Marino e Caravaggio

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    The Petrifying Art: Marino's Poetry and Caravaggio

    Author(s): Elizabeth CropperReviewed work(s):Source: Metropolitan Museum Journal, Vol. 26 (1991), pp. 193-212Published by: The University of Chicago Presson behalf of The Metropolitan Museum of ArtStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1512912.

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    h e Petri fying A r tM a r i n o ' s o e t r y a n d aravagg ioELIZABETH CROPPERProfessorof History of Art and Directorof the VillaSpelman,TheJohnsHopkins University

    T EWENTY-FIVE YEARS have passed sinceLuigi Salerno challenged the commonlyheld conviction that there could be no con-

    nection between "the concrete and realistic paintingof Caravaggio and the type of literature labeled'Marinismo.'"' Salerno's arguments in favor of theimportance of Marino's poetry for an understand-ing of Caravaggio's work have found little resonancein more recent scholarship, and even as Caravag-gio's reputation as a revolutionary realist has grown,so has Giovan Battista Marino's reputation as anoverly sophisticated poet whose work epitomizes thedecadence of Italian letters in the seventeenth cen-tury continued to decline.2 Yet, as Salerno sug-gested, Caravaggio and Marino had much in com-mon, no matter how different their historical roles,or the views of tradition that they each expressedthrough the medium of style. A reconsideration ofthe relationship between these two remarkable menwill, I hope, serve to show how a close reading ofMarino's poetry may change the way we view a par-ticular group of paintings by Caravaggio. Near-contemporaries working within the same aristo-cratic culture in Rome, Marino and Caravaggioshared, and pioneered, a certain aesthetic view ofthe power of art and especially of the relationshipof painting to the beholder.The briefest summary suggests how closely inter-woven the lives of the two artists were, and how sim-ilar their stories. Marino was born in Naples in 1569,and we now know that Michelangelo Merisi da Car-avaggio was born, far to the north

    of him, two yearslater.3 Both men set out to make their fortunes inRome where, in the first lustrum of the new century,they became friends and admirers of each other'swork.4 Giovanni Pietro Bellori's report that it wasMarino who introduced Caravaggio to Virgilio Cres-? The Metropolitan Museum of Art 1991Metropolitan MuseumJournal 26

    cenzi, persuading him to divide the commission todecorate the Contarelli Chapel in San Luigi deiFrancesi between the poet's two friends, the Cava-liere d'Arpino and Michelangelo da Caravaggio, isincorrect.5 But it is true that painter and poet cameto know each other in the household of the Cres-cenzi, Caravaggio's important early patrons. Cres-cenzio Crescenzi, son of Ottavio, owned two por-traits by Caravaggio, one of himself and the otherof Marino. When he died in 1641, he left them as apair "in signum amoris" to his nephew Francesco(who had himself painted a portrait of Marino forthe poet's funeral celebrations at the Accademiadegli Umoristi in Rome in 1625).6 Marino had ded-icated the first volume of his Rime to Crescenzio'sbrother Monsignore Melchiorre Crescenzi in 1602,the same year in which he probably wrote his fa-mous poem celebrating Caravaggio's Medusa.7 Healso composed a poem in praise of Caravaggio's por-trait of Melchiorre; lamentably, this, like the por-traits of Crescenzio and Marino, is lost.8 Marinoeventually willed his own collection of pictures toCrescenzio Crescenzi, excluding only his elevenportraits of famous men.9 These latter, togetherwith his collection of drawings, he left to FrancescoCrescenzi, the same aristocratic artist-dilettante whowas later to fall heir to the Caravaggio and Marinoportraits. 1Fortune broke up this remarkable Roman societyas surely as she had created it. Marino left Rome forRavenna with Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini in 1605upon the death of Clement VIII and the subsequentelection of Leo XI. Two years later he traveled withhis patron to the court of Maurizio of Savoia inTurin. After using all his powers of flattery, he suc-ceeded in 1610 in attaching himself permanently toMaurizio's court. There, the famous composer Si-gismondo d'India set to music for two sopranos andbasso continuo eight stanzas from Marino's then un-finished epic of love, L'Adone(conceived already in

    The notes for this article begin on page 209. 193

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    the first decade of the seventeenth century, al-though not published until 1623), and he includedthem in his Musiche a due voci, published in 1615.12That year, leaving behind many controversies, Mari-no went to the court of Queen Marie de' Medici inParis. When he returned to Italy as a pensionednoble in 1623, he held his own court in PalazzoCrescenzi before returning in triumph to Naples.Marino died almost upon his arrival, never realizingthe permanent setting for his talents and his collec-tion that he had always craved. His briefly ennobledfriend Caravaggio had died thirteen years before,his life and possessions similarly scattered. Chargedwith the murder of Ranuccio Tomassoni in a fightover a game of racquets on May 31, 1606, Caravag-gio had fled Rome, moving first to Naples and thento Malta. After being made a "cavaliere di grazia"ofthe Order of Knights of Malta by the Grand Master,Alof de Wignacourt, whose portrait he painted,Caravaggio was imprisoned on the island. He es-caped to Sicily, and was immediately stripped of theknighthood. In 1610, having made his way back toNaples, where he was wounded in a brutal attack,Caravaggio was set to return to Rome with a papalpardon. Unlike Marino, however, he was never tosee the city again; on July 18, 1610, Caravaggio diedalone on the pestiferous beach of Porto Ercole.'3In retrospect it seems that many of the similaritiesbetween painter and poet that must have been ob-vious to contemporaries in Rome became even moreapparent as their lives diverged. When Marinosettled in Rome, he was on the run from his secondprison sentence. He had served the first two yearsearlier, reputedly as a consequence of a young wom-an's death from an abortion; the second was for for-gery on behalf of a friend condemned to death.'4 InTurin Marino was shot at in the street by his rivalGaspare Murtola, only to end up in prison yet again(probably in retribution for his satires against theduke), risking once more the loss of all his literaryproperty. Caravaggio's criminal behavior, which in-cluded charges not only of murder but also of slan-der and disturbing the peace, was of a more aggres-sively violent sort; but his fights, imprisonments,and flights brought him notoriety as an artist similarto that enjoyed by Marino. Not surprisingly, bothpoet and painter, as we have seen, sought out ranksof honor that might transform this notoriety intofame and protect them from retribution.'5With regard to their own art, both men are note-worthy for polemicizing their originality. Caravag-gio, for his part, flaunted his rejection of antiquity

    and Raphael as models for imitation, determiningnever to be imitated himself.'6 It was fear that thismight happen that led him to threaten to beat upGuido Reni for attempting to steal his style in hisaltarpiece of the Martyrdomof St. Peter.17Marino,on his side, conducted a duel on paper over his owninimitable originality against anyone who would befoolish enough to steal from him, a Neapolitan.'8His challenge was more ironic than Caravaggio's,perhaps, in that he also flaunted his own reliance onhighly recondite sources (claiming to locate his orig-inality not in external nature but in his own fantasyand intellect), but the two artists are distinguishedby their claims for the absolute originality of theirwork. That neither, it now appears, was reluctant toexplore an original concept more than once shouldnot seem paradoxical. Repetition and variation tes-tify to originality, serving to reinforce the novelty ofthe original, to reinforce the notion of authorialpossession, and to confirm each artist's mastery ofartifice.

    Anti-social behavior and self-advertisement maynot have seemed so remarkable in Rome at a timewhen independent, urban, artistic personalitiesfound themselves increasingly in conflict with thecourtly society upon which the majority of poets andpainters still relied for patronage. But Marino andCaravaggio are outstanding for their aggressivepublic assertion of their own value; it has often beensuggested that Marino took special interest in thefreedom that Caravaggio claimed as his. And bothmen produced works that were sexually ambivalent.When Marino befriended him, Caravaggio hadalready completed the lateral canvases for the Con-tarelli Chapel and had probably signed the contractwith Tiberio Cerasi for the decoration of his familychapel in Santa Maria del Popolo, and so his publiccareer as a painter was launched.19 But Caravaggiowas still best known among aristocratic collectors forhis half-length figures of secular subjects in theVenetian manner and especially for his musical pic-tures. Among these the Metropolitan Museum'sMu-sicians, painted for Cardinal Del Monte, is a primeexample (Figure 1).20Marino was not the only poetin the Crescenzi circle to celebrate Caravaggio, buthe contributed more than any other contemporarypoet, in Rome or elsewhere, to the musical and vi-sual culture of the seventeenth century. It was in theexciting, rapidly changing musical culture of theearly years of the century in Rome that the strongestconnections between the two artists were forged.21Marino's importance for the new music coming to

