I'll Be Your Mirror: Michael Fried’s “The Moment of Caravaggio”

“I'll be your mirror,” The Velvet Underground sang in the song of the same name, “Reflect what you are, in case you don't know.” In The Moment of Caravaggio, Michael Fried argues that the art of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio captivates us by reflecting back at us the interior life we the viewer project into it. Fried adds to that dynamic another “moment,” in which the artist himself finds himself captured by his own painting, which he must cast off if it is to live as an independent art work. One of the most intriguing and subtle art critics writing today, Fried casts new light into the work of the master of chiaroscuro and presents a fresh approach to understanding just why Caravaggio’s art lingers in the mind and holds our attention even today, four centuries after his death. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "I'll Be Your Mirror."

[Many thanks to Princeton University Press for providing me with a review copy of Michael Fried’s The Moment of Caravaggio.]

Up in the Air

For many people, the art of Giovanni Battista Gaulli, also known as Il Baciccio, is a big pain in the neck. Born May 8, 1639, Baciccio thrived during the age of the high-flying, illusionary ceiling frescoes of the High Baroque and early Rococo. Visitors still strain to look up at Baciccio’s The Worship of the Holy Name of Jesus (above, from 1685) in the nave of the Church of the Gesù in Rome. Other artisans helped out with the trickery of the faux architectural touches, but Baciccio is responsible for the breathtaking foreshortening that makes you feel as if the roof has come off and the heavens themselves are putting on a show. Baciccio’s painterly pyrotechnics belong to the armory of the Counter-Reformation as they fought back against the rising tide of the Protestant Reformation by appealing to the eyes and hearts of the still mostly illiterate masses. Where Martin Luther stressed the word, Baciccio and others stressed the image. Seven consecutive popes, from Pope Alexander VII through Pope Clement XI, picked Baciccio to paint their official portrait, demonstrating the trust the top men had in their artistic, not so secret, weapon.

Although Baciccio remains most remembered today for his grand frescoes, he did fine, more terrestrial work as well. His Pieta (above, from 1667) demonstrates what Baciccio could do with radical foreshortening closer to eye level. The drama Baciccio brings to this familiar religious scene shows the influence of Annibale Carracci and the Bolognese Baroque school, who tried to breathe new life into tired old tropes. By the time Baciccio paints this Pieta, the Baroque had begun to give way to the Rococo and the ostentatious displays of the frescoes of palaces and churches. This Pieta, however, shows just how precise and colorful Baciccio’s painting could be, a fact often lost when viewing his works set so high above. Baciccio achieves drama without resorting to deep, Caravaggio-esque chiaroscuro. For all the bombast of the frescoes, these humbler works by Baciccio may actually be his most deeply moving for those who believe. The expressions of sorrow worn by the angels on the left provide a perfect entry for empathy even today.

Baciccio learned the trade of being an artist from Gian Lorenzo Bernini, whom he painted in the portrait above in 1665. Baciccio learned Bernini’s style so well that this painting was originally thought to be a self-portrait by Bernini himself. Painted before the success of the great frescoes, Baciccio’s portrait of his teacher shows the love and respect he held for Bernini. Modern art is so much about the struggle of the individual artist and the development of an individual style, that we fail to appreciate the guild system that was in play for centuries in Europe as techniques were passed down from generation to generation and established artists nurtured younger ones. There were, of course, artists who used and abused the talents of their assistants, but the relationship between Bernini and Baciccio seems to have been a good one. Although Bernini is a fine artist in his own right, the work of Baciccio reflects on his talents as a teacher as well.

Flea Flicker

One of the true stars of the Getty Museum’s exhibition Captured Emotions: Baroque Painting in Bologna, 1575-1725 (my review of the catalogue here) was the artist who comes almost at the end of that movement—Giuseppe Maria Crespi. Born March 16, 1665, Crespi earned the nickname "Lo Spagnolo" or “The Spanish One” for his penchant for wearing the tight Spanish-style clothing of the time despite living in Italy. This eclectic edge of Crespi’s extended to his magpie borrowings from other artists such as Caravaggio. Like the rest of the Bolognese School begun by Ludovico Carracci and his cousins Annibale and Agostino Carracci decades before, Crespi envied the powerful chiaroscuro of Caravaggio and emulated it in works such as The Ecstasy of St. Margaret of Cortona (above, from 1701). Out of the inky blackness the faces of Margaret and Jesus leap out as if surfacing from a great depth of water. Following the tenets of the Carraccis and distancing himself from Caravaggio’s relentless realism, Crespi plays up the emotional impact of the scene at the expense of realism, thus escaping the label of Carravaggisti slapped on so many other artists of the time.

