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Caravaggio was a genius who cast a shadow over all theother artists of his day. But who exactly were his travellingcompanions? The exhibition Caravaggio’s Rome1600–1630, with as many as one hundred and forty workson display, for the first time ever reconstructs the culturalconnective tissue of the Eternal City where the great Lom-bard genius lived and worked.In those vibrant and exciting years when the Catholic pa-pacy declared 1600 to be a Holy Year to celebrate the vic-tory of its predominance after the great Lutheran scare,Rome, also thanks to its rich patronages, became the Eu-ropean cultural capital, filled with thousands of artistswho didn’t just come from all over Italy (Caravaggio wasone of them), but from other European countries as well:Spain, France, Germany, Flanders, the Low Countries.A unique breeding-ground was being created where artistsfrom different backgrounds and cultures, and who spokedifferent languages, worked side by side and exchangedtechnical expertise, ideas, experiences, stylistic and icono-graphic models. Through the efforts of these artists, in justa few years the barren and stale stereotypes of Late Man-nerism were swept away, replaced by the most remarkableartistic renaissance of the Eternal City, whose repercus-sions would be felt throughout Europe until the late sev-enteenth century.The aim of this exhibition is to tell this story, which is stillpretty much unknown to the public at large, and to do jus-tice and provide visibility to those artists who, so to speak,had the “misfortune” of living in Rome in the first decadesof the seventeenth century, and who in modern timeswere literally overshadowed by the amazing popularityachieved by Caravaggio.It is precisely in order to give a complete overview of thiscrucial art-historical period and follow the various lines ofdevelopment all the way through that it was decided notto restrict the study exclusively to Caravaggio’s years inRome (1595?–1606) or to end it in the year of his death(1610) but to continue until 1630, which has always beenregarded as the time when the creative phase of Car-avaggism gave way to the unrestrainable impact of the

new Baroque movement.

The years between Caravaggio’s arrival in Rome during thelast decade of the sixteenth century and 1630 are a uniquemoment in the history of Italian and European painting.As is known, the period was one of crucial importance forthe history of Rome and Catholicism, coinciding with theend of the tension created inside the Church in the firstdecades of the sixteenth century with the Lutheran schismand the ensuing Catholic reaction, and the consolidationof the new theological, devotional and political vision inwhich modern Catholicism was to ripen. Art was the pri-mary channel for conveying new messages, and an ex-ceptional flowering developed essentially during the reignsof four popes, Clement VIII Aldobrandini (1592–1605),Paul V Borghese (1605–1621), Gregory XV Ludovisi(1621–1623) and Urban VIII Barberini (1623–1644).An idea of the dynamism of the Roman environment inthose years, as already confirmed by the coeval sources,1 isprovided by the findings of research into the city’s parishregisters,2 which has brought to light the names of thou-sands of artists active in every sector – many of whom arestill unknown and with no catalogue of works to definetheir stylistic personality – and reveals the complexity ofthe phenomenon and of the studies still to be undertaken.

In order to illustrate the developments of painting and hismanifold implications in the first three decades of theseventeenth century more clearly, the exhibition is divid-ed into sections and the paintings are classified as be-longing to the public or private spheres. The first twosections present the Tuscan and Bolognese painters, thetwo largest and most important “groups” of artists ac-tive in Rome during the period and those who, togetherwith the late Mannerist painters, cornered all of the majorjobs. Numerous altarpieces are exhibited in order to doc-ument the public commissions of this key art-historical pe-riod and offer an exhaustive overview of the Roman situ-ation at the time. The operations of restoration and con-servation carried out on all the works for the occasion re-2

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o whom the sources say was “Caravaggio’s woman”, andwhose pose conjures up the image of antique statuary;or the age of the naked Child (perhaps Lena’s son Paolo,born in 1602?), who is no longer a newborn, but a littleboy aged at least three or four, and also present in otherworks by the painter;7 and, lastly, the overwhelming hu-manity of the two pilgrims, perfectly adherent to the pau-perist spirituality of the Oratorians founded by FilippoNeri, so close, in its disarming faith and humility, to ourmodern spirit.Caravaggio and Annibale died exactly one year apart:Annibale Carracci died in July 1609 at the age of forty-nine, while Caravaggio died in July 1610 when he wasthirty-eight. In the two decades that followed the legacythey left behind was gathered up and developed, on theone hand, by Annibale’s crowded and efficient workshop,where the Bolognese classicist painters who had followedhim to the papal city remained active, and on the other, byCaravaggio’s few followers, as he had never wanted eitherpupils or an organized workshop.Situated in between was the flourishing activity of lateMannerist artists, especially Giovanni Baglione andGiuseppe Cesari, also known as the Cavaliere d’Arpino.

Baglione and Cesari Giovanni Baglione (1566–1643) and Giuseppe Cesari(1568–1640) both had substantial studios and were in-volved as from the 1580s in the countless projects of Six-tus V (1585–1590) and Clement VIII (1592–1605). Bothwere forced to coexist as from the mid-1590s with thegreat master from Lombardy, for whom they displayed in-creasing dislike while also falling under his spell in somerespects.While the Mannerist painters who first came under Car-avaggio’s influence seldom understood his extraordinaryinnovations to the full, it is also true that they managed onsome exceptional occasions to produce a highly originalsynthesis and unprecedented results in which externalaspects of the new approach, above all in the handling oflight, coexist with compositional and formal elements stillrooted in the late sixteenth-century tradition. It is in thissense that we must consider the two altarpieces exhibited(see below), examples of the two artists’ adaptation todevelopments in painting over the period in question.The four works by Giovanni Baglione on show bear wit-ness to his key role on the seventeenth-century Roman artscene. The large altarpiece of the The Appearance of theAngel to Saint Joseph from the Santacroce Chapel in thechurch of San Martino ai Monti, now in a private collec-tion, is dated around 1599 and the first of them in chrono-logical order. Recently discovered, it was identified byMaria Cristina Terzaghi as a work produced for the mar-quis and patron of the arts Paolo Santacroce. The largepainting marks an important moment of transition for

veal new and in some cases surprising stylistic informationthat has made a more precise art-critical reading possible.Crucial importance also attaches in this sense to the rareor indeed unique opportunity to analyze the altarpieces –often located in dimly lit churches or at a considerableheight – in conditions of perfect visibility. In this as in theother sections, efforts have been made to present themasterpieces alongside works that are unknown or little-known due to centuries of invisibility in the darkness ofbarely accessible monasteries and sacristies or locationin small, out of the way towns like Leonessa and Apiro. Fi-nally, there are numerous works from public and privatecollections exhibited here for the first time, like the can-vases from the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and othersnormally kept from view in private hands.The other sections are instead arranged in chronologicalorder, following the established division into decades andhence generations in order to trace the development ofCaravaggism as clearly as possible through the first thirtyyears of the seventeenth century, which saw its birth, at-tainment of the highest peaks, and subsequent decline asfrom the early 1620s, when clients gradually came to pre-fer the Baroque and classical styles.This essay examines the different sections in a sort ofguided tour, drawing attention above all to the primaryproblems and new developments emerging in the newstudies that have accompanied the exhibition.

The exhibition begins with a comparison between twogiants of painting: the Lombard Caravaggio who arrived inRome during the 1590s, and the Bolognese Annibale Car-racci, who arrived in Rome during the 1590s:3 two pre-em-inent figures who in those years developed and perfectedthe basics – albeit at opposite ends – of their way of paint-ing. Annibale developed a classicist painting style ofRaphaelesque inspiration founded on the representation ofa reality that was idealized and emended of all coarse-ness. Caravaggio, instead, expressed a naturalistic stylebased on the representation of reality as it appeared, withno idealization. We would not be going too far to callthis innovation revolutionary.The radical difference between the two great artists isclearly shown at the very beginning of the exhibitionthrough the juxtaposition of two of their masterpiecesaddressing the same subject, the Madonna of Loreto. Thetwo great altarpieces, both dated 1604–05, still hang inRome in the churches for which they were originally paint-ed, Carracci’s in Sant’Onofrio on the Gianicolo and Car-avaggio’s in Sant’Agostino. They address the mystery ofthe house where the Virgin conceived Jesus, which is tra-ditionally believed to have been transported fromNazareth to Loreto in Italy in 1291 by a flight of angels.The “Holy House” immediately became an object of pop-ular worship and increasingly frequent pilgrimage to

which devout people travelled on foot from every part ofItaly and Europe. The two paintings celebrate the same story but from twodiametrically opposed angles. Carracci sticks faithfully tothe traditional iconography and sets the scene symmetri-cally: at the centre is the Virgin and her newborn Child,seated on her house which is being carried through the airby five angels, two on either side, and one lower down,that with splendid invention and bold foreshorteningstressed by the flashes of light, holds the house upon itsshoulders. The figures’ faces, all very beautiful and ideal-ized, as befits the divine, are lit by a clear, bright, “uni-versal” light; the proportioned structure of the bodies,which show no signs of fatigue, derives from the classicalprototypes, as does the harmonious drapery of their cloth-ing, whose colours respect the traditional canons.The opportunity for close examination of the canvas bearsout the points already made by scholars. While the generalconception of the work can be attributed to Carracci, itwas produced with the help of artists working in his stu-dio.4 If the Madonna and Child are regarded as his work,there appear to have been two assistants involved. Themore talented, perhaps Domenichino, painted the twoangels on the right and the one carrying the house on itsshoulders. The other, perhaps Albani, is the author ofthe more awkward and wooden figures of the angels onthe left.The House, which is an object of cult and veneration,has practically vanished, summed up in the chippedmoulding of the doorway, the surrounding wall, and thedoorstep. Unlike Annibale’s work, the centre of the canvasis practically empty, and the two groups of figures havebeen placed to the sides: to the left, the divine groupmade up of the Mother and Child, standing on the thresh-old; to the right, the two piligrims kneeling before them.The female pilgrim is wearing a “torn and filthy hat”,5

while the male figure is characterized by his notoriouslyswollen, dirty feet – a sign of their having suffered fromthe long journey – commonly the symbol of obedience anddevotion, but in this case stuck without much concern inthe face of the viewer and, above all, placed right abovethe chapel altar in the church of Sant’Agostino. This is nolonger Annibale’s “universal” light; this light comes froma very specific source upwards and to the left, and itlingers to describe each single small and realistic detail,such as the wrinkles on the devout woman’s face. A greatdeal has been written about this amazing painting, whichwas at once harshly criticized by Caravaggio’s contem-porary biographer Giovanni Baglione.6 Our aim here is toemphasize the profound conceptual difference betweenthe two paintings and how Caravaggio, as always, suc-ceeded in renewing the traditional and consolidated icono-graphies of the figures. Suffice it to observe the Virgin’soverpowering, sensuous beauty, identified with Lena,

Baglione, poised here between his late Mannerist back-ground and the first timid signs of the naturalism he wasto embrace in the next few years,8 and is surprisingly pri-or to Caravaggio’s public debut with the works in SanLuigi dei Francesi (1600).9 This fact raises the question ofBaglione’s early knowledge of the first works produced byCaravaggio for private clients in Rome, especially the Do-ria Rest on the Flight into Egypt, which he seems to echoin the large angel seen from behind on the right in theforeground, the figure of Saint Joseph, and the realisticstill life of stones, plants and carpentry tools painted withunusual care and attention at the bottom in the fore-ground.The other three paintings by Baglione are exhibited atthe beginning of the section devoted to the Caravaggesquepainters: the Young John the Baptist (signed and dated1600), the Ecstasy of Saint Francis of Assisi (signed anddated 1601) and the Sacred and Profane Love (signed anddated 1602), which together provide exceptional docu-mentation of Caravaggio’s growing influence on Baglione. The Young John the Baptist from a Russian private collec-tion, exhibited to the public here for the first time andpreviously unpublished, also belongs to the transitionalphase, albeit with more explicit attention to Caravaggio.Signed and dated 160010 as already mentioned earlier, thecanvas is a precious addition to our knowledge of theparticular moment when Baglione came under the influ-ence, cautiously at first and then more explicitly, of theman who was to become his worst enemy as from 1603.11

Based on Caravaggio’s early models but still imbued withlate Mannerism in its chromatic range, the painting isperhaps the only work in which the author gives free reinto more deeply felt naturalism through precise Car-avaggesque references like the eloquent gesture of thehand of the young saint, which recalls that of Christ in theContarelli Chapel Calling of Saint Matthew. It is now es-tablished that Baglione was reluctant to commit himselffully to Caravaggio’s naturalism and that this was indeeddeveloped in wholly personal terms expressing a subjectivevision still linked to the late sixteenth-century devotionalsphere.12

In this case, Baglione combines two models in the com-positional structure: Caravaggio’s Sick Bacchus (c. 1596?)and Annibale Carracci’s Saint John the Baptist in the Desert(1596–97; fig. 1). In stylistic terms, there are clear refer-ences to the former in the accentuation of the light andcorresponding thickening of the shadow; the mostly darkbackground against which the figure of the naturally pro-portioned youth is painted with as much realism asBaglione was capable of, witness the moderately dirty fin-ger nails; the starkness of the composition, where super-fluous details are eliminated to focus all the attention onthe figure depicted; the way the viewer is directly ad-dressed (as Caravaggio did in his Musicians and Lute Play-

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o er and Carracci did in his Young John the Baptist); thecorner of the wall pointing towards the viewer and thebowl resting on it, a splendid still life projecting slightlyfrom the wall at the base like the Ambrosiana Basket ofFruit.The Saint Peter and Saint Paul (1600) in Santa Cecilia inTrastevere (fig. 2) and the Saint Sebastian Tended by anAngel, formerly in the collection of Mary Jane Harris andnow in the Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania (fig. 3),also display similar formal and stylistic characteristics.Baglione took a marked step in the direction of Car-avaggesque naturalism the following year with his SaintFrancis of Assisi in Ecstasy, signed “MC” and dated“1601”,13 a second version of which exists in Chicago,again dated 1601 (fig. 4). Regarded as a copy of the Amer-ican canvas, our painting, which resurfaced in 2008,14 is in-stead a splendid original by Baglione, as demonstratedby the numerous pentimenti and the differences betweenthe two paintings.15 The presence of so many instances ofrethinking suggests that, contrary to what was previouslybelieved, it was the Roman canvas that was painted firstrather than its American counterpart, which presents nosignificant pentimenti. In our view, the existence of twoversions of this work, like the two versions of Sacred andProfane Love and other paintings, including the Washingof the Feet, a “trial run” for an altarpiece in Saint Peter’s,raises the still unresolved question of how Baglione’s hugestudio operated, which remains wholly unexplored. Whydo two versions of the same work often exist, often of dif-ferent sizes, one signed and dated and the other not?Was one a sort of “record” kept in the studio as docu-mentation of a major work? Or were they samples to beshown to potential customers interested in ordering au-tograph replicas? No answer can be given to these ques-tions as yet, and these curious “duplicates” of Baglione’s,which are gradually increasing in number, must be studiedand understood.The use of chiaroscuro in the Saint Francis of Assisi in Ec-stasy appears to be designed to create an atmosphere ac-centuating a certain degree of sensuality but far removedfrom the naturalistic results obtained by painters likeOrazio Gentileschi in the same period. The same sophis-ticated sensuality was to appear about a decade later in thework of Orazio’s daughter Artemisia, thus demonstratingthe anything but marginal role of Baglione’s technical andpictorial research. His results in painting must have beennoticed both by clients and by Caravaggio himself, whomanifested his anger at the decision to award the presti-gious commission for an altarpiece of the Resurrectionfor the Jesuit church in Rome to Baglione, whom he re-garded as anything but a good painter,16 during the famoustrial in 1603. Michele De Sivo’s recent analysis17 of theseproceedings points out some interesting conclusions to bedrawn from the events, which were evidently connected

with jealousy on the part of Baglione’s denigrators. Thetestimony of Orazio Gentileschi, for example, reflects an-noyance at the financial success and renown connectedwith the commission for the Resurrection altarpiece, not tomention the gold necklace that Baglione received fromcardinal Benedetto Giustiniani for his Sacred and ProfaneLove, now in Palazzo Barberini.18

Certain choices were determined by a combination ofpsychological, aesthetic but also purely economic factors:the spirit of emulation and rivalry between professionalpainters in a city marked by fierce competition; the desirefor prestige of patrons who saw collecting as a way ofobtaining social recognition and distinction; the emer-gence of a specialized literature to guide and endorse theotherwise unforeseeable developments in taste.The meaning of the capital letters “MC” on the canvas ofthe Saint Francis before the date is still unclear. If thestyle did not speak for itself, they could be taken as the ini-tials of the author, perhaps employed in Baglione’s studio,whose work was passed off by the master as his own. Un-til new developments come to light, all we can do for themoment is focus more closely on Caravaggio’s growing in-fluence over Baglione. The Contarelli side panels had justbeen revealed, admired and criticized in 1601, thus dis-playing all of Caravaggio’s exciting power, and Baglionetherefore finally had a public model to see, not only theprivate paintings that may have been made accessible tohim. Now that Caravaggio’s new vision of reality wasmade public and indeed manifested in an importantchurch like San Luigi dei Francesi, Baglione went be-yond any viewing of private paintings and hastened toadapt to the new trend now established, as is clear in hisSaint Francis. Everything in this painting speaks of thegreat genius from Lombardy. The background is dark inorder to isolate and project the life-sized al naturale figuresgathered in the foreground. Apart from the red draperyand the precious blue damask of the angels’ garments, thechromatic range is deliberately toned down and far fromthe bright colours of late Mannerism. The scene is illumi-nated by a strong and direct shaft of light that enters,needless to say, from the upper left (as in nearly all ofCaravaggio’s paintings). The shadows are strong and dis-tinct to create dynamic chiaroscuro contrasts with thetender flesh tones of the two angels supporting the saint’sbody, which is not rendered very well in the lower part(among other things, the index toe is a curious stump) butcharacterized by powerful foreshortening from below, asis the angel on the left. This is indeed the most importantcompositional characteristic of the painting. What is thereason for this accentuated and evident foreshortening?Caravaggio makes no use of it in his Hartford Saint Fran-cis, from which Baglione copies the effect of lighting halfof the angel’s face. Where does this curious choice derivefrom? One of the (many) possible explanations could be

the fact that Caravaggio had been criticized for his sup-posed inability to handle foreshortening, charges that heanswered in his own inimitable fashion with the Ludovisiwall painting in 1599. Baglione may have wished todemonstrate his own skill in this respect through thepainting.The most striking demonstration of Caravaggio’s influ-ence on Baglione is, however, unquestionably provided inthe two versions of the Sacred and Profane Love, one inRome (Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica in Palazzo Bar-berini, signed and dated “IO Baglione/R: F:/1602) and theother in Berlin (Gemäldegalerie, unsigned and undated;fig. 5), produced for cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani inopen competition with the Love Triumphant painted byCaravaggio for Vincenzo Giustiniani (fig. 6) and a canvason a similar subject by Orazio Gentileschi. The well-known history of Baglione’s two paintings is perfectlysummarized in the catalogue by Michele Nicolaci.19 Ourconcern here is to point out the qualitative strides taken byBaglione in the space of just one year towards Car-avaggesque naturalism. Despite some evident remnants ofMannerism, Baglione manages here to reproduce exactlynot only the intensity of the relationship of light and shad-ow that distinguishes Caravaggio’s paintings of the sameperiod but also – as far as his expressive capacity will allow– the concrete presence of the bodies in space, startingwith the extraordinarily realistic and lifelike foot firmly seton the ground, which reveals the long study that Baglionemust have made of Caravaggio’s works. Comparison of thetwo Giustiniani paintings clearly shows how muchBaglione’s figure representing Sacred Love owes to thecompositional structure of Caravaggio’s Love Triumphant.The elements borrowed and adapted to his own require-ments include the inclination and lighting of the headand face, the accentuation of the shoulder, underscored bya shadowed hollow, and the positioning of the arm (placeda little higher but originally closer to Caravaggio’s figure,as revealed by x-ray examination), the hand, and the leftleg.As is known, Baglione was not only one of the leadingpainters involved in the projects of Sixtus V but also thefirst to adopt a naturalistic style of painting. He thereforewent through an intense Caravaggesque period that ex-tended beyond 1603, the year of his violent clash withCaravaggio over the latter’s highly offensive remarks andthe trial. Contrary to what is generally believed, the pro-ceedings did not mark a complete break with naturalismand the Caravaggesque style, as is demonstrated by the re-cent discovery of date “1606” on Baglione’s Ecce Homo inthe Galleria Borghese (fig. 7).20 It may indeed be no co-incidence that this was the year in which Caravaggio fledfrom Rome, as the disappearance of Baglione’s rival maywell have enabled him to resume the naturalistic styleabruptly abandoned with the trial in 1603. Moreover, after

Caravaggio’s hasty departure at the very peak of his suc-cess, there could also have been sound financial reasonsfor Baglione to resume the use of his formal and compo-sitional elements then in great demand on the market.Even though it is not certain that the Ecce Homo was ac-tually commissioned by cardinal Scipione Borghese, this isa tempting hypothesis, not least in view of the surprisingand problematic similarity between the figure of Christand Caravaggio’s John the Baptist (unanimously regardedas painted in 1610), which entered the Borghese collectionin 1611 (fig. 8).21

Chronological considerations obviously rule out any pos-sibility of Baglione’s work being influenced by the master’slate prototype, unless its date is brought significantly for-ward. Nor is it easy to imagine Caravaggio taking up amodel produced by his bitterest rival. Another possibilityis that the two paintings were based on a third work,possibly a sculpture. Attention should be drawn, howev-er, to the difficulty Baglione evidently experienced in pro-ducing his canvas, as shown by the numerous pentimentiin the left hand of Christ holding the reed and in thewhite cloth wrapped around his body, almost as though toconceal its positioning and proportions.Baglione’s “co-star” in the years immediately before thegreat Jubilee of 1600 was Giuseppe Cesari, also known asthe Cavaliere d’Arpino, whose work is represented in theexhibition by the Saint Barbara receiving the white robe bythe Angel formerly in the destroyed church of Sant’Angeloin Borgo, as stated in a document of 1597.22 The altarpiecewas painted in the very period when, according to the lat-est documentary reconstruction, Caravaggio was employedfor eight months in Cesari’s studio (c. 1596 – before March1597). Unanimously regarded as Cesari’s masterpiece, itwas produced in a period particularly full of public andprivate commissions. In chronological terms, it falls be-tween two of the most prestigious undertakings assignedto Cesari in those years, namely the decoration of themain hall of the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Capitol(1595), which was not completed until shortly before hisdeath (1640), and the transept of the Lateran basilica,commissioned by Clement VIII for the Jubilee of 1600.Cesari was responsible in the latter case not only for su-pervising the work of painting above the arches and be-tween the windows but also for painting the theatricalAscension of Christ over the altar of the Sacrament (fig. 9).Despite the documented relationship with Caravaggio inthe years when the Saint Barbara was painted, Cesarishows no sign of any concessions to the new approach andindeed almost appears intent on challenging his pupil byaccentuating the stylistic devices of late Mannerism tothe utmost in the handling of light, the transparent shad-ows, the range of colours, the idealization of the faces, andthe monumental centrality of the figure. It may, however,be possible to detect some faint echo of the new natural-

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o ism in the formal simplification of the composition and itslife-sized scale (to be found also in Annibale Carracci’sSaint Margaret, which Caravaggio himself greatly ad-mired).

The Bolognese PaintersThe Bolognese artists cited in the sources are just a few ofthose actually involved in what must have been a greatwave of migration already underway for two generations,moving constantly back and forth between Bologna andRome. Analysis of the parish registers and records23 andhistorical data brings the number up to about a hundredand reveals a very interesting panorama of artists more orless permanently resident in Rome, where they were alsoable to obtain commissions of a certain level. RaffaellaMorselli’s study published here, clearly illustrates the eco-nomic and political causes that prompted this exodus ofartists and must unquestionably have been of considerableimportance to ensure the large number of commissionsand the volume of transactions in which the Bologneseresident in Rome were involved.24 It is no coincidencethat the primary impetus is to be identified precisely in thesphere of patronage and the most prestigious of all pa-trons, namely the pope. The election of Gregory XIII(1572–1585) of the Bolognese Boncompagni familyopened up countless opportunities in Rome for artistsfrom his hometown. Work was offered not only by thepope himself, who would only have his portrait painted bythe Bolognese artists Lorenzo Sabatini and BartolomeoPassarotti, according to the sources, but also by the count-less friends and relatives pursuing careers at the pontificalcourt, who in turn involved further clients of differingsocial level. The overwhelming majority of the lawyers,writers and scholars but also historians, geographers andlinguists rotating around them were in fact from the regionof Emilia, and provide a very clear idea of the relations –and commissions – in which the painters were involved.Gregory XIII was followed by Innocent IX Facchinetti(from 3 November to 30 December 1591) and later byGregory XV Ludovisi (1621–1623). Even though Inno-cent reigned for only two months, he found time to de-velop closer ties with Alessandro Farnese and PaoloEmilio Sfondrati, who were, as Morselli observes, veryimportant points of reference in the careers of AnnibaleCarracci and Guido Reni. Gregory XV instead enabledthe Bolognese artists to strengthen their position and se-cure an exclusive monopoly of public commissions.It was Gregory XV that summoned Giovanni FrancescoBarbieri, better known as Guercino, to Rome, appointedDomenichino as his palace architect in 1621, and took ashis personal secretary the author and theorist monsignorGiovanni Battista Agucchi, already a close friend of An-nibale Carracci and strongly linked to Domenichino. Ac-cording to Malvasia, the plan for Guercino to decorate theBenediction Loggia, which fell through due to the death of

the pope, would have earned the painter an enormoussum, which gives some idea not only of the scale of thework to be carried out but also of the key role he musthave held at the time. Together with Lorenzo Gennari,Giovan Battista Croce, Guido Cagnacci and Galanino,Guercino was resident in that period in the Roman parishof San Lorenzo in Lucina,25 and it is probable that the firstcommission he obtained during his stay in the city was in1621 to decorate the casino or lodge on the Pincio ownedby the pope’s nephew cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, whoemployed Barbieri and Agostino Tassi to fresco two roomswith the images of Aurora and Fame26 (figs. 10, 11). As re-gards Domenichino, while his links with monsignor Aguc-chi have long been known, the Bolognese painter must al-so have found artistic favour with the pope and hisnephew, as the inventories of the Ludovisi family collec-tions include numerous works by his hand in the yearsthat precede or follow the period of the pontificate.27

General consideration of the first thirty years of the sev-enteenth century makes it possible to state that apartfrom popes and cardinals, it was above all to papal legatesand ambassadors that the Bolognese artists owed theirsuccess in Rome. Holding very important positions in thepolitical and cultural context of Bologna and Rome, thesefigures are crucial to any understanding of the timing andchannels of the spread of a style that was to gain the upperhand over Caravaggism, thus demonstrating the close-ness and importance of the relations between politics andpatronage, and hence how many opportunities there werefor artists to travel to Rome, even for short periods. Theambassadors include some important names, such asCamillo Gozzadini, a member of a ranking senatorial fam-ily in contact with Lavinia Fontana and Guido Reniamong others; Francesco Cospi, the owner of an exquisitecollection, who remained in Rome until 1610 and is nowknown to have had relations with Reni, Domenichino,Guercino, Spada and Elisabetta Sirani; Giovanni MariaAngelelli, minister of justice in Bologna in 1604, whoserved in Rome in 1616 and 1617 and was in contact withBartolomeo Cesi, Guercino and Guido Reni;28 and finallyFilippo Pepoli, who was on excellent terms with Renibut also the patron of painters like Albani, Spada andGuercino.As is known, the term of office of legates in Bologna in-creased at the beginning of the seventeenth century fromtwo to approximately three years, thus providing illustri-ous figures like Benedetto Giustiniani, Alessandro PerettiMontalto, Maffeo Barberini and Bernardino Spada withan opportunity to penetrate the mechanisms of the city’sart scene, which they found so impressive as to commis-sion portraits and easel paintings for their own collec-tions. The investigation of Roman parish records proves partic-ularly valuable for the light it casts on an unprecedentedand lively cultural scene involving the Bolognese painters.