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    Figure i. Caravaggio (1571-1610), The Musicians, ca. 1595. Oil on canvas, 34% x 45/ in. (87.9 x 115.9 cm). TheMetropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1952, 52.81

    prominence at the turn of the century, beginning atthe very moment when Caravaggio was working forCardinal del Monte and Marchese Vincenzo Giusti-niani and culminating with the musical settings ofhis poetry by Monteverdi, cannot be overesti-mated.22 No collection of poetry was more fre-quently set to music than the Rime, first publishedin Venice in 1602, in the very same year as GiulioCaccini'sLe nuove musiche.Indeed, several of his poe-sie per musica were published with musical settingseven before this.23 L'Adone, Marino's epic of love,also provided the material for numerous libretti, be-ginning with La catenad'Adone,published in 1626.24Sigismondo d'India's early settings of ottave rimefrom L'Adone have already been mentioned; theseinclude the famous description of the monstrous,

    marvelous song of the nightingale-an exercise inonomatopoeia that, when performed, would havebecome an impersonation. In the three books ofL'Adonedevoted to the Garden of Pleasure, Marinocelebrates every aesthetic delight. One part of thegarden is dedicated to sound and taste, and it is herethat Marino recounts the deeply pathetic story ofthe competition between the trilling nightingale andthe unhappy lover who sings to his own accompa-niment on the lute. Each matches the other withincreasingly complex and virtuoso inventions; as aresult the poor bird dies from exhaustion. The re-morseful musician, victorious because taught byLove, buries the nightingale in his lute and recordsthe story with a quill taken from the little corpse ofhis unwitting competitor.25 Marino also provides a

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    poetic report in this part of the poem on the mostup-to-date discussion of the functioning of the ear,and he celebrates two of the greatest female singersof his day-Virginia Ramponi Andreini and Ad-riana Basile-before going on to hymn the praisesof the taste of the fruits, plants, and herbs to whichAdonis is introduced in turn.26Marino's direct appeal to the senses, without re-course to dramatic action, in the synesthetic poetryof L'Adoneprovides the closest point of comparisonfor the sensuality and suppression of significant ac-tion that seventeenth-century Roman critics identi-fied in Caravaggio's early work.27Furthermore, the

    emphasis of Marino's sparkling madrigals, whichare filled with references to Amphion and Orpheus,on the power of music suggests the closest relationto the specific imagery of the paintings Caravaggioproduced for Del Monte and Vincenzo Giustiniani.Again, modern criticism has generally preferred tooppose the two, treating Marino's sensuality as asymptom of his seicentismo, of the lack of substancein his poetry.28By contrast, the sensuality of Cara-vaggio's manner has been associated with realismand with the painter's radical rejection of tradition,and it has even been identified as an aspect of hismodernity.Marino's work, especially his lyrical poetry, was inwide circulation long before it was published. None-theless, there is no reason to believe that particularpoems provided Caravaggio with texts for paintingsin the way that they provided the musicians hepainted with songs. Quite apart from the problemof establishing the historical record, to suggest thatCaravaggio could have borrowed inventions fromtexts in this way goes against the evidence of theearly works themselves, which were criticized bycontemporaries who were more attuned to the in-vention of istorie,for failing to display precisely thatpower of invention that bound painting and poetrytogether. And it is, of course, the absence of dra-matic action that also characterizes even the epic po-etry of Marino. What rendered his ornamental,starkly chiastic verses so attractive to musicians wastheir affective sentiment; and it is in this that we findthe connection between Marino and Caravaggio.The Lute Player from the collection of VincenzoGiustiniani (Figure 2) is probably the most matureexample of Caravaggio's musical paintings and iscertainly the best preserved.29 It has never seemedreasonable to me that the extraordinary still life itcontains should be interpreted in terms of an older,Northern European tradition of allegory, especially

    given Caravaggio's and Giustiniani's own statementson the importance of still-life painting as painting inits own right.30Franca Camiz'srecent reclassificationof the image as a kind of informal portrait of a con-temporary singer now renders emblematic or alle-gorical constructions even less justifiable.3' Theidentification of all the music in The Lute Player,furthermore, as well as the particular form of theperformance alluded to (in which the musicianplays the bass part of a madrigal in accompanimentto his own voice), reinforces the implication of themusician's gaze: that whether a portrait or not, theimage belongs primarily within a lyrical, not an al-legorical, tradition.32From within that tradition, a madrigal by Marinosuggests an alternative way of accounting for theprominence of the still life in The Lute Player. Thepoem, addressed to a Bella Cantatrice and pub-lished in the Lira in 1614, reads as follows:

    Abbi, musica bella,anzi musa novella, abbiti il vantodele due chiare cetreche le piante movean, movean le pietre.Che val pero col cantovivificar e cose inanimate,se nel tuo vivo cor morta e pietate?O chiari, o degni onori,porger l'animaai tronchi e torla ai coriO belle, o ricche palme,dando la vita ai sassi, uccider l'alme 33(Youhave, beautiful music, new muse rather,you havethe power of the two famous lyres [Orpheus and Am-phion] that moved the plants, moved the stones. Whatavails it, however, to bring alive inanimate things withsong if in your living heart compassion is dead? O shin-ing, o worthy honors, to give spirit to trees and take itfrom hearts O beautiful, o rich palms, giving life tostones you kill souls )

    Caravaggio's juxtaposition of the intensely appeal-ing singer and the exquisitely natural, objectivelyrendered natura in posa posits the same questions asMarino's madrigal. What is the value of this musi-cian's power to bring coseinanimatealive if he cannotbe moved himself? if he becomes in turn the stilllife? if in bringing stones alive he is all stone in hisheart-cold marble like the table Caravaggio placed(significantly) before him?Marino's relatively simple poem involves a furtherparadox, for it is itself a song addressed to a singerin an attempt to move her heart. In the process, as

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    Figure 2. Caravaggio, The

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    Figure 3. Caravaggio, TheCardsharps,a. 1595. Oil on canvas, 36 x 50/2 in. (91.5 x 128.2 cm). Fort Worth, KimbellArtMuseum (photo: KimbellArt Museum)

    Cardsharps Figure 3) has not gone unnoticed. Butafter Alessandro Martini's original observation ofthe relationship between the two, no further impli-cations seem to have been drawn for the interpre-tation of Caravaggio's painting.37 The invention hasagain been associated with a Northern allegoricaltradition rather than with the sophisticated cultureof artifice and the rarefied celebration of sensualpleasures in which Caravaggio actually worked.38The publication of Marino's poems postdates Cara-vaggio's painting, as did, undoubtedly, their com-position; in this case Caravaggio may even haveprompted Marino's invention. Like the "Bella Can-tatrice,"however, the sonnets on games suggest howCaravaggio's image is to be read, or, more properly,they help to define a certain relationship betweenthe work and the spectator.

    In the poem about dice, the "Giuoco di dadi," thepoet is the beholder. Accompanied by Love hewatches as his beloved tirelessly shakes and tossesthe ivory dice in both hands. In the concluding ter-cet, abandoning any interest in the outcome of thegame, he is moved to ask why his bones cannot beburied in that same shining alabaster urn-which isto say in his lover's ivory hands.39 The "Gioco didadi" closes in this way with the macabre musing ofa detached spectator who never truly enters thescene of the poem. In the "Gioco di primiera," thepoem about the game of cards, on the other hand,the poet-spectator enters the picture aggressively:

    Con venti e venti effigiate carte(armi del'Ozio) il sol de' miei pensieriesercitando gia fra tre guerrieriin domestico agon scherzi di Marte.

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    L'accogliean,le spendean confuse e sparte,fatti di cieca dea campioni alteri,e con assaltior simulati or veri,or schernian l'arte, or si schermian con l'arte.Quando ver me volgendo il guardo pio(e gliele die di propria mano Amore)quattro ne prese il bell'idolo mio.V'era col quadro e con la picca il fiore,il cor non v'era gia; ma gli died'io(per farlo apien vittorioso) il core.40

    (With twenty and twenty pictured cards [the weaponsof Idleness] the sun of my thoughts was training withthree other warriorson a domestic battlefield at gamesof Mars. They collect them up, they deal them outshuffled and scattered, made proud champions of theblind goddess [Fortune]; and with attacksnow feignednow true, now they mock art, now with art they fencewith one another. When turning toward me his piouslook [and Love gave the cards to him with his ownhand] my beautiful idol picked up four of them. Therehe was with the diamond, and with the club, the spade,the heart not yet there; but I gave him [to make victorycomplete] the heart.)Marino's game of four players, with the cheater out-side the scene, may have been inspired by Caravag-gio's famous picture, as Martini suggested; but thesexual excitement of the concluding amorous trickplayed by one man to win another finds no reso-nance in this particular Caravaggio.41 The poemhelps us to see, however, how Caravaggio also suc-ceeded in painting the essence of a trick by involv-ing us in it. Like Marino, he reveals to the spectatoreverything that is supposed to be concealed if thetrick is to turn.

