Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane (7 page)

63.
The Madonna of Loreto.
A picture much admired by the people at large in Rome, whom Giovanni Baglione described as ‘chattering like geese’ at its unveiling.

64.
The Madonna of the Palafrenieri.
The Virgin Mary and the infant Christ crush the serpent Satan as St Anne looks on. The picture was turned out of St Peter’s, probably because of the Madonna’s full cleavage.

65. The contract for the ill-fated
Madonna of the Palafrenieri.
His blood signature aside (Plate 80), this is the sole surviving example of Caravaggio’s handwriting.

66. View of Zagarolo in the Alban Hills outside Rome. Palazzo Colonna in Zagarolo was Caravaggio’s first hide-out after the murder of Ranuccio Tomassoni.

67.
The Supper at Emmaus.
A strikingly different interpretation of a subject Caravaggio had treated so subtly five years earlier (Plate 45). After the murder his style became increasingly bleak, dark and morbid.

68.
David with the Head of Goliath.
Cecco as David, Caravaggio as the severed head of Goliath. Often misdated to the end of the painter’s life, but actually painted in 1606 as a homicide’s plea for clemency.

69.
Sleeping Cupid.
Painted in Malta for a Florentine humanist, this picture was inspired by a celebrated sculpture of the same subject by Michelangelo.

70.
The Seven Acts of Mercy.
‘This one dark street, scene of desperation and pain and death, is the painter’s microcosm for the brutality of existence itself.’

71.
Roman Charity
(detail) by Pierino del Vaga.

72.
The Flagellation.
Torture as a misbegotten act of intimacy.

73.
The Crucifixion of St Andrew.
The painting does not show Andrew being bound to the cross, as some have thought, but the moment of his death. His former tormentors strive but fail to release him.

74.
St Jerome Writing.
Painted for one of the most senior Knights of Malta, a virtuoso demonstration of Caravaggio’s gifts to the artist’s new circle of patrons in the Order of St John.