Ironically, from that rejection of realism, Crespi soon moved on to a new emphasis on realism. Continuing to work in dark tones, Crespi entered the bedroom of an unsuspecting young woman in The Flea (above, from 1709). We catch the young lady desperately pursuing an aggravating flea feasting upon her flesh. The bedbugs certainly do bite in the squalor of her surroundings, which Crespi paints faithfully. Crespi knew the work of Rembrandt and even made etchings after some of Rembrandt’s paintings, so the connection between Rembrandt’s homely genre scenes of women in the home and Crespi’s is clear. What is especially remarkable about Crespi is his ability to depict such a scene without descending into caricature or mockery. Anyone who’s suffered a bug bite can identify with the woman’s plight, which provides an entrance through which further empathy allows one to explore the poverty of her situation. Crespi paints genre scenes that moralize without being moralistic.


In 1712, Crespi painted a series of paintings realistically depicting how the Seven Sacraments of the Catholic Church were performed. (All seven sacramental paintings can be seen here.) In Confession (above, from 1712), a priest hears the confession of a penitent kneeling to his right as another penitent waits on his left. Above the priests head is a mounted piece of paper half hidden in shadow that lists the sins that the priest was not allowed to absolve but had to refer the penitent to a cardinal or even the pope, depending on the severity. In the Seven Sacraments, Crespi unites religious painting with genre painting and elevates the life of the simple believer practicing his or her faith to the level of a saint in the throes of spiritual ecstasy. There’s a great warmth and humanity to these paintings of the sacrament that gives us a glimpse at the human side of religious life rarely seen and even contemplated when thinking of the great monuments and art of the Renaissance that have passed down to us. Crespi’s vast humanism, his willingness to embrace other cultures and styles and make them his own, allowed him to create images of great feeling that even Rembrandt would be proud of.

Eyes Wide Shut

With the definite exception of Sodoma, Guercino may be the owner of the worst nickname in Western art history. Born February 8, 1591, Giovanni Francesco Barbieri earned the nickname “Guercino” or “squinty” in Italian because of his crossed eyes. Despite that infirmity, Guercino taught himself how to draw and paint and eventually came under the influence of Lodovico Carracci and his cousin, Annibale Carracci. The Getty Museum’s current exhibition Captured Emotions: Baroque Painting in Bologna, 1575-1725 and the companion catalogue (my review here) show how Guercino fit in with the Bolognese Baroque School with works such as Angels Weeping over the Dead Christ (above, from 1618) that portray the deep human, psychological drama of such subject matter. Guercino painted Angels Weeping over the Dead Christ on copper, which helped make the deathly pallor of the fallen Savior gleam with a special, pearly light. The angels mourning over Jesus’ body strike the perfect balance of supernatural and natural, allowing mortal viewers to empathize and join them in their grief.

The Bolognese Baroque School always managed to keep some distance stylistically from the often overwhelming influence of their near contemporary, Caravaggio. Caravaggio revealed the incredible potential of chiaroscuro like no artist who had come before. Guercino and the Bolognese painters appreciated Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro but had less affection for the gritty realism of his works that would often use prostitutes to model the Virgin Mary. Guercino’s Samson Captured by the Philistines (above, from 1619) beautifully captures the power of Caravaggio-esque lights and darks to generate high drama, but the realism here never falls into the gutter. Stefano Pierguidi, in his essay, “The Naturalistic Strand in Bolognese Baroque Painting” in the Captured Emotions catalogue, sees the relationship between Guercino and Caravaggio as “a dialogue carried out at a chronological and geographical distance.” It’s entirely possible that Guercino knew Caravaggio only by reputation or by his influence on other artists when he painted Samson Captured by the Philistines, which makes Guercino’s ability to recreate the master’s special effects even more remarkable.