    Marino'svirtuoso poem exploits the power of lyricpoetry, his medium, by calling attention to its arti-fice. The heart, or cor, signifies both the card thatwill give victory to his bell'idolo,and the heart, orcuore, of the speaker, who also claims a victory withthe connivance of Love, dealer of the packs.42Mar-ino's trick plays upon the fit between the numbersfour and three-the numbers of the players (threeplus the sol, or the one and only

    of his thoughts)and of the cards (the three suits to which the heartmust be added)-and the quatrains and tercets ofthe poem. In the end his trick gives him the victoryover chance, war, and his beloved, for he remains aspectator. In Caravaggio's represention of a trick,the invisible had to be expressed through purelypictorial means in a single space and time.43 The

    young dupe has seen the ace (of spades?) and fourof diamonds on the table, but not the six of clubsand eight of hearts hidden behind the cheat's back,nor the two fingers and thumb held up by his side-kick. In representing this whole trick for the benefitof the beholder, the fundamental trickery of paint-ing to deceive through trompe l'oeil is also exposed,and with it our complicity.My last example of how a reading of Marino's po-etry may sharpen understanding of Caravaggio's in-novations concerns the Sleeping Cupid, painted inMalta in 1608 and now in the Palazzo Pitti (Figure4).44 This work, too, has been interpreted allegori-cally, as an image of the conquest of carnal passion.Its darkness and lack of flesh tone have been takento signify the death of love.45 Associations betweenCaravaggio's image and ancient sculpture have beennoted, but the specific popularity of the Hellenisticimage of a sleeping Cupid in the early seventeenthcentury has not been taken into account (Figure5).46 In Marino's Galeria,his anthology of poems de-voted to works of art, ancient and modern, real andimaginary, appear five poems devoted to such sleep-ing Cupids, who have taken their ease in foun-tains.47 In the most ambitious of the five Marinowarns that this Cupid can wound, even though he isof marble and is asleep:

    Guardati Peregrino,non gli andar si vicino,nol destar, prega, ch'eglidorma in eterno pur, ne mai si svegli.Se tu '1sonno tenacerompi al fanciul sagace,desto il vedrai piu fortetrattarquell'armi, ond'ee peggior che Morte.48

    (Look out, Pilgrim, don't get so close, don't rouse him,pray that he sleeps forever and never wakes up. If youbreak the clever boy's sleep, right away you'll see himtake up more strongly those weapons that make himworse than Death.)In his sleep this cruel child dreams not of love butof deceptions, massacres, robberies, and sufferings("Sogna dormendo inganni, / stragi, rapine, af-fanni"): only when Love sleeps may lovers rest ("solquanto posa Amor, gli amanti han posa").49Marinourges the pilgrim not to gaze upon Cupid as hismother, Venus, calls to him and the rosy dawn ap-pears. But then he asks, in conclusion:

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    Figure 4. Caravaggio, SleepingCupid,1608. Oil on canvas, 28/8 X 41/8 in. (72 x 105 cm). Florence, GalleriaPalatina,Palazzo Pitti (photo: Alinari/ArtResource)

    Figure 5. SleepingEros, Greek, 3rd to 2nd century B.C.Bronze, L. 339/A6n. (85.2 cm). The MetropolitanMuseum ofArt, Rogers Fund, 1943, 43.11.4

    Qual tu ti sia, che '1miri,temi non viva e spiri?Stendi securo il passo:toccal pur, scherzai teco, egli e di sasso.50(Whoever you are, who gaze on him; do you fear lesthe live and breathe? Lengthen your pace safely: touchhim even-I was teasing you-he is of stone.)

    Caravaggio's Sleeping Cupid has been describedboth as dead and as a sculpture, but he is truly nei-ther. This figurative ambiguity was perhaps themost popular of all artistic paradoxes in the Sei-cento, and Marino's poem relies upon it. The rela-tionship between the painting and the poem ismuch closer, however. Marino's sculpture is of acruel god of love, tired by his work of attacking ene-mies and causing all kinds of suffering. With noneof the thoroughly sweet charm of, for example, thesimilarly concettososculpture then in the collection ofVincenzo Giustiniani of a little statue of a sleeping

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    Cupid discovered by a bigger Cupid (Figure 6), orof Guido's lost Sleeping Cupid (Figure 7), Caravag-gio's Amor is also a cruel child, dark and tormented,not cherubic.5' The livid quality of his flesh suggeststhe very incarnation of malign envy. As, like Mari-no's Roman pilgrim, we gaze upon him in wonder(Marino's verb is always mirare),we sense both fearat the presence of danger and death, and amaze-ment at the artist's power, like that of love itself, todeceive us.

    Poems about works of art were as common aspoems about love in the later sixteenth and seven-teenth centuries, and more than one poet wroteabout works by Caravaggio: Marino'sarch-rival Gas-pare Murtola even dedicated his to MelchiorreCrescenzi.52 But Marino's Galeria, which includedthe five poems on the Cupid sleeping in a fountain,must be assigned special importance in the recon-struction of Caravaggio's Roman world. The anthol-ogy was first conceived in the years in which Cara-vaggio and he knew each other.53 In emulation ofBernardo Castello's illustrations to the Gerusalemmeliberata, Marino planned to publish a collection ofdrawings of mythological subjects accompanied byappropriate verses. Gradually this was transformedinstead into a sort of musee imaginaire of poemsabout works of art. The collection was published in1619 and 1620, but many of the poems were alreadywidely known.It was said by a contemporary that Marino's greatepic, L'Adone, which was longer than Tasso's Gerusa-lemme iberata,was composed entirely of fifty wordsarranged in different ways.54The conspicuous, for-mal conventions of Marino's poetry that enable suchdazzling displays of ingenious variety also make theidentification of characteristic themes or emotionsdifficult. Perhaps the most important, however, isthe power of art itself, the almost alchemical capac-ity of poetry, music, painting, and sculpture totransform matter into spirit and back again. As inthe poems on games, however, this power is alwaysshown to be dependent on Marino's own creativepower to enchant and confound. In the Galeriathetheme is present almost everywhere, but it is espe-cially prominent in the group of poems devoted tosculptures. It is often treated in a straightforwardlywitty way, with none of the darkness of the "Sleep-ing Cupid" (and indeed Marino sometimes betrayspoverty of invention). Amphion, for example, whoonce brought stones alive, is now stone himself; buthe seems to breathe, to sing, to live, and so his songcelebrates the superiority of the chisel over the

    . .f .,iri

    - .. *,,I ,,,4

    Figure 6. Giovanni Valesio (ca. 1583-1633), Love Discovers aSleeping Infant Love. Engraving, plate 25 from Galleria Giusti-niani (Rome, ca. 1631-35) I, pl. 25

    Figure 7. Robert Strange (1721-12), SleepingCupid.Engrav-ingafterGuidoReni.PhiladelphiaMuseum f Art,The Mu-riel and Philip Berman Gift (photo: PhiladelphiaMuseum ofArt)

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    lyre.55A statue of Helen laments that she had notbeen made of stone when Paris seized her; but evenas a sculpture, she insists that she is worth carryingoff.56Pasquino, the famous talking statue, tells pas-sersby not to marvel that a lifeless stone withouthands and tongue can speak; there was a time whennot only did he talk, but as he spoke he exploded,smashing the head and arm of the man who madehim speak but wanted him to keep silent.57 In oneof his least imaginative puns, Marino praises Gio-vanni da Nola's statue of St. Stephen, an image ofthe saint who was stoned to death: "once cruellykilled/now nobly carved/you died by stones, andfrom stone you gained immortal life."58Other oc-casional poems under the heading of Capricci cele-brate a nest of bees in a statue of Cicero that returnsboth sweetness and barbs to his lips; a statue of Sil-enus is falling-but does he fall from wine or wea-riness?; a statue of Nero actually falls and kills achild, showing how cruel Nero is even as a statue;Laocoon, who has been tied up to prevent him alsofrom falling down, complains that struggling withsnakes is enough; a statue of Mucius Scaevola haslost to time the hand that fire could not remove; acooler head has been restored to a statue of a be-headed traitor who laments that it had not alwaysbeen his.59

    These poems about antiquities must have been in-spired in part by the intense repopulation of Romansculpture gardens that Marino observed around theturn of the century. Equally topical are madrigalsand sonnets about famous modern sculpture, stat-ues of both living people and mythological charac-ters, as well as ephemeral figures made of snow,sugar, and wax. Two poems are dedicated to a statueof a beautiful woman, and one of these is outstand-ing for its length, complexity, and originality.60Outof the conventional Petrarchan paragoni, in whichthe artist's image and the living woman are com-pared and the impossibility of representing the per-fect beauty of the beloved is then invoked, Marinoweaves a complex comparison in which the true sub-ject is the effect of the sculpture, not the naturalwoman:

    La figura ritrattaMedusa mi rassembra.La scultura e si fattach'altruicangia le membra.Gia gia sento cangiarmi a poco a pocodi fuor tutto in macigno, e dentro in foco.Con la vivace imagodisfogo il mio tormento.

