording of the tones and colours of the intervening areas; but these guidelines were effaced by subsequent paint. The difference of Caravaggio’s procedure, which was recording visible contours, from contemporary practice is clear from Baldinucci’s description of disegno, [37] drawing, which he defined as ‘a plan made with lines of those things that the artist had in mind, and that he had imagined’. This difference was indeed noticed by a few contemporaries, like Giovanni de’ Vecchi who as reported by Gaspare Celio, said when he viewed the Contarelli Chapel paintings ‘This painter (virtuoso) even though he did not know how to draw, actually managed rather well ‘ [38]. The two paintings, that Caravaggio painted soon after he was taken up by Cardinal Del Monte, full of detail that was challenging to ‘get right’ were consummate demonstrations of this new-found ability.
In reality it has been overlooked that the original Lute Player was indeed among the pictures the young Antonio Barberini bought from the sale of Del Monte’s paintings in 1628, and it stayed with him up to his death in 1671. None of the Caravaggios was bought by Vincenzo Giustiniani, who was evidently more interested in the classical antiquities that formed the bulk of his acquisitions. One of the mysteries of the sale of the collection, inherited by the Cardinal’s nephew Uguccione Del Monte, who died just a week after his uncle, is the seeming absence, in modern accounts of the sale, of the painting. Uguccione had set about attempting to sell his inheritance, and his successor was his brother Alessandro Del Monte, and they managed to set aside the testator-s express direction that nothing was to be sold. There is an account of some of the sales, but it is incomplete and inaccurate. The painting had been specially remarked upon by Baglione as we have seen, and he reported the artist’s own great regard for it; this certainly resulted in the high prices the pictures achieved.
Several of the Caravaggios, including those most prized by Del Monte, were included in a lot that was acquired by Antonio Barberini (1607-1671), who was at the time showered with gifts and preferments by his uncle Pope Urban VIII and had learnt he was to become a Cardinal. This asta all’incanto was held intermittently from October 1627 to June 1628 in Palazzo Avogadro, next to Piazza del Popolo, where Del Monte had moved after yielding his Villa on the Pincio to Cardinal Ludovisi in 1621. It was intended to be a museum and educational facility that would be a permanent location for his large collection, where the Caravaggios had a privileged position. Wazbinski in his biography of Del Monte noted from his reading of the 1627 Inventory, which detailed the contents of his entire collection[39], that the paintings were arranged to celebrate Caravaggio’s revolutionary naturalism, and the artist-s reputation would indeed be tied to the Cardinal who rescued him from the street, because he had seen his exceptional talent.
This was the intention, and contributing to this project of a museum was Giovanni Battista Mattei’s bequest to his godfather (Del Monte) in 1624 of the St John the Baptist, that Caravaggio had painted in 1602/03 for his father Ciriaco Mattei, ( a work still missing) [40]. It was obvious that it was Del Monte who was responsible for a great advance in the recognition of this painter, giving him the opportunity to develop a wholly new perception that transformed the still basically medieval practice of learning representation by copying a master’s work and the examples of one’s elders and betters. This was a ‘scientific’ advance of the understanding of appearance that was confirmed by the effects seen in the images made through the camera obscura that were undeniably superior to what could be achieved through quadratura, the system of perspective that many artists were able to bring into play from a ‘professional’ able to do the appropriate calculations. All the more exciting as it was the first achievement in revising perception for centuries.
The protection that Del Monte had provided was of great importance for consolidating the artist’s career, that was based on an innate understanding of appearance rather than a learning process. The artist’s new fame meant that his patron could no longer count on new paintings from him after the first stunning pieces that were seen as miraculous. The Cardinal’s acquisitions from his protégé would be limited to works that preceded the large commission for the Contarelli Chapel (1599/1600) because of the inflation of the prices the artist was able to command.
