Caravaggio's The Beheading of Saint John - A Baroque Assessment
Public domain image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist was painted in 1608, and the story of the man behind it is nearly as dramatic as the harrowing scene of violence it depicts.
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio grew up in Milan, where he studied painting under the apprenticeship of Simone Peterzano. After his apprenticeship, he fled Milan for Rome after getting into fights and injuring a police officer. Caravaggio's proclivity for violent behavior would continue throughout his life, frequently landing him in jail and getting him exiled from one city to the next.
In Rome, Caravaggio would make his rise to fame, and also become involved in street-brawling. Here, he was contracted to decorate the Church of St. Louis of the French and commissioned to paint by a number of wealthy patrons. In 1600, he was jailed for beating a nobleman with a club. Over the course of the next several years he was arrested for violent crimes numerous more times. His stay in Rome ended in 1606, after killing a man in a brawl.
Caravaggio fled to Naples and then Malta, where he would paint one of his most renowned works, The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist. After another imprisonment, he fled to Sicily for a short time before returning to Naples, where his face became disfigured after a violent brawl. In 1610 he attempted to return to Rome but died of an unknown disease on the way there.
It isn't hard to imagine that Caravaggio drew inspiration from his own life when creating violent paintings like The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist. I can't say that I relate to Caravaggio's tumultuous life, but I have an appreciation for his rebellious attitude. He managed to achieve fame in spite of regularly getting into trouble and producing controversial works. He managed to subvert expectations even while working under the strict limitations of the Catholic Church.
In his article for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Keith Christiansen says Caravaggio was, "one of the most revolutionary figures of European art. His practice of painting directly from posed models violated the idealizing premise of Renaissance theory and promoted a new relationship between painting and viewer by breaking down the conventions that maintained painting as a plausible fiction rather than an extension of everyday experience."
The Influence of the Counter-Reformation
Caravaggio's rise to fame came during the period of the Counter-Reformation, in which the Catholic Church sought to combat the rise of Protestantism with reforms pertaining to many areas of life, including art. By the decree of the Council of Trent, works featuring religious subject matter were not to depict nudity, not to beautify the human form in a way that would incite lust, and not to depict religious subjects in the fantastical, decorative style of Mannerism.
Working within the limitations imposed by the Council of Trent, Caravaggio painted realistic portrayals of religious subject matter, forgoing the extravagant embellishments of Mannerism. In The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist and many other paintings, Caravaggio employed a style focusing on acute attention to naturalistic details and the pronounced use of chiaroscuro, known as tenebrism, to add drama and tension to his scenes. Note how Caravaggio depicted his subjects with realistic flaws and imperfections, as opposed to the beautified forms typically portrayed by Renaissance era artists.
In his book Caravaggio: A Passionate Life, Desmond Seward writes, "No paintings could have been more in accord with the council’s decrees than Caravaggio’s during his maturity. Despite their occasional brutality, his naturalism and total lack of affectation or of elegance for its own sake were the looked-for response to the decrees’ demand for functional art. He seldom used pagan imagery. He seems to have had little interest in the art of classical antiquity. In his later years, his painting was wholly religious. The Counter-Reformation had created a climate to which Caravaggio responded absolutely as an artist."
Differences from the Renaissance
Public domain image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
The eminent Humanism of Jan van Eyck's Renaissance-era work above stands in stark contrast to Caravaggio's violent scene.
Notice first, the scenery: Van Eyck places his subjects in a serene setting. The room is ornate and illuminated with soft golden daylight. The floor is richly patterned and the arches look out on a natural landscape.
Meanwhile, Caravaggio's arch looks into a shadowy interior. Nature is nowhere to be seen. His subjects are placed in a dark and unwelcoming setting. The walls and floor are almost featureless aside from their gritty texture. The few embellishments include the menacingly large bricks surrounding the arch and window, iron bars, and an enormous iron shackle.
Both paintings concern religious subject matter,. Van Eyck depicts an angel crowning the Virgin Mary, showing reverence to humanity. Caravaggio depicts the execution of a saint.
