Shakespeare, Caravaggio, and Four Other Guys

I can remember the first time that ever I saw a Caravaggio.

It was the summer of 1985. I was staying at a pension in Rome, out near the Milvian Bridge. On my first day, my friend Dick Lee—I guess you could say he was my boss—walked me down to the Piazza del Popolo, and into the church of Santa Maria Del Popolo, and up to the Cerasi Chapel, where are displayed the Conversion of St. Paul and the Crucifixion of St. Peter, two of the defining moments in the career of the painter, and indeed, in the history of Westeren Art.

I’d like to say I was stunned and bowled over by the spectacle; I can’t, really. I think I knew I was in the presence of something important (Dick told me). But it was all too new and unfamiliar. And anyway, jet lag.

I’ve had the great good fortune to go back there several more times since, and now I think I get it. Indeed, if you had to push almost everything else off a cliff, I'd say today that these (along with the Calling of St. Matthew, in the Church of San Luigi di Francesi, just a few blocks away) are on the short list of stuff I would try to save.

I’ve been thinking of all three of these paintings lately as I’ve been reading M: The Man who Became Caravaggio (1998) Peter Robb’s eccentric but appreciative biography of the artist. There seem to be a lot of biographies of Caravaggio and no wonder: with all the whoring and the swordplay, he offers more than enough to keep the biographer busy. Robb’s is perhaps the most informal of the lot, and it’s full of irritating stylistic tics (I think he may have spent too much time in the company of Robert Hughes). But he’s an enthusiast: when he turns his attention to a Caravaggio painting, he gives it his complete engagement and response.

Reading Robb, I did stumble on one insight, I’d never thought of before. That is: how close Caravaggio’s career tracks Shakespeare’s. For each of them, the flourit is the last decade of the 16^th Century and the first of the 17^th. The three great religious works that I mentioned above—they must date from just about exactly the time of Shakespeare’s great tragedies.

Of course, there isn’t the slightest reason to suppose they ever heard of each other (I forget who it was who said that Shakespeare must have been Italian). But it is hard to imagine how we would understand the world without them.

Afterthought: a propos of not much, one of the oddest pieces of Caravaggio arcanae must be this, which one of the teenagers in the family keeps on her bedroom wall. It is, indeed, the Calling of St. Matthew and it is, indeed, the Beatles, also known as “Renaissance Minstrels.” I have no idea whose idea it was or why, and it seems to be pretty obscure; fact is, I couldn’t even find on the web without help. I wonder if it is a bootleg, or simply a record so bad that no one wants to remember it.

Update: Thanks to Ken for an improved picture of the Beatles album--which, he assures me, is indeed a bootleg.