Whereas Caravaggio was reckless, perhaps mad character, Guercino was a stable, reliable artist. In 1621, Pope Gregory XV invited Guercino to Rome, where the artist began to amass a small fortune in commissions. A lightning-fast draftsman, Guercino completed he completed 106 large altarpieces in addition to more than 140 paintings in his lifetime. The official seal of approval from Gregory XV, however, tamed what few wild impulses Guercino inflused into his art. In the last stages of his career, Guercino turned to a controlled, classical style as seen in works such as Saint Romuald (above, from 1640). The saint’s stunningly white robe recalls the whiter-than-white whites of Bartolomeo Schedoni, a precursor to the Baroque style from the generation previous to Guercino’s. As much as I love the color and technique of Guercino’s Saint Romuald, I can’t help but miss the emotional connection earlier works such as Angels Weeping over the Dead Christ still make. Saint Romuald strikes a hokey pose of devotion that only the gleaming gown saves from complete triteness. The angel behind the saint belongs to an earlier time, before artists tried to humanize such beings. Perhaps it was only in his earlier days that Guercino saw the potential for his art clearly, before success and prestige narrowed his vision to that point that we have to squint to see his talent in the late works.

Coming to Your Emotional Rescue

Annibale Carracci (Italian, 1560–1609). Madonna Enthroned with Saint Matthew, 1588. Oil on canvas. Unframed: 384 x 255 cm (151 3/16 x 100 3/8 in.). Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Photo © Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Photographers: Estel/Klut.

As the High Renaissance waned and Mannerism reigned over the European art world, Ludovico Carracci and his cousins Annibale and Agostino Carracci quietly began to stage a revolution that would redirect the course of Western art. While Giorgio Vasari praised the old ways in his Lives, the Carraccis penned their protests in the margins and later in such paintings as Annibale Carracci’s Madonna Enthroned with Saint Matthew (above, from 1588). The Getty Museum’s current exhibition Captured Emotions: Baroque Painting in Bologna, 1575-1725 and the companion catalogue, edited by Andreas Henning and Scott Schaefer, try to recreate that pivotal moment in painting history when the Carraccis turned a corner and brought a heightened sense of emotion and humanity to painting that had been lost in the Olympian heights of Michelangelo and the rote gestures of Mannerism. Taking paintings from the Getty’s collection, several other southern California collections, and that of Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (all of which can be seen here), Captured Emotions recaptures a time at which the Carraccis were as famous as Raphael and Bolognese Baroque painting set a standard that not only contemporary but also future artists had to come to terms with.

Carlo Cignani (Italian, 1628–1719). Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife, about 1670–80. Oil on canvas. Unframed: 99.1 x 99.1 cm (39 x 39 in.). Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Photo © Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Photographer: H.-P. Klut.

In the opening essay of the catalogue, “Painting in Bologna from the Carracci to Crespi,” Charles Dempsey points to the Farnese Palace frescoes of Annibale and Agostino Carracci as the turning point in which the new style conquered Rome, “where painting had declined precipitously after the great years of the High Renaissance.” Dempsey bravely claims that the Carracci style then dominated “the history of painting in all Europe, not to be superseded until the Impressionist revolution of the mid-nineteenth century.” This new style found a powerful ally in the new, post-Reformation Catholic Church. The Counter-Reformation, launched at the 1563 Council of Trent, implored religious art to all, from the most sophisticated to the most illiterate. The common bond was human emotion. “Never before had direct psychological appeal been conceived as central to the enterprise of painting,” Dempsey writes. “In asserting this, Counter-Reformation clerics had unwittingly unleashed a tiger, for the depiction of a nude and repentant Magdalene in all her flesh-and-blood splendor, for example,… could arouse sensations simultaneously devout and carnal.” Old Testament tales such as that of Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife became fodder for this multi-faceted, emotional approach, leading to diverse interpretations such as the three versions in this exhibition (all shown here; Carlo Cignani’s appears above, from 1670-1680). Cignani’s Rubenesque wife of Potiphar almost leaps out of the image as Joseph recoils from her advances, his hands speaking volumes of his dismay. After decades of dull Mannerism, the Carracci style reached out and grabbed the audience and awakened both the pious and those purely interested in art.

Guido Reni (Italian, 1575–1642). Christ with the Crown of Thorns, about 1636–37. Oil on copper. Unframed: 76 x 60 cm (29 15/16 x 23 5/8 in.). Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Photo © Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Photographers: Estel/Klut.

