Moon Goddess

The Goddess goes through many cycles of varied lengths, and She returns over and over in many forms. Here, She appears in a painting by the Neapolitan master Giovanni Ricca, probably made around 1630.

Note the play of light and shadows on the face of this beautiful woman - reminding those of the half moon. The human features of this image are, probably, those of Ricca's wife, Caterina Rossa ("Red Catherine") as she appears in a red dress in the full painting. But she is just an avatar of the true Goddess.

If you ever thought that Baroque painting was all about mannerism, think it over. If you think that no Baroque master could emulate the master of them all, Caravaggio, think it over. This is a painting that, alone, can justify the existence of the human species as it evolved in order to, eventually, produce it.

But women partake the nature of the Moon Goddess in many forms, and sometimes you don't even need a master painter to see it appear, as it does in this image of Ugo Bardi's daughter, Donata, photographed in 2016 at the Escher Museum in Delft, Holland.

Caravaggio: the epiphany and the sacrifice

Caravaggio is not a painter: he is a prophet. Caravaggio doesn't show what you can see, he shows what nobody can see. Caravaggio doesn't see, he penetrates. Caravaggio's painting are not about religion, they are a religion. Caravaggio does not paint, he reveals. And these are merely some characteristics of a painter that has gone beyond the mere world of things and who found ways to show things, while at the same time showing what's behind things. He is Caravaggio. That's all.

Look at this painting: the martyrdom of St. Ursula. Perhaps the last painting Caravaggio painted, it is the extreme synthesis of all what Caravaggio had painted before. This is the ultimate epiphany of the divinity, shown as the final crowning of a sequence of images that followed Caravaggio's own existence on this world.

The painting shows the death of Ursula, British princess, who refused to marry Attila, king of the Huns, who in revenge killed her and all her retinue of 11,000 virgins. A naive story for our modern tastes but not for Caravaggio, who has seen the deep meaning of the myth. The divine spirit can take a human form; can step into the material world for a short while. Then, it has to return. And returning, for the divine being, means death for its human form but, for the divine form, it is resurrection.

It is the basis of the Christian myth, but it goes much deeper and much earlier; it is the most ancient myth of all: the sacrificial myth that goes to the very center of the interaction of the divine and the human spheres.

And that's what Caravaggio is showing to us. Ursula, hit by an arrow, is the human form of the divine spirit. She had already appeared in an earlier painting by Caravaggio; in his "Our Lady of the Pilgrims".

Perhaps the same woman, surely the same spiritual entity. Caravaggio has been starting with this divine epiphany to end it with the one of Ursula. It is a complete universal cycle in two paintings: the same creature that has appeared for a brief existence on the lower sphere, to leave the material world in a spiritual apotheosis, later on.

Only Caravaggio could do it. 

The mysterious power of Caravaggio

Caravaggio: the Martyrdom of St. Ursula (ca. 1610).


I have a curious story to tell about this painting by Caravaggio. A few years ago, I was in Naples for a meeting on waste management. I was taking a walk in town and I stumbled into the announcement of a special exhibition of a newly discovered Caravaggio painting. I went inside, and there it was: the martyrdom of St. Ursula, seen in public perhaps for the first time after that Caravaggio had painted it, probably just before his death, in 1610.

At that time, I was already a Caravaggio lover, not yet a Caravaggio addict, as I am now. But seeing that painting was a big step forward in that direction. And you never know what effects Caravaggio can have on you; really, it is stuff so powerful that it can shock you, or make you weep, or maybe it can push you through a multi-dimensional gate that takes you directly to the planet Tralfamadore.

What happened to me on that occasion was not as spectacular as taking me to a remote planet, but weird nevertheless. That afternoon, I took a train to Rome where I had been invited to give a talk at the convention of the Italian Radical Party. I duly spoke to the audience and, afterward, the speakers were invited for dinner, together with some politicians. We sat at a large, round table and I found myself seated near an old lady. We chatted a little and the conversation moved to Caravaggio and to the painting I had seen just that morning. It turned out that the old lady, too, was a Caravaggio lover: we are a community of addicts. She was very interested in this recently re-discovered painting; the martyrdom of St. Ursula.

In the meantime, the conversation had been going on at the table, with people engaged in some deep political discussion about I don't remember what. At some point, someone turned to me and asked me: "but, Ugo, what's your opinion?" and then he asked me what I thought of some current political event. I turned in his direction and I said, "I don't know; we were discussing the martyrdom of St. Ursula."

