Caravaggio_ A Life Sacred and Profane - Andrew Graham-Dixon [126]
The horse evoked other folk memories too. Like the benign ox and ass in traditional depictions and plays of the Nativity, the animal standing quietly in the dark recalls the manger in which Christ was born. Seen through half-closed eyes, the animal’s groom might almost be St Joseph. The association adds another level of meaning to the scene. In the moment of his conversion Paul is helpless yet blessed, bathed by the light of God, just as Christ was in his infancy.
Behind all this is the old idea of the Imitatio Christi, which was central to the ethics of the old pauperist orders such as the Franciscans. To understand Christ’s message is to become like him, to follow in his footsteps – to undergo a profound, internal metamorphosis. At the instant of his inner rebirth as a Christian, Paul mystically experiences the whole life of Christ, its beginning and its end. He becomes, in his own mind, both Christ the blessed child and Christ the doomed adult, sacrificed to save mankind. In the movements of his body are reflected the motions of his soul. He reaches his arms out like a baby. As he does so, his gesture mimes the Crucifixion.
The theological justification for pairing St Paul’s conversion with St Peter’s martyrdom was the belief that each event represented a mystical death. At his conversion, Paul dies to the world to be reborn in Christ; at his martyrdom, Peter literally dies, to meet his rewards in heaven. Such symmetry is implicit in the relationship between Caravaggio’s two paintings. The prone body of Paul, cruciform in a gesture of spiritual empathy, is echoed by the actually crucified body of Peter.
According to legend, Peter insisted that he be crucified upside down because he felt unworthy to die the same death as Christ. In The Crucifixion of St Peter, Caravaggio shows him already nailed to the cross, defiantly half rearing up as his executioners toil to raise him into place. He exhales against the pain, stomach muscles tensing, and looks away out of the picture. His eyes are fixed on the actual chapel’s altar, as if to stress that death by martyrdom is another form of participation in the rite of the Mass. Even as his own blood is shed, he trusts that he will be saved by the flesh and blood of Christ. The rock in the foreground is the symbol of his hard, enduring faith, cornerstone of the Church itself: ‘thou art Peter, and upon this rock I shall build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it’ (Matthew 16:18–19).
The action takes place in some dim corner of a nocturnal world lit only by the flash of God’s grace. The light falls on Peter and the straining figures of his three executioners, but the martyr alone is alive to its message of salvation. The others grunt and sweat under the burden of his weight, grimly immersing themselves in the practical business of hoisting up a human body nailed to a cross. They look as though they are trying not to think about what they are actually doing – or pretending to themselves that it might be some more innocent and straightforward task, such as erecting a fence-post, or heaving the joist of a house into place.
The executioners are insensitive to the point of insentience, blind to the mystical significance of the death they so callously arrange. Their figures are pushed up so close to the front edge of the picture that they seem almost to spill out into the real world. Like The Conversion of St Paul, The Crucifixion of St Peter is a painting aimed squarely at poor and ordinary people. It is a challenge as well as a call to conscience: viewers are brought into its space and invited to take the place of Peter’s executioners, at least in the mind’s eye – to make good their failings, to show compassion and mercy, to open up to the light of God.
The Renaissance