The parish of San Lorenzo in Damaso was home as earlyas 1595 to interesting figures like Giovanni Antonio Solariand a certain “Innocenzo pittore”, who could be thepainter Innocenzo Tacconi, in which case the currently ac-cepted date of 1600 for his arrival in Rome would have tobe brought forward by five years. The artists also includea Giovanni from Modena, resident in the parish of theSanti Apostli in 1596 and 1598, who is perhaps to beidentified as the fresco painter Giovanni Battista Ingoni(1528–1608?) recorded as one of Girolamo Muziano’sassistants in the work in the Villa d’Este in Tivoli in 1569.29

Documented in 1595 in the service of cardinal OdoardoFarnese, Annibale Carracci was soon joined in Rome bypupils and followers, who shared the master’s accommo-dation and commissions. In 1607, as stated by Malvasiaand confirmed by the parish records, Annibale had beenresident for a year in a house on Via Condotti in theparish of San Lorenzo in Lucina together with SistoBadalocchio, Giovanni Antonio Solari and Antonio Car-racci.30 It is thus possible to say that the Bolognese fol-lowers of Annibale Carracci and Guido Reni in Rome atthe beginning of the seventeenth century were many andthat their accommodation in small groups in rented roomsand houses ensured their economic survival while foster-ing a fruitful exchange of stylistic ideas and figurativemodels.In this connection, initial analysis carried out on the worksof artists like Guido Reni, Domenichino, Albani and Lan-franco as well as the less exorbitant Giovanni Battista Vi-ola and Sisto Badalocchio on the occasion of the exhibi-tion revealed a new and curious fact about the Bolog-nese painters. They appear to have remained in some way“marginal” with respect to commissions for altarpieces inthe period from 1606 to about 1614, between the onset ofthe illness that struck Annibale after the Farnese com-mission and led to the unavoidable decline of his studioand the contemporary rise of Guido Reni on the onehand and Domenichino on the other. Examination of thecommissions carried out over the period reveals the large-scale employment of Annibale’s pupils on major frescoesin Roman churches and private homes, while altarpiecepainting appears to have remained predominantly thepreserve of Tuscans like Cristoforo Roncalli, DomenicoCresti, also known as Passignano, and Agostino Ciampel-li. The analysis clearly indicates that the Bolognese, notleast through the Farnese commission, had earned a goodreputation as fresco painters and were mostly employed assuch. The countless major series of frescoes painted overthe period include those in the Palazzo Mattei (1606–07)under the supervision of Albani, who ran the studio dur-ing Annibale’s illness; the frescoes of the oratory of San-t’Andrea and Santa Silvia in the church of San Gregorio alCelio commissioned by Scipione Borghese, on which Reni,Lanfranco, Domenichino and Badalocchio worked in

1608–09; those painted by Francesco Albani in the Palaz-zo Verospi on the Corso (1607–08); the demanding seriespainted again by Albani in the Palazzo Giustiniani at Bas-sano di Sutri together with Domenichino and GiovanniBattista Viola (1609; figs. 12, 13); and the series painted byDomenichino in Grottaferrata for the Farnese family(1608–10; figs. 14, 15). It was for Paul V that Guido Reni,now the favourite painter of the Borghese family, super-vised Giovanni Lanfranco, Francesco Albani, AntonioCarracci and Campana in the decoration of the Annunci-ation Chapel in the Palazzo Quirinale (figs. 16, 17) in1609–10 and then decorated the Pauline Chapel in SantaMaria Maggiore (figs. 18, 19) in 1611–12, followed im-mediately afterwards, in 1612–13, by the casino dell’Au-rora in the grounds of Palazzo Rospigliosi. Domenichinopainted the frescoes of the chapel of cardinal Polet inSan Luigi dei Francesi (figs. 20, 21) in 1612–15 and thenthose in the Villa Aldobrandini at Frascati (figs. 22, 23) in1616–18. The few public works on canvas produced byBolognese painters in this period do not begin until 1614,when Guido Reni painted the Ecstasy of Saint Philip Neriimmediately before returning to Bologna for the chapeldesigned to host the relics of the saint (now in the saint’srooms; fig. 24). Domenichino painted the monumentalCommunion of Saint Jerome for the church of San Giro-lamo della Carità (1614; fig. 25) in the same year.As mentioned above, the major commissions for altar-pieces went above all to Tuscan artists. Nevertheless, someof the small number of public canvases produced byBolognese artists are on show here in order to documenttheir active presence in Rome. First and foremost, wehave the Saint Margaret31 painted by Annibale Carracci inc. 1599 as a “minor” commission to adorn the altar ofthe chapel of writer Gabriele Bombasi in the church ofSanta Caterina dei Funari. This painting, his first in Rome,immediately became a model for the other painters, whorushed to see it,32 including Caravaggio himself, who“feasted his eyes on it”.33 Confirmation of this is providedby Bellori: “After stopping to gaze upon it for a longtime, Caravaggio turned and said that he rejoiced to see apainter in his time”. What is there in this painting that canhave attracted him so much? To our eyes, it is a typicalwork of Carracci’s early Roman period, when he revisedhis Bolognese training and above all the Venetian com-ponent of his painting in the light of his experience in theEternal City.34 But what did Caravaggio see in it? Com-parison between the Saint Margaret and Cesari’s SaintBarbara (figs. 26, 27) may held to suggest an answer. Theseare two almost contemporary altarpieces, very similar interms of composition and size, showing a female saint in alandscape. Cesari’s decision to include an angel, in ac-cordance with the iconography of Saint Barbara, was alsodesigned to emphasize the divine character of the scene,dominated by the ethereal and idealized but also provoca-

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avaggio’s most important patrons, the banker OttavioCosta, between 1604 and 1605, namely a painting for thechurch of Santa Caterina in the parish of Sant’Alessandroat Conscente in the region of Liguria. The Costa brothers,who were responsible for building the new church, com-missioned Reni to paint a Martyrdom of Saint Catherine,40

today in the Museo Diocesano d’Arte Sacra of Albenga.For the altar they had a copy made of Caravaggio’s Johnthe Baptist, the original of which is in the Nelson-AtkinsMuseum of Art in Kansas City (fig. 29). As pointed out byMaria Cristina Terzaghi, the commissions given by Costato Caravaggio and Reni, albeit in different periods, are ev-idence of appreciation for the modern and naturalisticstyle, as indicated also by his employment of artists likeLanfranco and Cesari. There is a very interesting inter-weaving of elements here, as Malvasia mentions the latteras one of Reni’s supporters in Rome. It may be no coinci-dence that Reni, Cesari and Caravaggio all obtained com-missions and fees from the same patron. At the sametime, Costa does not appear to have been the only one tofoster the contacts between Reni and Cesari. As from1607, the latter enjoyed the patronage of cardinal Mon-talto, whose secretary was Ruggero Tritonio, mentioned inthe first draft of Ottavio Costa’s will as the beneficiary ofa painting by Caravaggio of his own choice.41 Evidence ofReni’s relations with Cesari and above all the latter’s at-tempts to set him up against Caravaggio is again providedby Malvasia, who states that on his arrival in Rome,“[Reni] was highly regarded and respected, above all byCesari, who sought to promote him also in opposition toCaravaggio, his declared enemy, and obtain for him com-missions that he understood Caravaggio was to be as-signed. This happened with the Crucifixion of Saint Peterat the church of the Tre Fontane outside Rome, where hepromised cardinal Borghese that Reni would be trans-formed into Caravaggio and paint it in the bold, darkstyle in which we see it brilliantly executed”.42

While Malvasia confused Aldobrandini with Borghese,he had a very clear idea of the role that Reni would haveto play if his painting was to meet the artistic require-ments predominating in that period in Rome, where thegreat esteem for the works of Caravaggio made them amodel that any artist seeking success was obliged to takeinto consideration. And this suggests that a declaration ofallegiance to the master’s style was essential at that par-ticular time in the Eternal City, something of fundamentalimportance for anyone wishing to be regarded as one ofthe few “men of talent” alongside those mentioned byCaravaggio during the celebrated trial of 1603.There was no help for it. Even a painter of Reni’s calibrehad to yield, and it is indeed possible that he was morewounded than he appeared to be by the omission of hisname – but not that of Annibale Carracci – from the sortof “top ten” listed by Caravaggio when the judge asked

him to name the best artists in Rome. His success was stillto come of course, and the comparison may not havebeen of much concern to him at the time, as their initialcontact can have been no more than his admiration for theContarelli canvases, after which he is immediately docu-mented as working above all in the province or only ir-regularly in Rome. By 1604, however, comparison couldno longer be avoided. Passeri43 even speaks of Reni pro-ducing “whole half-figures in imitation of Caravaggio”for a tailor, and even if the story is groundless, it is signif-icant that he should have found it congenial to paint half-figures in the master’s style. Guido Reni’s adoption of naturalism is a thorny questionand one in need of deeper examination, not least with re-spect to the relations of patronage imposed upon him.On the one hand, attention has been drawn to the natu-ralistic similarity between two of Reni’s paintings, namelythe Martyrdom of Saint Peter and the David and Goliath(fig. 30) now in the Louvre, for which it is difficult to re-construct the history and especially to establish a certaindate. Stylistic affinities would suggest that it too was paint-ed around 1605, which raises the question of whetherCaravaggio saw it before his flight from Rome, beforethe work he produced on the same subject during hissecond stay in Naples, and perhaps also before his Madon-na of the Pilgrims. The crossed legs of the Virgin in the lat-ter are indeed reminiscent of the pose of Reni’s David, it-self a classical citation of the Farnese Hercules but com-pared in the past also to the Faun previously in the MatteiCollection and the Meleager in the Vatican Museums.44

Critics have, however, recently pointed out that Reni’sdrive for naturalism was not confined to a mere attempt atemulation and that Caravaggio was a point of stylisticreference for him and an iconographic universe to bedrawn upon with a certain degree of discrimination, purg-ing any “slips”. Reni’s work in Rome between 1600 and1606 was in any case largely for patrons seeking a simple,unadorned and highly communicative approach, like thecardinals Sfondrati and Gallo, which makes it difficultto establish any real cultural parallel between works likeReni’s Martyrdom of Saint Peter for the church of SanPaolo alle Tre Fontane and Caravaggio’s for the CerasiChapel or Reni’s David in the Louvre and Caravaggio’s inthe Borghese Gallery. Apart from the above-mentioneddetail of the legs, Reni’s David is unquestionably lightyears away from the Borghese version. The plumed hatheld by Reni’s Biblical hero is in no way comparable toanything in the later work by Caravaggio. The need for de-piction to correspond to “reality” led many artists in theseventeenth century to converge on “naturalistic” ele-ments marking a general adoption of the Caravaggesqueapproach in response to the new demands. Naturalismthus emerged as a variegated stylistic solution designed tomeet the new cultural requirements of very demanding pa-10

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o tive figure of the scantily clothed saint. Annibale insteadtakes a completely different approach. Apart from theevident stylistic superiority of his landscape, the most sig-nificant differences lie in the rendering of the two femalefigures. While the Saint Barbara repeats all the worn-outstereotypes of late Mannerism, the Saint Margaret ap-pears wholly innovative. First of all, rather than a hack-neyed model, she is a “real” woman of natural proportionseffortlessly dominating the space in which she is embed-ded. Nonchalantly resting her elbow and forearm on a ru-in, she addresses the faithful and indicates the divine as anintermediary between man and God in accordance withthe most canonical dictates of the Counter-Reformation.The most striking innovations are, however, the darkbackground of trees against which she stands out andabove all the strong, direct light from the right, which il-luminates only the essential parts of the figure, the onesthat Annibale wanted to emphasize: the hand pointingto the heavens, only half of the body, the face and thehead, the magnificent silken Venetian drapery, and thehand with the book and its pages. Finally, with a stroke ofgenius, the shaft of light completes the physical definitionof the figure by striking half of the foot in the lower fore-ground and picking out the splendid toes. Where there isno light, there is shadow, not as dark as Caravaggio’s butintentionally emphasized and distinct: on the forehead, theleft hand and the foot. Above and beyond the extraordi-nary stylistic quality of this painting, the sophisticatedrange of colours and the splendid landscape, it may havebeen precisely this that struck Caravaggio: the intenseand deliberate play of chiaroscuro that defines the saint asa vibrant, living figure set against a dark background pre-cisely in order to accentuate the effect of the handling oflight. This is exactly what Caravaggio was doing, albeittransposed into the classical terms of the Bologneseschool. The first works of a devotional character other than fres-coes produced by Annibale and his studio include a pre-cious portable tabernacle35 painted for Odoardo Farneseand now in Palazzo Barberini. Dated around 1603, it isstill of uncertain attribution. Regarded as a masterpiece ofAnnibale Carracci in the records of the various collec-tions through which it passed over the centuries, it was cu-riously relegated to the status of a studio work in thetwentieth century, possibly by Innocenzo Tacconi, theoldest of Annibale’s pupils, the master being consideredresponsible only for the overall conception.36 As it was al-ready pointed out in the past,37 the remarkable stylisticquality of the work and the importance of the client – car-dinal Odoardo Farnese – are key evidence of authenticity,at least as regards the central panel of the tabernacle withthe magnificent Pietà, closely related to Annibale’s otherworks on this subject now in Capodimonte (1598–1600),the Louvre (1602–07) and National Gallery in London (c.

1603 or 1606). The theme probably derives from his closeconsideration of Correggio’s Lamentation for the del BonoChapel in San Giovanni Evangelista, Parma, a work thatappears to have haunted him ever since he first addressedthe subject in his Pietà with the miserables, Saints Clareand Francis of Assisi and Mary Magdalene, painted in 1585and now in the Galleria Nazionale, Parma. While theLondon and Paris versions – and the one in the tabernacle– are more closely influenced by Correggio in the partici-pation of various figures around the body of Christ, this isreduced in the Capodimonte canvas, painted for OdoardoFarnese (who also commissioned the tabernacle) between1598 and 1600, to the presence of the Virgin Mary andtwo angels, as though to focus attention exclusively on thefull significance of Christ’s sacrifice and his mother’s grief.The reference here is rather to Michelangelo’s Pietà, aboveall in the pyramid-like compositional layout and the ges-ture of the Virgin’s hand. The versions of London, Parisand Rome are characterized by a more classically struc-tured composition in which the emotion of the model byCorreggio is transformed into concentration on the poet-ics of affect that leads back in any case to the drama thathas already taken place. In all three, the scene is set in alandscape, more expansive in the Paris and Rome ver-sions and reduced to the bare essentials in the Londonwork before disappearing almost completely in the Naplescanvas. Annibale attains the highest levels of pathos inall of them.The involvement of pupils in the Barberini tabernaclecan be regarded as limited to the smaller compartments,where it may be possible to identify the hand of Innocen-zo Tacconi but not of Antonio Carracci, who must havebeen just eleven years old in 1603.The election of Paul V of the Borghese family marked aperiod of intense activity for the group of Bologneseartists, who began to expand their monopoly of publiccommissions and impose a very different vision of theworld from the realism of Caravaggio. They enjoyed thesupport of illustrious patrons who appreciated their over-all style, despite differences in personal taste and inter-pretation, and played a key role in the decoration of Romeduring the early seventeenth century. For Reni above all, along period of work and contact with the painting of Car-avaggio commenced. The undeniable relationship be-tween the two artists is clearly attested by a number ofReni’s paintings, starting with the Martyrdom of Saint Pe-ter (1604–05),38 commissioned by cardinal Pietro Aldo-brandini for the church of San Paolo alle Tre Fontaneand now in the Vatican Gallery (fig. 28). Malvasia39 recallsa certain resentment on the part of Caravaggio, who evi-dently sensed the danger: “This displeased Caravaggio,who greatly feared a new style completely different fromhis and equally esteemed”.Reni was involved in another commission for one of Car-

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The canvas by Emilio Savonanzi53 now in the monastery ofSan Lorenzo fuori le mura originally adorned an altar inthe basilica and belongs to a group of three altarpiecesthat the painter began in 1618,54 only one of which is stillin situ. The other two were moved to the abbey of Valvis-ciolo when San Lorenzo was restored by order of Pius IX(1846–1878). Restoration in 2011 for the exhibition atPalazzo Venezia eliminated layers of oxidized varnish andoverpainting to permit a correct reading of the work thussalvaged. The most striking element was the appearance inthe upper left section of the previously illegible figure of apagan god, the presence of which was attested in an en-graving of the altarpiece by Giovanni Maggi dated nolater than 1625. The evident references to Caravaggio’s De-position are already known to critics,55 who locate thepainting in the sphere of the “ennobled Caravaggism”practiced by Savonanzi and artists like Gramatica andRiminaldi. The latter in particular has also been taken as aterm of comparison for the splendid canvas of Venus Cry-ing over the Death of Adonis in the Capitoline Museums,56

where pre-Baroque elements can be identified in the fore-shortened body of Adonis lying in the foreground and thefrantic impetus of the hastening Venus. The elegant posesand the lyrical tone of the composition are reminiscent ofGentileschi, as are the typical faces. The introduction of acoastal landscape is curious for this subject, which is nor-mally set in woodland, and prompts a hypothesis of sub-sequent alteration that can only be verified throughrestoration.The second and third decades saw further consolidation ofthe patronage relations already established by the Bolog-nese painters in Rome at the beginning of the seventeenthcentury, whereby those who decided to remain in the citymanaged to corner most of the public commissions. Afterthe death of Annibale Carracci and the departure of Renifor Bologna, Lanfranco and Domenichino were left toshare the most illustrious of these, like the Royal Hall inPalazzo Quirinale (fig. 37) for example, which earnedLanfranco the princely sum of 1,680 scudi. A few years lat-er, the reign of the Bolognese pope Gregory XV saw thestart of a new period of fortune for the artists from hishometown, which his death just two years after his elec-tion did nothing to abate. While Guercino, Cagnacci andSerra did leave the city after 1623, a new wave of Bolog-nese artists was already appearing on the horizon. Giro-lamo Curti, a specialist in illusionistic ceilings, the sculptorGiulio Cesare Conventi and the painter Giovan GiacomoSementi, were to alternate with the far more famous Al-bani and Reni in brief appearances on the Roman scene towork for the most demanding clients, who could hardly berefused. The situation had now changed, however, and theyears of the Barberini pontificate were also to consoli-date the professional and financial position of a colonythat had managed to carve out a central niche in the dif-

ficult art world of Rome.

The TuscansAlready described by Giulio Mancini as a “school”, theTuscan colony included artists characterized by completemastery of the art of drawing and the ability to adapt thelatest developments in painting in order to meet the de-mands of commissions calling for a simple, accessible andhighly spiritual vocabulary in line with the principles ofthe Counter Reformation.57

Long marked by dictates of severity and clarity inheritedfrom a common background in Florentine Mannerism, thecanvases of Agostino Ciampelli, Cristoforo Roncalli andBaccio Ciarpi bear witness to their authors’ successful at-tempt at integration into the Roman art world and contactwith influential religious bodies like the Oratorians. Theyowed their success primarily to the “decorum” of canvasescharacterized by a simple, highly accessible and intenselyspiritual vocabulary in line with the dictates of theCounter Reformation.58

It is useful to recall the strong commitment to charitableworks that marked artists like Baccio Ciarpi all throughtheir lives,59 which may account in his case for close in-volvement with confraternities and churches rather thanlarge-scale decorative enterprises and private commis-sions.60 Sobriety and accessibility are, however, also thehallmarks of the work of Agostino Ciampelli, CristoforoRoncalli and Domenico Cresti, known as Passignano. Thelatter’s Christ in the Tomb, for example, painted for car-dinal Scipione Borghese between 1611 and 1612, per-fectly epitomizes the austere and intimate character ofhis style, albeit softened by the poetics of affect that theartist appears to prefer while maintaining a certain degreeof restraint and control in compositional terms.61

Despite its stricter compliance with devotional dictates,the same holds for Roncalli’s Holy Family with Angels,62

first recorded as belonging to the Borghese Collection ina family inventory of 1693, where it is vaguely attributed to“Pomarancio”.63 The attention to details in the depictionof Biblical episodes or the devotional hagiographic tradi-tion, something greatly in demand in the Oratorian circleswith which Roncalli was already in contact at the end ofthe sixteenth century, was not their exclusive preserve,however, but widespread also among the patrons belong-ing to the same cultural sphere. With this the paintermust have combined the skilled draughtsmanship typicalof the Tuscan school and “his own way of colouring”, toquote Mancini, who included him among those who work“in their own way without being kicked along by oth-ers”.64

Details of everyday life are included by Ciampelli in asimplified vision of narrative content in order to makereligious episodes more immediately relevant and acces-sible to the viewer. The Christ and Mary Magdalene65 from12

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o trons. It is also possible, as recently suggested,45 that Reni’sattitude, above all in the second decade of the seven-teenth century, when he was totally and successfully in-volved in public works of papal origin, was one of com-plete distrust for the Caravaggism developed by a host ofartists of different training and culture. He may indeedhave taken his distance from a method that led to “re-peating forms and models” without fully understandingthe ethical and religious principles involved. It is perhapsin this light that we should also see Reni’s acquisition ofCaravaggio’s Denial of Saint Peter from the engraver LucaCiamberlano of Urbino, who offered him the originalcanvas on 3 May 1613 to cover part of a debt of 350 scudi.The episode naturally raises a number of questions,46 firstof all regarding the value of the painting, which was esti-mated at 240 scudi, and whether the transaction was pri-marily a good bit of business for Reni or effected with aview to obtaining a stylistic model to follow. The hypoth-esis of financial advantage would appear the more plausi-ble in view of the stylistic development of the artist, whoappears to have arrived at a sort of aversion for Car-avaggesque naturalism in ten years of work betweenBologna and Rome, as demonstrated by the frescoes paint-ed in the casino dell’Aurora for cardinal Borghese in thatperiod (1613–14; fig. 34). Further investigation is cer-tainly required into the by no means secondary role playedon the Roman market by the sculptor Ciamberlano, whomanaged to snap up one of Caravaggio’s highly covetedpaintings within the first three years after his death.47

As mentioned above, Reni returned to the Emilia region in1614, the year that also marked a return to the awarding ofpublic commissions for altarpieces to Bolognese painters.Domenichino’s Communion of Saint Jerome for the churchof San Girolamo della Carità (fig. 25) is emblematic of anirresistible ascendancy that was to culminate in the spaceof a decade with a practical monopoly of commissions un-der Pope Gregory XV of the Ludovisi family.A date of around 1614 can also be assigned to the altar-piece of Saint John the Baptist in the Desert in Santa Mariain Trastevere,48 whose restoration for this exhibition ap-pears to confirm the attribution to Antonio Carracci putforward in the eighteenth-century guides to Rome byRoisecco (1745) and Titi (1763).49 Careful cleaning elimi-nated retouching and layers of varnish to reveal variouspentimenti, including the torso of the saint, which wasoriginally bare, the greater inclination of the right hand,and the strengthening of the left thigh. In addition tosomewhat obvious but certainly no less important icono-graphic references of Emilian origin and similarities withReni’s painting on the same subject, now in the DulwichPicture Gallery, London, which has also prompted the hy-pothesis of a common model for the two artists (a drawingby Annibale or Agostino), the attribution of the canvas toAntonio Carracci appears to be borne out by precise

comparison with certain works by the artist. Stylistic sim-ilarities appear between the John the Baptist and the fig-ures in the cycle painted by Antonio in the Chapel of thePassion in San Bartolomeo all’Isola (fig. 35) as regards therendering of anatomy and of fabrics. Moreover, the Bap-tist’s face displays close similarity with that of the SanBartolomeo Christ crowned with thorns as regards theshape of the eyes, mouth and nose, and the client wasprobably the same in both cases.50 There is in fact a ref-erence in Mancini to a John the Baptist painted by AntonioCarracci for cardinal Michelangelo Tonti from Rimini,who was to commission the decoration of the Chapel ofthe Passion. The work could be dated around 1614, assuggested by Alessandro Zuccari on the base of compari-son with the chapel dedicated to Saint Charles Borromeoin San Bartolomeo all’Isola. While the question of attri-bution does not appear to have been definitively settled,the restoration and the exhibition have certainly providedan opportunity for more precise examination of the can-vas.The exhibition also provided an opportunity for exami-nation of another two “Bolognese” canvases largely inac-cessible to the public, namely Lanfranco’s extraordinaryaltarpiece of the The Virgin and Child in the Clouds withSaints Carlo Borromeo, Catherine of Alexandria and Au-gustine in the church of San Pietro in Leonessa (near Rieti)and the one of the Saints Justinus and Hippolytus Transportthe Body of Saint Lawrence in San Lorenzo fuori le mura.Far off the beaten track of the customary artistic itiner-aries, the Leonessa altarpiece51 is a truly excellent workbrimming with cultural references and epitomizing a pe-riod in which Lanfranco was involved in commissionsfor patrons of great prestige such as the decoration ofthe Bongiovanni Chapel in the church of Sant’Agostino,the altarpiece of the Assumption of the Virgin for SantaMaria del Ruscello in Vallerano (fig. 36) and the frescoesin the Royal Hall of the Palazzo Quirinale (fig. 37). Itwas in the same period of 1616–17 that elements drawnfrom Correggio and already developed in Emilia reap-peared inside the composition in the handling of facial fea-tures and in the idea of melding the celestial space withthe terrestrial.52 While some doubt still remains as to theidentity of the client, it should be noted that the town ofLeonessa had long been a Farnese possession at the timeand that the family may therefore have played a part in se-curing the commission for Lanfranco. In any case, it wasprecisely in 1616 that cardinal Odoardo commissioned thepainter to decorate the camerino degli Eremiti (fig. 38) aswell as the above-mentioned altarpiece in Vallerano (an-other Farnese fief). The possibility cannot be ruled out,however, of action on the part of the Hermits of Saint Au-gustine, the order for which Lanfranco was working in theBongiovanni Chapel and to which the monastery inLeonessa belonged.