Of all the artists in the show, Guido Reni stands out for his masterful technique and emotional rendering. In Christ with the Crown of Thorns (above, form 1636-1637), “the miracle of Reni’s art appears in the unerring poise he strikes between the actuality of flesh and blood and the poetic metaphor Christ simultaneously embodies,” writes Dempsey. Reni strikes the perfect note that the church desired. Caravaggio accused Reni of stealing his style, writes Stefano Pierguidi in his essay, “The Naturalistic Strand in Bolognese Baroque Painting,” but Reni rejected Caravaggio’s work as too naturalistic, thus losing touch with the poetic side. Christ with the Crown of Thorns also illustrates the new technique of painting on copper. “On copper plates it was possible to execute especially intricate and radiant paintings, inasmuch as the support was hard and smooth and did not absorb oil pigments,” Andreas Henning explains in his essay on the subject. From around 1575 until around 1650, artists painted on copper to achieve that inner radiance that the divine Savior deserved. Such special effects only added to the emotional impact of these paintings as the battle for souls and paying commissions raged.

Giuseppe Maria Crespi (Italian, 1665–1747). Confession, about 1712. Oil on canvas. Unframed: 127 x 94.5 cm (50 x 37 3/16 in.). Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Photo © Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Photographers: Estel/Klut.

If the Carraccis stand at the beginning of this movement, Giuseppe Maria Crespi stands at its end. Crespi’s Seven Sacraments (one of which, Confession, appears above, from 1712) represent the height of the naturalistic strain of the Bolognese Baroque. “Crespi presented the sacraments as he observed and experienced them himself as scenes from everyday life, in contemporary dress, without idealization,” writes Bjorn Kerber in “Documenting Invisible Grace: Giuseppe Maria Crespi’s Seven Sacraments.” Although Poussin had painted the same sacraments in his own classical style, he had a great appreciation for the Bolognese Baroque school. The royalty of Europe and Russia collected their works fervently. Yet, by the middle of the nineteenth century, the Carraccis and their followers fell out of favor. John Ruskin, traveling through Italy while working on Modern Painters, attacked them viciously. “There is no entirely sincere or great art in the seventeenth century,” Ruskin wrote. “Insincerity and pretentious artificiality of emotion were to be cited against them soon as the Napoleonic Wars in the early nineteenth century changed the map of Europe and turned a generation of young intellectuals into romantic prophets and pragmatic nihilists,” laments Tatiana Senkevitch in “The Critical Reception of the Bolognese School.” Winckelmann, Goethe, Stendhal, Hazlitt, and the poet Robert Browning, among others, continue to admire the Bolognese Baroque school, but the times had changed to the point that such emotional appeals no longer rang true.

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) (Italian, 1591–1666). Saint Mark, about 1615. Oil on canvas. Unframed: 87.5 x 70.5 cm (34 7/16 x 27 3/4 in.). Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Photo © Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Photographer: H.-P. Klut.

For me, the appeal of the Carraccis and their school comes not only in their art but in their appreciation of art. If Vasari is the first art historian writing, they were the first art historians in practice. The Carraccis obsessively studied the art of the past and emphasized the works of predecessors when teaching in their academy. Taking a buffet-style approach to the Renaissance, the Carraccis picked and chose the very best and developed a style that synthesized all of those strengths. “They found the natural purity of Correggio’s color unequaled by any master,” Dempsey writes, “while the dramatic force of Titian’s chiaroscuro was unrivaled.. No artist could equal Michelangelo in his mastery of the nude in action… Raphael was unsurpassed in composition and the perfection of his proportions.” Such assessments seem natural today, but back then, Dempsey stresses, “[t]hese critical distinctions were in themselves new and unprecedented.” Works such as Guercino’s Saint Mark (above, from 1615) arise with great consciousness of the past masters, both in their strengths and weaknesses. The Carraccis put into artistic practice the critical appreciation of art history in a way that both honored the past as well as looked to the future of art. Such consciousness both spurs on and plagues art making even today, thus linking the artists of today to the spirit of these artists centuries ago. Captured Emotions restores the Bolognese Baroque school to its proper place in the great scheme of art history as the beginning not only of self-reflecting art but also the first freeing of the tidal wave of emotions that have made so much art since so compelling. With essays and online features as welcoming and engaging as the paintings themselves, the Getty has created an opportunity for the art-loving public to regain a lost piece of the long art history journey to today.


[Many thanks to the Getty Museum for providing me with a review copy of Captured Emotions: Baroque Painting in Bologna, 1575-1725, edited by Andreas Henning and Scott Schaefer, and for the images above from the exhibition.]