The subjects of these paintings were arresting, particularly as they were not conventional, and they did not attempt to present a narrative or celebrate a story or a pious tribute, even St Catherine (as the patron saint of philosophy) is not especially saintly. No-one had celebrated the different characters of players as in the Cardsharps, or their interpersonal relationships and the meticulous accuracy of representation of the musical instruments, the position of the player’s hands being an almost textbook illustration to demonstrate musical technique, and the novel appreciation of the impact of light passing through glass and water, the realism of the flowers and fruit -a revolutionary emphasis on features not previously noticed, equal attention paid to yesterday’s iris, the more than thirty dewdrops, those attached to the glass, the detail of the frog on the bow giving tension to the resinated horsehair, the curled up strings that have snapped.
Unlike other choices, these were not indecorous, but they were a vital part of the novel, and arresting, vision that this artist put forward, a challenging imagery whose significance was self-evident, and appreciated cosa nuova alle persone non dell’arte[41] as Celio would put it (as if he himself was completely au fait). If we notice these things today, how much more arresting would they have been then. Some of these effects were indeed present in the Boy bitten by a Lizard but with the pictures done for Caravaggio’s new patron he carried his technical virtuosity to new heights. And the flowers were real specimens, with some of their transitoriness represented in flowers that are past their best, like the fruit in the Ambrosiana Basket of Fruit that also includes bruised and worm-eaten specimens. They are neither generic nor artificially perfect, and those eventually inserted in the Giustiniani version were (mainly) repeated from the original painting, not from a new bunch. .
Clovis WHITFIELD Umbria 29 Gennaio 2025
NOTE
[1] M. Frazzi, L’Accademia degli Insensati e gli inizi del giovane Caravaggio a Roma, il milieu culturale e sociale di una rivoluzione artistica’ https://www.aboutartonline.com/laccademia-degli-insensati-e-gli-inizi-del-giovane-caravaggio-a-roma-il-milieu-culturale-e-sociale-di-una-rivoluzione-artistica/ 11 aprile 2021, and C. Whitfield, https://www.aboutartonline.com/ September 2023, and on academia.edu : the-origin-of-the-symbolism-in-caravaggios-early-works-the-meeting-with-the-insensati-precursor-of-the-new-enlightenment-with-the-support-of-the-young-maffeo-barberini-original-engl/
[2] See J.B. Scott, Galileo and Urban VIII, Science and Allegory at Palazzo Barberini,, in I Barberiini e la cultura europea del Seicento, 2007 [2004] p. 127-142
[3] Scritti originali del Conte Carlo Cesare Malvasia, spettanti alla sua Felsina Pittrice, ed L. Marzocchi, Bologna, 1983, p. 388
[4] From the evidence the artist himself gave during the trial for libel brough by Giovanni Baglione, 13 Sept. 1603, in S. Macioce Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Fonti e documenti, 1532-1724, Rome 2003, p. 127, 2023 ed., p.154
[5] This was in fact Costantino Spada, a ‘second-hand picture dealer’ whose shop was on the corner behind Palazzo Madama and next to the church of San Luigi dei Francesi, see F. Curti, ’Costantino Spada “Regattiero di quadri vecchi” e l’amicizia con Caravaggio’, Roma moderna e contemporanea XIX, 2011, p. 167-197. The Cardsharps that Del Monte bought before he sought him out, may have been for sale with Spada, who does not seem to have been an agent for Caravaggio but happened to have some of the many paintings he painted in Palazzo Petrignani for sale in his shop.
[6] See C. Whitfield https://www.aboutartonline.com/dal-verisimile-a-il-vero-come-la-tecnica-reale-di-caravaggio-abbia-cambiato-la-percezione-di-tutto-original-text-and-italian-translation-by-c-lollobrigida/
[7] G.P. Bellori, Vite dei pittori… Rome 1672, p. 212
[8] G. Mancini, Considerazioni, ed Marucchi and Salerno, 1956, I, p. 226. As his brother had taken holy orders, and their sister had chosen life in a convent, their expectation had been that Michelangelo would have produced a succession in the family, like the other sister Caterina who had six children.
[9] G:P. Bellori, Vite dei pittori, 1672, p. 202. This turn of phrase referred to copying from life, from nature, and not only portrait likenesses.
[10] Translation from the Schilderboek, S. Macioce Michelangelo da Caravaggio, Fonti e Documenti, 2003, p. 309.