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in the gentle touch used for the figure of Mary Magdalene,deriving perhaps from the painting of Pulzone but moreprobably from the many Titianesque prototypes to befound also in Rome. Engaged almost exclusively on reli-gious commissions rather than work for private clients,Ciarpi was closely involved with Santa Maria in Vallicellaand a member of the confraternity of San Giovanni deiFiorentini, circles into which he introduced the youngPietro da Cortona (1597–1669), his pupil from around1614, who shared both his religious feeling and his artisticapproach.Pietro’s time in Rome, which began in 1612 in the com-pany of Andrea Commodi, his first master, continued un-der Ciarpi’s protective wing in 1614, when Commodi leftthe city. After early work such as the paintings in the Vil-la Arrigoni Muti at Frascati (c. 1616; fig. 44) and the fres-coes in Palazzo Mattei di Giove (1622–23; fig. 45), Pietrocame into contact during the 1620s with the stimulatingaristocratic, intellectual and antiquarian circles of the age,which helped to introduce him to modern ideas but alsobecame solid points of support as regards concrete pa-tronage through the figures of Marcello Sacchetti, Cas-siano Dal Pozzo and the Crescenzi family.70

On the deaths of Caravaggio and Annibale Carracci, thetwo Florentine painters most esteemed in their home-town, namely Cigoli and Passignano, succeeded in ob-taining the most important commissions in Saint Peter’sdespite being based in Florence. Shortly before obtainingthe commission for an altarpiece in Saint Peter’s (1602–03)through the support of Clement VIII, for example, the lat-ter also managed to obtain the commission for the Baptismof Saint Prisca for the church on the Aventine (fig. 47)from cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani despite competitionfrom Giovanni Baglione. Subsequently, having gained thefavour of Paul V, he took part in the decoration of someparts of Santa Maria Maggiore (1608–12) alongside themore celebrated figures of Giuseppe Cesari and GuidoReni, and of one of the ceilings of the vigna del Quirinalefor cardinal Scipione Borghese. The Florentine origins of the Barberini family probablyplayed a key part also in the decision to commissionPassignano to paint the canvas of Lucina Recovering theBody of Saint Sebastian from the Cloaca Maxima.71 Ap-pointed by cardinal Maffeo Barberini, the future UrbanVIII, to supervise work on the family chapel in Sant’An-drea della Valle (1602), Passignano was also asked to pro-duce the painting but not paid for it until 1617, whenthe project was nearing completion. The naturalistic ele-ments predominating in the canvas are to be understoodin a classical sense and far removed in some respects fromthe new experiments with the handling of light underwayat the beginning of the seventeenth century, in whichPassignano and many other Florentine artists appear tohave displayed little interest.

Few Tuscan artists really felt the influence of Caravaggio inall its explosive force. Most of them remained wedded tothe tradition of classicism and the veneration of draughts-manship, and were thus too blinkered to grasp the im-portance of his painting. Exceptions to this rule wereLodovico Cardi, known as Cigoli, and the artists fromSiena and Pisa, who showed greater readiness to take upsuch new approach, albeit in partial and personal terms.Examples include Francesco Rustici and Rutilio Manettifrom Siena, Pietro Paolini from Lucca, and Orazio Rimi-naldi and Gentileschi from Pisa. Cigoli was an outstandingfigure in this panorama. His first stay in Rome, begin-ning in 1604, saw involvement in the prestigious com-mission for the painting of Saint Peter Healing the Cripplein Saint Peter’s. On his return to the city in 1606, he drewup plans for the enlargement of the basilica while alsoworking at the same time for Pompeo Arrigoni and Mas-simo Massimi.There is an extensive critical literature on the unwitting in-volvement of Passignano, Cigoli and Caravaggio in a sortof contest organized by Massimo Massimi, who commis-sioned an Ecce Homo from each of the three artists, ac-cording to the sources.72 A great deal of light has been caston this “Massimi competition”, long a subject of interestto art history and criticism focusing of Caravaggism, byRosanna Barbiellini Amidei,73 whose archival researchhas brought to light autograph documents by Caravaggioand Cigoli and clarified the circumstances of the com-missions. Caravaggio undertook to produce a paintingon an unspecified subject on 25 June 1605 and Cigoli re-ceived an account of 25 scudi in March 1607 on delivery ofa painting described as a “companion to another” by Car-avaggio. While some doubts still remain about the re-peatedly suggested identification of Caravaggio’s paintingas the Ecce Homo in the Palazzo Bianco in Genoa (fig. 49),the documents explode the intriguing myth that Massimipreferred Cigoli’s work and that Caravaggio suffered adefeat by clearly showing that Cigoli received his accounton delivery two years after Caravaggio’s written under-taking. In the same note, Caravaggio states that the mea-surements of the work to be painted must be similar tothose of the Crowning with Thorns already produced forMassimi, which suggests that the canvas can be identifiedas the one in the gallery of Palazzo degli Alberti in Prato(fig. 50), a view that has aroused misgivings in some crit-ics.74

The presence of Cigoli in Rome must have represented asort of alternative to Caravaggio and the Carracci family asregards the rediscovery of realism and the expression of af-fect. The different but valid alternative offered by theFlorentines to the dominant Caravaggesque style had pro-duced works like the Samson and Delilah by Pietro Sigis-mondi on show here,75 a canvas of great quality but littleknown, signed and dated 1606, owned by the Monte di14

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o the Chigi Collection in Palazzo Barberini is devoid of anydramatic accents whatsoever but reveals the strong devo-tion characteristic of religious depictions. There is notrace of painful penance or anxiety but the entire scene isenveloped in an atmosphere of peace and forgiveness em-anating from Christ’s calm and gentle face and the serenegaze of Mary Magdalene kneeling at his feet. Far from thecompositional rigidity of the Vision of Saint John Gualbert(1594; fig. 39), Ciampelli is engaged here in a work of ex-perimentation and exploration, developing a wholly newhandling of colour while remaining faithful to the six-teenth-century compositional archetypes of his training. As in the case of the Bolognese artists, research revealsthat the Tuscans enjoyed the support of patrons fromtheir own region who maintained the superiority of Flo-rentine art and gave their compatriots priority in everytype of commission, both private and public. During the reign of Pope Clement VIII (1592–1605), andespecially in connection with the Jubilee of 1600, Romesaw the rekindling of the interest in artistic patronagedating from the age of Sixtus V, which led to the comple-tion or renovation of works commissioned by the previouspopes. The efforts of Clement VIII appear to have con-centrated primarily on the celebrations for Holy Year, anopportunity to glorify the city and its intrinsic power ofsalvation, which had triumphed over paganism andbrought it back into the divine light. Formidable impetuswas provided in this connection not only by the preceptsof the Council of Trent but also by the monumental worksof the Oratorian Cesare Baronio,66 authentic cornerstonesof ecclesiastical history based on minute and meticulouscritical analysis of the documentary sources. Tangiblesigns of renewed magnificence manifested themselvesthrough the restoration of ruined Roman churches, espe-cially those of the early Christians, the symbols par excel-lence of the purer form of religion closer to the fountain-head that the new religious orders were attempting torecreate. This was of particular importance for the Je-suits, Oratorians and Theatines, the new orders that hademerged with great vigour after the Council of Trent,which required new edifices to accommodate their everlarger congregations. Many of the artists involved in theseundertakings were of Tuscan origin and in direct contactwith the religious orders, like, for instance, CristoforoRoncalli, the official painter of the Oratorians. He was of-ten employed by Cesare Baronio, whose projects in theclosing years of the sixteenth century included the deco-ration of the church of Santi Nereo e Achilleo,67 carriedout largely by the Tuscans Nicolò Circignani, DuranteAlberti and Girolamo Massei, and the oratory of San-t’Andrea in the church of San Gregorio al Celio, whereRoncalli painted the altarpiece. He may also have been re-sponsible for the general conception of the altarpiecesfor the Clementine Chapel in Saint Peter’s.

Baronio commissioned Roncalli to paint an altarpiecewith Saints Domitilla, Nereus and Achilleus in 1598–99 forthe left altar of the church of Santi Nereo and Achilleo, hisfirst titular church (1596–97), to celebrate his success inobtaining the relics of the Christian martyrs from San-t’Adriano al Foro. The choice of Roncalli, also known asPomarancio, must have been influenced to some extent bythe artist’s familiarity with the Oratorian community atSanta Maria in Vallicella as well as his friendship withthe Crescenzi, one of the Roman aristocratic families thatsupported the work of Saint Philip Neri and his followers.Given Baronio’s status, the painter obviously adheredscrupulously to his iconographic indications and the in-structions he unquestionably imparted to follow the gen-eral approach of early Christians models such as the earlymedieval fresco of Pope Gregory with his parents Jordianusand Silvia in the oratory of San Gregorio al Celio, now lostbut still in place at the end of the sixteenth century.68

It is precisely due to the “patent of canonicity” connectedwith the name of Baronio that Roncalli’s altarpiece becamethe compositional prototype of a series of works paintedfor many Roman churches during the early years of theseventeenth century. The most illustrious of these are un-questionably the works produced by Rubens for SantaMaria in Vallicella in 1608. In stylistic terms, apart fromthe evident legacy of late Mannerism and the “twin” saintswho appear to be based on the same drawing, interest at-taches to the figure of Saint Domitilla, which is based onRaphael’s Saint Cecilia but with a new intensification ofchiaroscuro with respect to the celebrated model. Attention has been drawn repeatedly to the key roleplayed by the Oratorians in the field of culture and to thenumber of patrons belonging to the order, includingOrazio Rucellai, Giovan Battista and Giacomo Crescenzi,Fabrizio Massimo and Marcello Vitelleschi. The Jesuits al-so appear, however, to have commissioned Tuscan artiststo spread their religious message in a simple and directway through figurative art. Their projects often involvedreliable painters like Agostino Ciampelli, Tarquinio Ligus-tri, Giovanni Battista Fiammeri and Andrea Commodi,who all collaborated on the decoration of the Jesuitchurch of San Vitale (figs. 40–43). The Oratorian church of Santa Maria in Vallicella wasalso connected with the work of Baccio Ciarpi(1574–1654), as exemplified in the exhibition by the De-position69 from the church of Santa Maria della Con-cezione in Campo Marzio, dated between 1617 and 1625.Not impervious to the variety of styles to be found inRome in the early decades of the century, the canvas ap-pears to reflect the influence of Caravaggio in its adoptionof chiaroscuro contrasts, which are combined, however,with pearly gleams on the body of Christ. The many oth-er terms of comparison include above all Michelangelo’sVatican Pietà and a certain Venetian quality detectable

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they could have formed part of a series of four Doctors ofthe Church, but as there is no trace of this in the Gius-tiniani inventories, the problem of the painting remainsunsolved for the moment and the investigations continue.In particular, if the provenance of the painting from theGiustiniani Collection is accepted, as seems unquestion-able, it is necessary above all to explain why no canvasidentifiable as the Saint Augustine in question is to befound in the family inventories so meticulously examinedby Danesi Squarzina. As the scholar has effectively demon-strated,82 the identification with “un santo in abito dinero pittura andante di autore incerto” put forward byZuccari is in fact unacceptable, as the adjective andantewas synonymous in the Giustiniani and all the other an-cient inventories with “mediocre”, which is wholly inap-propriate for the painting on show here.

Caravaggio’s Followers of the First Decade“[...] The school, working in this way, are closely tied tonature, which they always keep before their eyes as theywork. They succeed well with a single figure but strike meas less successful in narrative compositions and the ex-pression of feelings, which depend on imagination and notdirect observation [...]”83

This is how Giulio Mancini explained the phenomenon ofCaravaggism at its birth, the substantial difference and thelimitations of Caravaggio’s followers. While the error ofsumming up the movement in a blanket formula mustbe avoided, it is undeniable that contemporaries were al-ready aware of the distance between the master’s uniquestyle and the various interpretations of the themes of-fered by the other painters, both those who knew him andthose who learned from his works. Mancini’s observa-tions clearly evince full understanding of Caravaggio’spainting and a certain acumen in indicating the charac-teristics of his school, “[which] had a wide following andwas taken up with determination, diligence and skill byBartolomeo Manfredi, Spagnoletto, Francesco, also calledCecco del Caravaggio, Spadarino, and partially by CarloVeneziano”.The list supplied by Mancini apparently makes no dis-tinctions and simply refers in general terms to artists whocame under the influence of the new approach in differentperiods and ways. As already pointed out in the past, it isdifficult to establish a “pure linear genealogy of descent”with any certainty, even for the artists of the first genera-tion, and more useful to concentrate instead on the linksand the relations of collaboration and exchange that lie atthe root of the interweaving.84 An attempt to understandthe reason for the short list of names offered by Manciniis, however, by no means devoid of importance. Why didthe physician not include other living artists who unques-tionably followed or developed Caravaggio’s approach,like Baglione, Borgianni and Gentileschi? Especially in

view of the fact that the biographer later appears to focusnot only on stylistic characteristics but also and above allon the modus operandi common to the different followers.It is therefore possible that Mancini was concerned todraw attention precisely to the unusual method of theschool, which used “lighting from one source only, whichbeams down without reflections”, “closely tied to nature,which they always keep before their eyes as they work”and “succeed well with a single figure” but not in “narra-tive compositions”. Luigi Spezzaferro put us on our guardyears ago about the interpretation of Mancini’s words,especially his repeated use of the term “schola” (school).The fact that it is also used to indicate the followers of An-nibale Carracci led the scholar to reflect on the actualmeaning it may have had in the seventeenth century, andto conclude that it meant neither more nor less than a cor-poration, a group of people practicing the same art orcraft with the same characteristics. Mancini’s list is there-fore to be understood not in the stylistic but in the exclu-sively technical sense, hence the omission of those whowere interested in the stylistic aspect of the new approachbut tried to follow it in different ways, like the first gen-eration of Caravaggesque painters, whose working practiceremained more closely bound up with now outmodedstyles like the Mannerist or Tuscan, to give just one ex-ample. And it was indeed precisely within the sphere ofthis first generation that we find both the painters who im-mediately clashed with Caravaggio – such as Baglione –and those who instead became his keenest supporters.Another possible explanation can be derived from con-sideration of the dates. Mancini wrote between 1617 and1621; Borgianni had already died in 1616 and was there-fore probably not mentioned precisely because he wasno longer alive; Gentileschi moved to the Marche regionafter the trial involving his daughter Artemisia in 1612 andhad not worked in Rome for years; and Baglione hadlong abandoned his Caravaggesque vein.It is in any case possible to include among the earliestCaravaggesque painters those who came into direct con-tact with the master’s genius and maintained his highlypersonal and unprecedented stylistic approach. As statedabove, these include artists with a late Mannerist back-ground like Baglione and Orazio Gentileschi, already in-volved in the projects of Sixtus V and Clement VIII in the1580s. It is then possible to add the names of CarloSaraceni, Orazio Borgianni, Tommaso Salini, PaoloGuidotti and Rubens, albeit in a very personal way, aswell as Francesco Boneri, known as Cecco del Caravaggio(who may have lived with the master from 1605 in theparish of San Nicola dei Prefetti), and non-Italian painterslike the Spaniards Juan Bautista Maíno and Luis Tristán,both mentioned in Rome in the first decade of the seven-teenth century.85

Apart from the very particular case of Baglione, which has16

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o Lucca bank. Despite the inherent drama of the subject,the depiction is devoid of any elements of Caravaggesque“verism” and marked by a certain degree of figurativerigour. The numerous references to the Florentine artisticculture could be accounted for by Sigismondi’s enrol-ment at the city’s academy of drawing in 1615, but this in-clination may also date from an earlier period and havebeen fostered by the close contact maintained with hishometown in terms of commissions and collaboration.76

Alternatives to Caravaggio and new approaches often re-sulted in works of art of very uncertain attribution as ex-emplified by two problematic paintings on show here,namely The Flagellation of Christ from the basilica of San-ta Prassede in Rome and the Saint Augustine from a pri-vate collection in London.As has long been known, there is a connection betweenthe former and a work produced by Giulio Romano forcardinal Bibbiena, who then donated it to the basilica, asmentioned by Vasari in his Lives.77 This attribution was re-jected by Calvesi as early as 1954 on the basis of stylisticanalysis that suggested the hand of Simone Peterzano.Challenged after the restoration carried out in 1965 byIlaria Toesca, who suggested an author working inRaphael’s entourage in the period 1516–20, the attributionto Peterzano was reiterated by Calvesi in 197178 within theframework of collaboration between the Milanese masterand the young Caravaggio. The scholar drew attentionto the Borromaic ideas informing the depiction as identi-fiable in the use of light “to foster concentration”, leavingall the details in darkness to focus on the three torturersand Christ, thus becoming symbolic light, a force of sal-vation that triumphs over darkness. Calvesi subjected thework to more detailed analysis recently79 and suggestedthat it may have been left unfinished by Peterzano and en-trusted in the early 1590s to the young Caravaggio, whocould have completed it immediately after his arrival inRome or even sent it from Milan. The possibility that thepainting is instead entirely the work of Caravaggio hasbeen put forward by Claudio Strinati, who suggests adate towards the end of the last decade of the sixteenthcentury.80 The question therefore still awaits a definitivesolution.The Saint Augustine from a private collection was broughtto attention by heated dispute and has been the subject ofa round table discussion in connection with the presentexhibition.81

The attribution of the canvas to Caravaggio by SilviaDanesi Squarzina was based on the documentary evi-dence of a parchment label indicating its provenance af-fixed to the back of the canvas: “Procedencia del Mar-qués Recanelli en la calle del gobierno”. This unquestion-ably suggests that the painting was in the Palazzo Gius-tiniani in Rome, as the marquis Pantaleo Vincenzo Gius-tiniani Recanelli was the family heir as from 1857 and

“Calle del gobierno” was the old name of the Via dellaDogana, the location of the mansion containing the col-lection of Vincenzo Giustiniani. The label provided solidevidence making it possible to work back to the originalownership of the painting, and Danesi Squarzina alsosuggests on the basis of her reading of the Giustinianiinventories that it can be identified as the canvas thathung in the “large room of ancient paintings” described inthe inventory of 1638 as “a half-figure painting of SaintAugustine on emperor canvas, about 5½ palmi high and4½ wide, by Michelangelo Caravaggio in a black frame”.In addition to the subject, the measurements of the canvasalso seemed to tally with those given in the documents,but not all of the scholars gathered for the discussionagreed on the identification of the work.The lack of any reference to inventory numbers on the la-bel led Alessandro Zuccari to suggest that the paintingcould be the one described in an eighteenth-century in-ventory of the Giustiniani family as “a mediocre paintingof a saint in a black habit by an author of uncertain iden-tity”. Kristina Hermann Fiore instead drew attention to alate seventeenth-century epigram of Giovanni MicheleSilos that provides a description of the Saint Augustinementioned in the inventory of 1638 differing substantial-ly from the canvas in question: “Caravaggio, you doublethe saint’s energy: he threatens war with his writings, stillwaging war though depicted in a painting”.More favourable to the attribution of the work to Car-avaggio were the diagnostic investigations carried out byBeatrice De Ruggeri, Marco Cardinali and Claudio Fal-cucci, according to which, the technique used for theSaint Augustine is compatible with the master’s work inthe years immediately preceding the Contarelli Chapel(1599–1600), even though this can only be confirmedthrough investigations on other works produced in Romeby other artists of the period. At the same time, someiconographic doubts were raised by the studies of Alessan-dro Cosma and Gianni Pittiglio, who pointed out thatthe saint is wearing a habit of the Augustinian order thatdid not come into use until the 1620s.The point of greatest discord was, however, raised on thestylistic front. After drawing attention to the fact that thepainting has a setting whereas this element is generallynonexistent in those of Caravaggio, swallowed up in thedark background, Vittorio Sgarbi pointed out the weak-ness in the handling of the subject, a far cry from the re-sults achieved by the master, who would never have paint-ed figures, even saints, with such slender and eleganthands, characteristic that appear to suggest that it wasproduced some twenty or thirty years after his death.Dating was again the point addressed by Ursula FischerPace, who drew attention to very close similarities with theworks of Giacinto Gimignani, including a Saint Ambrosethat is the same size as the Saint Augustine. Together,

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Lucina in 1607 as living in the home of Luigi Ubiedo,canon of Toledo,97 and it is also possible that Ribera wasalso in Rome with Tristán during the same period, asclaimed by his biographer José Martínez (1600–1682).98

Despite the lack of concrete documentary proof at pre-sent, the evidence of the Spanish biographer thus makes itreasonable to suggest that Ribera’s presence in Rome,documented so far only from 1613, may have startedsome years earlier, in 1607 at the latest. While there are noknown Roman works by Tristán, or by Maíno, the newdocuments provide crucial evidence to guide research in-to his activity in the city. It should be noted that Tristánappears to have absorbed naturalism far more deeplythan Maíno on the evidence of the Repentant Saint Peterof the Spanish royal collections, characterized by amarkedly Caravaggesque approach and an evident citationof the first version of the Saint Matthew and the Angel(1602) from the Contarelli chapel, which the artist mayhave seen in the Giustiniani Collection (fig. 51). Rubens shows us in his Fermo Shepherd’s Adoration, againdated 1608, just how deeply he had absorbed the potentialof Caravaggio’s handling of light and already interpreted itin his own way. In his case, it is not only light but also themonumentality and solidity of the figures that precisely re-flect the works of the master seen in Rome. The Flemishpainter’s well-known admiration for Caravaggio is indeeddemonstrated by the various drawings made of his paint-ings.99 The Fermo altarpiece is part of the prestigiouscommission received by Rubens for the choir of thechurch of Santa Maria in Vallicella in 1608 from fatherFlaminio Ricci, Superior General of the Philippine orderin Rome, who entrusted the painter with the execution ofthe Adoration for the Costantini family chapel in thechurch of San Filippo in Fermo, his hometown. The “rec-ommendation” by father Ricci included in the contract100

contains a curious assurance that the artist, though Flem-ish, was “raised in Rome since childhood”. As Rubensleft for Italy in 1600 and arrived in Rome in 1601 at theage of 24, the statement is somewhat baffling and in needof clarification.The fateful year of 1608 also saw the execution of thesigned and dated David with the Head of Goliath by Pao-lo Guidotti, now in the gallery of the basilica of S. Paolofuori le mura. It was a key year for Guidotti, who was notonly principe of the Academy of Saint Luke (1606–08) atthe time but also made a knight of the Militia of Christ byPaul V and accorded the privilege of using the name ofthe papal family, being hence also known as the “CavalierBorghese”. Guidotti’s unidealized David arrogantly dis-plays the bloody sword more prominently than the sev-ered head of his enemy. The cruelty of the action is in-tentionally emphasized by the way the entire composi-tion is concentrated in the very foreground. One impor-tant point that appears to have never been made before

now is that date 1608 written on the back of Guidotti’soriginal canvas establishes a crucial terminus ante quem forthe David with the Head of Goliath by Caravaggio in theGalleria Borghese, from which it clearly derives and whichis still erroneously dated between 1609 and 1610.101

Guidotti’s canvas proves that Caravaggio’s work, paintedfor Scipione Borghese according to Bellori, was in Romein the cardinal’s collection, where it is recorded for thefirst time in 1613, before 1608 and that it was thereforeprobably painted before May 1606, when Caravaggio fledfrom Rome. The other possibility is that it was sent backto Rome during his first stay in Naples, as suggested by thecopies that Galanino was commissioned to make (see be-low) or from Malta (in any case before 1608), for whichthere is no evidence whatsoever. The real problem regarding the Caravaggesque works ofthe first decade is, however, connected with the The Mar-tyrdom of Saint Stephen I, Pope, Martyr and the The Call-ing of Saint Sylvester, Pope, Confessor, two concave can-vases hung at a considerable height on either side of thehigh altar of San Silvestro in Capite and dated 1609 on thebasis of documentary evidence. Repeatedly examined anddiscussed, these enigmatic works have been linked in thelast few decades with the names of Orazio Borgianni,Battistello Caracciolo, Louis Finson, Marten HermansFaber and Cecco del Caravaggio but still await convincingattribution.102 There are four elements that strike theviewer at first sight: the literal citation of some works byCaravaggio, above all the Martyrdom of Saint Matthewbut also the Barberini Judith in the detail of the SaintStephen’s half-complete decapitation; the concentration ofthe composition in the foreground with life-sized figures;the attempts to “dress up” the work with chiaroscurothat is incoherent but clearly inspired by naturalism; andfinally the absolute extraneity in stylistic terms with respectnot only to Caravaggio but also to the artistic culture ofearly seventeenth-century Rome in general. Everythingin these paintings suggests an artist who was deeply im-pressed by the models of Caravaggio but reinterpretedthem in a wholly original way that can be associated withno known figure. The “patchy” light with no precise pointof origin or direction, the strongly expressionistic charac-terization of the figures, the bronzed flesh tones contrast-ing with the glowing colours of the garments, and theextreme agitation of both compositions – placed in dia-logue with one another through the two outer figureswhich, though actually moving towards the saints, ap-pear to be rushing together and thus create a very stronglink across the space of the apse – all suggest an artist frombeyond the Alps, unidentifiable al present but probablycalled by the German cardinal Franz Seraph von Diet-richstein, to whom the church was assigned from 1599.One disturbing detail that is hard to explain regards thefigure of Constantine’s envoy to Saint Sylvester, repeated18