Charity Case

There’s something truly disturbing in the cold, dead eyes of the blind beggar in Bartolomeo Schedoni’s painting The Charity (above, from 1611). Born January 23, 1578, Schedoni knew the work of his slightly older contemporary Caravaggio and copied the more famous artist’s strong use of lights and darks for dramatic effect. Schedoni, however, resists the reductive label of “Caravaggisti” through the greater softness of much of his works, which make him a kindler, gentler Caravaggio in many ways. Schedoni studied with Annibale Carracci and admired the works of Correggio, whose gentleness, especially in religious genre paintings, set the standard for a generation of Italian artists. The little boy staring out at the viewer in the bottom right could have stepped right out of a Correggio painting. That little boy’s soft, yet still almost accusing glance balances the unseeing, yet clearly confrontational “glance” of the blind boy with the walking stick. In those two figures you can almost see Schedoni standing with one foot in each of the two schools—the little cherub representing Correggio and the striking charity case representing Caravaggio. In The Charity, the realism of the beggars symbolically asks the beauty of Correggioesque lyricism for the means of survival.

Of course, Caravaggio was the new, hot thing, so Schedoni found himself veering more towards that new style than the old ones. In The Deposition (above, from 1613), Schedoni captures wonderfully the pure compositional chaos as well as the dramatic lights and darks of Caravaggio. In fact, Schedoni’s Deposition bears a striking similarity compositionally to Caravaggio’s The Calling of Saint Matthew (1599-1600), right down to the detail of a standing figure pointing to the jumbled left side of the image. If Caravaggio mastered the power of blackness, Schedoni perfected whites “whiter than white,” as the old detergent ads used to promise. The white of the woman’s rolled sleeve almost explodes with light against a sea of darkness. Maybe Schedoni could have taken the Baroque style in a completely different direction—towards light rather than dark. Sadly, he met his end almost as quickly as Caravaggio did.

Schedoni must have been a man of great passions. He reportedly almost lost the use of his right, painting hand from playing tennis too obsessively. The same fervor that drove him to perfect his art through risky innovation, unfortunately, also enflamed him to risk money at the gambling table. Heavy losses at gambling allegedly led Schedoni to take his own life in 1615. In that same last year, Schedoni painted The Holy Family with the Virgin Teaching the Child to Read (above, from 1615), a tender, decidedly non-Caravaggioesque painting of great intimacy—a return to Correggio in many ways. Schedoni painted many small works as this as devotionals for patrons to complement his income from larger, public works for churches. Schedoni gave this particular version to his wife, perhaps in a moment of affection and thanks for her putting up with his difficult ways. For centuries after his death, Schedoni became known more for his wild ways, ala Caravaggio, than his art. The early English Romantic novelist Ann Radcliffe named a sinister monk in her novel The Italian, Or, The Confessional of the Black Penitents “Schedoni” after the painter. Although Schedoni’s whites still gleam brightly today, his star in the art history firmament faded long ago into just another shooting star that once held great promise but burned out much too soon.

The Challenger

When Gian Lorenzo Bernini began sculpting his David (above) in 1623, he must have felt like the Biblical David standing there in the Valley of Elah facing down the Goliaths of the Renaissance. Born December 7, 1598, Bernini and the rest of the Baroque generation worked in the shadow of Michelangelo et al. As Bernini chipped away at the marble, images of Donatello’s David of the 1440s, Verrocchio’s David of 1473-1475, and, standing tallest of all, Michelangelo’s David of 1501-1504 had to have been in his mind. Donatello and Verrocchio chose to show David victorious, standing over the decapitated head of his vanquished foe. Michelangelo showed David measuring up the competition and summoning up the courage to fight. Bernini daringly chooses to show the moment of action itself, when David rears back to sling the fateful stone. David’s mouth tenses in the moment of concentration, a beautifully realistic, natural touch that humanizes the mythic young shepherd. Where his predecessors posed the young hero, Bernini springs him into action. By sculpting his David, Bernini threw down the gauntlet at the feet of the greats of the past and announced himself as a worthy challenger to the title of greatest sculptor of his time.

From the time he came to Rome with his father at the age of seven, Bernini knew he would be a great artist someday. The painter Annibale Carracci first recognized Bernini’s blooming talent and clued Pope Paul V and other potential patrons in on the next great thing. Bernini’s promise soon flowered into realized works of art that revolutionized sculpture with their drama and breathtaking realism. The Ecstasy of St. Theresa (above, from 1647-1652) added a whole new dimension to religious art—sex. The expression on St. Theresa of Avila’s face is purely orgasmic as the presence of God literally pierces her soul. The young angel beside St. Theresa seems more like Cupid with his arrow of love than a messenger of God. It’s truly amazing the level of sensuousness Bernini achieves in the drapery of the saint’s robes and how they ebb and flow around her body, as if they conducted the euphoric electricity emanating from her. I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing this sculpture in person, but just judging from photographs of it in place in the Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome, the sexiness of the sculpture set in a church might make me blush.