There was a moment of silence at the table with people looking at me, frozen. Then, they shook their heads and they restarted their political discussion, probably denying to themselves that they had heard what I had said.

I have never been invited again to another political convention; I don't know if it is because of this story, probably not. Anyway, it shows how the mysterious power of Caravaggio can appear in many forms.

About the painting itself, the martyrdom of St. Ursula, I will write another post. 

The Ecstasy of Caravaggio

Caravaggio's Our Lady of the Pilgrims (image from Wikipedia)


Every time I happen to be in Rome for one reason or another, I usually make an effort to take some free time to go to see Caravaggio's "Our Lady of the Pilgrims." Often, I succeed because it is not very far from the central train station, in the Church of St. Augustine.

And I can tell you that, every time I have a chance to see this painting, it is a new shock, a new emotion, a new sensation, something that usually forces me to sit down somewhere, typically on the steps in front of the church, to recover my wits. Then, I can walk to the station and take the train home, a little shocked, but happy. 

I am not sure if I can comment on this painting (*); it is beyond my capabilities. Let me just say that Caravaggio managed an extraordinary feat. He is showing here ordinary people: an ordinary young mother with her child, ordinary travelers with their walking canes, with their feet dirty of a long, long walk. And, yet, at the same time, that woman is the all-holy Mother of God, truly the Panagia Theotokos herself, a miracle that repeats itself for me every time I am there. And it keeps going forever for the two figures kneeling in the painting who have been adoring this manifestation of the divine spirit for more than four centuries; never getting tired of doing that.

I don't know if everyone gets the same feeling when they see this painting; probably not. But for some of us, Caravaggio is not just a painter of religious subjects, he is a religion himself. And a painting such as the Lady of the Pilgrims is not just a painting about a religious revelation, it is a revelation in itself.

So, if you have a chance to be in Rome, try to take a look to this painting by Caravaggio, then you'll tell me what effect it made on you.




(*) But I might perhaps cite something written by the Emir Abd Al-Qadir around a century ago. As well known, Islam is not interested in images, but I think these words catch something of the mystical experience that at times come to people. Maybe the good Emir would have understood the meaning of Caravaggio's painting. 

"Our God and the God of all the communities opposing ours are truly and really a unique God, in agreement with what He said in several verses "Your God is a unique God" (Cor. 2:163; 16; 22, etc.). He also said: "There is no God but God" (Cor. 3:62). It is like this despite the diversity of His theophanies, their character absolute or limited, transcendent or immanent, and the variety of His manifestations. He manifested Himself to Moslems beyond all forms at the same time manifesting Himself in all forms. To the Christians, He manifested Himself in the person of Christ and of monks, as He says in the Book. To the Jews, He manifested Himself in the form of 'Uzayr and of the rabbis. To the Mazdians, in the form of fire, and to the dualists in the light and in the obscurity. And it manifested Himself to every worshipper of anything - stone, tree, or animal..  - in the shape of that thing: because no worshipper of a finite thing worships it for what it is itself. What he worships is the epiphany in that form of the attributes of the true God - be He exalted - with this epiphany representing, for each form, the divine aspect that pertains to Him."

Translated from "Abd el-Kader le magnanime", Gallimard 2003




H/t Antonio Cavaliere for having inoculated me with the Caravaggio virus

Caravaggio: the mystery of mercy

Every masterpiece must keep a certain level of mystery, a layer of things unexplained and unexplainable, something in the style of Leonardo's Mona Lisa. A true masterpiece is like a classy woman who leaves something mysterious about herself, disclosing it only to those who deserve it. A definition that applies to most of Caravaggio's paintings: beautifully realistic, but always with a deeper layer of significance inside; a layer that you don't conquer if you don't make some effort in order to deserve it.

This is especially true for "the seven acts of mercy", one of the eeriest and most beautiful paintings by Caravaggio, perhaps the one that contains the most complex message that the author even created. A message, however, that's not easy for us to understand and that perhaps we'll never be able to unravel completely. But, it is worth to make the effort for a painting that was one of the last efforts of Caravaggio, possibly his most ambitious ever.