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o already been examined, numerous artists came under theinfluence of Caravaggio in their public and private worksduring the first decade. As mentioned above, the recentresearch on parish records has clearly shown that many ofthe leading practitioners of Caravaggesque naturalismwere already in Rome in the first decade, and many ofthem could have been directly acquainted with the master.While it is true that we have many names with no knownworks at present, it is hardly possible that these artists alllived in Rome without painting anything. It is to be hopedthat further study will make it is possible to connect thesenames with the many works whose authors are now un-known. Orazio Gentileschi, Orazio Borgianni, Rubens and CarloSaraceni are the key names, the tip of the iceberg. In thefirst decade of the seventeenth century, when Caravaggiowas still alive, they had already absorbed his approachdeeply, interpreted by each in the light of his previous ex-perience. In my view, the quantity and the quality of theworks on show here are such as to necessitate radical re-vision of the chronology currently accepted in the litera-ture, which minimizes the scale of Caravaggism in thefirst ten years of the century.A crucial date for the first Caravaggesque painters ap-pears to be 1608, established by documentation or datingas the year when some of the masterpieces on show herewere produced by key figures in this intense period, someof whom have already been thoroughly examined throughmonographic studies or exhibitions, including Gentileschi,Borgianni, Rubens and Guidotti.Orazio Gentileschi painted a very powerful ArchangelMichael and the Devil for Mario Farnese in c. 1608 thatproves surprisingly close to Baglione’s canvas on the samesubject and already reveals what were to be the stylisticcharacteristics of his approach to naturalism. The GalleriaCorsini Madonna and Child is probably to be regarded asproduced during the painter’s early period (1603–05).The long debate over the attribution of this work, forwhich the name of Caravaggio was also put forward,86

has now been resolved thanks to the restoration carriedout in 2010,87 which clearly reveals the hand of Gen-tileschi during his first approach to Caravaggism, when hislight was less piercing and failed to suffuse the flesh anddrapery, and his shadows were yet to become transparent.An extraordinary range of colours was revealed by therestoration in the simple garments of Mary and Jesus,who “rummages” realistically in his mother’s clothing likeall children aged from one to two, and just like the one inthe Corsini canvas. The deep, affectionate, intimate real-ism of this painting suggests a model well-known to thepainter, possibly his wife Prudenzia portrayed with one oftheir numerous children (Marco?) before her death agedthirty in December 1605, which would constitute a ter-minus ante quem for the painting in that case.88

The work of the Roman painter Orazio Borgianni89 ex-hibited here is the fragment of the extraordinary Sezze al-tarpiece,90 again dated 1608. As finally established by thestudies carried out in connection with the exhibition, thiswas actually commissioned by Tommaso Giuseppe Mel-chiorri, marquis of Torrita Tiberina, poet and musician butalso member of the Accademia Romana and the Accade-mia degli Umoristi, and not his brother Benedetto, ashad always been thought on the basis of an inscriptionpreviously on the canvas. It also emerged that the originallocation of the altarpiece was the church of San Francescoa Ripa in Rome.91 The work is an extraordinary mixture ofTitian and Raphael filtered through the idealized natural-ism of Correggio with a dash of Caravaggio, a formula orrather perhaps a stylistic synthesis that must have pre-sented itself in some way as an alternative to Car-avaggesque naturalism but above all as an attempt to fillthe vacuum left by the master’s flight from Rome. Thelegacy of Raphael, seen as the only way to compete withthe followers of Caravaggio present in Rome in that peri-od, was reformulated by Borgianni also in the PalazzoBarberini Holy Family with a musician angel, Saint Elisa-beth and the Young Saint John who offers the dove, allego-ry of the Holy Spirit to Jesus, of c. 1609–10, the authorshipof which has never been questioned despite the absence ofdocumentation. The canvas is characterized by an atmos-phere of intimacy and everyday life transposed into the re-ligious dimension, and the painter displays his virtuosity inthe famous basket of clothing placed in a predominant po-sition in the foreground in the right corner of the painting.Another masterpiece by Borgianni is the powerful Over-come by Anger, David Beheads Goliath (or Biblical Allegoryof Anger) of 1609–10 (Real Academia de Bellas Artes deSan Fernando, Madrid), where the figure of David isclearly derived from the Narcissus attributed to Caravag-gio. Described by Baglione as “the finest work he pro-duced here in Rome”92 and painted for the ambassador ofthe Gonzaga dynasty in Rome, the canvas can shed somelight on Borgianni’s still mysterious relationship withSpain, where he was living between about 1597 and1605.93 Among other things, this period also saw the mis-sion carried out by Rubens to the Spanish king (1603) onbehalf of Vincenzo I Gonzaga, duke of Mantua, by whomhe was then employed as court painter, a new element thatopens up intriguing horizons.The presence of Borgianni and Rubens in the Iberianpeninsula and their return to Rome by 1605 may be con-nected with the arrival in the Eternal City of Juan BautistaMaíno and Luis Tristán, documented respectively in Oc-tober 160594 and 1607.95 Both remained there for someyears and are mentioned in other documents in 1609(Tristán and Maíno) and 1610 (Maíno alone).96 It is veryprobable that Tristán can be identified as the “Luisi pic-tore” registered in the parish records of San Lorenzo in

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and a Sermon of Saint Raimondo Nonnato (1610–12) forthe same order, which also employed the still mysteriousartist some years later to produce the large altarpiece ofSaint Peter Nolasco Borne by Angels dated around 1628,the period of the saint’s canonization.110

The exhibition has also provided an opportunity to ad-dress one of the most extensively debated questions re-garding Saraceni’s oeuvre, namely the authenticity of theBarberini Angel and Saint Cecilia, regarded by some schol-ars as the work of Guy François.111 Direct comparisonfor the first time ever with the latter’s Holy Family withSaint Bruno and Saint Helena, signed and dated 1626,suggests the possibility of collaboration between Saraceniand the French painter. In particular, we would regard theformer as responsible for the splendid compositional in-vention of the angel dominating the entire scene with hiswings, the balance between the two figures, the monu-mental musical instruments that occupy the space with thesame dignity and importance as the figures, as well as theinnovation of the figure of Cecilia with respect to the stillprevailing iconography of Raphael. In the light of thecomparison, François can perhaps be attributed with theface of the young saint, which stylistically resembles theVirgin in the canvas now in the Musée de Brou, Bourg-en-Bresse (figs. 55, 56). This collaboration, which would bewholly plausible in Saraceni’s well-established studio,must have taken place before 1613, when François re-turned to his native land. Attention should also be drawnto the recent discovery of an interesting copy of the SaintCecilia with the Angel attributed to Guy François, whichstill awaits in-depth study (fig. ...).The artists active in the first decade show less absolutecompliance with the constraints of decorum and respectfor tradition in their works for private hands, and hencegreater freedom and lack of inhibition in the explorationof new expressive resources. The presence of still moremarkedly Caravaggesque works in this sector is thereforehardly surprising. Even time-honoured canonical icono-graphies, like those of Biblical heroes, saw the introduc-tion of somewhat radical innovations as exemplified by thevarious variations on the theme of David and Goliath,clearly influenced by Caravaggio’s prototype in the Borgh-ese gallery.Orazio Gentileschi developed a different image of the Is-raelite champion, a virtuoso tour de force in the handlingof anatomy and light that leaves the macabre trophies ofvictory in the shadows, almost polemically, to concen-trate on a contemplative and even melancholy atmos-phere of the hazy, abstracted kind already seen in the cel-ebrated Borghese David of Caravaggio. Great impact is at-tained by Gentileschi’s original handling of transparentshadows and piercing light, which does not simply strikethe forms but penetrates and turns them into luminousbodies within the composition. Openly independent of the

Caravaggesque models are the paintings of the seconddecade of the seventeenth century, like the altarpiece ofSaint Francis Receiving the Stigmata in San Silvestro inCapite, which is generally regarded as painted immediatelybefore the painter’s departure for Genoa in 1621 andthought by critics to have been commissioned by theSavelli family, owners of the chapel and patrons of Orazio.Mancini’s list of followers also includes Cecco del Car-avaggio,112 who lived with the master in 1605 in the parishof San Nicola dei Prefetti. Identified by Papi as FrancescoBoneri, he is also regarded by some scholars as Caravag-gio’s lover. His highly original works glow with an in-tense, almost metaphysical light and display characteristicsseeking to “ennoble” the cruder elements of the Car-avaggism practiced by the Tuscan naturalistic painters.While there are no known works for the time when Ceccowas living with the master, echoes of this crucial period areclearly discernible in the three works attributed to Bonerion show here: the Fall of Christ on the Way to Calvary(Bratislava, Slovenskà Nàrodnà Galèria), the Martyrdom ofSaint Sebastian (Warsaw, National Museum) and the Mak-er of Musical Instruments in the National Gallery ofAthens. These canvases reveal a very interesting kind oficonographic audacity in which it is easy to see the influ-ence of Caravaggio, especially in the case of the Martyr-dom. The scene of the soldier holding the arrow alreadyburied in the chest is completely new and appears to de-pict no known episode in the life of the saint. As Papi ob-serves, works of such iconographic freedom could cer-tainly be intended only for a very limited circle of admir-ers, as by no means everyone would be willing to acceptimages so far removed from the canonical texts of refer-ence. In addition to the presence of a particular type ofbald figure with big ears, possibly derived from the Slaveof Ripa Grande and frequently used also by the youngRibera,113 another surprising feature of the Saint Sebastianis the presence in the lower section of a half-length figurein full light watching the scene like a member of the au-dience in a theatre. It is not known whether the very par-ticular cut of this daring insertion is the result of an as yetunconfirmed shortening of the canvas or one of the in-triguing effects typical of Cecco. Cecco’s most surprising work is, however, unquestion-ably the Maker of Musical Instruments in the NationalGallery of Athens (another version is to be found in theWellington Museum in London; figs. 58, 59). While the ti-tle indicates what has always been regarded as the subjectof this extraordinary painting, closer examination revealsthat the elegant young man in a plumed hat shown speak-ing (or singing?) in the centre of the canvas is not a crafts-man but more probably a gentleman, as his clothingwould also suggest, in the act of buying an instrument,namely the tambourine he is holding in one hand while us-ing the other to pay for it with a coin. But where is the20

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o with variations also in the Martyrdom of Saint Stephen,which appears to be derived from one of the executionerson the left in the first version of the Martyrdom of SaintMatthew in San Luigi dei Francesi,103 to which both com-positions are heavily indebted. As is known, Caravaggiocovered the first version with a thin layer of brown beforepainting the second over it. How was this unknownpainter able to see the figure, which is hidden in the finalwork? Was he so close to Caravaggio that he was allowedto see the initial and quickly concealed version of theMartyrdom?The year 1610 is a watershed marking both Caravaggio’sdefinitive disappearance from the art scene and, curious-ly enough, a considerable and almost simultaneous in-crease in the number of paintings inspired by his. The in-fluence of his work spread like wildfire, almost as thoughhis followers, freed from his living presence, felt free todraw upon his paintings.In the same year, the 17-year-old Artemisia Gentileschisigned and dated her first known painting, Susanna andthe Elders (Pommersfelden, Schloss Weissenstein), re-garded by critics, also recently, as possibly produced withthe assistance of her father Orazio. Attention has beendrawn repeatedly to the difficulty of distinguishing be-tween the work of these artists, above all in the earlyyears when they were both physically and artistically close.As regards the artistic relationship between father anddaughter, Judith Mann, while describing the Susanna es-sential to any understanding of Artemisia’s early develop-ment, considers it possible that Orazio played a part atleast in her choice of models, thus acting as a sort of di-rector in the conception and execution of the painting,and that he was physically responsible for details such asthe inscription on the step on the left, as Artemisia wasstill unable to write at the time.104 At the same time, theuse of live models for his compositions was now custom-ary practice for Orazio, and there is nothing to prevent usfrom thinking that the young Artemisia did likewise fromthe very outset. Some elements of the painting reveal a tru-ly extraordinary and mature mastery of composition, andit is legitimate to suggest that the splendid and highly re-alistic nude of Susanna is a self-portrait of Artemisia in amirror. Support for this hypothesis is provided by thestrong and portrait-like characterization of the heroine’sface and its striking similarity with other female figures bythe artist often identified as self-portraits. By the samelogic and given the date of painting (1610), the models forthe two elders, whose pose forms a sort of dome overSusanna’s head, could be Orazio (the older), who was 47at the time, and “notorious” Agostino Tassi,105 who was32, even though, according to Patrizia Cavazzini,106

Artemisia may not have known him in 1610. The painting,especially in the upper section with the two men depictedagainst a glowing sky, recalls the decoration of the casino

delle Muse executed by Gentileschi and Tassi for ScipioneBorghese in 1611–12, which includes various portraits ofArtemisia (fig. 52). A newcomer on the Roman scene,Tassi was to work with Orazio Gentileschi the followingyear (1611) on the now lost frescoes in the ConsistoryRoom of the Palazzo Quirinale. In this work, alongside thestudy of painting from life and her father’s teaching,Artemisia unquestionably reveals a composite trainingbased on naturalism, the classical Bolognese models and,last but not least, the works of Caravaggio, albeit embell-ished with a sophisticated handling of colour that seems tolook forward to later work in Florence. The Venetian Carlo Saraceni107 (c. 1579–1620), docu-mented in the parish records only from 1601 to 1620 butpresumably present in Rome as from 1598,108 is a partic-ular and partly anomalous case, albeit one largely free ofcomplex problems. Analysis of his intense activity clearlyshows that he managed to corner most of the public com-missions in the city and become the predominant figure ofthe second decade with the aid of a large and well orga-nized studio staffed above all by French painters. In thisrespect, Saraceni evidently made the most of the cachetderiving from his training in the sphere of great Venetianpainting, seen in Rome as an unquestionable guarantee offormal quality. None of the other Caravaggesque painterswas his equal as regards the quantity and quality of altar-pieces produced, as shown by the Madonna and Childwith Saint Anne (c. 1610). Now in Palazzo Barberini, itwas originally painted for the right altar of the church ofSan Simeone profeta in connection with the renovationcarried out by Orazio Lancellotti.His combination of the Venetian and Caravaggesque stylesfound favour with private patrons and religious bodiessuch as the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercyand the Carmelites. In the second decade alone, we findhim at work not only in the church of San Simeone but al-so on other major public commissions, the most significantof which was unquestionably an altarpiece of the Death ofthe Virgin for the Carmelite church of Santa Maria dellaScala (c. 1610; fig. 53) to replace the one painted by Car-avaggio but rejected due to outcry over rumours that themodel was a drowned prostitute. Saraceni must obvious-ly have enjoyed extraordinary esteem in that period if hewas considered the only one capable of replacing a workfor public display by Caravaggio, who was still alive orvery recently deceased at the time. Given the value at-tached to the master’s works at the time and the fact thatclients were ready to go to any lengths to possess one, thiscommission speaks volumes.109

Further confirmation of Saraceni’s prestige is providedby commissions to paint a Martyrdom of Saint Erasmus forthe cathedral of Gaeta (1610–11; fig. 54) in connectionwith the work undertaken by the Spanish bishop Pedro deOña of the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercy,

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was living in 1616.121 In any case, as is known, the firstdocument providing firm evidence of the artist’s pres-ence in Italy dates from 1611, when he was paid for thelost altarpiece of Saint Martin Distributing Alms paintedfor the church of San Prospero in Parma, a fairly impor-tant commission that he is unlikely to have obtained with-out previous contact in Rome with Mario Farnese, hispoint of contact in the northern city. The first certainrecord of Ribera’s presence in Rome is dated 5 June 1612and regards a house rented in the vicinity of Via del Leon-cino, where the painter asked for permission to demolisha ceiling in order to paint.122 This recalls a similar episodeinvolving Caravaggio and the house he rented from Pru-denzia Bruni in Vicolo San Biagio on 8 May 1604, wherehe asked for permission “to uncover half of the room”,probably in order to paint large altarpieces like the Deathof the Virgin for Laerzio Cherubini,123 and also to obtainbrighter, perpendicular light for his work.124 The evidenceis also important, however, as showing that Ribera was al-ready an established painter by that date and may havebeen so for some time. Other documents suggest that hewas fully integrated into the Roman social fabric, includ-ing his presence at the Academy of Saint Luke on 27 Oc-tober 1613, followed the next year by an undertaking topay 100 scudi towards the building of the academy’schurch, a sum that was actually never forthcoming andmay have been pledged simply as a form of publicity.125

Ribera lived in a house on Via Margutta from April 1615to March 1616 together with other people, including hisbrothers Girolamo, in 1615, and Giovanni, in 1616. Thelast piece of relevant documentation dates from May 1616and regards the payment of two scudi for charitable pur-poses to the Academy of Saint Luke.126 As abundantlydocumented in records and inventories, Ribera’s stay inRome saw a large number of commissions for illustriouspatrons like Benedetto and Vincenzo Giustiniani, ScipioneBorghese, Pietro Cussida, Mario Farnese and Giovan Bat-tista Bolognetti, to name just a few.The Palazzo Barberini Saint Gregory the Great is one of agroup of thirteen paintings produced by the painter andlisted in the Giustiniani inventories. Attributable on styl-istic grounds to an early period around 1614, the icono-graphically innovative painting shows the saint from be-hind in a splendid red mantle that covers most of thesurface. Accepted by critics as his work after the initialproposal by Danesi Squarzina,127 the painting has beencompared to the Saint Augustine, Saint Bartholomew andSaint Paul today in the Longhi Collection, part of the se-ries of Apostles formerly in the collection of Pietro Cussi-da, whose changes in ownership are still the subject of in-vestigation.128 Despite the exhibitions in Madrid andNaples and numerous monographic studies by Spinosaand Papi,129 all of the activity of the young Ribera in Romeis still highly problematic and in need of further clarifica-

tion, especially with respect to the group of works attrib-uted to the Master of the Judgement of Solomon, whichPapi regards as painted by Ribera in Rome.130 New in-sights and stimulating suggestions came above all from theexhibition at Capodimonte,131 where interesting compar-isons were drawn that constitute the basis for new ap-proaches to this much debated question, which is stillvery far from being definitively settled. One of the artists listed by Mancini among Caravaggio’sclosest followers is Giovanni Antonio Galli, known asSpadarino. Various exchanges and contacts can be iden-tified with figures like Saraceni (who probably workedwith him on the Royal Room in Palazzo Quirinale), Tassiand Cecco del Caravaggio (the casino Montalto at Bagna-ia), and perhaps also Manfredi, as suggested132 and byconceptual echoes in The Guardian Angel of San Rufo inRieti, initially attributed by Longhi to Orazio Gentileschiand then, in 1943, to Spadarino.133 Challenged only byMoir, Longhi’s attribution is based solely on stylistic evi-dence, whereas the date of 1617–18 rests on valuabledocumentation. The work is one of the masterpieces ofseventeenth-century painting. Striking features include astark, unadorned approach born out of compositionalrigour and an almost monochromatic range of colour var-ied only by the earth pigments used for the flesh tones.Standing out against a completely black background in thecentre of a dark void, the two isolated figures bisect thespace, wrapped in a close embrace that makes them asingle whole endowed with harmony by an extraordinarycounterpoint of arms and legs borrowed from classicalsculpture. One exceptional invention is the wings thatwholly dominate the upper part of the canvas, their move-ment suggested by the varied incidence of light, the pow-erful left wing brightly illuminated and the right swal-lowed up in darkness apart from a gleam defining part ofits outline. Longhi described it as “an elegy in black andwhite miraculously expressed by the shadow that settlesupon it like dark powder on delicately crafted forms”. It isprecisely the rereading of Longhi’s intense descriptionthat prompts us to wonder whether this extraordinarypainting really is the work of Spadarino. We know nothingabout the commission or about why such a masterpieceended up in the small church of San Rufo in Rieti. Thereis very little in stylistic terms to connect it with Spadarino’scompact forms, his glowing range of colour, his sumptu-ous materials and heavy, shining satins, the physical rich-ness of his colours. Suffice it to compare this Guardian An-gel with the practically coeval Quirinale frescoes (fig. 61).The impalpable lightness of the transparent draperies andthe shadow settling like “dark powder” on the bodiesstrike me as the furthest thing imaginable from Spadarino.Greater similarity to this painting is shown by the SaintAnne Spinning and the Virgin Sewing in the Galleria Spa-da, now attributed by Papi to an anonymous artist con-22

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o maker being paid? He is not there. Because the maker isthe viewer. To be more precise, the maker is the personlooking at the canvas, placed by the painter right in frontof the young customer. It is the viewer that is receiving thepayment and is about to put the coin into the half-opendrawer in front of him.114 In our view, it is no coinci-dence that the position of the viewer is clearly identifiedby the perspective lines formed by the neck of the violinon the right and the roll of papers on the left. Is it possible that Cecco invented a conception so sophis-ticated as to envisage the “active” involvement of theviewer in the scene depicted? Perhaps, but we am moreinclined to think that the source of this brilliant idea canonly have been Caravaggio, even though examination ofhis works has yet to reveal situations as clearly explicit asthe in Cecco’s Maker, only interesting suggestions.

The Second Generation of Caravaggesque Painters(1610–20)The second decade of the seventeenth century was domi-nated by the major works commissioned by Pope Paul V,in particular the decoration of the Pauline Chapel in San-ta Maria Maggiore and his new palace on the Quirinal hill,and by his nephew Scipione Borghese, who devoted hisenergies primarily to embellishing four lodges built onland adjacent to the papal palace, to his new villa, and toexpanding his collection. Nearly all of the leading artistsactive in Rome at the time were involved in this bonanza,Tuscans and Bolognese, late Mannerists and Car-avaggesque painters, with no distinction of school or ap-proach. The key figure employed by the papal family un-til 1614, when he returned to Bologna, was Guido Reni,who worked in the Vatican palaces (1607–08) and SanGregorio al Celio (1609); on the decoration of the An-nunciation Chapel in the Palazzo Quirinale (1610), whichopened the new decade and where he supervised thepupils of Annibale Carracci Giovanni Lanfranco,Francesco Albani, Antonio Carracci and Tommaso Cam-pana; in the Pauline Chapel alongside Baglione (1611–12);and in the casino dell’Aurora for Scipione Borghese, wherein 1614, immediately before returning to his hometown,he played a leading role together with Tempesta, Bril,Passignano, Baglione and Cherubino Alberti. The manyother artists involved in the Borghese commissions aswell as Reni and the Bolognese colony included some ofvery different training and culture such as Cigoli (1611–13;fig. 60), and, above all Agostino Tassi – the only painter ofillusionistic architectural decoration in Rome at the timeand therefore much in demand. After the ConsistoryRoom of Palazzo Quirinale (1611), together with OrazioGentileschi, and the casino dell’Aurora (1611–12), Tassi al-so worked in the casino del Patriarca Biondo (lost frescoes,1612). His rise to fame was such that not even his trial forraping Artemisia Gentileschi could halt it. After a short

period in Bagnaia, where he worked with Cecco del Car-avaggio for cardinal Montalto, and despite his sentence ofperpetual exile, he reappeared at work in the huge RoyalHall, the most important room in the papal palace, to-gether with Lanfranco and Carlo Saraceni. The sameartists, together with Battistello Caracciolo, Honthorst,Guerrieri, Domenichino, Turchi, Baburen and others, al-so produced works for the collection of Scipione Borgh-ese.The second decade saw an increase in the number ofCaravaggesque artists, both Italian and foreign. In additionto the debuts of the 17-year-old Artemisia Gentileschi(1610) and Bartolomeo Manfredi (before 1613), thosedocumented as present in Rome include Ribera (1612),Leonello Spada (1611?), Giuseppe Vermiglio (1612), Bat-tistello Caracciolo (1612), Vouet (1613), Honthorst (before1616), Baburen and de Haen (1617), Alessandro Turchi(1617), Régnier (1618?) and Tournier (1619?). The second generation of Caravaggesque artists is gener-ally made up of painters born around 1585–1600 but ac-tive as from second decade of the seventeenth centurywho had no specific late Mannerist training and no directacquaintance with Caravaggio. They all prove to have de-veloped their style through study of the master’s worksand the assimilation of external features, sometimes alsoincluding the spirit, in accordance with their own partic-ular abilities.The period 1612–13 must have been crucial for the de-velopment of Caravaggism, fostered above all by the pres-ence in Rome of key artists, including many non-Italians,each of whom played a part in spreading the new ap-proach to painting. It includes, for example, the arrival ofSimon Vouet, who was in Rome, albeit with some inter-ruptions, until 1627 and presumably of Valentin deBoulogne. While the latter is not securely documented inthe parish records until 1620, the “Valentino garzone pit-tore” resident in the parish of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte in1609 could well be him, not least in the light of San-drart’s assertion that he was in Rome in 1610.115 Despitethe lack of documentary confirmation, the stay of GerardSeghers was probably between 1611 and 1617,116 while thetime around 1612 may have seen Battistello Caracciolo’sfirst trip to Rome and the arrival of Jusepe de Ribera.117 Assuggested also by Papi, however, the latter may have ar-rived as early as 1604–05,118 when there is documentaryevidence for the presence in Rome also of the SpaniardsMaíno (1605–10) and, slightly later, Tristán (1607–09),described by Martinez119 as in Rome together with Rib-era.120 Born in 1591, Ribera would have been aged be-tween 14 and 16 at the time, and probably travelled to thecity together with some fellow countrymen to stay with arelative, as suggested by a document of 1612 in whichthe painter stands surety for the daughters of a certain“Giovanni Ribera”, presumably the brother with whom he