    Con occhio ingordo e vagov'affisoil guardo intento.E si di senso lo stupor mi priva,ch'io son quasi la statua, ella par viva.Spira l'imagin bella,quasi animata forma.Spira, ma non favella,o che pensi, o che dorma.Forse il rigor che le circonda il petto,passando al volto, irrigidi l'aspetto.Mentr' io contemplo egualeor questo ed or quel volto,ne so discerner qualesia '1proprio, e qual lo scolto,dico con pensier dubbio e mal distinto:"Ambo son veri, o l'un e l'altroe finto."(lines 13-36)

    (The figure portrayed seems like Medusa to me. Thesculpture is made in such a way that it changes thelimbs of others. Already, already, I feel myself chang-ing littleby little, outside all stone, and inside in flames.With the lively image I let loose my torment. With acovetous and desiring eye I fix my intent gaze upon it.And stupor so deprives me of sense that I am almostthe statue, and she seems alive. The beautiful imagebreathes, almost an animated form; it breathes, butdoes not speak, neither what it thinks, nor what itdreams. Perhaps the hardness that encircles its breast,passing to the face, has stiffened its aspect. While I con-template equally now this and now that face, I knownot how to discern which is the true, which the sculp-tured, and I say with thought that is doubtful andbadly defined: "Both are true, or both are feigned.")

    So real indeed is the statue that only the soul andthe vermilion of the cheeks are lacking. But, Marinocontinues, if Prometheus could give life to stonewith his fire and if wounded Venus could tint herflower, his heart could endow this statue with thecolor of its blood and with its ardor:

    Vinta, vinta e da l'Artela maestra Natura.L'unain ogni sua partefredda l'ha fatta e dura.aspra, sorda qual e, piena d'orgoglio:l'altrala fe' di carne, ed e di scoglio.In questo anco emendatada la falsa e la vera,che quella l'ha formatavolubile e leggiera:questa ha pur dato almeno a la sembianzala fermezza marmorea, e la costanza.(lines 49-60)

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    (Conquered, conquered by Art is mistress Nature. Theone in every part has made her cold and hard, bitter,unheeding as she is, and full of pride: the other madeher of flesh and yet she is of rock. In this, too, im-proved upon by the false one is the true, in that theformer [Nature] made her voluble and gay: the latter[Art], however, made her at least resemble the hard-ness of marble, and its constancy.)The marble and the real woman are then crossed

    in this canzonetta,which is the longest poem dedi-cated to a sculpture. Though the simulacrobello musthave been made by Love, he could not wound her,for, though she seems to be of marble, she is in factdiamante,or diamond; but Love cannot wound thereal woman, "l'Idol ch'adoro," either. If there is nolute, no sung melody, that can move this stone, andif even Amphion, who moved mountains with hisplectrum, could not move her, then, sings the poetto Love:

    tu mirabile e novoPygmalion divino,poi che pieta non trovoin un porfido alpino,muta a la bella effigie il magistero,e trasformalaomai ne l'esser vero.(lines 97-102)

    (You marvelous and new, divine Pygmalion [Love];given that I find no compassion in an alpine porphyry,change the magistery of the beautiful effigy,and trans-form it into a true being.)Entwining the two figures ever more completely,Marino addresses Love-as-Pygmalion with a finalsubstitution:

    E s'informar non vuoidi vivo spirto il sasso,spoglia de' membri suoiquesto spirito lasso,pur che dopo la morte almeno siain questo sasso sol la tomba mia.(lines 103-108)

    (And if you do not wish to inform the stone with livingspirit, take away from its limbs this wretched spirit, ifafter my death at least in this stone may be my tombalone.)And entombed in the stone he will be if this womanis indeed Medusa.The antithesis of Medusa and Pygmalion, the oneturning flesh to stone, the other stone to flesh, was

    obviously not Marino's invention; as a conceit it wasespecially favored by poets and artists in the seven-teenth century. It is the theme upon which turnsAngelo Caroselli's invention, for example, in thepainting he made for Vincenzo Giustiniani in com-memoration of the publication of the Galleria Gius-tiniana (Figure 8).61Over a marble altar embellishedwith a Medusa head, Pygmalion holds up a volumeof prints, comparing these to the living figure of awoman beside him. In contrast to more straight-forward representations of the Ovidian story ofPygmalion, Caroselli's allegory involves a complexseries of displacements. Beside the altar with its of-fering to Venus, an already living beauty endowedwith the features of a classical original is comparednot to nature or to antique statuary, but to the en-gravings of the Galleria. These swelling lines, aslovely as Medusan marbles, provide the standard ofcomparison for the lover of both nature and art.

    ~ X A L . . dFigure 8. Angelo Caroselli (1585-1652), Allegory f Sculpture.Destroyed

    The effect of Caroselli's concetto(presumably fromthe early 163os) in which all forms of art, including,of course, painting, are subtly substituted for eachother, and all for nature, is indebted to Marino'scomplex manoeuvres to render all beauty artificial,to create in his poetry a substitute reality.62Marinonot only invokes the topos of the antithetical powersof Medusa and Pygmalion in witty, playful poemsbut also in serious contexts. These concern life-conceived as sensation, movement, or transforma-tion, but never as action or events-and death,again conceived as a change in material state, butnot as leading to spiritual salvation. Predictably, his

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    Figure9. Caravaggio,Medusa.Oil on canvas,mountedonpoplar shield, with gold leaf-on-blackborder, Diam. 215/8 in.(55 cm). Florence, Galleriadegli Uffizi (photo: Alinari/ArtResource)

    admiration for Caravaggio, a painter of sensoryperceptions who was criticized for not painting fig-ures in action and a painter who denied the exis-tence of an ideal beyond painting and sense, fo-cused on the artist's powers to bring figures alive orturn them to stone. Marino's famous sonnet ad-dressed to the Grand Duke of Tuscany in praise ofthe parade shield bearing the image of Medusagiven to him by Cardinal del Monte and painted byCaravaggio can be excluded from discussion nolonger (Figure 9):

    Or quai nemici fian, che freddi marminon divengan repentein mirando, Signor, nel vostro scudoquel fier Gorgone, e crudo,cui fanno orribilmentevolumi viperinisquallida pompa e spaventosa ai crini?Ma che Poco fra l'armia voi fia d'uopo il formidabil mostro:che la vera Medusa e il valor vostro.63

    (Now what enemies will there be who will not becomecold marble in gazing upon, my Lord, in your shield,

    that Gorgon proud and cruel, in whose hair horriblyvoluminous vipers make foul and terrifying adorn-ment? But yet You will have little need for the formi-dable monster among your arms: for the true Medusais your valor.)

    "La vera Medusa e il valor vostro." Whatever thecompliment to the Grand Duke, Marino celebrates,as he does in the equally famous poem in honor ofGuido Reni's Massacreof theInnocents(see Figure o),the power of the artist to kill and to bring aliveagain, to meduser,and to enchant.In a few brilliant pages Louis Marin has analyzedCaravaggio's Medusa as the image in which the art-ist's shocking destruction of painting as the art ofrepresentation was perfected.64 Perseus's trick tocatch the eye of the Medusa in the mirrored shieldgives him the power literally to turn figures into im-ages that exist eternally in a coup d'oeil, in the mo-ment of sculptural fixity that divides even the pres-ent into instants. We see the Medusa at the verymoment that she sees herself, but already her bloodis congealing in lines that do not follow the illusoryconcavity of the convex surface. Caravaggio trans-fixes us with the fascination of simultaneity, ofdoubleness-and not only in this painting. Destroy-ing the distance between the model and its copy thatrepresentation respects, he creates a simulacrumcomparable to Marino's beautiful statue.65Marino's epitaph for Caravaggio, however con-ventional, expresses this shocking power. Death andNature, he writes, conspired to kill Caravaggio, theone because he brought the dead alive with hisbrushes, the other because she was conquered inevery image that Caravaggio created rather thanpainted ("da te creata, e non dipinta)."66Caravag-gio's figures, even in action, are creations, not imi-tations; they are statues, models, simulacra. He mayhave dismissed the canon of antiquity, pointing topeople around him as his models; but when Cara-vaggio set figures up in the studio, lighting themfrom above, painting them only in that moment,Caravaggio was not only denying reality, as LouisMarin has suggested, but he was also striving to findand occupy the momentary gap between the effectsof Pygmalion and Medusa, between bringing imagesalive and turning them to stone.67 In the process healso places the spectator in the gap between the two,and in this is to be discovered that marvelous qualitythat caused spectators to be amazed, to be en-chanted, to be transfixed.68