If you have a chance to see the original painting, in Naples, then you have no other adjective to describe it than "stunning". It stands in the church of the Pio Monte, in a large hall, surrounded by several other paintings of the same, or slightly later, age. All high-quality paintings, some of which were probably conceived as in competition, or perhaps in imitation, of Caravaggio's piece. But the distance between the masterpiece and the competitors is stark. Caravaggio is something else. Think of a wolf in a pack of poodles and you can understand what I mean.

But, apart from the overall visual effect, what is that you are seeing? What does this painting mean? What did Caravaggio want to say with it? If you look at the many available interpretations, you'll find that most of them concentrate on the various groups of figures represented, assigning to each one the role of representing a specific act of mercy (see, for instance, the recent book by Terence Ward, "The Guardian of Mercy"). So, the woman who offers her breast to the old man represents, "Pero", the Roman woman who secretly breastfed her father, Cimon, after that he was incarcerated and sentenced to death by starvation. This action is worth two acts of mercy: "feed the hungry" and "free the incarcerated".

In this way, each group can find a specific interpretation, which is fine. But what is the meaning of the whole composition? In other words, how do the various groups relate to each other and interact with each other? Just to give some idea of the kind of questions that can be asked about this painting, let me list a few

- Why is the woman breastfeeding her father so afraid? What is she looking at?

- Why did Caravaggio include Samson in the composition? What act of mercy is involved in Samson drinking from the ass jawbone that he had used to slaughter thousands of Philistines?

- What are the two Angels doing? Are they fighting with each other? If so, for what reason?

- Why do the characters completely ignore the angels and the virgin Mary flying just above them?

- Why this complete separation between the upper part of the painting (Madonna and Angels) and the lower part? They seem almost like two different painting.

And I could go on. As an answer, it may be argued that Caravaggio was in a hurry and that he was not trying to tell a single, coherent story. He just piled up characters and stories as he saw them, in the busy streets of Naples, at his time (and, today, the city atmosphere may not have changed so much).

But I think we may also try an interpretation of the overall composition if we think of the peculiar conditions of Caravaggio when he was working on this painting. He was a fugitive from Rome, where he had been sentenced to death because he had killed a man. And it may be that this situation is reflected in the composition of the painting.

So, first of all, let's take a look at the woman's face, the only female character of the human section of the painting. We don't know who modeled for Caravaggio in this painting, but if you compare this face with that of another Caravaggio's piece, Judith in "Judith killing Holofernes", well there are some elements in common; in particular, the round shape of the face. Filide Melandroni, Caravaggio's lover in Rome, is often supposed to have posed for Judith in that painting. And this Filide may well have been the cause of the duel in which Caravaggio killed his rival and was then sentenced to death. So, let's imagine that the breastfeeding woman somehow represents Filide. Then, what is she looking at that is making her so worried? The direction of her glance is rather clear: it goes to the figure of Samson, who is drinking from the ass jawbone.

Now we can propose a tentative interpretation. Samson has killed many people with the ass bone he is drinking from. He killed them for a good reason, but he remains a murderer. It is the situation of Caravaggio, who may have been thinking of having good reasons for killing his rival, but who may have been seeing himself as a murderer nevertheless. So, if Samson represents Caravaggio, the woman may represent Filide, in a sense betraying Caravaggio by offering her breast to another man. Note how Samson/Caravaggio is the only character looking "outside" the painting; he is looking up, but in the wrong direction: the divine pardon is over him, but he cannot see it. Note how Samson is also denied the shelter that, instead, is offered to another character in the painting, just nearby.

And the upper layer of the painting? One of the angels looks at the woman, the other at Samson. Why are they fighting? It is perhaps a conflict that takes place in heaven as a reflection of the conflict taking place on earth. The sky is not a refuge, for Caravaggio. At the same time, another kind of mercy is entering the painting from the center-right. It is the small procession with a priest blessing the body of a deceased person. The priest is really the focal figure of the painting, the one who brings light, the only light of the painting. Caravaggio/Samson is looking in the other direction, but the message is clear: his sin of murder can be atoned and pardoned with death. In some way, Caravaggio was prefigurating his own death that would occur not much later, on a Tuscan beach.

Is this really what Caravaggio had in mind? We will never know for sure and it is also true that real artists often act on the basis of intuition rather than a well-defined plan. That may be true for this painting, whose meaning may have appeared as a surprise to Caravaggio himself as he saw it appearing under the strokes of his brush. That must be the way masterpieces are created, and this is surely one.




h/t Antonio Cavaliere who inoculated me with the Caravaggio virus.