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new and all-inclusive examination of his oeuvre mightyield some answers.In any case, between unscrupulous dealers and individu-als driven by the desire for wealth, it is hardly surprisingthat there should have been great and disturbing confu-sion in Rome just a decade after Caravaggio’s death as towhich were the originals and which the copies of hisworks as well as a clear understanding of the value of thelatter. In the flourishing market of the 1620s, it was com-monly held that only the finest connoisseurs could distin-guish a copy from the original, and copies were often re-garded by their owners as originals in no way lacking themaster’s genius.143 As Mancini observed in letters to hisbrother Deifebo,144 the originals were “deflowered” andtherefore had to be protected at all costs, and talentedpainters (like Manfredi) had to be commissioned to pro-duce copies in view of the time and effort involved. An ex-ample is provided in this connection also by the history ofCaravaggio’s Death of the Virgin, refused by the fathers ofSanta Maria della Scala and bought in 1607 by the duke ofMantua. Giovanni Magni, the duke’s ambassador, toldAnnibale Chieppio that he had left the painting on showfor a week in his mansion on the Corso for the benefit ofpainters but with copying absolutely forbidden.145 Theseventeenth-century idea of the copy was unquestionablya far cry from the negative view of today. As copies were inany case rare and in demand also in other countries, it isby no means odd that they should have been highly re-garded and taken in some cases for originals. Manfredi’s free reworking of the master’s canvases is awell-known fact, as exemplified by the events leading upto the creation in 1613 of the Mars Punishing Cupid(Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago; fig. 63), derivedfrom a now lost painting on the same subject painted byCaravaggio for cardinal Del Monte and jealously guardedin his palace. Manfredi was commissioned to paint thecanvas by Giulio Mancini on behalf of Agostino Chigi, giv-en the impossibility of obtaining the original,146 and musthave done so with good deal of personal input, as he waspaid 35 scudi, including the cost of the models.147 While itis of course impossible to establish whether his Mars Pun-ishing Cupid is a faithful copy of the lost Caravaggio or afree interpretation, as suggested by documentary evi-dence, what we see is an extraordinary achievement dis-tinguished by pure and brilliant colouring, daring per-spective and convulsive rhythms capable of eliminating thebarrier between pictorial and natural space.148 In my view,it was the combination of so many qualities that ledMancini to regard Manfredi not as a mere copyist but as ayoung artist “of great promise”.149

A subject of art-critical attention in recent years, Man-fredi’s “light paintings”, connected with the youthful ap-prenticeship to Pomarancio recalled by Baglione, are to beregarded as prior to the Mars Punishing Cupid. These

works, recently brought to attention by critics, still limit-ed in number, display less maturity of execution or greaterstylistic similarity to other masters, and were produced be-fore the artist had fully developed his means of expression.They include a Sacrifice of Isaac from the church of Gesùin Rome (fig. 64),150 and a recently published Apollo andMarsyas (Saint Louis, The Saint Louis Art Museum; fig.65).151

The discovery of Manfredi’s “light period” is connectedwith Massimo Pulini’s acute identification152 of the masteras the author of the altarpiece of the Coronation of the Vir-gin with Saint John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene and SaintFrancis from the church of San Pietro in Leonessa near Ri-eti. This is a work of great quality but unquestionablylinked in terms of composition, colour and light to the tra-ditional models of altarpieces derived from Annibale Car-racci and his school. The dating of 1615–16 suggestedfor this altarpiece,153 a few years after the Mars PunishingCupid, should perhaps be shifted slightly forward as itwas not until his writings of 1617–21 (but probably in thiscase post-1618) that Mancini spoke of Manfredi beginningto produce public works.154 It is interesting to note that,like other painters, in producing what is so far his onlyknown public work, the painter from Ostiano abandonedCaravaggesque models and devices (apart from dark shad-ow) in favour of the tried and tested Roman-Bolognesetype of composition that was certainly more palatable toecclesiastical clients.The canonical Coronation of the Virgin displays the adop-tion of the Carraccesque classical style on the part of thepainter, who opts for a traditional iconography in whichcelestial and terrestrial spheres are separated while main-taining a vigorously sculptural approach in the figures ofthe saints below and clearly naturalistic handling of thenon-idealized faces moulded by bold chiaroscuro. It is awork of great quality but one in which classicism pre-dominates to the point of having prevented identifica-tion of the author until a few years ago. On the basis of theforegoing observations, it was difficult to imagine a “lightperiod” in Manfredi’s painting and the production of a re-ligious work for public display, especially as the canvas ismarginal with respect to the world of Roman commis-sions and located in the out of the way town of Leonessa,a Farnese possession on the border of the Lazio region.Identification of the Leonessa altarpiece as a work pro-duced by Manfredi in the period 1615–16 opens up newhorizons of research, not least as regards the reconsidera-tion of various other works and the reconstruction of apublic career that the painter must have managed suc-cessfully, as shown by the canvas in question. As Pulinirightly observed, the question remains of the role playedby his “light works”, the “contamination” they may havegenerated, and their impact. The possibility cannot beruled out of a significant influence on the work of artists24

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o nected with Salini but regarded by Longhi in 1951 asSpadarino’s work, probably because of its close stylistic re-semblance to the Rieti canvas. An interesting combination of Caravaggio and AnnibaleCarracci is developed by the Bolognese painter Baldas-sarre Aloisi, known as Galanino (1577–1638), the authorof the innovative Saint John the Baptist in the Desert (1611;signed and dated), one of the few pieces of firm evidencefor a reconstruction of his still mysterious career. It ispossible, as has been suggested,134 that Galanino paintedthe copy of the Saint John the Baptist left by Caravaggio onthe felucca in 1610 for Scipione Borghese. Support for thisis provided by a record of the bank of Santo Spirito inNaples dated 5 November 1610 of a payment of ten ducatito a certain Baldassare Alvise, identified as Galanino, fortwo copies of the David and Goliath, again painted for thecardinal, one of which was recently shown in an exhibitionat the State Archives in Rome.135 The experience of pro-ducing copies of original works by Caravaggio must havehad some effect, as perhaps manifested in the painting ex-hibited here, which was produced just one year later. Theimportant thing to note is that this was certainly no iso-lated event in the seventeenth century. The practice ofmaking copies of paintings by Caravaggio was not con-fined to Rome and met the demand of collectors increas-ingly anxious to possess some specimen of the master’swork even in this form. The case of Galanino is just oneexample of the success and circulation of such copies alsooutside the borders of Rome. As we have seen, Mancini was very quick to point out thekey facets of the new Caravaggesque painting and itspractitioners. The keen eye and experience of a non-Ital-ian like Joachim von Sandrart can now help us to under-stand the subsequent phase of European expansion ofthis school.136 His Teutsche Academie der edlen Bau-, Bild-und Mahlerey-Künste –zweiter Haupttheild (1675) docu-ments not only the spread of the new naturalistic paintingin the first decades of the seventeenth century but also itslater association with other approaches to painting as wellas the exporting of this naturalism to foreign countries un-touched by the first wave of Caravaggism. The Teutsche af-fords a glimpse of what happened outside Italy and whatexactly was absorbed of the substance and vocabulary ofthe new approach codified as the Manfrediana Methodus.It is interesting to note that every detail of the Methodus asa set of elements comprising the pictorial techniques, useof colour and procedures generally shared by the variouspractitioners is examined by Sandrart in the life of Seghersrather than Bartolomeo Manfredi (1582–1622). Whilethe latter certainly retains his primacy as the painter clos-est to the master, Seghers is praised for his ability to cap-ture reality so well as to be mistaken for Bartolomeo, therecognized and established leader of the school.In actual fact, Sandrart appears somewhat sparing in his

list of Caravaggesque artists, focusing in addition to Man-fredi and Seghers on Jean Ducamps, Ribera, Valentin,Vouet and Régnier: not many names for what was an au-thentic school characterized by a particular way of han-dling light and shadow, colour and composition in ad-dressing the same subjects. While admitting a certain ex-perimental component, Sandrart is unlikely not to havenoticed the role played by these paintings on the privatemarket, and we are certainly not mistaken in stating thatalongside works on Caravaggesque subjects, but not de-void of more exquisitely personal inspiration, the pro-duction of copies had probably already carved out a sub-stantial niche on the market as early as the time of themaster’s flight from Rome.Manfredi is still today an elusive and in many respectsmysterious painter awaiting reliable clarification, above allas regards the two crucial and unresolved questions of hisreal relations with Caravaggio and a coherent reconstruc-tion of his stylistic development.137

Manfredi has long been burdened by negative judge-ments, beginning with the biography written by his con-temporary Giovanni Baglione, essentially as a result ofhis role in the spreading of Caravaggesque models inRome during the second decade of the seventeenth cen-tury,138 which saw the birth of the Manfrediana Methodus,the celebrated and successful stylistic approach that bearshis name. It is for this very reason that he was dismisseduntil recent times as one of the master’s many followers, orrather the most faithful of his imitators. With the progressachieved in studies, however, he is now increasing recog-nized as a key figure for any understanding of this com-plex period in Rome’s artistic history.His popularizing work can be explained only in the lightof the pressing demand of Roman collectors for Car-avaggesque works, which could not be met at the end ofthe first decade and in the second due to the absence ofCaravaggio from Rome and the lack of a recognizedschool and pupils. The vacuum thus created was filled byManfredi with works inspired by Caravaggio’s paintingsbut produced “with finer harmony and gentleness”.139

According to Baglione’s malign testimony, they “werethought to be by Caravaggio”140 and even deceived thepainters called upon to judge them.This disturbing remark by Baglione could explain the ex-istence of so many “duplicate” Caravaggio works and anauthentic market for copies of the originals, as is beginningto emerge from the numerous documents gathered and in-terpretations developed by Luigi Spezzaferro,141 and asclearly suggested, albeit with subtle differences, also by thewritings of Giulio Mancini and Giovanni Pietro Bellori.142

The latter claims in fact that Manfredi was not just an im-itator of Caravaggio but actually capable of “transforminghimself” into the master. How many works by Manfrediare attributed to Caravaggio today? We do not know, but

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of them with accommodation in their own homes, makesit easier to understand the context and the mechanisms in-volved in the development and dissemination of certainmodels.It was under Giustiniani’s protective wing that works likeHonthorst’s Christ before the High Priest (fig. 67) andFreeing of Saint Peter (fig. 68), Régnier’s Supper at Emmaus(1617; fig. 69), Giusto Fiammingo’s The Flight of theNaked Young Man after the Taking of Christ169 and Ceccodel Caravaggio’s Christ Driving the Money Changers fromthe Temple (fig. 70) came into being. In many cases therefore, the exchange of ideas and mod-els between artists came about through their contact withwealthy and intelligent clients who also generously al-lowed access to their collection of paintings and ancientsculptures. In others, the key element was fruitful atten-dance at public or private academies, like the one –renowned at the time but still awaiting thorough clarifi-cation today – held in the Palazzo dei Crescenzi. Nation-al churches could also be place to meet and exchangeideas.Episodes like the decoration of the Cussida Chapel inSan Pietro in Montorio were unique to the city of Rome inthe second decade of the seventeenth century as regardsboth the choice of subject matter and the planning ofcomposition in close relation to the architectural setting.Suffice it to recall how Baburen used not only light of asymbolic or artificial nature in his works but also the nat-ural light from windows to accentuate the presence ofhis figures.The work initiated in 1617 was carried out for PietroCussida, commercial agent in Rome for the king ofSpain170 as well as a collector and patron of Ribera, byDirck van Baburen, who painted the altarpiece with theDeposition of Christ, the Christ on the Way to Calvary onthe right side and the lunette with the Agony in the Gar-den,171 and his companion David de Haen, the author ofthe lunette with the Christ Mocked. The two Dutchpainters developed a particular form of naturalism with ac-centuation of the more grotesque and expressionistic as-pects, as shown by de Haen in the Christ Mocked. Whilefairly uncommon among the Italian Caravaggesque artists,this subject appears to have been familiar to Flemishpainters, and de Haen combines the naturalism then infashion with vigorous accentuation of chiaroscuro with re-sults that even appear to look forward to the work ofartists active in Naples in the first half of the century underthe influence of Ribera.172 While retaining marked the-atrical accents and a wholly modern vocabulary, this nat-uralism is therefore far removed from any coarseness.These characteristics were probably essential for the Fran-ciscans of San Pietro in Montorio, who required both amodern approach and strict observance of the rules laiddown for art by the Counter Reformation, including close

correspondence between image and religious text as wellas immediate comprehensibility. De Haen sticks closely tothe Gospel of Matthew and uses its precisely detailednarrative as the key tool to organize the scene depicted inboth spatial and expressive terms in the physiognomicrendering of the soldiers mocking Christ. The textuallyfaithful story is developed in the lunette in a balancedcomposition where Christ, seated to the right on a marblebase, is juxtaposed with the two soldiers on the left whileslender, evanescent figures in the centre establish themain axis of the scene.Baburen also complied with the Franciscans’ demand forunadorned images closely faithful to the scriptural text, asshown by his altarpiece of the Burial of Christ, which re-veals a knowledge of Caravaggio’s works. The master’saltarpiece for Santa Maria in Vallicella is in fact echoed inthe arrangement of the figures, the dramatic gestures ofthe figures, and above all the angular rendering of themarble tomb, albeit in a wholly original way.Baburen is also the author of the Saint Sebastian Tended bySaint Irene and her Handmaiden (Madrid, MuseumThyssen-Bornemisza), a mesmerizing canvas regarded byGaskell173 as one of the first he painted in Rome andtherefore dated before 1617, immediately prior to thework in San Pietro in Montorio. A striking element of thispainting is the glowing accentuation of the body of thesaint, which dominates the entire composition, revealingcareful study of the original works of Caravaggio and thepotentialities of the relationship between light and surface,as in the reflections on the centurion’s armour in the low-er section. The master’s influence can in any case be seenin all the details of the composition and the rendering ofthe two juxtaposed female figures. This is the most au-thentic interpretation of the word according to Caravag-gio, and Baburen shows in this painting that he was one ofthe few painters to understand it perfectly.One of the most interesting of the questions of attributionregarding the works exhibited is the case of the SaintJerome in his Study in the American Embassy in Rome,which bears a seal on the back of the frame with the Bon-compagni Ludovisi coat of arms, valuable evidence es-tablishing its provenance as the family mansion purchasedby the USA for its embassy complete with furnishings.Brought to the attention of critics in 2007,174 the canvaswas attributed by von Bernstorff to Bartolomeo Cavarozzion the basis of stylistic considerations and the presence ofan engraving by Dürer of the Virgin before the Walls ofNuremberg, which also appears in the Saint Jerome withTwo Angels in the Galleria Palatina, Florence. The veryhigh quality of the Rome Saint Jerome and its substantialdifference from the Florentine work as regards execu-tion and pictorial substance call for reconsideration ofthis not particularly convincing attribution, studies ingreater depth taking into account the seal on the back,17526

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o like Honthorst, Riminaldi, Vouet and AlessandroTurchi.155

Apart from the Leonessa altarpiece and Mars PunishingCupid, Manfredi’s “light paintings”, which are also char-acterized by a bright range of colours, include the above-mentioned Sacrifice of Isaac in the church of Gesù,156 stillof unknown provenance and long regarded as the work ofSpadarino157 on the basis of stylistic similarities. In actualfact, as Pulini has clearly shown, the work is fully in linewith Manfredi’s oeuvre.The Madonna and Child158 recently attributed to Man-fredi by Papi159 is also included in the exhibition. Thework is evidently influenced by Caravaggio’s Madonna ofthe Rosary, above all as regards the “plump” Child. A“humble” transposition of Caravaggio’s magnificent pro-totype, it may provide important evidence that the Madon-na of the Rosary was painted in Rome, as recently sug-gested, in view of the fact that Manfredi appears to havenever visited Naples.Manfredi was flanked on the Roman Caravaggesque sceneduring these crucial years by other young talents, includ-ing many with the stuff of great masters.A large number of paintings gathered together in the ex-hibition document the exuberant ranks of French andFlemish artists – from Valentin, Tournier, Régnier, Vi-gnon, Bigot and Mellan to Gerrit van Honthorst, Hen-drick Ter Brugghen and van Baburen160 – vividly de-scribed as flocking into Rome during the second decadeby authoritative figures of the day like the physician GiulioMancini and the noble collector Vincenzo Giustiniani.161

Mancini has no doubts as to the reasons for their arrivaland above for embarking on a career in painting, andpoints the finger firmly at the art of Caravaggio and his in-creasingly popular method of painting models from lifewith no preparatory drawings.162 Far from strict rigour ofthe academies, the practice he inaugurated gave talentedyoungsters from the provinces an opportunity to make agood and early start in a place like Rome with so much tooffer in terms of success and money. The great influx of foreigners occupied the area of the citybounded by Via Margutta, the Corso, Via del Babuino,Santa Maria del Popolo and San Lorenzo in Lucina, givingbirth to a lively artistic environment where various lan-guages, traditions and iconographic models rubbed shoul-ders, an authentic artistic melting pot to be drawn upon. Aparticular phenomenon was to emerge from this in theearly 1620s, namely a sort of compact, organized groupcalled the Schildersbent or “band of painters” in openopposition to the official line expressed by the Academy ofSaint Luke, the bastion of official figurative culture. Madeup primarily of Dutch and Flemish painters, the Schilder-sbent – whose members called themselves Bentvueghels or“birds of a feather” – was founded in 1623 by Cornelisvan Poelenburgh and Bartholomeus Breenbergh.163 Ef-fectively denied access to official ecclesiastical commis-

sions164 – except for the Frenchman Valentin, who en-tered the Barberini family’s service after Vouet’s departurefrom Rome in 1626 – the Bentvueghels were mainly in-volved in the production of small genre paintings andlandscapes, and made no real impact on the Roman art-historical panorama.While the presence of artists like Louis Finson and Hen-drick Ter Brugghen was brief or somewhat nebulous,there is more documentation for Gerrit van Honthorst.Perhaps to be identified as the “Flemish Gherardo”recorded together with a certain “Giovanni” in the parishof the Santi Maria and Gregorio in Vallicella in 1610 and1611,165 Honthorst was unquestionably the recognizedleader of the group until 1620, the year of his return toUtrecht, where he set up a successful studio that providedtraining for many of the Flemish painters and served as aformidable channel for the dissemination of naturalism innorthern Europe.166

A protégé of Giustiniani and the grand duke of Tuscany,Honthorst was, together with Baburen, one of the fewFlemish painters to obtain major commissions in the sec-ond decade, as shown also by The Mocking of Christ in theCapuchin church of Santa Maria della Concezione inRome. Variously regarded in the past also as the work of a“follower of Dirck van Baburen” and even as an “eigh-teenth-century copy”, it is on show here after recentrestoration re-establishing his authorship. Even though thecanvas does not present a homogeneous pictorial texture,it provides precious evidence of Honthorst’s early workand constitutes an indispensable starting point for recon-struction of his career and development in painting. Thequality of the workmanship in the face of Christ, wherethe influence of Manfredi can also be detected, rules outany possibility of the work being a copy. The diagnostic in-vestigations carried out on the canvas reveal significant de-tails of execution such as frequent overpainting, fluidbrushstrokes, a texture devoid of uncertainty and, lastbut not least, traces of drawing that suggest a pictorialmethod excluding improvisation. At the same time, our es-tablished knowledge of Honthorst’s practice during hisRoman period fully accounts for the minimal correctionspresent on the canvas.167 On the contrary, the sometimescoarse physiognomy of the faces of the torturers in theforeground reflects both a free and dynamic relationshipbetween preparatory drawing and execution, and proba-bly, as Papi suggests,168 the impression made on him by theengravings on the subject by Dürer or Goltzius. It is alsoperfectly in line with other works by Honthorst, like theUffizi Supper Party and the London Mocking of Christ, togive just two examples. The fact that cultured and open-minded collectors likeVincenzo Giustiniani recognized the value of the work ofpainters such as Honthorst, David de Haen and NicolasRégnier, becoming their patrons and even providing some

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the meantime with the support of perspicacious patronsresponsive to the new taste. It was in 1620 that Bernini,aged little over 20, produced the wonderful fountainsculpture of Neptune and Triton (London, Victoria and Al-bert Museum) for the Villa Montalto, which seemed tocome to life in the cascading water and blend into its nat-ural setting. In 1622, during the reign of Gregory XV,Andrea Sacchi began to display his talent with the SaintIsidore and the Virgin Mary (1622) for the high altar of thechurch of San Isidore, which shows the marked influ-ence of Lanfranco rather than the Bolognese school but al-so echoes of warm and golden Venetian colour (fig. 79).The latter are also to be found in the Triumph of Bacchus(c. 1624) painted by Pietro da Cortona (Rome, PinacotecaCapitolina), a model of the new seventeenth-century clas-sicism (fig. 80).The classical style thus triumphed in its long strugglewith Caravaggesque naturalism, which soon went out offashion and was to linger on only as an element of a newstylistic approach revitalized by new developments, name-ly the Baroque movement, strongly supported by UrbanVIII (1623–1644) and harnessed by him to celebrate thetriumph of the Catholic church over Lutheran heresy. Excellent insight into this period of transition is providedby the decoration of the gallery of Palazzo Mattei, carriedout between 1624 and 1626, which can be regarded as oneof the last Caravaggesque works in Rome. The canvasescommissioned by Asdrubale Mattei constitute a keyepisode in the artistic panorama of the third decade due tothe client’s specific demand for naturalism.184 The artistsinvolved in the last joint enterprise of Caravaggism in-clude the older Antiveduto Gramatica, the Tuscan Rimi-naldi, the Veronese Alessandro Turchi, the FrenchmanValentin and the young Serodine, perhaps the most in-teresting and original member of the group. The threeworks produced by the latter (figs. 81, 82, 83) between1625 and 1626 are Christ among the Doctors (Paris, Lou-vre), The Tribute Money (Edinburgh, National Gallery),and The Farewell of Saints Peter and Paul before Martyr-dom (Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica in PalazzoBarberini). The last of these,185 on show here, is probablyinfluenced by Caravaggio’s Taking of Christ in the Garden,painted for Ciriaco Mattei in 1602, in the compositionalidea of focusing attention on the faces in the foreground,which are almost broken up by the light and isolated de-spite the agitated movement of the soldiers around them,built up out of large brushstrokes, blurred outlines anddissolved matter. The intensity of the look exchanged bythe two saints foresees the tragic fate of martyrdom thatawaits them. The composition, crammed with figures, isshot through with tension and dynamism, as emphasizedalso by the soldier in the foreground whose raised arm di-vides the canvas diagonally, recalling a similar figure in theCrowning with Thorns painted by Ter Brugghen (Copen-

hagen, Statens Museum for Kunst; fig. 84).Particular importance attached within the context of thiscommission to Valentin’s Last Supper (Rome, GalleriaNazionale d’Arte Antica in Palazzo Barberini),186 on showhere, one of the few points of chronological reference inthe artist’s career, which shows that he was perfectly ca-pable at the time (1624–25) of mastering the new classicalstyle, as seen above all in the layout of the composition,without necessarily departing too much from naturalisticmodules, developed in the deft orchestration of light andthe expressive rendering of the apostles’ faces. Curious insome respects is the choice of subject, one never ad-dressed by Caravaggio or Manfredi but depicted by theFrench artist with touches of moving humanity, startingwith the face of Christ, placed in the centre of the scenebut isolated from the rest of the figures and scenographi-cally pushed back from the edge of the canvas by a tablecovered with a gleaming white cloth, the composition’smajor point of light.In the large canvases painted for religious edifices, this pe-riod still displays marked allegiance to the more evidentexpressive characteristics of Caravaggesque ancestry, al-though these are now often independent and sometimeseven far removed from the complex solutions of the mas-ter’s mature period. Such variable concomitances can beclearly seen in paintings like Valentin’s little-known Johnthe Baptist in the collegiate church of Sant’Urbano in thetown of Apiro in the Marche region and BartolomeoCavarozzi’s Visitation with its elegant and rhythmic formalcadences. Recognized as Valentin’s work in 1973–74,187 theJohn the Baptist was painted for Giovanni Giacomo Bal-dini (1581–1656), born in Apiro and physician to UrbanVIII. Very different from the works by Caravaggio now inKansas City and the Galleria Borghese, the work displaysgreater similarity in compositional structure and the han-dling of space to the Giustiniani Love Triumphant, withthe saint’s naked body, barely covered by the sheepskin,standing out against a dark background that sets off the al-most pearly white skin and the taut posture of a bodyready to spring into action.In general terms, Valentin’s paintings of this period belongto the last phase of Caravaggism and represent the lastremnants of the phenomenon of imitation that beganabout thirty years earlier and perhaps came to an endwith the last, illustrious major commission for altarpiecesfor Saint Peter’s assigned to three Caravaggesque painters:the Saint Wenceslas (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum;fig. 85; the work on show is the sketch now in PalazzoBraschi, Museo di Roma) painted by Angelo Carosellibetween 1627 and 1631, the Martyrdom of Saints Mar-tinian and Processus (Vatican Gallery; fig. 86) painted byValentin in 1629, and the Miracle of Saint Valeria beforeSaint Martial (Rome, Saint Peter’s, sacristy) painted bySpadarino in 1629–32 (fig. 87). 28

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o more relevant stylistic comparisons and, last but not least,new scientific investigations.Another interesting work on show is Simon Vouet’s TwoLovers from the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Long be-lieved to have been lost and known through an engravingby Claude Vignon dated 1618,176 this fascinating and sen-sual early work of the great French painter resurfaced in1990, when it was published by Victoria Markova, andwas exhibited for the first time in an exhibition on theartist’s early years held in Nantes.177 Direct comparisonwith the Pallavicini version of same subject178 (figs. 71, 72)confirmed that the Roman canvas is a copy but of suchhigh quality to suggest an artist close to Vouet but char-acterized by greater rigidity and less pictorial subtlety.One possibility is Vignon, the author of above-mentionedengraving, whose friendship with Vouet could have af-forded him an opportunity to copy the painting. As itwas the case for the Two Lovers, there are also two ver-sions of the Palazzo Barberini Fortune Teller, Vouet’s firstknown work painted in Rome. The second, which is in theGalleria Palatina, Florence (figs. 73, 74), was regardedas the original for decades and demoted to the rank of acopy in the 1990s.179 The existence of two versions, simi-lar in quality and size, of Vouet’s first two Roman workscan hardly be a coincidence and may perhaps be con-nected with a practice used by studios to preserve a recordof the original works produced. A similar system appearsto have operated in Baglione’s studio, even though thecopies are usually smaller in this case.180