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    Caravaggio's painting of petrification is quite dif-ferent from that manierastatuinapracticed by Vasari,against which Caravaggio, like the Carracci, reacted.In that hard manner, flesh and blood and figures inmovement were painted in such an unnatural way,from memory and without reference to the modelor to the effects of natural light, that they resembledstatues tinted with pale hues.69 Caravaggio's figuresbegin in the flesh and indeed continue to appear toexist in it rather than seeming to derive from mem-ory or art; but they harden before us, and we beforethem. As Marino wrote of the statue of the beautifulwoman: "stupor so deprives me of sense / That I amalmost the statue, and she seems alive."The association that I have outlined between Car-avaggio's and Marino's conceptions of the power ofthe image and their denial of representation doesnot diminish the revolutionary quality of Caravag-gio's work as painting in any way. Nor does their fas-cination with the Pygmalion/Medusa conceit lead toany further associations with magical automata,children's games, or with involuntary sexual re-sponses crudely defined. It is, in fact, of the utmostimportance to recognize that this conceit operatesentirely within the expectations of metaphor andrepresentation, not reality, in both Marino's andCaravaggio's work. Instead, by seeking to establishhow Caravaggio and Marino shared an aestheticviewpoint, I want to arrive at a reading of the earlyworks that extends beyond the frame, and beyondthe decipherment of individual images as allegorieswithin it, a reading that takes into account Caravag-gio's powerful demands upon our senses and ourfeelings. The demands of Caravaggio's paintingsupon the spectator, or more accurately upon theamatore,or lover of painting, that a reading of Mar-ino's poetry helps to make visible belong to a lyricaltradition. These kinds of demands are thereforemost conspicuous in the early works of Caravaggio,but I believe them to be deeply important also forthe later "histories" in which narrative expectationsare subverted by lyrical address and stasis.The example of Marino's subversion of poeticgenre, by which he rendered both religious and his-torical epics as lyrical poetry, argues (if argumentsare still needed) in favor of accepting Caravaggio'scontemporary and equally radical reinterpretationof familiar inventions as deliberate and deeply med-itated also.70 Marino's undeniable thematization ofhis own virtuosity, furthermore, lends support tothe view, often expressed but never fully explicated,that Caravaggio also made the expression of the

    power of his own art into a conscious theme of hispainting. Marino's Massacreof theInnocents,a poemfull of beautiful images of gruesome events, pro-vides the best point of departure here. In this longpoem, the space and time of dramatic action areconstantly repressed, as they are so often in Cara-vaggio's work, in order to force the eyes of thereader to admire and to react to the horror of eachframed action. For example, in the midst of theslaughter, Marino describes the murder of a singlechild, born to a beautiful mother, as follows:

    Figure lo. Guido Reni (1575-1642), The Massacre of the Inno-cents, 1611. Oil on canvas, 1051/2 X 667/8 in. (268 x 170 cm).Bologna, PinacotecaNazionale (photo: Alinari/ArtResource)

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    Figure 1. Caravaggio,Martyrdomf St. Matthew, 599, detail. Oil on canvas, 1o ft. 71/4n. x11 ft 3 in. (323 x 343 cm). Rome, ContarelliChapel, S. Luigi dei Francesi(photo: Alinari/ArtResource)

    Tacque la bella donna e non disciolseVoce, pianto o sospir: tacque e sofferse,Ma si pietosa in atto il figlio tolseE voluntaria al mascalzon l'offerse,Che, se non ch'egli altrove i lumi volse.Se non ch'ella d'un velo i suoi converse,Vincealo il dolce sguardo, e '1 erro acutoFora di mano al feritor caduto.71(Silent was the beautiful woman and let out no voice,cry, or sigh: she suffered in silence, but so pitifully ingesture did she take her son and freely offer him to thescoundrel, that, had he not turned his lights elsewhere,had she not covered hers with a veil, her sweet glancewould have conquered him, and the sharp blade havefallen from the hand of the striker.)

    In response the poet exclaims, "Contro furor cheval bellezza?" or "Against fury what does beautyavail?" The effect that failed because two gazesnever met was that of perfect beauty to soften theheart, to disarm without words or force, which is tosay, the very effect of silent painting to conquerwithout discourse in a single glance. The beautifulMedusa would have succeeded.In the opening verses of book 3 of the Massacreofthe Innocents (in which the massacre actually takesplace), Marino laments that he can neither kill normove to pity with words written in ink, and he seeksto borrow the colors of the painter.72 But as thepoem unfolds, we see that despite the frequent ap-peals of the colors of metaphor and of images of

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    works of art, beauty fails to stop events; and that itis, in fact, the poet's pen that succeeds in conqueringboth the affects of horror and beauty and the effectsof assassins' swords and mothers' love.73 Marinothematizes his pen now as sword, now as brush,throughout, but nowhere more shockingly than inthe description of the death of one infant at his les-sons. As the child studies Hebrew, reading the linesscattered on his little tablet, his severed head fallson the "innocent pages"; upon them is written hislast deed "in living letters with vermilion charac-ters."74

    Guido Reni, who, like Caravaggio, was criticizedfor not being able to compose figures in action, wasboth the most perfect epigone of Caravaggio andthe greatest expositor of Marino's theme.75 In Mari-no's sonnet written in praise of Guido's own Massacreof the Innocents (Figure o) it is not the writer's ownink but the painter's brush that offers life and death:

    Che fai GUIDO? che fai?La man, che forme angeliche dipigne,tratta or opre sanguine?Non vedi tu, che mentre il sanguinosostuol de' fanciulli ravivando vainova morte gli dai?0 ne la crudeltate anco pietosoFabro gentil, ben saich'ancor Tragico caso e caro oggetto,e che spesso l'orror va col diletto.76(What are you doing, Guido, what are you doing? Thehand that paints angelic forms now treats of bloodydeeds? Do you not see that while you are revivifyingthe bloody throng of infants you are giving them newdeath? O compassionate even in cruelty, gentle artifi-cer, well you know that a tragic event is also a preciousobject, and that often horror goes with delight.)First (like Pygmalion) Guido's brush brings the in-fants alive and then (like Medusa) it kills them. Itswork is bloody indeed, enlivening forms with a ver-milion hue, which then flows out of the little marblebodies in daubs upon the ground. But in Guido'sassemblage of living, dying, and dead forms, nochild is actually being murdered. The true psycho-logical center of this painting of transformation,close to the true, empty center of the canvas, is theshort dagger dipped in blood that is held up bythe bearded executioner, who so thoughtfully goesabout his terrible work, even as the startled little boyhe is about to kill cries out silently at the sight of itand as his mother seeks to stay the blow.

    That blow is stayed forever not by the deflectionof a sword but by the determination of the brush.Guido's brush is more powerful than the sword inthe Massacre, as he represents its power both tobring alive and to kill through carmine tints. In sodoing he provided a different answer to the ques-tion of what beauty could accomplish in the face ofhorror. Unlike the executioners who are not movedby what they see, we gaze upon the work and arearrested by its beauty. As we do so, we turn whatMarino called the "tragico caso" into a "caro og-getto" and back again. We are placed in that samereflexive moment mastered by Caravaggio, whichMarino's poetry represents in the form of paradox-ical questions vividly reinforced by chiasmus, allit-eration, and near anagrams. Once recognized, thismoment appears as a central theme in Caravaggio'swork as well as in Guido's, and Marino's poetic ques-tions help us to identify it. The problematic of rep-resentation in Caravaggio's early musical paintings,as I suggested above, can be rephrased in the formof the question "Che val bellezza senza pieta?" Iwould now propose, and for the same reasons, thatthe pained expression on the face of the self-portrait of Caravaggio in The Martyrdomof St. Mat-thew in the Contarelli Chapel (Figure 1 ) either setsup or poses the question that so dominates paintingand poetry in the early Seicento, which Marinoposes so succinctly in this poem: "Contro furor cheval bellezza?" Caravaggio's inscription of his ownname in the blood of St. John in the late Deathof theBaptist (almost inconceivable without Marino's ex-ample) demands an answer to the same question.77Marino's reputation among literary critics is notthe only factor that makes it difficult to argue for aMarinesque reading of early Seicento painting andof Caravaggio in particular. The relationship be-tween painting and literature in the Renaissance hasbeen considered from the viewpoint of narrativesubject matter and of allegory but not of the specialrelationships set up between the spectator and theimage in lyric poetry. However, I would suggest thatCaravaggio's Lute Player bears a closer relationshipto works such as Titian's Flora (Figure 12) than tonarrative or allegorical pictures, such as de la Hire'sAllegoryof Music.7 Insofar as TheLutePlayer may bea portrait, it resembles other portraits only to theextent that they, like Leonardo's Ginevrade' Benci, oreven the Mona Lisa, demand, like the Flora, that welove and admire them.79 Such works belong ulti-mately to the same Petrarchan tradition that in-spired Marino's poem addressed to the statue of a

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    I-AV ;I=.Figure 12. Titian, (1488/90-1576), Flora, ca. 1520-22. Oilon canvas, 31 /8 x 243/4 in. (79 x 63 cm). Florence, Galleriadegli Uffizi (photo: Alinari/ArtResource)

    beautiful woman. This tradition of painting derivesits power from the tension Petrarch voiced betweenthe absent beloved and the present representation.Whether portraits or not, such pictures address thespectator as lover.Marino's own poem about Guido's Massacre,"Chefai Guido che fai," was itself surely written in con-scious relation to Petrarch's sonnet "Che fai? chepensi che pur dietro guardi," addressed by the poetnot to a painter of angelic forms, but to his ownsoul.80What is dead for Petrarch are not the imagesthe painter depicts, but the very things that the soulonce described and painted-the sweet words andlooks of his beloved. Where Marino praises Guidofor killing and bringing alive again in his images,Petrarch begs the painter (his soul) not to make newthat which kills it ("Deh non rinovellar quel chen'ancide") but to look heavenward for beauty.