Bernini’s monument to Blessed Ludovica Albertoni (above, from 1671-1674) in the chapel of the San Francesco a Ripa in Rome repeats the ecstasy of St. Theresa years later but actually amplifies the sexual component. The life-size sculpture shows Ludovica Albertoni on her deathbed, simultaneously suffering the final pangs before death and enjoying the first stirrings of divine acceptance. Again, religious ecstasy bears a great resemblance to sexual orgasm. By placing Ludovica on a bed, the implication becomes even clearer. Ludovica looks like any one of several Roman or Greek goddesses enjoying the caresses of another diety. Beneath a mountain of sculpted robes, Bernini reveals naked physical and spiritual pleasure. As with the drapery around St. Theresa, Ludovica’s robes seem vibrantly alive, quivering with the pleasure she is feeling. As with his David, Bernini depicts his figure in a moment of action, a moment of becoming. David throws the stone and is transformed from simple shepherd to prophet and king. St. Theresa and Ludovica accept the hand of God upon them and are transformed into saints. By showing these individuals at the moment of transformation, Bernini transforms sculpture and transformed himself from a prodigy of great promise into an artist who could take on all comers.

Unfair Comparisons

Most visitors to Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome gravitate almost immediately to the paintings on the side walls—The Conversion of Saint Paul on the Road to Damascus and The Crucifixion of Saint Peter—works instantly recognizable as the work of the Baroque bad-boy genius Caravaggio. Between those two strikingly dark works of rabid realism rises above the altar the Assumption of the Virgin Mary by Annibale Carracci (above). Baptized November 3, 1560, Carracci’s crowded, light-filled composition actually was the plum job in the chapel, yet today it and Carracci’s work in general are overshadowed by Caravaggio’s dramatic shadows as much as by his tempestuous life story. Whereas Caravaggio took painting into a darkly realistic direction after the Renaissance, Carracci sought to salvage some of the lessons of Michelangelo and Raphael, his heroes, and adapt them for the Counter-Reformation age. While Caravaggio painted prostitutes and beggars as the Virgin and the apostles, Carracci looked to his heroes for models for his lofty vision.

From 1597 through 1600, Carracci worked on a series of frescoes for the Palazzo Farnese in Rome. Drawing inspiration as much from the Farnese Hercules in the owner’s collection as much as from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling, Carracci painted such works as The Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne (above, from 1597-1600). Using all the optical trickery of the new wave of perspective, Carracci kept his work up to date while still maintaining the grand fresco tradition of the Renaissance past. The hypermuscular figures ranging across Carracci’s frescoes recall Michelangelo’s beefed up Biblical figures and ancient sibyls while simultaneously honoring the classical sources Michelangelo and Carracci both knew first hand. The taste for grand fresco style, with the notable exception of Michelangelo’s work, no longer exists today, perhaps a side effect of the end of the age of kings thanks to the modern march of democracy. Caravaggio never worked in fresco, preferring to stay as earthbound as his style itself. Carracci, however, wanted to rise above and consort with his hero Michelangelo, at least metaphorically.

Towards the end of his life Carracci fell into a deep, paralyzing depression. His Self-Portrait of 1604 (above) reflects this dark mood. Did Carracci begrudge Caravaggio his fame and influence—the squadron of Caravaggisti that spread the style across all of Europe shortly after his death? Domenichino, Carracci’s prize student, carried on Carracci’s grand fresco style long after the teacher stopped working. Rubens and Poussin would later praise Carracci’s work in the next generation of European artists. After years of immobility, Carracci died in 1609. Per his request, his students buried Carracci’s remains near those of Raphael so that he could continue to mingle with genius for all eternity. Carracci’s face in the self-portrait on the easel in the larger self-portrait haunts in a way that a simpler self-portrait never could. By placing his portrait in the larger context of the studio, Carracci says that his studio is as much a part of him as his face. When changing tastes threatened to take away that essence from him, Carracci put down his brush and simply ceased to be.