The existence of “duplicates” of very different works pro-vides further confirmation, if any was needed, that thecomplex question of studio copies and/or replicas is stillfar from settled and requires deep and serious investiga-tion. The third decade: changes and the waning of CaravaggismThe year 1621, when the Bolognese Alessandro Ludovisibecame Pope Gregory XV (1621–1623), was marked by aseries of events heralding imminent if not actually imme-diate change on the art scene. On the Caravaggesquefront, the departures of Orazio Gentileschi for Genoa(1621), Claude Vignon for Paris (1621–22), Jan Janssensfor Ghent (1621) and Theodoor Rombouts for Florence(1621) were only partially compensated by the arrival orpresence of Jacob van Oost (c. 1621) and Jan van Bijlert(1621). The leading Caravaggesque painters of the firstand second decades disappeared from Rome in the shortspace of a few years. Borgianni died in 1616. Saracenireturned to Venice in 1619 and died there in 1620. Hon-thorst returned to Holland in 1620 and Bartolomeo Man-fredi, the primary point of reference of the second gener-ation, died in 1622. In the same years, thanks to the election of Gregory XV,the Bolognese painters won greater space as well as officialappointments and commissions.181 The brief Ludovisi pa-

pacy constitutes an important point of transition betweenthe coexistence of various styles under the Borghese reignand the cultural homogeneity for propaganda purposesthat was to be imposed under Urban VIII. With his clearunderstanding of the importance of art and patronageoriented towards political ends, Gregory soon allocatedhuge resources to the purchasing of art works. Throughcardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, the family built up an enor-mous collection of sculptures and paintings, most of whichwere received as gifts from candidates for important po-sitions.In 1621, after the death of cardinal Aldobrandini, hisfamily sought to consolidate relations with the Ludovisithrough the gift of some paintings by Titian, including thecelebrated Bacchanals, transported from Ferrara in 1598,incorporated into the collection of Ludovico Ludovisi,and visible at his villa in the Gardens of Sallust.182 As al-ready pointed out, the display of these masterpieces mayhave prompted the painters in the classical style to con-tinue along their path, opening up new horizons butabove all introducing Rome to glowing Venetian colour,which was to become an increasingly constant feature inpainting.Lanfranco’s work for the Barberini family, for example,probably coincided with his allegiance to the “neo-Venet-ian school” born under the influence of the Bacchanalsand involving a number of Roman painters in that peri-od.183 A renewed form of classicism characterized by afresh and luminous style and free in certain respects fromthe heavy burden of archaeological knowledge thus cameto spread along different paths, sometimes confused orbarely traced but in any case diversified, in the complexvariety of approaches that characterizes Roman painting inthe third decade of the seventeenth century.In those years, the alternation of pictorial personalities andimportant works provided young artists with attractivetargets to aim at. The major commissions carried out in-clude in particular the decoration of Sant’Andrea dellaValle, the most important Roman church after Saint Pe-ter’s, where Domenichino worked on the spandrels(1622–27) and Lanfranco on the dome (1625–28); thedecoration of the Sacchetti Chapel in San Giovanni deiFiorentini (1622–24), again by Lanfranco (fig. 75); and thelarge Glory of Saint Chrysogonus (1622; now in LancasterHouse, London) painted for Scipione Borghese on theceiling of the church of San Crisogono in Trastevere byGuercino (fig. 76). The latter, who arrived in Rome fromCento in 1621, was involved in various works for the Lu-dovisi, including the above-mentioned ceiling of the Roomof Countries (1621) together with Paul Bril, GiovanniBattista Viola and Domenichino, and the frescoes of Au-rora and Fame on the ceiling of the casino dell’Aurorawith Agostino Tassi, who painted the architectural settings(1621). More modern approaches gathered momentum in

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ed around the end of the second decade and the begin-ning of the third, and formerly in the collection of Agosti-no Chigi in Siena. Here the divine figure appears all toosedate, almost paralyzed and frozen in its movements,above all by comparison with Caravaggio’s impudent mas-terpiece. The large amount of space devoted to the still lifecould be explained, instead, by Petrazzi’s penchant for thisgenre,197 which characterizes his best works in the sameperiod.198

The Tuscan painters’ adoption of Caravaggism thereforeappears to have been constantly characterized from theoutset by an alternation of marked resistance and deep re-sponsiveness in which their interest in naturalism devel-oped gradually with moderation and certainly in step withthe evolution of taste. The fact that enthusiasm for this ap-proach reached its peak in Tuscany at the very momentwhen its decline began in Rome accounts for the fact thatthe Tuscan painters of the third decade often became themost faithful practitioners of naturalism and ensured itscontinued existence. Further clarification is still requiredfor the particular inclination towards Caravaggism mani-fested by Siena in the work of the local painters FrancescoRustici and Rutilio Manetti. This may be connected on theone hand with the arrival of canvases by Caravaggio,Manfredi and Honthorst at the grand ducal court in Flo-rence in the first and second decades,199 and on the otherto Giulio Mancini’s links with Siena, his hometown, whichled, as is known, to the shipping of numerous Car-avaggesque works from Rome with a significant impact onthe local painting.200

Francesco Rustici’s adoption of the Caravaggesque styleappears to have been mediated through the formal char-acteristics and handling of light developed by Honthorst,whose paintings were greeted with great admiration andinterest on their arrival at the grand ducal court at the endof the second decade.201 This influence is confirmed by thenumerous works set in interiors and lit by candles ortorches. In the Death of Lucretia (Florence, Uffizi), onshow here, the candlelight makes the faces of the figuresshiny, almost wax-like, and helps to create an atmosphereof restrained drama, as in a theatrical scene, where theflickering glow is like a spotlight aimed at the action onstage. Gentle and emotional at the same time, this type ofpainting must have enjoyed a certain degree of successwith patrons to judge by the series of prestigious com-missions obtained, also for the Borghese family (theBorghese Saint Sebastian; fig. 96). On Rustici’s death in1626, his role was taken over in the art-historical panora-ma of Tuscany and Siena in particular by Rutilio Manetti,who had developed a naturalistic approach and handlingof light together with Rustici during the second decade, al-beit with differences of experience and vocabulary. In hisSaint Jerome Comforted by Angels (Siena, Monte deiPaschi di Siena Collection, on show here), signed and

dated 1628, Manetti shows little deference in his depictionof the saint’s old and weary body, deftly sculpted by lightand shadow. Slumped in the arms of the angels, the figureof Jerome recalls Caravaggio’s model in the GalleriaBorghese (1605) in the position of the head and the knit-ted brow as well as the semantic significance of the light.Adopting the most sophisticated aspects of the Manfredi-ana Methodus, the painting of Pietro Paolini from Lucca(1603–1681) is represented by the previously unpublishedSinger from the Accademia di Santa Cecilia,202 dated in the1620s, when the artist was still serving his apprenticeshipto Angelo Caroselli (1623–26/7). The only elementspicked out by light in the almost all enveloping darknessare the young man’s face and wide-open mouth, his handsand the musical score. The material of his clothing and thefeather in his cap, both of the same colour, can just bemade out. Turning towards the right as though in re-sponse to a call, the figure’s attention is focused else-where while he goes on singing, an attitude also found inother subjects depicted by Paolini. The fact that he didnot confine himself to attaining familiarity with Car-avaggesque naturalism through figure paintings in Carosel-li’s studio but devoted himself also to still life is now firm-ly established and confirmed not only by the presence ofobjects, flowers and fruit in his canvases but also by paint-ings in which these are the primary subject. Caravaggiohad already asserted that it was just as much work forhim to produce a good painting of flowers as one of fig-ures,203 and the genre evidently proved particularly con-genial to Paolini, who is highly rated by critics today inthis field.204

While linked to the Manfrediana Methodus in terms ofsubject matter, including musicians, gamblers and tavernscenes in general but also some religious episodes, thepaintings of Rombouts, Régnier and Tournier appears tohave attained a certain degree of autonomy and versatili-ty in stylistic terms. Enjoying close relations with influen-tial patrons well informed about the latest developments,they appear to have adopted Caravaggism consciouslyand in some respects on a limited basis. The arrival of Theodor Rombouts (1597–1637) in Italy,perhaps around 1616205 but not documented in Romeuntil 1620,206 enabled him to link up with the Car-avaggesque painters of the second generation and to par-ticipate fully in the pictorial and stylistic debate and in themost spontaneous experimentation with the master’s ex-traordinary legacy. While the Manfrediana Methodus wasbecoming established, Rombouts embarked on the pro-duction of canvases in which all the attention is focused onthe expressive power of the figures, generally composedand elegant, never forward. The Palazzo Corsini Concert(c. 1625, on show here), the object of debate in the past asregards attribution and differing from the master’s modelsalso in its far smaller format, stands out by virtue of its30

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o “Updated” Caravaggesque works were not totally ex-cluded from the public commissions of the third decade,as shown by Giovanni Serodine’s lost canvases for thechurches of San Pietro in Montorio (The ArchangelMichael and Lucifer, 1626) and San Salvatore in Lauro(The Transfiguration of Christ, 1627) and those for thechurch of San Lorenzo fuori le mura: the Beheading ofJohn the Baptist and Saint Lawrence Distributing Alms(1625–26; fig. 90). The artist also produced works forprivate patrons, like those commissioned by AsdrubaleMattei in 1625–26 (figs. 81, 82, 83). Serodine’s highlypersonal interpretation revitalized the Caravaggesque vo-cabulary at the very moment when it appeared to havereached a dead end. With his vigorous return to natural-ism, the artist, who originally trained as a stonemason,was the creator of a highly original style blending colourand light to shape bodies and objects capable of bringingthe events depicted to life. Apart from a vague reference tothe Lateran Canons, it is still uncertain who commis-sioned the Saint Lawrence Distributing Alms on showhere (now in the museum of the abbey of Casamari).188

The only suggestion put forward hinges on the fact thatSan Lorenzo was the titular church of cardinal FrancescoBoncompagni at the time (1625–26), but there is no fur-ther evidence to clarify matters. The canvas bears thepainter’s signature on the edge of the jug in the left corner,the side from which the shaft of light comes that strikesthe saint on the shoulders and goes on to pick out merci-lessly the deformed legs and ragged clothes of the beggarin the foreground and the humble but dignified faces ofthe other two, all gazing intently on the precious objectproffered by the saint. Attention is thus focused on the ac-tions being performed, presented to the viewer through apainful form of spirituality accentuated by the bare settingmade homogeneous by the use of dark hues. This wasthe starting point of an expressive trajectory that was tolead to a dissolution of volumes similar to what was de-veloped by Caravaggio in his last years, even though Sero-dine appears to have had no direct knowledge of thoseworks. The result is in any case a highly original interpre-tation far removed from the customary modules of theManfrediana Methodus.There may be a connection between the clearly Car-avaggesque character of the canvases for the Mattei galleryand a contingent event, namely the election of two natu-ralistic artists to the leading position in the Academy ofSaint Luke. Antiveduto Gramatica was invested as principein 1624 but then replaced almost immediately,189 in theJune of the same year, by Simon Vouet, who contributedto the dissemination in Rome of a new brand of natural-ism. Less violent and purged of all coarseness, the newpainting appears to have aimed from the outset at the el-evation of the more realistic aspects through fusion withelements derived from the classicism of the Bolognese

school and the early Baroque style of Lanfranco. This in-terpretation proved particularly congenial to the Frenchand Tuscan artists, and served to delay the definitiveeclipse of naturalism for a few years.The paintings best exemplifying the characteristics of thisparticular mutation of Caravaggism are those by Tuscanartists, such as the altarpiece of the The Four HolyCrowned Ones (fig. 94), now attributed to Orazio Rimi-naldi,190 on the basis of stylistic comparison191 with theGalleria Palatina Love Triumphant (fig. 95) dated in thesecond half of the 1620s. Produced for the Confraternity of Stonemasons, whosepatron was cardinal Mellini, the work was designed toadorn the altar of the oratory of the Santi Quattro Coro-nati in the church of Sant’Andrea in Vincis.192 Riminaldiaddresses the dramatic subject of the saints awaiting tor-ture and death in a highly original composition with acentral fulcrum probably derived from classical sculp-ture. In the same period his Love Triumphant appears tobe far more strongly influenced by Vouet despite the Car-avaggesque subject, and the transparency of the gleaminglight on the god’s body leave very few doubts as to theoriginal source.193 It is probable that Riminaldi, workingon two fronts, modernized some aspects of his work with-out abandoning others. Overall examination of his workdoes indeed reveal a composite culture made up of closeconsideration of contemporary painting but also ancientstatuary. Riminaldi’s participation in the meeting held byVouet in 1624194 prompts reflection not only on the degreeof influence exercised on the former by the latter but alsoon the general environment. As has been suggested,195 it ispossible that the meeting was held to prepare for Vouet totake over from Gramatica at the head of the Academy ofSaint Luke, not least because when that happened, on20 October 1624, Riminaldi was appointed to serve asone of the censori, a body made up of the academy’s mostimportant members to which the principe himself was ac-countable.196 In view of this, it appears clear that the re-lations between the two probably went beyond the sphereof work to encompass a sort of allegiance on the part ofOrazio to the French community and a shared vision as re-gards matters of art and painting.In the case of Riminaldi’s Love Triumphant (c. 1624; fig.95), it is important to point out the extent to which hisversion of Caravaggio’s renowned painting became a pointof reference in the work of many Italian artists, who ap-pear to have appreciated its moderate emotional impactand the decision to eliminate the display of the genitalsand the laughter. In this milder variation on the theme, thegod’s pose is intimate but composed, a far cry from the ev-ident erotic allusions characterizing the Giustiniani canvas.Astolfo Petrazzi from Siena also appears to follow Rimi-naldi’s example in his Love Triumphant (Rome, Galleriad’Arte Antica in Palazzo Barberini; on show here), paint-

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most transforming the metaphorical image into a ple-beian vision. The virile humanity and powerful realisticimpact of the two male nudes in the foreground, one ofwhich with an incredibly hairy chest, and the deft handlingof technique honed through long, direct study of Car-avaggio’s works all demonstrate that it was precisely theFrench painter that best understood and assimilated themaster’s authentic message and was his true heir.Valentin was presented to cardinal Barberini by Cassianodal Pozzo, who may have noted him as one of the paintersassociated with cardinal Del Monte, to whom the Frenchartist gave a unfortunately lost portrait.212 The relations be-tween Valentin and dal Pozzo must in any case have be-come very close over the years, perhaps to the point of sin-cere friendship, as the artist’s biographers report thatwhen he died dramatically in poverty as the result ofdrinking, it was the Roman scholar who stepped in and or-ganized his burial.213

The Allegory of Italy ends the third decade and the cre-ative trajectory of Roman Caravaggism. It was in 1630, justoutside our period, that the Dutch artist Matthias Stomer(1600–after1650) arrived in Rome with his original inter-pretation of naturalism mediated essentially by Honthorst.The space in Rome was, however, too restricted by thenand Stomer was soon forced to head south to Sicily, whereconsiderable success awaited him. The extraordinarypainter Mattia Preti (1613–1699) from Calabria, who mayhave been in Rome as early as 1624, got the message im-mediately and used his truly exceptional stylistic and qual-itative gifts to develop a splendid and intelligent synthesisof naturalism, Baroque and classicism in his early worksduring the fourth decade. This winning combinationearned him highly profitable commissions and a greatreputation in Rome, Modena, Naples and Malta, where hedied at a ripe old age at the end of the century. One of the very few artists involved in the final throes of adying movement during the 1630s was Trophime Bigotfrom Arles, whose presence in Rome is documented in thethird decade.214 Between 1630 and 1634, the year of his re-turn to France,215 he painted the altarpiece of the Adora-tion of the Magi (fig. 98) for the church of San Marco inRome, a stylistically hybrid work that displays the influ-ence of Saraceni, Manfredi and Tournier. Bigot’s name isclosely connected with to the last great problem of RomanCaravaggism, namely the attribution of the three canvasesof the Chapel of the Passion in Santa Maria in Aquiro, thePietà over the altar and the Flagellation and Crowningwith Thorns on either side (figs. 99–101).The three works are part of the decoration of the chapelcommissioned by Marco Antonio Pizzichetti of Rome,an oil merchant in Piazza Capranica, in his will of 25 Oc-tober 1629 in place of the work initially planned for San-ta Maria in Traspontina. The chapel in Santa Maria inAquiro was, however, not granted to him until 1633, and

he was already dead when the work began. The accountsof the Pizzichetti estate, kept by the executor FrancescoGiordano, another oil merchant, list the payments tocraftsmen involved in the undertaking between 1633 and1635 but only two painters are mentioned namely Gio-vanni Battista Speranza, who frescoed the ceiling, and acertain “Maestro Jacomo” for the “picture to be painted inthe chapel”. The documents provide precise details ofthe work to be carried out but make no mention of theother two paintings and say nothing about the iconogra-phy of the painting for which “Maestro Jacomo” receivedpayments in 1634–35, which makes it impossible to tellwhich of the three it was. It is commonly believed to havebeen the Pietà, specifically attributed to a certain “Ja-cobbe” by Fioravante Martinelli in his guide to Rome of1660–63.216 The paintings are finally mentioned specifi-cally in terms of number but not of subject matter on 14June 1635 in a payment to the carpenter Antonio Lusoriofor gilded frames, which indicates that all three paintingswere completed by that date and ready for insertion intothe decoration of the chapel.217

The modest quality of the Pietà has prompted scholars towonder about the actual personality of “Maestro Jaco-mo” and his possible authorship of the three paintings,which display divergent stylistic characteristics within thesame Caravaggesque framework. The different hypothesis put forward for the three paint-ings by the scholars who have addressed the question218

can be summarized as follows. First, they are the work ofthe same painter, namely “Maestro Jacomo”, whose trueidentity is still unknown. Second, they are by three dif-ferent artists. Third, they are by two painters, one whoproduced the Pietà and the Flagellation (or the Crowningwith Thorns) and the other the Crowning with Thorns(or the Flagellation). Other suggestions put forward arethat the two paintings not mentioned in the paymentsmay have originally belonged to the Chapel of the Passionin Santa Maria in Aquiro, or that they may have arrivedthere from elsewhere, or else that they may have beencommissioned by the executor when the work was al-ready underway or even much earlier by Pizzichetti him-self, at least in the case of the Crowning with Thorns,which is regarded in the latest studies as the work ofTrophime Bigot. The three canvases in the Chapel of the Passion in SantaMaria in Aquiro are in any case connected with the cata-logue of the “Candlelight Master” and the different viewsput forward by scholars as to the possible identification ofthis anonymous painter apply also to them, jointly or sev-erally. The highly complex and fascinating question ofattribution in this case is one well worth outlining brieflyhere. The “Candlelight Master” proposed by BenedictNicolson as the author of a group of paintings and re-garded as a follower of Honthorst in Rome has been split32

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o originality in terms not so much of subject matter as ofcomposition and the handling of light, where the well-known boldness and lack of decorum characterizing thefaces painted by other Flemish artists give way to bal-ance and moderation. The painter’s Catholic upbringingmay have played some part in this,207 and indeed probablya crucial one in view of his frequent choice of moralisticsubject matter. So similar in approach to Manfredi as to be mistaken forhim quite often, Nicolas Tournier (1590–1639) also arrivedin Rome during the second decade and is recorded inthe parish registers as from 1619, when he was 29 yearsold. While little or nothing is known about his activity pri-or to this date, the artist can hardly have begun his careerat such a late age, to judge above all from the first paint-ings commonly regarded as his. Heavily indebted to Man-fredi’s works, his oeuvre suggests that he may have arrivedin Italy long before the date known to us. The YoungMan with a Glass from the Galleria Museo e MedagliereEstense in Modena, has a very interesting history in termsof attribution. It appears together with its pendant,Drinker with a Flask, as the work of Bartolomeo Manfre-di in the inventory of cardinal Alessandro d’Este of 1624,barely two years after Manfredi’s death. This detail is byno means negligible and it appears almost impossible thatthe compiler would have made such a mistake. At thesame time, however, the two paintings bear little resem-blance to Manfredi’s work and a great deal to that ofTournier, who went on to produce canvases of great psy-chological intensity such as the Dice Players of Atting-ham Park (fig. 97), discovered by Nicolson only in 1967,the first absolute masterpiece painted by the artist in hisRoman period. What was to become a complex question of attributionover the years began at the end of third decade, around1628. We refer to the altarpiece of Saint Peter NolascoBorne by Angels, originally in the now demolished churchof Sant’Adriano al Foro Romano and now in the CasaGeneralizia or headquarters of the Mercedarian order, towhich it belonged.208 Work on decorating the church be-gan early in the second decade, when altarpieces werecommissioned from leading naturalistic painters active inRome, such as Carlo Saraceni (the Preaching of Saint Ray-mond Nonnato) and Orazio Borgianni (Saint Charles Bor-romeo Visiting Victims of the Plague). It is know that thefirst chapel in the right aisle was dedicated to Saint PeterNolasco, founder of the Mercedarian order, and that itspatron was Sante Ghetti. The latter may also have been re-sponsible of the choice of the artist, but his insolvency andinability to provide an altarpiece may have led to the taskbeing taken over by Luis Aparicio, Procurator of the Or-der. While the somewhat summary nature of the executionhas suggested the involvement of two different hands,one for the figures in the foreground and the other for the

buildings in the background, the intention was clearly toensure stylistic harmony with the earlier works by Saraceniand Borgianni, as shown by the abundance of naturalisticelements in the composition. The names put forward in-clude Guercino, Saraceni himself and Emilio Savonanzi,the latter also recently209 in virtue of the work’s classicalvein and its strong similarities with his Saint Cyriaca in SanLorenzo fuori le mura. Another intriguing but unlikely at-tribution is to Spadarino,210 but for the moment, in the ab-sence of further evidence, this remains no more than asuggestion. A solution may be provided by investigation ofthe commission in greater depth. A number of artists with apparently more tangential rela-tions to Caravaggio’s legacy during the third decade some-times picked up original characteristics of it, albeit from aneccentric viewpoint. One example is the mysterious Mas-ter of Serrone, who takes his name from the small town inUmbria where he left his surprising masterpiece in thechurch of Santa Maria Assunta, its original location. Com-pletely devoid of documentation or literature, the can-vas was probably painted between 1617, when the churchwas built, and 1628, when the altar of Saint Joseph is de-scribed as bearing an image of the saint. Bruno Toscanosuggests on the basis of an acute analysis of the paintingand its austere religious sentiment, differing greatly fromthe Mediterranean style, that it is a product of the northEuropean cultural area. The Caravaggesque elements arereworked here in the openly archaic overtones of northerncharacter that pervade the scene in a timeless atmospherethat is simultaneously domestic and holy. It may be no co-incidence that the anonymous author was initially identi-fied as a figure of the stature of Georges de La Tour, oneof the painters most deeply and originally influenced byCaravaggio. A stay in Italy would appear an indispensableprerequisite of his training, but there is as yet no evi-dence whatsoever of this. The proposal, hindered by thelack of documentary confirmation, prompted Toscano211

to draw attention to significant stylistic and composition-al similarities to the Holy Family with the Family of Johnthe Baptist (private collection) by the Master of Resina.For the moment, the author of this magnificent and dis-turbing painting remains shrouded in mystery. The exhibition ends with the celebrated Allegory of Italy(Finnish Institute of Rome) painted by Valentin deBoulogne for cardinal Francesco Barberini between 1627and 1628, an authentic “audition” required of the Frenchpainter by the papal family with a view to the importantcommission for Saint Peter’s. The stirring and powerfulcanvas, epitomizing the process that was to lead Valentintowards more markedly classical works, displays a more vi-brantly naturalistic approach alongside shades of classicallyricism and clearly Baroque elements. We are struck bythe painter’s skill in combining certain aspects of the Car-avaggesque vocabulary with allegorical themes and al-

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o up by some scholars into two or three distinct anony-mous artists or tentatively identified in different ways onthe basis of documents and other evidence. Accordingto some scholars,219 the works of higher quality, like theCrowning with Thorns or Mocking of Christ, are the workof the “Candlelight Master”. Some identify this anony-mous artist as Bigot and some as “Maestro Jacomo”,220

while others suggest that “Maestro Jacomo” worked inclose connection with the “Candlelight Master” but pos-sessed less skill in terms of style and compositional or-chestration.221

Some authoritative scholars rule out the possibility ofBigot’s involvement in the Chapel of the Passion of SantaMaria in Aquiro, whereas Wolfgang Prohaska and othersregard him as the author of the Crowning with Thorns andidentify him as the “Candlelight Master”, whose Romancanvases are of higher quality than the known works pro-duced by Bigot after his return to Provence in 1635.222

The three canvases of Santa Maria in Aquiro are thus thecentral nucleus of the “Bigot / Trufamonti / CandlelightMaster” group and their art-critical history is anythingbut over. The fascinating question of attribution, the lastmystery of late Roman Caravaggism, will certainly receivemarked stimulus from the restoration of the works nowunderway together with the reappraisal of archival docu-mentation and the literary sources as well as the viewsformulated by scholars.