    The poem about Caravaggio's Medusa also has asignificant Petrarchan subtext. In the final poem ofthe Canzoniere,Petrarch celebrates the Virgin as his"saldo scudo"-the firm shield not of his artistic vir-tuosity, nor even of princely valor, but of the af-flicted against Death and Fortune ("o saldo scudode le afflitte genti / contr' a' colpi di Morte et di For-tuna").81The poet begs her to intercede on his be-half:

    no '1mio valor, ma l'alta sua sembianzach'~ in me, ti mova a curar d'uom si basso.Medusa et l'error mio m'an fatto un sassod'umor vano stillante.82The sensuous beauty of Medusa and error havemade him a stone, and it is not his own valorbut Christ's humanity that will move the Virgin topity him.Petrarch claimed that he had come to see the se-ductive mortal beauty he had loved, together withearthly deeds and words, as encumbrances on hissoul.83 Marino's choice of subtext in this case servesto announce his own rejection of Petrarch's strategicdenial of artistry; his poetry never ceases to cele-brate the delights of sensual pleasure and his ownvirtuoso transformation of reality into art.84In thecourse of his working life, Caravaggio's view of hisown art, his attribution of worth to illusion and rep-resentation, did not necessarily duplicate that ofMarino (and certainly not that of Petrarch). Butsuch early works as The Lute Player, The Cardsharps,and the Medusa succeed in representing the em-brace of sensual pleasure and the delight in trans-lating the real into art and back again; this genre ofrepresentation also distinguishes Marino's poetry.85Caravaggio's early lyrical painting, petrified andpetrifying, addressed to the spectator as lover or co-conspirator, belongs to the largely uncharted tradi-tion of representation as an affective relationship inthe Renaissance.

    ACKNOWLEDGMENTSThis article is a revised version of the text for alecture presented at the seminar "Art, Music, andPoetry in the Age of Caravaggio," held at the Met-ropolitan Museum in April 199o. I would like tothank Keith Christiansen and Linda Wolk-Simonfor inviting me to speak at the seminar. My thanksgo also to David Quint for his careful reading of thetranslations, which are my own, except where indi-cated.

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    NOTES1. Luigi Salerno, Duncan T. Kinkead, and William H. Wilson,"Poesia e simboli nel Caravaggio," Palatino 10 (1966) pp. 106-

    117; see p. 107.2. New editions and studies of Marino's work have begun tooffer an alternative to the tradition of Crocean criticism. See, for

    example, Giambattista Marino, Lettere,Marziano Guglielminetti,ed. (Turin, 1966); Giovan Battista Marino, L'Adone, GiovanniPozzi, ed., 2 vols. (Milan, 1976); idem, La galeria, Marzio Pieri, ed.2 vols. (Padua, 1979); idem, Rime amorose, Ottavio Besomi andAlessandro Martini, eds. (Ferrara, 1987); idem, Rime marittime,Ottavio Besomi, Costanzo Marche, and Alessandro Martini, eds.(Ferrara, 1988). See also Ottavio Besomi, Ricerche intorno alla"Lira"di G. B. Marino (Padua, 1969); Carmela Colombo, Culturaetradizionenell'Adonedi G. B. Marino (Padua, 1967).

    3. For information on Caravaggio's life and work, see Mia Ci-notti, "Michelangelo Merisi detto il Caravaggio," in I pittoriberga-maschidal XII al XIX secolo:II Seicento(Bergamo, 1983) I, pp. 205-641. For the likely date of Caravaggio's birth in October 1571,based on the date of his parents' marriage and the birth of hisyounger brother, see ibid., p. 234.

    4. Marino first visited Rome in the train of the prince of Concafor the Jubilee of Clement VIII in 1600. He returned the follow-ing year. For Marino's biography, see, in addition to the introduc-tions of the editions cited above, James Mirollo, The Poet of theMarvelous: GiambattistaMarino (New York, 1963). Still indispens-able are Angelo Borzelli, II cavalier GiovanBattistaMarino (Naples,1898), and Mario Menghini, La vita e le opere di Giovan BattistaMarino (Rome, 1888). Caravaggio probably arrived in Rome latein 1592 or in 1593 after selling his property in Lombardy, al-though the precise date cannot be documented; he may have vis-ited Venice and Emilia on the way. See Cinotti, "II Caravaggio,"pp. 209-216, 238-239.

    5. Giovan Pietro Bellori, Le vite de'pittori,scultorie architettimod-erni (1672) Evelina Borea, ed. with introduction by GiovanniPrevitali (Turin, 1976) pp. 218-219. In a note Borea points outthat the contract of July 23, 1599, between the congregation ofSan Luigi dei Francesi and Caravaggio for the lateral paintings inthe chapel, which also referred back to Virgilio Crescenzi's earlieragreements with d'Arpino, predates Marino's arrival in Rome.Furthermore, Virgilio Crescenzi had died in 1592, leaving his sonGiacomo to execute Matteo Contarelli's will; see Cinotti, "IICar-avaggio," p. 238.

    6. Cinotti, "I1Caravaggio," p. 571, nos. 1 o, 111.7. On the Crescenzi, see, in addition to Cinotti, "II Caravag-

    gio,"Anna Grelle, "I Crescenzi e l'Accademia di via S. Eustachio,"Commentari12 (1961) pp. 120-38; see further note o1 below. Cin-otti, "IICaravaggio," p. 427, cites Giorgio Fulco'sobservation thatMarino's collection of poetry for the Galeria had begun already in1602. Detlef Heikamp, "La Medusa del Caravaggio e l'armaturadello Scia Abbas di Persia,"Paragone n.s. 17, 199 (1966) pp. 62-76, previously dated the poem roughly between the Lira of 1614and the publication of the Galeria in 1619/20. Heikamp rejectsthe conventional date of 1608 for the arrival of the parade shieldin Florence (in connection with the marriage of the future Cos-imo II) suggesting instead that Marino could have seen it in 1601

    on a visit to Florence, which means that there is no factual ob-stacle to redating the poem earlier.

    8. Cinotti, "IICaravaggio," p. 575, no. 134.9. Marino's collection had been preserved in Palazzo Crescenzisince his departure from Rome in 1605. For inventories of Mari-no's possessions and his disposition of them, see Giorgio Fulco,

    "I1sogno di una 'Galeria': Nuovi documenti sul Marino collezion-ista,"Nuova antologia 10 (1979) pp. 84-99.io. For a brief biography, see Luigi Spezzaferro, s.v. "Cres-

    cenzi, Francesco," and "Crescenzi, Giovanni Battista,"in Diziona-rio biografiodegli italiani (Rome, 1984) XXX, pp. 634, 636-641.

    1 . For a general treatment of Marino's biography, see Mirollo,Poetof theMarvelous, pp. 5-111.12. Lorenzo Bianconi, Music in the SeventeenthCentury,David

    Bryant, trans. (Cambridge, 1988) pp. 14-15. See pp. 7-20, fora useful analysis of why composers found Marino's poetry so at-tractive.13. See Cinotti, "IICaravaggio," pp. 233-248, for a register ofthe documented events in Caravaggio's life.14. See Mirollo, Poetof theMarvelous, p. 12, for reference to the

    suggestion that the charge was sodomy. Neither charge has beendocumented.15. Caravaggio was knighted in Malta in 1608, Marino inTurin the following year.16. Bellori, Vite,pp. 214, 230.17. See the account in Carlo Cesare Malvasia, Felsina pittrice,

    Giampietro Zanotti, ed., 2 vols. (Bologna, 1841) II, p. 13.18. For a discussion of Marino's polemic in the context of crit-ical debates on painting, see Elizabeth Cropper, The Ideal ofPaint-

    ing: Pietro Testa'sDiisseldorfNotebook(Princeton, 1984) pp. 120-128. For the text of Marino's letter to Claudio Achillini, whichcontains his most important points of argument, see his Lettere,pp. 238-256; see especially p. 249 for his statement, "onde si pos-sono ben vantare d'aver rubato a' napolitani, che sono avezzi asaper farlo con sottilita e con grazia."

    19. Cinotti, "I1Caravaggio," p. 240. The contract for the Cer-asi commission was signed on September 24, 16oo.20. Ibid, pp. 476-479.21. See Salerno, Kinkead, and Wilson, "Poesia e simboli nel

    Caravaggio."22. See again Bianconi, Music in the SeventeenthCentury.On thenew music, or secondapratica, see Claude Palisca, BaroqueMusic

    (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1968) pp. 8-28. For the importance ofMarino's poetry for the music of Monteverdi, see the extensiveand significant discussion by Gary Tomlinson, Monteverdiand theEnd of theRenaissance (Oxford, 1987) esp. pp. 151-213. See alsoAlessandro Martini's introduction to his edition of a selection ofMarino's lyric poetry, Amori(Milan, 1982) esp. pp. 18-25.

    23. Bianconi, Music in the SeventeenthCentury,p. 8, cites twofive-part settings of Marino's texts by the young Neapolitan com-poser Giovan Domenico Montella, published in 1594 and 1596,and lists many other published settings from the first decade ofthe century in support of his claim for Marino's overwhelminginfluence. See also Roger Simon and D. Gidrol, "G. B. Marino ela musica del '6oo," Studi secenteschi14 (1973) pp. 81-187.