[11] Cf Dinko Fabris, ‘Il “ciclo musicale” di Caravaggio: gioco nascosto di committenti,’in La musica al tempo di Caravaggio, ed. S. Macioce, Enrico di Pascale, Roma, 2010, p.75/76
[12] V. Giustiniani, Discorsi sulle arti e sui mestieri ed. A. Banti, Firenze, 1981. p. 40. ’Quinto, il saper ritrarre fiori, ed altre cose minute, nel che due cose principalmente si richiedono, la prima, che il pittore sappia di lunga mano maneggiare i colori e ch’effetto fanno, per poter arrivare al disegno vario delle molte posizioni de’piccoli oggetti, ed alla varietà dei lumi , e riesce a cosa assai difficile unire queste due circostanze e condizioni a chi non possiede bene questo modo di dipignere, e sopra a tutto vi si ricerca straordinaria pazienza’
[13] See C. Whitfield https://www.aboutartonline.com/caravaggio-and-th-magic-ofi-ritratto-from-life-original-english-text-and-italian-translation/ July 4 2021
[14] These were of the Shepherd Corydon (Galleria Doria Pamphilj – the work long mistaken for ‘St John the Baptist’) and the Fortune Teller (the version in the Louvre; the replicas done by Caravaggio himself are in the Capitoline Galleries. Del Monte had missed buying the originals at the time of the dispersal of the Petrignani paintings See C. Whitfield https://www.aboutartonline.com/caravaggios-shepherd-in-arcadia-original-english-text-and-authors-italian-traslation/ Aboutartonline, December 22, 2022.
[15] ‘Professavasi egli inoltre tanto ubbidiente al modello che non si faceva né meno una pennellata, la quale diceva non essere sua ma della natura’, Vite dei pittori, 1672, p. 212,
[16] The painting of a similar subject from the collection of Silvano Lodi, included in the exhibition Caravaggio’s Friends and Foes, Whitfield Fine Art, London , 2010, has recently been attributed to Mario Minniti. https://www.aboutartonline.com/lesordio-romano-caravaggio-nuove-tracce-dalla-biografia-mario-minniti-attribuzione/. Since it includes a glass carafe with flowers, and some dewdrops, it is clearly inspired by Del Monte’s picture, and must be an early work by Caravaggio’s servitore. It was included in a sale at Christie’s Milan online, June 2023,
[17] stated in his ‘Ultimi Studi sul Caravaggio e la sua cerchia’, in Proporzioni, I 1943, p. 5 ‘sta il fatto che se v’è un autore a non potersi immaginare nell’atto di replicare le proprie opere questi è il Caravaggio’ It is a paradox that while the pictures were taken so faithfully from life, these inventions could be replicated, even by others.
[18] See S.D. Squarzina, La collezione Giustiniani, Inventari I, Torino/Milano, 2013, I, p. 394/395 Frequently confidently described as commissioned by Vincenzo, or even created after Del Monte’s original as a gift for him, there is no basis for these imaginative accounts.
[19] It is painted more confidently, but even the flowers in the opinion of Daniela Storti and Claudio Falcucci, on seeing it in the course of cleaning to St Petersburg in 2017, to have been left for another hand.
[20] Caravaggio’s Carafes“… fece questo e quello, ogni sorta di quadri”. A crucial study regarding the ‘hand’ of Caravaggio’s jugs, Aboutartonline, 2024, and Academia.edu.
[21] L. Spezzaferro,’Caravaggio accettato, Dal rifiuto al mercato’, in Atti del Convegno 2001, Città del Castello, 2002, p.39-50. and F. Nicolai, Mecenati a confronto, Roma 2008, Appendice II, p. 216-250. This is the painting that later, in 1620 Altemps inventory, will be described more fully ‘Un giovane che sona il lout con una carafe di fiori di p.mi 6 longo cornice nera rabescata d’oro’
[22] Gaspare Celio, Vite dei Pittori, written 1614, ed. by R. Gandolfi, Florence 2021, p. 320. ‘ si pose in casa di esso Prospero a fare alcuna cosa dal naturale , dove fece un putto che sonava un leuto’. No mention of the carafe of flowers, but this feature with the reflections was only present in the Del Monte original.
