Caravaggio_ A Life Sacred and Profane - Andrew Graham-Dixon [265]
13. See Helen Langdon, The Lives of Caravaggio, p. 45. The translation here gives ‘the style of Giorgione’, which I have changed to ‘idea’ because the Italian word Baglione used was pensiero.
14. See Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, vol. 1, p. 641.
15. San Luigi dei Francesi was open to such innovations from outside. When Caravaggio accepted his commission, it was already one of the few churches in Rome to have a great Venetian canvas – by Jacopo Bassano – above its high altar.
16. See Helen Langdon, Caravaggio: A Life, p. 75.
17. See Sandro Corradini, Materiali per un processo, document 21, 7 Feb. 1601.
18. See Walter Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, pp. 269–70.
19. All the material from the investigation of Onorio Longhi in Oct. 1600, discussed below, is from Sandro Corradini, Materiali per un processo, document 15.
20. See above, p. 74.
21. Ibid., document 16, 20 Jan., deposition by Stefano Longhi and others.
22. Ibid., document 18.
23. Cited in John T. Spike, Caravaggio, in his CD-ROM catalogue entries for The Conversion of St Paul and The Crucifixion of St Peter; and Walter Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, pp. 302–3.
24. See Denis Mahon, ‘Egregius in Urbe Pictor: Caravaggio Revisited’, Burlington Magazine, vol. 93, no. 580 (July 1951), p. 226.
25. Caravaggio was familiar with the place too. He had convalesced in the Hospital of Santa Maria Consolazione in 1592–3, after being kicked by a horse.
26. Sixtus V; see Helen Langdon, Caravaggio: A Life, p. 181.
27. Quoted in John T. Spike, Caravaggio, p. 106.
28. See Helen Langdon, The Lives of Caravaggio, p. 88, where Bellori says that ‘Caravaggio did not use cinnabar reds or azure blues in his figures; and if he occasionally did use them, he toned them down, saying they were poisonous colours.’
29. See Fiora Bellini, ‘Tre documenti per Michelangelo da Caravaggio’, pp. 70–71.
30. See Helen Langdon, The Lives of Caravaggio, p. 91.
31. See Charles Scribner III, ‘In Alia Effigie: Caravaggio’s London Supper at Emmaus’, Art Bulletin, vol. 59, no. 3 (Sept. 1977), pp. 375–82, for an illuminating account of the youthful Christ and his theological significance.
32. The author’s name was Gaspare Celio, whose book was published in Naples in 1638. He described the picture as ‘a Pastor Friso, in oil, by Michelangelo da Caravaggio’. See the entry in John T. Spike, Caravaggio, CD-ROM catalogue entry no. 29.
33. See Conrad Rudolph and Steven F. Ostrow, ‘Isaac Laughing: Caravaggio, Non-Traditional Imagery and Traditional Identification’, Art History, vol. 24, no. 5 (Nov. 2001), pp. 646–81. The article advances the theory that the painter meant to depict Isaac instead of St John. It also contains a very good summary of the hard documentary evidence that disproves its own argument.
34. ‘Un quadro di San Gio: Battista col suo Agnello di mano del Caravaggio’, cited in ibid., p. 649.
35. He described it as ‘di San Giovanni Battista del Caravaggio’; cited in ibid.
36. See Helen Langdon, The Lives of Caravaggio, p. 72.
37. See Sergio Benedetti, ‘Caravaggio’s Taking of Christ: A Masterpiece Rediscovered’, Burlington Magazine, vol. 135, no. 1,088 (Nov. 1993), p. 740.
38. See Niccolò Lorini del Monte, Elogii delle piu principali S. Donne del sagro calendario, e martirologio romano (Florence, 1617), p. 316. My attention was called to this passage by Pamela M. Jones’s enlightening study of the pauperist context of Caravaggio’s Rome in her book Altarpieces and Their Viewers in the Churches of Rome from Caravaggio to Guido Reni; see pp. 75ff. in particular.
39. Cointrel’s nephew and heir, François, took possession of Cobaert’s dull and stolid sculpture, eventually having it completed by another artist and placed in a chapel in SS Trinità dei Pellegrini, where he himself would eventually be buried.
40. See Irving Lavin, ‘Divine Inspiration in Caravaggio’s Two St Matthews’, Art Bulletin, vol. 56, no. 1 (Mar. 1974), pp. 59–81.
41. See Helen Langdon, The