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    24. Bianconi, Music in the SeventeeenthCentury,p. 13. Bianconirefers to the "remarkable intellectual courage and 'modernity' ofcontent" of L'Adone. The historical role of Marino's poetry hasbeen recognized among musicologists, even if the latter oftentend to draw their critical conclusions from the older tradition ofliterary scholarship.

    25. Marino, L'Adone, I, pp. 367-373 (canto 7,11.32-57). In hiscommentary, II, pp. 363-370, Pozzi notes the well-known deri-vation of the story of the competition from Famiano Strada's Pro-lusionesacademicae(1617).

    26. L'Adone, I, p. 381 (canto 7, 1. 88), and p. 363 (canto 7, 1.16); II, pp. 374, 357. See also Bianconi, Music in the SeventeenthCentury,p. 14.

    27. For Bellori's observation that Caravaggio's work in theContarelli Chapel lacked composition and movement, see theVite, p. 220; on p. 222 appears his description of the ConversionofSt. Paul in the Cerasi Chapel, "la quale istoria e affato senza at-tione."

    28. Even Gary Tomlinson, so receptive to the power of Mari-no's poetry, refers (Monteverdi,p. 169) to Marino's "virtuosicspan-gles" as exemplifying his lack of concern for content. Such polar-ization of substance and ornament, especially common indiscussions of the art of Mannerism and the Baroque, will alwayswork against Marino's reputation.

    29. Cinotti, "I1Caravaggio," pp. 447-450. For the identifica-tion of this picture with the original in Giustiniani'scollection, seeDenis Mahon, "The Singing 'Lute-player' by Caravaggio from theBarberini Collection, Painted for Cardinal Del Monte,"BurlingtonMagazine 132 (1990) pp. 5-20.

    30. Vincenzo Giustiniani in his letter to Teodoro Amideni re-ported that Caravaggio had said that it was as difficult to paint agood picture of flowers as it was one of people. In Vincenzo'ssystem of modes of painting "saper ritrarre fiori, e altre cose min-ute," constituted the fifth mode. For the text of the letter, seeGiovanni Bottari and Stefano Ticozzi, Raccolta di letteresulla pit-tura, scultura,ed architettura.. , 8 vols. (Milan, 1822-25) VI, pp.121-129; see esp. pp. 124-125.

    31. Franca Trinchieri Camiz, "The Castrato Singer: From In-formal to Formal Portraiture," Artibus et Historiae 18 (1988) pp.171-186; and "La 'Musica' nei quadri del Caravaggio," Quademidi Palazzo Venezia6 (1989) pp. 198-221. Camiz herself, in "TheCastrato Singer," pp. 174-175, refers the still-life elements inboth the Leningrad picture and the Del Monte version of it to"Northern art traditions."

    32. The history of the identification of the music has becomerather complex. Thomas Bridges, in his Ph.D. dissertation, "ThePublishing of Arcadelt's First Book of Madrigals," 2 vols. (Har-vard University, 1982) I, p. 55, n. 131, provides a useful summaryof the identification of "Chi potra dir," "Se la dura durezza," and"Voi sapete," in the Hermitage picture: "Germain Bazin repro-duced the painting in Musee de l'Ermitage; es grandsmaitresde lapeinture (Paris: Editions Cercle d'Art, 1958), p. 61, pl. 42, andidentified 'Voi sapete ch'io v'amo' (pp. 67-70), with the help ofNanie Bridgman of the Bibliotheque Nationale. Susan GuessWelcker, with the help of Professor Herbert Kellman, identifiedthe remaining two pieces.... See her 'Aspects of Music in the

    Early Paintings of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio,' ThesisUniv. of Illinois, Urbana, 1967. The pieces were also identifiedindependently by Franca Camiz and Agostino Zino (communica-tion, 1981)." See further H. Colin Slim, "Musical Inscriptions inPaintings by Caravaggio and His Followers," in Music in Context:Essays orJohnM. Ward,Anne Dhu Shapiro and Phyllis Benjamin,eds. (Cambridge, Mass., 1985) pp. 241-263, esp. 243-244, forthe Leningrad painting; pp. 241-242, for the Metropolitan Con-cert;and pp. 246-247 for the version of TheLutePlayerowned byWildenstein; see also Cinotti, "I1Caravaggio,"p. 449, and Camiz'spublications cited in "The Castrato Singer."The texts, with trans-lations, are now available in Keith Christiansen, A CaravaggioRe-discovered:The LutePlayer, exh. cat., MMA (New York, 1990).

    33. Marino, Amori,p. 99, no. 39.34. Martini, in Amori,pp. 26-39.35. The appeal of the actual singer has been associated withboth homosexual and now, through the identification of him as a

    castrato, even heterosexual responses. I am not concerned herewith identifying the "proper" sexual reaction to the sitter butrather with identifying what kind of representation this paint-ing is.

    36. Bert Meijer has drawn attention to what he calls an "audio-visual" relationship between image and beholder that wouldhave, in his view, been much stronger in the 16th century than weperceive it to be now. Such a relationship could only reinforce thedemands made upon the beholder that I seek to recover here.See his "Harmony and Satire in the Work of Niccolo Frangipane:Problems in the Depiction of Music," Simiolus 6 (1972-73) pp.94-112.

    37. Martini, in Amori,pp. 50-51, 167-169. In his comment onp. 167, Martini explains that Berni's poem on the game was "uncapitolo giocoso," and Alessandro Striggio's composition "Giocodi primiera" "un divertimento musicale,"neither of them provid-ing a real precedent for Marino's lyric. See also his brief commentin "I capricci del Marino tra pittura e musica," in Letteratura tal-iana e artifigurative, Atti del XII convegno dell'Associazione inter-nazionale per gli studi di lingua e letteratura italiana, Toronto,1985, 2 vols. (Florence, 1988) I, pp. 655-664. Howard Hibbard,Caravaggio (New York, 1983) p. 274, also cites Striggio's compo-sition in connection with TheCardsharps.For Striggio, and for ear-lier examples of cardplaying themes set to music, see Albert Ein-stein, The Italian Madrigal, 3 vols. (Princeton, 1949) II, p. 768.

    38. For various interpretations see Cinotti, "II Caravaggio,"pp. 554-556. Barry Wind, in his recent article, "A Note on CardSymbolism in Caravaggio and his Followers,"Paragonen.s. 40, 475(1989) pp. 15-18, identifies the club suit with success, the eight ofhearts with good news; about the suit of the four of diamonds hehas no comment, suggesting only that the number four "could begiven connotations of forboding." The ace of spades would standfor unhappiness. It remains to be determined, however, if theprotagonists are engaged in playing a specific game and not justposing conveniently with cards chosen for symbolic reasons. Ifthe addition of the concealed club card to the cards already onthe table will allow the cheat to win the game, then success mayindeed provoke violence and trump happiness. Wind's interpre-tation relies on his belief that Caravaggio's genre paintings are

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    "redolentwithovert and covertsymbolism,"nd thatthe symbol-ism of the cards representsanother "layerof meaning" n thiswork n whichCaravaggio's commitment o nature .. is actuallyconflatedwith theatricalcontent."Myalternativereading beginsby challenging the status of these works as "genre"paintings:Marinowas not writing "genre"poetry,but adaptingthe lyrictonew subjects.On the painting itself, see Denis Mahon, "FreshLight on Caravaggio'sEarliest Period: His 'Cardsharps'ecov-ered," Burlington Magazine 130 (1988) pp. 10-25.39. Martini, n Amori,p. 93, no. 33; see also the commentaryon pp. 166-167, in which Martini,pointing to the evocationofPetrarch n the incipit("Stiamo,Amor,a veder la glorianostra"),contrastsPetrarch's isionof Lauraas a vivifying ightwithMari-no'spoetic stance in this poem as "uncantore che vuol davverostare vedere, on ad ammirare,disincantato cupo osservatore."

    40. Ibid, p. 94, no. 34.41. On the sex of the lover, see Martini, in Amori,pp. 168-172,who again pointsto the ultimatedetachmentof the poeticself asspectator.The sex of the "bell'idolo" s not determineddefini-

    tively by the gender of the wordhere, it should be noted. I havefollowed Martini'sinterpretationin my translationbecause Iagree that the lover is male in the context of the game of cards.Part of Marino'sstrategy,of course, is to call into questionanystraightforward exual identification.However,in entitling thetwo poems that follow the "Giuocodi pallone. Per una donna,"and "Giuocodi racchetta.Per la medesima,"writesMartini,Mar-ino proteststoo much.

    42. Ibid., pp. 168-169.43. Martini, n Amori,p. 169, also emphasizesthe analogybe-tween the two undertakings:where Caravaggio et out to tell astory through the difficultmedium of a single pictorialspace,Marinoadoptedthe limitationsof the sonnet.44. Cinotti,"IICaravaggio," p. 433-434, no. 14.45. See the summaryof interpretationsn ibid.The date and

    provenance were established by Silvia Meloni Trkulja, "Per'l'Amore dormiente' del Caravaggio,"Paragonen.s. 28, 331 (1977)pp. 46-50.