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48 Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry II. 6, edited by A.Zuccari, pp. 38–9.49 G. Roisecco, Roma antica, emoderna o sia Nuova descrizionedella moderna città di Roma, e ditutti gli edifizj notabili, che sono inessa, e delle cose più celebri, cheerano nella antica Roma: con leautorità del Cardinal Baronio,... e dialtri classici autori...; abbellita con200, e più figure in rame, con curiosenotizie istoriche, e con la cronologiadi tutti li sommi pontefici; accresciutain questa nuova ed. di un terzo tomodove si tratta di tutti li riti, guerrepiù considerabili, e famiglie piùcospicue degli antichi romani, 3 vols.(Rome: Gregorio Roisecco, 1745),vol. I, p. 178; F. Titi, Stvdio diPittvra, Scoltvra, Et Architettvra,Nelle Chiese di Roma Nel quale si hànotitia di tutti gl’Artefici, che hannoqui operato (Rome: Mancini, 1674),p. 85.50 Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry II. 6, edited by A.Zuccari, pp. 38–9.51 For Lanfranco’s altarpiece, seeCaravaggio’s Rome… , op. cit.,catalogue entry II. 7, edited by B.Ghelfi, pp. 40–1.52 Ibidem. For the influence of Cor-reggio, which remained strong longafter Lanfranco’s arrival in Rome,see most recently Giovanni Lan-franco. Un pittore barocco fra Parma,Roma e Napoli, exh. cat. (Parma,Reggia di Colorno, 8 September – 2December 2001; Naples, CastelSant’Elmo, 21 December 2001 – 24February 2002; Rome, PalazzoVenezia, 16 March – 16 June 2002),catalogue entry by E. Schleier(Electa: Milan 2001), pp. 158–59,with previous bibliography.53 Cf. Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry II. 8, edited by P.Castellani, pp. 42–3.54 Ibidem. For the set of threealtarpieces, see R. Carloni, “Unartista bolognese in relazione colSacchi: Emilio Savonanzi”, inAndrea Sacchi, 1599-1661, exh. cat.(Nettuno, Forte Sangallo 20November 1999 – 16 January2000), edited by R. BarbielliniAmidei (Rome: De Luca Editorid’Arte, 1999), pp. 40–3.55 R. Carloni, op. cit., pp. 40–3.56 Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry III. 9 edited by B.Ghelfi, pp. 84–5.57 M. Gregori, “I pittori fiorentinitra Venezia, Parma e Roma”, inStoria delle arti in Toscana. IlSeicento, edited by M. Gregori

(Florence: Edifir Edizioni, 2001),pp. 9–20.58 M. Gregori, “I pittorifiorentini…”, op. cit., pp. 9–20.59 G. Mancini, op. cit., vol. I, p. 262;G. B. Passeri, op. cit., pp. 50–2.60 S. Prosperi Valenti Rodinò,“Baccio Ciarpi”, in DizionarioBiografico degli Italiani (Rome:Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana[Treccani], 1981), vol. 25, pp.218–25.61 Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry III. 15, edited by F.Gasparrini, pp. 98–9.62 Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry III. 11, edited byM. Pupillo, pp. 88–9.63 Attributed to Niccolò Circignaniby Adolfo Venturi in 1893, thepainting was definitely identified asthe work of Crisoforo Roncalli byHermann Voss (“CaravaggioFruhzeit. Beitrage zur kritik seinerwerke un seiner entwicklung”, inJahrbuch der preuszischen Kunst-sammlungen, 44, (1920), pp. 73–98).64 G. Mancini, op. cit., vol. I, p. 236.65 The painting is little known be-cause it is on loan to the Italian Em-bassy in Madrid and therefore can-not be seen. Cf. Caravaggio’sRome…, op. cit., catalogue entry III.10, edited by F. Gasparrini, pp.86–7.66 C. Baronio, MartyrologiumRomanum, cum NotationibusCaesaris Baronii (Romae: 1586 infol.); C. Baronio, AnnalesEcclesiastici (Romae: 1588–1607),12 vols.67 The titular church assigned tohim by Clement VIII in 1596.68 Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry II. 11, edited by M.Pupillo, pp. 48–9.69 Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry II. 17, edited by A.Lo Bianco, pp. 60–1.70 See the study by S. ProsperiValenti Rodinò in this catalogue.71 Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry II. 15, edited by A.Amendola, pp. 56–7.72 G. B. Cardi, Vita di LodovicoCardi Cigoli: 1559 – 1613, (1628),edited by G. Battelli (Florence:Barbèra, 1913); F. Baldinucci,Notizie dei professori del disegno daCimabue in qua: opera... distinta insecoli e decennali, con nuoveannotazioni e supplementi per curadi F. Ranalli (Florence: Batelli,1681–1728), ed. 1845–47, 5 vols.,vol. III (1846), pp. 266–7, 685.73 R. Barbiellini Amidei, “Ancora a

palazzo Massimo: io MichelangeloMerisi da Caravaggio”, in Art edossier, 18, 1987, pp. 14–5.74 M. Gregori, Michelangelo Merisida Caravaggio: come nascono icapolavori, exh. cat. (FlorencePalazzo Pitti, 12 December 1991 –15 March 1992; Rome, PalazzoRuspoli, 26 March –24 April 1992)(Milan: Electa, 1991), pp. 248–9.75 Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry III. 13, edited byA. Calabresi, pp. 94–5.76 Ibidem.77 G. Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellentipittori, scultori e architettori: con iritratti loro et con l’aggiunta delleVite de’ vivi & de’ morti dall’anno1550 insino al 1567; con le tavolein ciascun volume, delle cose piùnotabili de’ ritratti, delle vite degliartefici, et dei luoghi dove sonol’opere loro (1568), 9 vols.(Florence: Milanesi, ed. 1878–85),vol V, pp. 531–32.78 M. Calvesi, Le realtà delCaravaggio (Turin, Einaudi, 1990),pp. 45–7.79 M. Calvesi: “Caravaggio: idocumenti e dell’altro”, in Storiadell’Arte, 128, (2011), pp. 31–44,and Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry VI. 1, edited by M.Calvesi, pp. 102–05.80 C. Strinati, “Quesiticaravaggeschi”, in Caravaggio aRoma. Una vita dal vero, op. cit.,pp. 26 ff.81 In Palazzo Venezia, Rome, on 20February 2012.82 S. Danesi Squarzina, oral com-munication at the round table of 20February 2012.83 G. Mancini, op. cit., vol. I, p. 108.84 For broader discussion of thisquestion, see A. Zuccari, “Ilcaravaggismo a Roma. Certezze eipotesi”, in I Caravaggeschi. Percorsie protagonisti, conception and sci-entific direction by C. Strinati, A.Zuccari, edited by A. Zuccari, 2vols. (Milan: Skira, 2010), vol. I, pp.31–60.85 Cf. R. Vodret, Alla ricerca…, op.cit., pp. 356, 426.86 Cf. Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry VI. 4, edited by M.Francucci, pp. 148–49.87 By Carla Mariani, 2010.88 Cf. R. Vodret, Alla ricerca…, op.cit., p. 456.89 For Orazio Borgianni, see G.Papi, Orazio Borgianni (Soncino:Edizioni dei Soncino, 1993) and themore recent studies: M. Gallo,Orazio Borgianni: pittore romano(1574-1616) e Francisco de Castro,

Conte di Castro (Rome: UNI, 1997);M. Gallo, “Vita e opere di OrazioBorgianni (1574-1616)”, in Studi distoria dell’arte, iconografia eiconologia: la biblioteca del curioso,edited by M. Gallo (Rome:Gangemi Editore, 2007), pp.245–61; A. Vannugli, La collezionedel segretario Juan de Lezcano:Borgianni, Caravaggio, Reni e altrinella quadreria di un funzionariospagnolo nell’Italia del primoSeicento (Rome: Bardi Editore,2009).90 Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry V. 2, edited by M.Gallo, pp. 114–17.91 Ibidem.92 G. Baglione, op. cit., vol. I, p. 143.For discussion of this phrase, seeCaravaggio’s Rome… , op. cit.,catalogue entry VI. 7, edited by M.Gallo, pp. 156–59.93 Ibidem.94 Cf. R. Vodret, Alla ricerca…, op.cit., p. 356. The first documentrefers to the baptism of Maíno’s sonFrancesco in San Lorenzo in Lucinaon 17 October 1605, which un-questionably establishes the Spanishpainter’s presence in Rome at thatearly date. As the document states,Maíno was not married to themother, Ana de Bargas, perhapsfrom the area of Toledo, andFrancesco was therefore illegitimate.Nothing is known as yet about thegodparents Francisco Arias Picar-do and Isabella de Castiglione, butthe fact that both were Spanish sug-gests that the painter was not fullyintegrated into the Roman environ-ment.95 Cf. R. Vodret, Alla ricerca…, op.cit., p. 426. The records of theparish of San Lorenzo in Lucina for1607 indicate the presence in thehouse on Via Condotti owned bythe canon Luigi Ubiedo from Tole-do of a certain “Luisi pictore”, whoalso appears in the records at thesame address in 1609. Tristán isdocumented from 1613 in Toledo,where he became the city’s leadingartist after the death of El Greco in1614. The identification of “Luisipictore” as Luis Tristán is borne outby the fact that the painter was aguest of a priest from his hometownof Toledo, a natural and commonarrangement. Moreover, there is norecord of Tristán’s presence inSpain for those years.96 The second and third documentsregarding Juan Batista Maíno arefrom the records of the parish ofSant’Andrea delle Fratte for 1609

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o 1 G. Mancini, Considerazioni sullapittura (Ms. c. 1617–21), edited byA. Marucchi, commentary by L.Salerno (Rome: AccademiaNazionale dei Lincei, 1956–57).2 R. Vodret, Alla ricerca di“Ghiongrat”. Studi sui libriparrocchiali romani, 1600–1630(Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider,2011).3 For Annibale Carracci, in additionto D. Posner, Annibale Carracci: AStudy in the Reform of ItalianPainting around 1590 (New York:Phaidon, 1971), see S. GinzburgCarignani, Annibale Carracci aRoma: gli affreschi di PalazzoFarnese (Rome: Donzelli, 2000);Annibale Carracci, exh. cat.(Bologna, Museo CivicoArcheologico, 22 September 2006– 7 January 2007; Rome, CentroCulturale Internazionale Chiostrodel Bramante 25 January – 6 May2007) edited by D. Benati, E.Riccòmini (Milan: Electa, 2006); S.Ginzburg Carignani, La GalleriaFarnese: gli affreschi dei Carracci(Milan: Electa, 2008); C. Robertson,The Invention of Annibale Carracci(Cinisello Balsamo: SilvanaEditoriale, 2008).4 Cf. most recently Caravaggio’sRome 1600–1630. Works, exh. cat.(Rome, Museo Nazionale di PalazzoVenezia – Saloni Monumentali, 16November 2011 – 5 February2012), edited by R. Vodret (Skira,Milan 2012), catalogue entry I. 2,edited by B. Ghelfi, pp. 24–5.5 G. Baglione, Le Vite de’ pittoriscultori et architetti dal pontificatodi Gregorio XIII del 1572 in fino a’tempi di Papa Urbano Ottavo nel1642, Rome 1642 (anastaticreprint), edited by J. Hess, H.Röttgen, 3 vols. (Vatican City:Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana,1995), vol. I, p. 130.6 As is known, Baglione initiallyadopted elements of Caravaggio’sstyle but became his bitterest enemyafter insults received from the mas-ter and the ensuing trial in 1603.7 Cf. for example the Madonna andChild with St. Anne, Rome, GalleriaBorghese.8 Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry II. 2, edited by G.Serafinelli, p. 30.9 A. Morandotti, “Il ‘Sogno di SanGiuseppe’ di Giovanni Baglione”,in Giovanni Baglione un dipintoritrovato (Milan: Matteo LamperticoArte Antica e Moderna, 2009), pp.5–12, esp. p. 9; in Caravaggio’sRome…, op. cit., catalogue entry II.2, edited by G. Serafinelli, pp. 30-

31.10 The inscription “G. Baglione AD1600” appears in the centre of theshadow cast by the stone.11 The breach occurred in 1603 as aresult of the insulting remarks madeby Caravaggio and his friends toBaglione, the author of a much dis-cussed Resurrection for the Jesuitchurch in Rome. As is known,Baglione brought a successful ac-tion for libel against Caravaggio andhis associates.12 Cf. the study by S. Macioce inthis catalogue.13 The inscription “MC 1601” ap-pears on the half-open page of thebook at the bottom.14 The painting was bought by Lu-ciano Maranzi on its first appear-ance at a Christie’s auction in Romein 1952 and remained in his collec-tion until June 2008, when it reap-peared in an auction held byBloomsbury in Rome.15 Cf. the Bloomsbury auction cardfor 11 July 2008.16 ASR, Tribunale del Governatore,Processi del sec. XVII, vol. 28 bis,c. 385: “I know of no artist whoconsiders Giovanni Baglione a goodpainter”. Cf. M. Di Sivo, “Uominivalenti. Il processo di Baglionecontro Caravaggio”, in Caravaggio aRoma. Una vita dal vero, exh. cat.(Rome, Archivio di Stato di Roma,Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza, 11 February– 15 May 2011), edited by M. diSivo, O. Verdi (Rome: De LucaEditori d’Arte, 2011), pp. 90–108,esp. p. 103.17 M. Di Sivo, op. cit., pp. 90–108.18 Cf. the study by S. Macioce inthis catalogue.19 Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry VI. 3, edited by M.Nicolaci, pp. 144–47.20 Caravaggio en Cuba, exh. cat.(Cuba, Havana, Museo Nacional delas Bellas Artes, 23 September – 27November 2011), edited by R. Vo-dret, G. Leone (Rome: San-na&Delfini, 2011), catalogue entryby M. Nicolaci, p. 67.21 Caravaggio a Roma. Una vita dalvero, op. cit., catalogue entry by M.Nicolaci, p. 211.22 H. Röettgen, Il Cavalier GiuseppeCesari d’Arpino. Un grande pittorenello splendore della fama enell’incostanza della fortuna (Rome:Ugo Bozzi Editore, 2002), pp. 6,42, 87, 140, 227, 311 and no.70.23 R. Vodret, Alla ricerca…, op. cit.24 Cf. the study by R. Morselli inthis catalogue and R. Vodret, Allaricerca…, op. cit., ad indicem.25 Cf. most recently, R. Vodret, Alla

ricerca…, op. cit., ad indicem.26 L. Salerno, I dipinti del Guercino(Rome: Ugo Bozzi, 1988), pp.161–7; D. Mahon, Il Guercino:Giovanni Francesco Barbieri1591–1666, exh. cat. (Bologna,Museo Civico Archeologico; Cento,Pinacoteca Civica; Cento, SantaMaria del Rosario, 6 September –10 November 1991; FrankfurtSchirn-Kunsthalle, 3 December1991 – 9 February 1992) (Bologna,Nuova Alfa Editoriale, 1991), p.143; D. De Grazia, “Guercinodecoratore”, in Il Guercino, op. cit.,pp. XLVI–LI; and, most recentlyR. Vodret, Alla ricerca…, op. cit.27 R. E. Spear, Domenichino, 2 vols.(New Haven: Yale University Press,1982), vol. I, nos. 29, 53, 67, 82, 83.28 E. Ravaioli, “Pedagogia della virtùed esercizio apologetico: unaricostruzione storico-culturale perla committenza artistica di GiovanniAngelelli (1566-1623), senatorebolognese”, in Atti e memoriedell’Accademia Clementina, no.35–6, n.s., 1995–96, pp. 117–39; C.C. Malvasia, Felsina Pittrice. Vitede’ pittori bolognesi. Con aggiunte,correzioni e note inedite delmedesimo autore di GiampietroZanotti, 2 vols. (Bologna: Davico,1841–44), vol. I, pp. 117, 327, 398,327, 540; vol. II, pp. 22, 63, 343.29 See the study by R. Morselli inthis catalogue.30 R. Vodret, Alla ricerca…, op. cit.,p. 215; C. C. Malvasia, op. cit., I,pp. 318–19; C. Mazzetti diPietralata, “La casa di AnnibaleCarracci e dei suoi allievi in viaCondotti: una nota documentaria”,in Dal Razionalismo alRinascimento. Per i quarant’anni distudi di Silvia Danesi Squarzina,edited by M. G. Aurigemma(Rome: Campisano Editore, 2011),pp. 233–9. The scholar presents thedeed whereby Annibale took pos-session of the property on 6 May1606, signed by Solari andDomenichino as witnesses. Theowners were Isabella Molù andsomeone identified only as Bar-tolomeo Merisi.31 Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry II. 3, edited by B.Ghelfi, pp. 32–3.32 G. P. Bellori, Le vite de’ Pittori,Scultori et Architetti Moderni(Roma: 1672), edited by E. Borea(Turin: Einaudi, 1976), pp. 44 and105.33 F. Albani letter of 1658, cf. mostrecently Caravaggio’s Rome…, op.cit., catalogue entry II. 3, edited byB. Ghelfi, pp. 32–33.

34 Ibidem.35 Painted in oil on copper, thetabernacle has an ebony frame withgold fittings.36 D. Posner, op. cit., p. 54; A. Brogi,“Una pala, un disegno: AnnibaleCarracci e il cardinale Farnese”, inParagone, 43, (1992), 503, N.S., 31,pp. 45–9, esp. p. 49; A. Brogi,“Innocenzo Tacconi e l’officinaclassicista: un’ eredità dilapidata”, inParagone, 46, (1995), 539, N.S., 49,pp. 27–57, esp. p. 40.37 R. Vodret, entry in L. MochiOnori, R. Vodret, Palazzo Barberini.Capolavori della Galleria Nazionaled’Arte Antica (Rome: De LucaEditori d’Arte), 1998, pp. 63–4.38 H. Hibbard, “Notes on Reni’schronology”, in The BurlingtonMagazine, 107, (1965), pp. 503–04;S. Pepper, Guido Reni: a CompleteCatalogue of his Works with anIntroductory Text (Oxford:Phaidon, 1984); M. C. Terzaghi,Caravaggio, Annibale Carracci,Guido Reni, tra le ricevute del BancoHerrera & Costa (Rome: L’Erma diBretschneider, 2007), p. 315.39 C. C. Malvasia, op. cit., vol. II, p.15.40 Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry II. 4, edited by B.Ghelfi, pp. 34–5.41 The will was drawn up on 6 Au-gust 1606 when Costa was seriouslyill. On his recovery, he gave hisfriend Tritonio a copy of the SaintFrancis in Ecstasy, which is now inthe Musei Civici in Udine, whereasthe original is in the WadsworthAtheneum, Hartford. cf. M. C.Terzaghi, Caravaggio, AnnibaleCarracci, op. cit., pp. 78, 300–02.42 C. C. Malvasia, op. cit., vol. II,pp. 14–15.43 G.B. Passeri, Vite de’ pittori,scultori ed architetti che annolavorato in Roma, morti dal 1641fino al 1673 (Rome: Settari 1772),pp. 80–1.44 J. Hess, “Le fonti dell’arte diGuido Reni”, in Il comune diBologna, 3, (1934), pp. 25–33.45 M. Nicolaci, R. Gandolfi, “IlCaravaggio di Guido Reni: laNegazione di Pietro tra relazioniartistiche e operazioni finanziarie”,in Storia dell’Arte, 130, (2011), pp.41–64.46 For the question as a whole, seeM. Nicolaci, R. Gandolfi, op. cit.,p. 47.47 For the probable impact on artistsof the presence of the Denial ofSaint Peter in Rome at the begin-ning of the second decade, see M.Nicolaci, R. Gandolfi, op. cit.

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di San Biagio e la questione delsoffitto rotto”, in Caravaggio aRoma. Una vita dal vero, op. cit.,pp. 124–29; R. Vodret, M.Cardinale, M. B. De Ruggieri, “Unnuovo ritrovamento documentario eil problema della luce nello studiodi Caravaggio”, in Caravaggio aRoma. Una vita dal vero., op. cit.,pp. 130–6.124 D. Soggiu, “La casa diCaravaggio”, in Caravaggio a Roma.Una vita dal vero, op. cit., pp.117–23.125 G. Papi, “Ribera a Roma: larivelazione del genio”, op. cit., pp.31–59, esp. p. 37.126 G. Papi, “Ribera a Roma: larivelazione del genio”, op. cit., pp.31–59, esp. p. 37. See also R.Vodret, Alla ricerca…, op. cit., p.401.127 S. Danesi Squarzina, “Newdocuments on Ribera…”, op. cit.128 Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry IX. 3, edited by G.Papi, pp. 250–51.129 See most recently G. Papi,Ribera a Roma (Soncino, Edizionidei Soncino, 2007); N. Spinosa,Ribera. La obra completa (Madrid,Fundación Arte Hispánico, 2008).130 See the study by G. Papi in thiscatalogue.131 N. Spinosa, “Sul giovane Riberain mostra dal Prado aCapodimonte: rilievi, riflessioni ealtro ancora”, in Ribera tra Roma,Parma, op. cit., pp. 205–27.132 A. Zuccari, Il caravaggismo aRoma, op. cit., pp. 31–60.133 R. Longhi, “Ultimi studi sulCaravaggio e la sua cerchia”, inProporzioni, 1, (1943), p. 5–63; cf.Caravaggio’s Rome… , op. cit.,catalogue entry VII. 7, edited by G.Papi, pp. 196–97.134 M. C. Terzaghi, “Galanino aNapoli tra Annibale Carracci eCaravaggio”, in Napoli e l’Emilia:studi sulle relazioni artistiche,conference proceedings (SantaMaria Capua Vetere, 28–29 May2008), edited by Andrea Zezza(Naples, Luciano Editore, 2010),pp. 63–86.135 For this painting, now in a pri-vate collection in London, see Car-avaggio a Roma. Una vita dal vero,op. cit., catalogue entry by F. Papi,pp. 222–24.136 For a broader examination ofthis question, see C. Mazzetti diPietralata, “Prima e dopoCaravaggio. Appunti di ricerca peril contributo nordico”, inCaravaggio e l’Europa. L’artista, lastoria, la tecnica e la sua eredità,

conference proceedings (Milan, 3–4February 2006), edited by L.Spezzaferro (Cinisello Balsamo:Silvana Editoriale, 2009), pp.197–213; and more recently C.Mazzetti di Pietralata, Joachim vonSandrart (1606–1688): i disegni(Cinisello Balsamo: SilvanaEditoriale, 2011).137 For Manfredi, see K. Garas,“Unbekannte italienisce Gemaeldein Gotha Probleme un Bigot undManfredi”, in Acta historiae artiumAcademiae Scientiarum Hungaricae,26, 1980, pp. 265–83; M. Marini,“Equivoci del caravaggismo 2, A)Appunti sulla tecnica delnaturalismo secentesco, traCaravaggio e manfredianamethodus; B) Caravaggio e i suoidoppi. Il problema delle possibilicollaborazioni”, in Artibus etHistoriae, IV/8, 1983, pp. 119–54;G. Merlo, “Precisazioni sull’annodi nascita di Bartolomeo Manfredi”,in Paragone 435, (1986), pp. 42–6;Dopo Caravaggio. BartolomeoManfredi e la ManfredianaMethodus, exh. cat. (Cremona,Santa Maria della Pietà, 7 May – 7July 1988) (Milan: Mondadori,1987); R. Morselli, “BartolomeoManfredi and Pomarancio: SomeNew Documents”, in TheBurlington Magazine, 129, 1987, pp.666–68; R. Randolfi, “La vita diBartolomeo Manfredi neidocumenti romani e un’ipotesi sullasua formazione artistica”, in Storiadell’arte, 74, (1992), pp. 81–91; E.Parlato, “Manfredi’s Last Year inRome”, in The Burlington Magazine,1072, (1992), p. 442; M. Pulini, “UnManfredi alla luce del sole”, in Studidi storia dell’arte, 4, (1993), pp.303–13; R. Morselli, “BartolomeoManfredi (1582 – 1622); Sandrart, ilcollezionista olandese BalthasarCoymans e alcune nuove proposte”,in Antichità Viva, 32, (1993), pp.25–37; Michelangelo Merisi daCaravaggio e i suoi primi seguaci,exh. cat. (Thessaloniki, Kivernio,16 April – 15 June 1997), edited byM. Gregori ([n.p.]: Arti GraficheAa, 1997); M. Maccherini, “Novitàsu Bartolomeo Manfredi nelcarteggio familiare di GiulioMancini: lo ‘Sdegno di Marte’ e iquadri di Cosimo II granduca diToscana”, in Omaggio a FiorellaSricchia Santoro (Prospettiva [1999])(Florence: Centro Di, 1999), pp.131–41; G. Papi, Manfredi: laCattura di Cristo (Turin: Camedda,2004); and, finally N. Hartje,Bartolomeo Manfredi (1582 – 1622):ein Nachfolger Caravaggios und

seine Europaische Wirkung(Weimar: VDG, 2004). It shouldbe noted that Hartje, who providesnot always accurate transcriptionsof nearly all the documents so farpublished on Manfredi in an ap-pendix, gives the archival referenceswithout indicating the bibliograph-ic sources.138 G. Baglione, op. cit., vol. I, p.159.139 G. Mancini, op. cit., vol. I, p.251.140 G. Baglione op. cit., vol. I, p. 159.141 L. Spezzaferro, “Caravaggioaccettato: dal rifiuto al mercato”, inCaravaggio nel IV centenario dellaCappella Contarelli, conferenceproceedings (Rome, AccademiaNazionale dei Lincei, 24–26 May2001), edited by C. Volpi, overallsupervisor M. Calvesi (Citta diCastello, Petruzzi Stampa, 2002),pp. 23–50, esp. pp. 23–5; L.Spezzaferro, “Caravaggio in unaprospettiva storica: proposte eproblemi”, in Caravaggio e l’Europa:il movimento caravaggescointernazionale da Caravaggio aMattia Preti, exh. cat. (Milan, Palaz-zo Reale, 15 October 2005 – 6 Feb-ruary 2006; Vienna, LiechtensteinMuseum, 5 March – 9 July 2006)(Milan: Skira, 2005), pp. 33–43.142 G. P. Bellori, op. cit., p. 234: “Heused the same methods and darkhues but with greater care andfreshness, and also excelled in thehalf-figures used in the scenes”.143 On the problem of originals andcopies, see M. Maccherini, “Novitàsu Bartolomeo Manfredi”, op. cit.;M. C. Terzaghi, “Caravaggio tracopie e rifiuti”, in Paragone, LIX,82, (2008), pp. 32–71.144 M. Maccherini, “Novità suBartolomeo Manfredi”, op. cit.;Idem, “Caravaggio nel carteggiofamiliare di Giulio Mancini”, op.cit., pp. 71–92.145 B. Furlotti, Le collezioniGonzaga: il carteggio tra Roma eMantova (1587 – 1612) (CiniselloBalsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2003),p. 484, doc. no. 721.146 It is known from a letter ofMancini dated 22 February 1613(cf. Maccherini, “Novità suBartolomeo Manfredi”, op. cit., pp.134–8) that the painting had actu-ally been promised to him by Car-avaggio during an illness but wasseen by cardinal Del Monte, thepainter’s patron, “who took and stillhas it”. Mancini wrote that hewould try to obtain a copy but wasnot optimistic. M. Maccherini,“Novità su Bartolomeo Manfredi”,

op. cit., p. 134, letter of 8 March1613: “I will send you a painting byhim of the Ecce Homo and havemade an order for this Mars Pun-ishing Cupid. If the Cavaliere likesit, all well and good, in otherwise Iwill be happy to have it the house.It will be much better [translationuncertain: “fissarà di gran lungha” inthe original] ok? than the Gypsy Isent you”. Letter of 22 March 1613:“I wrote to you about having a MarsPunishing Cupid painted by a youngartist of great promise, and willsend you a work by him as a sam-ple. If the Signor CommendatoreAgustino likes it, all well and good,otherwise keep it for yourself. I amsure you will like it”. In a letter dat-ed 5 April 1613 (p. 135), Manciniwrites that he is in possession of theEcce Homo: “I have an Ecce Homoby the young artist who is doing theMars Punishing Cupid. I hope youlike it. I will send it soon togetherwith the other things”. For theMemphis Ecce Homo, cf. Nicolson,Caravaggism in Europe, Turin,Allemandi, 1990, p. 143, fig. 294;and more recently M. Maccherini,“Novità su Bartolomeo Manfredi”,op. cit., p. 139.147 M. Maccherini, “Novità suBartolomeo Manfredi”, op. cit., pp.131–33.148 R. Vodret, “BartolomeoManfredi”, in I Caravaggeschi. Per-corsi…, op. cit., vol. II, pp. 515–27.149 M. Maccherini, “Novità suBartolomeo Manfredi”, op. cit., p.135, letter of 22 March 1613.150 Published in Caravaggio e i suoiprimi seguaci, exh. cat. (Tokyo,Teien Museum, 28 September – 16December 2001; Okazaki, City Mu-seum, 22 December 2001 – 24 Feb-ruary 2002), edited by C. Strinatiand R. Vodret (Tokyo: Asahi Shim-bun, 2001), catalogue entry editedby M. P. D’Orazio, p. 142.151 N. Hartje, op. cit., fig. 18.152 M. Pulini, op. cit., pp. 303–13.153 Caravaggio e il Genio di Roma1592–1623 , exh. cat., (Rome,Museo Nazionale del Palazzo diVenezia, 10 May – 31 July 2001),edited by C. Strinati and R. Vodret(Milan: Rizzoli, 2001), catalogueentry edited by M. Pulini, p. 46.154 G. Mancini, op. cit., vol. I, p. 25:“He has produced few publicworks”. The short biography ofManfredi was probably written after1618, as Mancini mentions theworks of his bought by the grandduke of Tuscany between the Juneand October of that year. Accord-ing to G. Baglione, op. cit., vol. I, p.38

