Caravaggio_ A Life Sacred and Profane - Andrew Graham-Dixon [4]
81. The Adoration of the Shepherds (black and white photo), 1609, Oratory of San Lorenzo, Palermo, Italy/Alinari/The Bridgeman Art Library. Stolen in 1969. Oil on canvas, 105.5 x 77.6 in. (268 x 197 cm).
82. The Burial of St Lucy, 1608, Basilica di Santa Lucia al Sepolcro, Syracuse, Italy. Photo: Scala, Florence. Oil on canvas, 160.6 x 118.1 in. (408 x 300 cm).
83. The Denial of St Peter, 1610, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA/Art Resource/Scala, Florence. Gift of Herman and Lila Shickman, and Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 1997. Oil on canvas, 37 x 49.4 in. (94 x 125.4 cm).
84. The Martyrdom of St Ursula, 1610, Intesa Sanpaolo Collection, the Gallery of Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano, Naples. Oil on canvas, 56.3 x 70.9 in. (143 x 180 cm).
85. Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump by Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–97), 1768, National Gallery, London, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library. Oil on canvas, 72 x 96 in. (182.9 x 243.9 cm).
86. The Raft of the Medusa by Theodore Géricault (1791–1824), 1819, Louvre, Paris, France/The Bridgeman Art Library. Oil on canvas, 193.3 x 281.9 in. (491 x 716 cm).
87. Still from Mean Streets, directed by Martin Scorsese (1942– ), 1973, Taplin-Perry-Scorsese/The Kobal Collection.
Text illustration, p. 325: Sketch of Caravaggio’s sword and dagger made by the police officer who arrested him on the evening of 28 May 1605. As reproduced and cited in Maurizio Marini, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio ‘pictor praestantissimus’ (second edition, Rome, 1979), p. 54.
Text illustration, p. 328: A Knight of Malta being Defrocked by Wolfgang Kilian (1581–1662), from C. von Osterhausen, Eigentlicher und gründlicher (Bericht, Augsburg, 1650), no. II. Photo: Zentralinstitut für Kuntsgeschichte. Engraving, 5 x 3 in. (12.7 x 7.5 cm).
Map 1
Milan, c. 1590
Map 2
Rome, c. 1600
Map 3
Valletta, c. 1607
Map 4
Naples, c. 1610
Map 5
Italy, c. 1610
Preface and Acknowledgements
This book has taken me a shamingly long time to write, more than ten years in total. My excuse is that I have had a lot of other things to do at the same time. For the first five of those ten years I was responsible for two weekly articles for the Sunday Telegraph (latterly reduced to one, to make life workable); in 2007 I had to stop work on Caravaggio almost completely to finish a book about Michelangelo’s paintings in the Sistine Chapel; and throughout the past decade I have spent at least five months of every year writing and presenting various television series about the history of art for the BBC.
While often frustrating, the many delays and interruptions have, overall, worked to the book’s advantage. Had I delivered my manuscript more quickly, I might have caused my miraculously patient and long-suffering publisher, Stuart Proffitt, considerably less stress. But I would not have been able to take advantage of numerous recent archival discoveries – a set of remarkable finds that cumulatively have transformed our knowledge of Caravaggio, particularly of his later years. Because those discoveries have emerged piecemeal, often in out-of-the-way academic journals or private publications, I have found myself in the unusual and fortunate position of writing about one of the greatest artists ever to have lived fully four centuries after his death, yet able to draw on fresh and important documentary material unavailable to previous biographers.
As a result, I believe I have been able to shed light on aspects of Caravaggio’s life that have until now remained shrouded in mystery to all except the scholars most closely involved – including the painter’s sexuality, the circumstances that led him to commit the murder of 1606 that cast such a long shadow over the rest of his life, and the events surrounding his imprisonment on the island of Malta. In addition I publish here for the first time some hitherto overlooked descriptions of the Osteria del Cerriglio, the establishment