    46. Luigi Salerno, "Caravaggioe i caravaggeschi,"Storiadell'arte7/8 (1970) pp. 234-248, see p. 241, mentions the impor-tance of the ancientfigure of sleepingCupidin connection withCaravaggioand Guido Reni only in passing.He also cites Mur-tola'spoem, "Sedipingere Amore,"but this cannot refer to theSleepingCupid n Florence and may not even refer to an actualpaintingat all. For the bronzeSleepingEros n the MetropolitanMuseum, see Margarete Bieber, TheSculptureof theHellenisticAge(New York, 1955) p. 145, and figs. 616-618.

    47. Marino, La galeria, I, pp. 273-277.48. Ibid., p. 275,11. 21-28.49. Ibid.,p. 276,11.33-34, 6o.50. Ibid., p. 277, 11.96-100.51. The engraving, Galleria Giustiniani(Rome, circa 1631-35)I, pl. 25, is by Valesio.See furtherElizabethCropper,"VincenzoGiustiniani'sGalleria:The PygmalionEffect,"QuaderniOlivetti,forthcoming. Guido'sfamous SleepingCupid s lost: see D. Ste-

    phen Pepper, Guido Reni (Oxford, 1984) pp. 299-300.

    52. See, for example, the poemscitedby GiorgioFulco,"Am-mirate 'altissimopittore:Caravaggionellerime ineditedi MarzioMilesi,"Ricerchedi storiadell'arte. 1, "Roma nell'anno 1600" (1980)pp. 65-89.

    53. On the historyof the collection,see Pieri's ntroduction,"Capriccioma non troppo," n Lagaleria, , pp. xxv - xlv.

    54. Marino'senemy Stigliani ried to attribute hiscomment toLope de Vega.

    55- Marino, La galeria, I, p. 279.56. Ibid, p. 280.57. Ibid.,p. 285.58. Ibid., p. 29o.59. Ibid.,pp. 309-310.60. Ibid., pp. 293-296.61. The paintingwas presumablydestroyedin Berlinduringthe war. For further discussion,see Cropper,"VincenzoGiusti-niani'sGalleria,"orthcoming.62. Marinodevelopsthe conceit of the engraved ine'scapacityto bringstones alive in more light-heartedexamples,suchas the

    capricciodevoted to Villamena'sprint of the map of Rome, Lagaleria,I, p. 261, no. 6. The poem concludes,"Now there is noneed for the foot of the pilgrimfrom the far borders to wanderaround the heart of Rome looking in vain for Rome: here yousee it clearly,and hence you see how by virtue of an ingenioushand the hardnessof marblegives wayto leaves[of paper].'63. Marino, La galeria, I, pp. 31-32. See Cinotti, "IICaravag-

    gio," pp. 427-429, no. 11.64. Louis Marin, Detruire a peinture(Paris, 1977) esp. pp. 119-

    44, 191-194.65. Ibid., pp. 171-176.66. Marino, La galeria, I, p. 191; "Fecer crudel congiura, /MICHELE,a danni tuoi Mortee Natura. Questarestar temea /

    da la tua mano in ogni imaginvinta,/ ch'era da te creata,e nondipinta. / Quella di sdegno ardea, / perche con larga usura /quantela falce sua genti struggea, tante il pennellotuo ne rifa-cea."67. On Caravaggio's tudio practiceof setting up figures inposa,as if for a stilllife, see KeithChristiansen,"Caravaggiond'I'Esempio avantidel naturale,"'ArtBulletin68 (1986) pp. 421-445-68. Bellori, Vite,p. 217, for example,writesof howyoungart-ists were drawnto gaze upon the miraculouspowerof Caravag-gio'sworkand thento imitatehim.Caravaggio's oweroverthosewho weretakenby the noveltyof hisworkappearsto be almostamagical, irresistibleenchantmentaccordingto Bellori'sbiogra-

    phy.69. For a general discussionof the reform of the maniera ta-tuina,see CharlesDempsey,"The CarracciReform of Painting,"in TheAge of Correggioand the Carracci:Emilian Painting of theSix-teenth and SeventeenthCenturies,exh. cat., National Gallery of Art(Washington, D.C., 1986) pp. 237-254, esp .. 240. On the termmanieratatuina, ee GiovannaPerini, "II essicotecnicodel Mal-vasia,"in Accademiadella Crusca,Convegnonazionalesui lessici ecnicidel sei e settecentoPisa, 1980) pp. 221-253, esp. pp. 227-232.

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    70. That is to say, such reinterpretation did not result fromwhat, for example, Bellori saw as his deficiencies; see Vite, p. 230,"non erano in lui ne invenzione ne decoro ne disegno ne scienzaalcuna della pittura mentre tolto da gli occhi suoi il modello res-tavano vacui la mano e l'ingegno."

    71. Giovanbattista Marino, Dicerie sacre e La strage de gl'inno-centi,Giovanni Pozzo, ed. (Turin, 1960) p. 551 (bk. 3, stanza 50).

    72. Ibid., pp. 535-536, bk. 3, stanzas 1-2. He seeks to rival thepainting of his friend the Cavaliere d'Arpino specifically.

    73. In one extended metaphor, for example, Marino summonsup an image of a Charity painted by the Cavalier d'Arpino andthen transforms it into an image of Niobe with her children,which he compares in turn to a white marble sculpture stainedwith blood; ibid., pp. 554-558.

    74. Ibid., p. 555, bk. 3, stanza 61.75. For an important critical discussion of Guido Reni, Cara-

    vaggio, and Marino, see Charles Dempsey, "Guido Reni in theEyes of His Contemporaries," in GuidoReni, 1575-1642, exh. cat.,Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, 1988) pp.101-118.

    76. Marino, La galeria, I, p. 56.77. Cinotti, "I1Caravaggio," pp. 445-447, no. 23.78. For which, see Christiansen, A CaravaggioRediscovered,pp.

    82-84. For Titian's Flora, see Harold Wethey, ThePaintingsof Ti-tian, 3 vols. (London, 1969) III, The Mythologicaland HistoricalPaintings, pp. 154-155, no. 17.

    79. Elizabeth Cropper, "The Beauty of Woman: Problems inthe Rhetoric of Renaissance Portraiture," in Rewriting the Renais-sance: The Discoursesof Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe,Margaret W. Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan, and Nancy Vickers,eds. (Chicago, 1986) pp. 175-190.

    80. Petrarch'sLyric Poems: The "Rime sparse"and OtherLyrics,Robert Durling, trans. and ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1976) pp.

    452-453, canto 273: "Ch6 fai? che pensi che pur dietro guardi /nel tempo che tornar non pote ormai? / Anima sconsolata, chepur vai / giugnendo legno al foco ove tu ardi? / Le soavi parole ei dolci sguardi / ch'ad un ad un descritti et depinti ai, / son levatide terra; et e, ben sai, / qui ricercarli intempestivo et tardi. / Deh,non rinovellar quel che n'ancide, / non seguir piu penser vagofallace, / ma saldo et certo, ch'a buon fin ne guide; / cerchiamo '1Ciel, se qui nulla ne piace: / ch6 mal per noi quella belta si vide,/se viva et morta ne devea tor pace."81. Ibid., pp. 575-583, canto 366; see p. 576,11. 17-18.

    82. Ibid., pp. 582-583,11. 109-112: "let not my worth but Hishigh likeness that is in me move you to help one so low. Medusaand my error have made me a stone dripping in vain moisture."

    83. Ibid., pp. 580-581, 11.85-86: "mortal bellezza, atti, et pa-role m'anno / tutta ingombrata l'alma."On the relationship be-tween Petrarch's poetic autonomy and his idolatry, see John Frec-cero, "The Fig Tree and the Laurel: Petrarch's Poetics," in LiteraryTheorylRenaissanceTexts,Patricia Parker and David Quint, eds.(Baltimore/London, 1986) pp. 20-32 (first published in Diacritics5 (1975) pp. 34-40. See also his "Medusa: The Letter and theSpirit,"Yearbookof Italian Studies(1972) pp. 1-18.

    84. See Mirollo, Poetof theMarvelous,p. 20, on Marino's elimi-nation of such themes as the donna angelicata and the corgentilefrom his Petrarchan poetry. See further, Benedetto Croce, Nuovisaggi sulla letteratura taliana del seicento Bari, 1931) pp. 380-443.

    85. Such transformation and representation relied on tradi-tional means of expression bent to new purposes. It is betweenThe Cardsharpsand, for example, Chardin's The Card Castlethatwe witness a final, destructive step in the tradition of lyrical view-ing and painting. In this later development, as Michael Fried hasanalyzed so brilliantly, the beholder-no longer (I would argue)lover or coconspirator, petrified and petrifying-is fully absorbedwithin or without the picture. For Fried's arguments see Absorp-tion and Theatricality:Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot(Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1980) esp. pp. 7-70.

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