Now let's take a look at a Mannerist painting:
Public domain image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Joachim Wtewael's Perseus Freeing Andromeda is highly stylized and exaggerated. Rich light and colors describe an abundance of elegant, flowing forms in order to create a heightened sense of reality. Caravaggio did something very different: there are few forms and their poses are strained rather than elegant. There are no fantastical flourishes. The reality he depicts is degraded rather than elevated.
In comparing these paintings, it is evident how the gentle Humanism and flowing Mannerism characteristic of Renaissance art was restricted by the Counter-Reformation. Baroque artists like Caravaggio had to find new ways to express themselves within the Catholic church's limitations.
Framing
Part of what makes The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist so unsettling is the unusual way the scene is framed. It seems almost as if the subjects aren't properly centered, but that impropriety serves a purpose as it might in an art film or photograph. The titular subject is not only pressed to the ground but pushed right against the bottom edge of the painting. Because of the way paintings are traditionally framed, we expect to see more of the world beneath Saint John, and so something feels amiss. Its almost as if there is no room to breathe, or the world before him has been cut short. That claustrophobic effect helps us to feel the impact of Saint John's imminent execution.
Similarly, Caravaggio included a view of the wall behind the subjects extending higher than what seems necessary. There are no subjects in the upper half of the painting, so why did Caravaggio put so much emphasis on this monolithic wall? Because of the wall's immense scale and framing it takes on an oppressive characteristic, towering over the human figures, poor Saint John especially.
Compare the framing here to Van Eyck's Madonna of Chancellor Rolin where everything is symmetrically arranged. The archway is neatly centered, and the human subjects are put at the focus and given plenty of breathing room.
Wtewael's Mannerist Perseus Freeing Andromeda, on the other hand, is not neatly symmetrical, but the subjects are harmoniously arranged within an elegantly balanced composition. His subjects, like Caravaggio's are placed near the edges of the painting, but we don't feel uncomfortably short of breath about it because they are turned to face inward where there is ample room.
Tenebrism
The use of tenebrism in this painting isn't as pronounced as in some of Caravaggio's other work, but it is present. Through the window, we can see nothing of the interior, so that the figures behind the bars appear to emerge from a dark void. The archway and the women's dresses are similarly dark, while some sparse white highlights illuminate the subjects from overhead. This extreme contrast achieves a highly dramatic effect, throwing the human figures into stark relief.
Color
In this painting Caravaggio makes dominant use of drab grays and browns in the background. He uses brighter colors more sparingly, with reds, blues, and greens adorning his human subjects. This restrained use of color accentuates his use of tenebrism, making the human subjects stand out in dramatic contrast to their surroundings.
Texture
Caravaggio makes extensive use of optical texture to create a sense of grittiness. The walls and brickwork appear appropriately cracked and scuffed and dingy. The people appear dirty and blemished and wrinkled. The textures here add realism to the scene.
Shape
The rounded shape of the arch, along with the triangular shapes embedded within the prominent human subjects, create a frenzied sense of movement around the scene of the execution.
I can't say I'd want this painting hanging in my living room, but I appreciate Caravaggio's skill at creating feelings of discomfort. There are plenty of artists who depict violence with more gore but less impact. Caravaggio's genius was in his ability to use naturalism, tenebrism, and creative framing amplify the unsettling nature of his violent depictions.
Works Cited
"The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist" Wikimedia Commons, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/La_decapitaci%C3%B3n_de_San_Juan_Bautista%2C_por_Caravaggio.jpg. Accessed 7 June 2021.
"Madonna of Chancellor Rolin" Wikimedia Commons. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/Virgin_with_Chancellor_Rolin_Luber.jpg. Accessed 7 June 2021.
"Perseus Freeing Andromeda" Wikimedia Commons. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Joachim_Wtewael_-_Perseus_and_Andromeda_-_WGA25911.jpg. Accessed 7 June 2021.
Hi Alex!
ReplyDeleteI almost did my Baroque blog on one of Caravaggio's pieces! I really enjoy the very Baroque-esque use of chiaroscuro. It adds that drama by casting light on the main subjects of the painting. I really enjoyed the background and research you provided on Caravaggio and his upbringing. Great analysis!