[23] See C. Whitfield, aboutartonline.com/prospero-orsi-the-true-role-of-prosperino-caravaggios-agent-original-english-text-and-italian-version-by-the-author/
[24] https://www.aboutartonline.com/paintings-for-sales-news-paintings-n-myths-to-debunk-on-caravaggios-roman-year-original-english-text-and-authors-translation
[25] For instance in the 1620 circa inventory published by F. Nicolai, Mecenati a confronto, Rome 2008, p. 230/231 : Un quadro d’un pastor the son un flauto del Caravaggio, sc. 40. Un quadro che d’un putto che sono un liuto del Caravaggio. sc.100, un quadro con frutti e fiori dipinti del Caravaggio, sc. 60, un quadro del retratto del Caravaggioche gli morde una lucertola sc. 60, Un quadro de frutti del Caravaggio dov’è la carafa, sc 50 . And in 1613 Altemps had paid 40 sc a Prospero Orsi pittore e sono per due quadri de frutta uno del Caravaggio e l’altro di Bart [olomeo]
[26] See the Altemps Inventory in the Newberry Library in Chicago, published by F. Nicolai, Mecenati a confroto, Rome 2008, . p.230, # 83, un quadro d’un putto che suona un liuto del Caravaggio sc. 100’.
[27] Cesare Crispolti was from Perugia, and his ownership of the Boy selling Fruit makes him one of Caravaggio’s earliest collectors, as he bought one of the pictures he did ‘per vendere’ as Mancini puts it. He was also a member of the Perugian Accademia degli Insensati, which met in Rome in Maffeo Barberini’s residence next to Prospero Orsi’s. See L. Teza, Caravaggio e il frutto della virtù, Milan 2013, p. 9.
[28] Karin Wolfe, ‘Caravaggio, Another Lute Player’. Burlington Magazine 127, 1985. p. 45-452.
[29] Oral communication, the late Nicola Salini, who completed conservation of the painting in 2010.
[30] See Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, The Lute Player, On the Completion of the Restoration, by V. Korobov, S. Bogdanov, T. Bushmina State Hermitage Museum, 2017.
[31] The painting has a ‘Lebrun’ frame, doubtless chosen for it in Paris where the Giustiniani pictures were sent for sale, and it is markedly too small for the existing canvas.
[32] The Cardsharps shared the same history as the Lute Player (and the St Catherine ) from Del Monte to Antonio Barberini, and i remained with that family until the 1890s.
[33] Visible to the naked eye, but more obvious in the X-ray and IRR.
[34] T.M. Schneider, ‘L’orecchio di Caravaggio, o come distinguere un originale da una copia,’ Paragone XLIV, 519-521 1993, p. 21-23
[35] See M. Kemp, in Science in Culture, The cut-and-paste carafe, Nature, Nov. 2002, p. 364.
[36] As observed by Daniela Storti and Claudio Falcucci during a visit to the Hermitage in 2016, during the restoration of the picture there
[37] Del disegno, Un apparente dimostrazione con linee di quelle cose con l’animo si aveva concepite e nell’idea immaginate’. F. Baldinucci, Vocabolario toscano dell’arte del disegno, Florence, 1681 p. 51.
[38] G. Celio, Vite dei pittori, ed R. Gandolfi, Firenze, 2021, p. 321 De Vecchi was a distinguished Tuscan painter and associate of Vasari, one of the authorities in the Accademia di San Luca, who lectured there on disegno.
[39] Z. Wazbinski, Cardinale Francesco Maria Del Monte, 1549-1626, Florence 1994
[40] It was an oblong composition, of the saint seated with a lamb. and its history is traceable up to 1777, when it was bought by Gavin Hamilton. See C Whitfield https://www.aboutartonline.com/caravaggios-shepherd-in-arcadia-original-english-text-and-authors-italian-traslation/ Giovanni Battista (1569-1624) was Ciriaco’s eldest son and presumed heir. It does exist, but is yet unpublished in this connection.
[41] G. Celio, VIte, 1614, op. cit, p. 320/21