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o and 1610.97 R. Vodret, Alla ricerca…, op. cit.,p. 426.98 The biographer’s assertion thatthe two painters were together inItaly “for a long time” becomesmore comprehensible in the lightof this hypothesis. Cf. Discursospracticables del nobilísimo arte de lapintura [c. 1673], edited by V.Carderera y Solano (Madrid:Imprenta de Manuel Tello, 1866),pp. 120–1, and M.E. Manrique Ara,Jusepe Martínez, un pintorzaragozano en la Roma del Seicento(Zaragoza: Institución “Fernandoel Católico”, 2001), p. 82.99 As it is known, it was Rubenswho drew the attention of the dukeof Mantua to Caravaggio’s Death ofthe Virgin, refused by the DiscalcedCarmelite Fathers of Santa Mariadella Scala and then bought by theGonzaga family.100 M. Jaffè, “Peter Paul Rubens andthe Oratorian Fathers”, inProporzioni, 4, 1963, p. 209–41; andIdem, Rubens e l’Italia (Rome:Fratelli Palombi Editori, 1984).101 Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry VI. 6, edited by R.Vodret, p. 154.102 For a coherent analysis of theseattributions, see Caravaggio’sRome…, op. cit., catalogue entry V.6–7, edited by G. Leone, pp.122–23.103 Cf. R. Vodret, Caravaggio.L’opera completa (CiniselloBalsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2009),p. 105, and Caravaggio. La cappellaContarelli, exh. cat. (Rome, PalazzoVenezia, 10 March – 15 October2011), edited by M. Cardinali, M.B. De Ruggieri, Munus (Rome:L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2011), p.68, which includes the x-ray of theMartyrdom of Saint Matthewshowing the first version painted byCaravaggio.104 Artemisia Gentileschi. Lettereprecedute da Atti di un processo perstupro, edited by E. Menzio (Milan:Abscondita, 2004), p. 124. See alsothe more recent R. Contini, F.Solinas, Artemisia Gentileschi, storiadi una passione, exh. cat. (PalazzoReale, Milan, 20 september 2011 –29 January 2012) (Milan: 24 OreCultura, 2011), pp. 36–49; F.Solinas, Le lettere di Artemisia(Rome: De Luca Editori d’Arte,2011); Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry VI. 10, edited by A.Catalano, pp. 164–65.105 Agostino Tassi painted a lostMarine Frieze in Palazzo Firenzeunder the supervision of Cigoli

around 1610.106 P. Cavazzini, “Artemisia nellacasa paterna”, in Orazio e ArtemisiaGentileschi, exh. cat. (Rome, Palaz-zo Venezia, 20 October 2001 – 20January 2002; New York, Metro-politan Museum of Art, 14 Febru-ary – 12 May 2002; Saint Louis,Saint Louis Art Museum, 15 June –15 September 2002), edited by K.Christiansen, J. W. Mann (Milan:Skira, 2001), pp. 283–95, esp. p.286.107 For Saraceni, in addition to A.Ottani Cavina, Carlo Saraceni(Milan: Gruppo editoriale MauriSpagnol, 1968), see M.G.Aurigemma, “Carlo Saraceni, unVeneziano a Roma”, in Caravaggio eil caravaggismo, from the first courseof modern art history taught bySilvia Danesi Squarzina, academicyear 1994–95, edited by G.Capitelli, C. Volpi, Università degliStudi di Roma “La Sapienza”,Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia.Istituto di Storia dell’Arte (Rome:Il Bagatto, 1995), pp. 117–38; L.Testa, “Carlo Saraceni: nuovidocumenti per una rilettura dellabiografia del Baglione”, in GiovanniBaglione (1566-1644): pittore ebiografo di artisti, edited by S.Macioce (Rome: Lithos, 2002), pp.160–83; M. Gallo, “Questioni didate e problemi di filologiasaraceniana: Carlo Saraceni, ilcardinale Francesco Albizzi daCesena, San Lorenzo in Lucina e iquadroni con san Carlo Borromeo;‘San Carlo Borromeo salva unorfanello in Campo Vaccino aRoma durante la peste milanese del1576-1577’ (Allegoria della‘redemptio’ mercedaria), di OrazioBorgianni (Roma 1574-1616)”, inStudi di storia dell’arte, iconografia eiconologia. La biblioteca del curioso,edited by M. Gallo (Rome,Gangemi Editore, 2007), pp.181–209; M. Marini, S. Corradini,“Carlo Saraceni e la Spagna, unacommissione per Tarragona nel1608: una pala da ritrovare”, inVenezia, le Marche e la civiltàadriatica: per festeggiare i 90 anni diPietro Zampetti, edited by I.Chiappini di Sorio, L. De Rossi(Monfalcone: Edizioni dellaLaguna, 2003), pp. 400–03.108 R. Vodret, Alla ricerca…, op. cit.109 See, inter alia, the letters ofGiulio Mancini in M. Maccherini,“Caravaggio nel carteggio familiaredi Giulio Mancini”, in Prospettiva,86, 1997, p. 71–92, and those ofDiodato Gentile to ScipioneBorghese published by V. Pacelli,

“La morte del Caravaggio e alcunisuoi dipinti da documenti inediti”,in Studi di storia dell’arte, 2, (1991),p. 167–88.110 To complete this overview ofSaraceni’s glittering career in Rome,it should be recalled that between1616 and 1617 he received the mostprestigious commission from PopePaul V in connection with the dec-oration of the Royal Hall in thePalazzo Quirinale, where he workedalongside Agostino Tassi and Gio-vanni Lanfranco. He was also em-ployed at the same time in thechurch of Santa Maria dell’Animato restore the Giulio Romano’s Fug-ger altarpiece, work financed by abequest (1615) of Johannes vonLampacher, and immediately afterto produce two large altarpieces(1618) for the chapels at the en-trance to the church, a Martyrdomof Saint Lambert commissioned byLambertus Ursinus de Vivariis anda Miracle of Saint Benno for thedealer Pietro Visscher, known forhis relations with various Flemishartists resident in Rome. The sameperiod saw the frescoes in SantaMaria in Aquiro (1616–17) and theMartyrdom of Saint Agapitus forPalestrina (1618). Cf. Caravaggio’sRome…, op. cit., catalogue entry X.8, edited by M. Nicolaci, pp.292–93.111 For the complex question ofattribution see Caravaggio’sRome…, op. cit., catalogue entry VI.9, edited by L. Bartoni, pp. 162–63.112 For Francesco Boneri, known asCecco del Caravaggio, the crucialstudy is G. Papi, Cecco delCaravaggio, Soncino, Edizioni deiSoncino, 2001. See also N.Hebertová, Cecco del Caravaggio:nesenie kríža (Bratislava: SlovenskáNárodná Galéria, 2006), and J.Kliemann, “L’Amore al fonte diCecco del Caravaggio e l’ultimoquadro del Merisi: omaggio almaestro o pittura ambigua?”, inCaravaggio e il suo ambiente:ricerche e interpretazioni, edited byS. Ebert-Schifferer, J. Kliemann, V.von Rosen, L Sickel (CiniselloBalsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2007),pp. 181–215.113 In this connection, see Il giovaneRibera tra Roma, Parma e Napoli.1608-1624, exh. cat. (Madrid,Museo Nacional del Prado, 4 April– 28 August, 2011; Naples, Museodi Capodimonte, 23 September2011 – 8 January 2012), edited byN. Spinosa (Naples: arte’m, 2011).114 The same conclusions were ar-rived at independently by Marina

Lambraki-Plaka, director of the Na-tional Gallery of Athens, withwhom we had a very useful ex-change of ideas.115 The records of the parish of SanLorenzo in Lucina, where thepainter was probably resident, havenot survived for the period1612–14, and the first mention ofhis name is in the register for 1615.Cf. R. Vodret, Alla ricerca…, op.cit., p. 502. Bousquet suggested thatthe painter was to be identified asthe “Valentino francese” living inthe house of the painter Polidoroin the parish of San Nicola deiPrefetti in 1611. See J. Bousquet,“Valentin et ses compagnons: ré-flections sur les caravagesques fran-çais à partir des archives paroissialesromaines”, in Gazette des beaux-arts, 92, (1978), p. 101–14, esp. p.107. S. Danesi Squarzina “NewDocuments on Ribera, ‘pictor inUrbe’, 1612–16”, in The BurlingtonMagazine, 148, 2006, 1237, pp.244–51 identified him as the “Mon-sù da Colombiera” (not listed as a“painter”) who appears in theparish records of San Lorenzo inLucina for 1615 as lodging in aninn on Via Ferratina. A newly dis-covered document for the sameyear of 1615 registers the presenceof a “Valentino francese pittore” ina house with many others in thesame parish but on Via Ripetta. Cf.R. Vodret, Alla ricerca…, op. cit.,op. cit., p. 519. For Vouet’s arrivalin Rome, see also F. Solinas,“Ferrante Carlo, Simon Vouet etCassiano dal Pozzo. Notes et docu-ments inédits sur la période romai-ne, in Simon Vouet, Actes du col-loque international (Galeries Na-tionales du Grand Palais, 5–7 Fe-bruary 1991), edited by S. Loire(Paris: La Documentation Françai-se, 1992), pp. 135–47.116 M. C. Guardata, “GerardSeghers e l’ambiente gesuiticoromano (Anversa 1591–1691)”, in ICaravaggeschi. Percorsi…, op. cit.,op. cit., vol. II, pp. 659–66.117 S. Danesi Squarzina, “Newdocuments on Ribera…”, op. cit.118 See the study by Gianni Papi inthis catalogue.119 M. E. Manrique Ara, op.cit., p.82.120 See above.121 See the study by Gianni Papi inthis catalogue.122 S. Danesi Squarzina, “Newdocuments on Ribera…”, op. cit.,pp. 244–51.123 A. Zuccari, “Caravaggio in‘cattiva luce’? Lo studio in vicolo

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“Novità su Bartolomeo Manfredi,p. 134.202 Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry XI. 18, edited byM. Gianfranceschi, pp. 332–33.203 See the letter from V. Giustinianito Teodoro Amayden, dated around1620, published in G. Bottari, S.Ticozzi, Raccolta di lettere sullapittura, scultura ed architetturascritte da’ più celebri personaggi deisecoli XV, XVI, XVII (Milan: PierGiovanni Silvestri, 1822–25), 8vols., esp. vol. VI, pp. 121–29.204 See the excellent study by F.Paliaga, “‘Ogni sorta di animali, difrutta e di siffatte altre cose’. PietroPaolini, Simone del Tintore e lanatura morta a Lucca”, in Luce eombra, op. cit. , pp.CCXXXV–CCLI.205 The artist made a will in hishomeland in 1616, possibly beforehis departure for Italy. Cf. I.Baldriga, “Theodor Rombouts”, in Icaravaggeschi. Percorsi, op. cit., vol.II, pp. 621–30, esp. p. 630, note 7.206 Registered as resident in theparish of Sant’Andrea delle Frattein 1620. Cf. Alla ricerca di ‘Ghion-grat’, op. cit., edited by R. Vodret,ad indicem.207 In this connection, see I. Baldri-ga, “Theodor Rombouts”, in I car-avaggeschi. Percorsi, op. cit., vol. II,p. 628.208 Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry X. 8, edited by M.Nicolaci, pp. 292–93.209 A. Zuccari, Il caravaggismo aRoma, op. cit., p. 55.210 G. Papi, Spadarino (Soncino:Edizioni dei Soncino, 2003), pp.134–36.211 B. Toscano, in Pittura delSeicento e del Settecento: ricerche inUmbria, [“Ricerche in Umbria”, 2(1980)] (Treviso: Canova, 1980),pp. 45–52, 458, note 628.212 For the lost portrait, see M.Mojana, Valentin de Boulogne(Milan: Eikonos Ed. 1989), p. 265.213 Baglione, op. cit., vol. I, p. 224;M. Mojana, op. cit., p. 11.214 The artist is recorded as residentin a house at the Otto Cantoni inthe period 1620–25 together withhis boy Andrea and servantFrancesco, but complications arisebecause he is also traditionally iden-tified as the painter Trofamone (orTrufemonti), resident in the Gia-rdino di Capo di Ferro in 1630 to-gether with two French painters list-ed as Claudio and Carlo.215 V. Tiberia, “Un’aggiunta perTeofilo Trufamond”, in Bollettinod’arte, 76 (1990), 64, pp. 71–2. For

further discussion of the work andthe problem, see W. Prohaska,“L’enigma Trophime Bigot”, in Icaravaggeschi. Percorsi, op. cit., vol.II, pp. 317–23, and Idem, inCaravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit., pp.352, in entry.216 F. Martinelli, “Roma ornatadall’Architettura, Pittura e Scoltura,1660–1663”, in C. D’Onofrio,Roma nel Seicento (Florence:Vallecchi 1969), p. 88.217 For the documents, see E.Fumagalli, “Pittori Senesi eCommittenza Medicea: nuove dateper Francesco Rustici”, in Paragone.Arte, 41 (1990), 479/481, pp. 69–82note 37; and more recently, O. Mi-chel, “Une proposition pour ‘Mas-tro Giacomo’: Jacques Casell (Mar-chiennes, vers 1585 – Rome,1643)”, in Simon Vouet en Italie,conference proceedings (Nantes,2008), edited by O. Bonfait, H.Rousteau-Chambon (Paris: PressesUniversitaires de Rennes 2011), p.237–44.218 The authors in question includethe following: J. P. Cuzin, “Trophi-me Bigot: A Suggestion”, in TheBurlington Magazine, 121 (1979),pp. 301–5; B. Nicolson, “Un Cara-vagiste Aixois: Le maître à la chan-delle”, in Art de France, 4 (1964),pp. 116–39; G. Papi in Gherardodelle Notti (Soncino: Edizioni deiSocino 1999), pp. 52 ff; G. Papi,“Trophime Bigot, il Maestro del lu-me di candela e Maestro Giacomo”,in Paragone. Arte, 49 (1998–99), pp.3–18; W. Prohaska, L’enigma, op.cit., pp. 317–23.219 B. Nicolson, Un CaravagisteAixois, op. cit.; W. Prohaska, L’enig-ma, op. cit.220 L. J. Slatkes, “Master Jacomo,Trophime Bigot, and the Candle-light Master”, in Continuity, Inno-vation, and Connoisseurship, con-ference proceedings (Palmer, 1995),edited by M. J. Harris (UniversityPark, The Pennsylvania State Uni-versity Press 2003), pp. 62–83.221 G. Papi, Trophime Bigot, op. cit.,pp. 3–18.222 W. Prohaska, L’enigma, op. cit.,pp. 317–23.

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o 159: “He painted no large publicworks”.155 Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry VII. 2, edited by M.Pulini, pp. 186–87.156 N. Hartje, op. cit., p. 448, alsoattributes him with the Apollo andMarsyas, formerly in the DerekJohns Collection, London, now inSaint Louis.157 E. Giffi Ponzi, “Per loSpadarino”, in Prospettiva, 50,(1987), pp. 71–81.158 Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry VIII. 15, edited byF. Pasculli, pp. 236–37.159 G. Papi, “Tre dipinti diBartolomeo Manfredi”, in Paragone,60, (2009), Ser. 3, 83, pp. 43–48.160 O. Verdi, “‘So cascato per questestrade’. La città di Caravaggio”, inCaravaggio a Roma. Una vita dalvero, op. cit., pp. 32–45; F. Fischba-cher, Matthias Stomer: Die siziliani-schen Nachtstücke (Frankfurt amMain [u.a.]: Lang, 1993).161 Mancini’s observation is nowborne out by the study of Romanparish records. Cf. R. Vodret, Allaricerca…, op. cit.162 See the study by Gianni Papi inthis catalogue.163 S. Janssens, “Between Conflictand Recognition: theBentvueghels”, in Jaarboek, Konin-klijk Museum voor Schone Kun-sten, 2001 p. 56–85. The Schilders-bent existed for about a century andalso served a social function by pro-viding members with financial as-sistance in the event of medical orlegal problems. Free of any rulesand characterized by Bacchic prac-tices and festivities, the organiza-tion imposed a rite of initiation anda nickname on every new member.These artists devoted their energiesprimarily to the production of easelpaintings of genre scenes, whichfound great favour with collectors.164 Many of them were also Protes-tant.165 See R. Vodret, Alla ricerca…, op.cit., p. 326, no. 328.166 See the study by Gianni Papi inthis catalogue.167 For a thorough examination ofthe work in historical, pictorial andconservational terms, Honthorst eil Cristo deriso della chiesa dell’Im-macolata Concezione a Roma. Studiostorico-critico, tecnica di esecuzione,restauro, edited by R. Vodret, G.Leone (Rome: Miligraf edizioni,2008).168 Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry V. 9, edited by G.Papi, pp. 132–33.

169 Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry IX. 7, edited by F.Marcelli, pp. 260–61.170 L. J. Slatkes, Dirck van Baburen.1595–1624. A Dutch Painter inUtrecht and Rome (Utrecht: Dekker& Gumbert, 1965).171 L. J. Slatkes, “Dirck vanBaburen”, in Dopo Caravaggio:Bartolomeo Manfredi e laManfrediana methodus, exh. cat.(Cremona, Santa Maria della Pietà 7May – 7 July 1988) (Milan: Mon-dadori, 1987), pp. 98–102; M. J.Bok, Masters of Light: Dutchpainters in Utrecht during the Gold-en Age, exh. cat. (San Francisco,Fine Arts Museum, 13 September–30 November 1997; Baltimore,Md, Walters Art Gallery, 11 Janu-ary – 5 April 1998; London, TheNational Gallery, 6 May – 2 August1998) (New Haven: Yale UniversityPress, 1997), p. 374; C. Grilli,“David de Haen, pittore olandese aRoma”, in Paragone, 48, (1997), Ser.3, 11, p. 33–50.172 Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry VII. 5, edited by V.White, pp. 192–93.173 I. Gaskell, “Photography andArt: What Next?”, in Apollo, 130,(1989), pp. 155–8.174 See Dürer e l’Italia, exh. cat.(Rome, Scuderie del Quirinale 10March – 10 June 2007), edited byK. Herrmann Fiore (Milan: Electa,2007).175 Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry VIII. 18, edited byF. Pasculli, pp. 242–43.176 Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry IX. 4, edited by V.Markova, pp. 252–53.177 Simon Vouet. Les années ita-liennes, 1613/1627 , exh. cat.(Nantes, Musée des Beaux–Arts, 21November 2008 – 23 February2009; Besançon, Musée desBeaux–Arts et d’Archéologie, 27March – 29 June 2009), edited byD. Jacquot, A. Collange (Paris, Ha-zan, 2008).178 Carried out in the exhibition on13 February 2012.179 R. Vodret, “Guercino, Vouet,Sacchi e gli altri, recuperi dalpatrimonio in deposito esterno dellaGalleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica inPalazzo Barberini”, in Bollettinod’arte, 6. Ser. 81, 1996 (1997), 98,pp. 115–40.180 See in particular the duplicateversions of works by Baglioneknown at present: the Ecstasy ofSaint Francis (Rome, private collec-tion, and Chicago, Art Institute),Sacred and Profane Love (Rome,

Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica,signed and dated 1601, and Berlin,Gemäldegalerie), and the Washingof the Feet (Rome, GalleriaNazionale d’Arte Antica, andRome, Pinacoteca Capitolina).181 See above.182 G. Briganti, “Pietro da Cortonao della pittura barocca”, in Roma1630. Il trionfo del pennello, exh.cat. (Roma, Villa Medici, 25October 1994 – 1 January 1995)(Milan: Electa, 1994), pp. 23–52,esp. p. 36.183 The peak of this phase is visiblein Lanfranco’s work in the altar-piece commissioned by Urban VIIIfor the church of Santa Maria dellaConcezione and the subsequentdecoration of the CrucifixionChapel in Saint Peter’s (1629–31)for Francesco Barberini.184 See F. Cappelletti, L. Testa, Iltrattenimento di virtuosi: lecollezioni seicentesche di quadri neiPalazzi Mattei di Roma (Rome:Àrgos, 1994); F. Cappelletti, “Gliaffanni e l’orgoglio del collezionista:la storia della raccolta Mattei el’ambiente artistico romano dalSeicento all’Ottocento”, inCaravaggio e la collezione Mattei,exh. cat. (Rome, Galleria Nazionaled’Arte Antica in Palazzo Barberini,4 April – 30 May 1995), edited byR. Vodret (Milan: Electa, 1995), pp.39–54; L. Testa, “La collezione diquadri di Ciriaco Mattei”, inCaravaggio e la collezione Mattei,op. cit., pp. 29–38.185 Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry XI. 20, edited byM. Nuzzo, pp. 336–37.186 Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry XI. 21, edited byA. Brejon de Lavergnée, pp.338–39.187 Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry X. 3, edited by A.Brejon de Lavergée, pp. 282–23.188 Caravaggio’s Rome…, op. cit.,catalogue entry X. 4, edited by M.Nuzzo, pp. 284–85.189 The reason for the replacement isthat Gramatica attempted to sellRaphael’s Saint Luke Painting theMadonna, from the church of SantiLuca e Martina, damaged duringrestoration works in the building.Cf. G. Baglione, op. cit., vol. I, p.293.190 For the suggested attribution,see I. Colucci, “I Santi QuattroCoronati nelle vicende artistichedella confraternita dei marmorai”,in Bollettino dei Musei Comunali diRoma, XVII, n.s., [2003], pp.162–186; Caravaggio’s Rome…, op.

cit., catalogue entry X. 6, edited byG. Becatti, pp. 288–89.191 Convincing parallels can bedrawn between the altarpiece inquestion and the Pisan artist’s LoveTriumphant in the Galleria Palatina.192 An inventory dated 1728 statesthat the work was then placed onthe high altar of the church itself toreplace an earlier painting.193 M. Pupillo, “Orazio Riminaldi”,in I Caravaggeschi. Percorsi…, op.cit., vol. II, pp. 595–608, esp. p. 602.194 Cf. R. Vodret, Alla ricerca…, op.cit., p. 502.195 P. Carofano, “Gli anni romanidi Orazio Riminaldi, caravaggescoeterodosso”, in Luce e ombra.Caravaggismo e naturalismo nellapittura toscana del Seicento, exh. cat.(Pontedera, Centro per l’ArteOtello Cirri, 18 March –12 June2005; Pontedera, Museo PiaggioGiovanni Alberto Agnelli, 18 March–12 June 2005), edited by P.Carofano, pp. CLXXVII–CXCIX,esp. CLXXXVIII.196 M. Missirini, Memorie per servirealla storia della Romana Accademiadi S. Luca fino alla morte di AntonioCanova (Rome, De Romanis, 1823),p. 82.197 R. Vodret, catalogue entry inColori della musica: dipinti,strumenti e concerti tra Cinquecentoe Seicento, exh. cat. (Rome, GalleriaNazionale d’Arte Antica in PalazzoBarberini, 15 December 2000 – 28February 2001; Siena, Santa Mariadella Scala, 6 April – 17 June 2001),edited by A. Bini, C. Strinati, R.Vodret (Geneva: Skira, 2000), p.150.198 Cf. also the Woman Playing theLute with Still Life of Musical In-struments (Siena, PinacotecaNazionale).199 Between 1598 and 1609, Car-avaggio’s Head of the Medusa, Bac-chus and Sleeping Cupid arrived inFlorence, the first two were for thegrand duke Ferdinand I and thethird for the Dell’Antella family.They were followed in 1618 by aConcert and the Card Players (Uf-fizi) by Bartolomeo Manfredi andlater, probably in 1620, by the Sup-per Party and the Fortune Teller(Uffizi) by Gerrit van Honthorst.Cf. C. Pizzorusso, “Caravaggio con-tromano. Episodi di naturalismonella Toscana fiorentina”, in I Car-avaggeschi. Percorsi…, op. cit., vol. I,p. 188.200 M. Maccherini, M. Maccherini,“Novità su Bartolomeo Manfredi”,op. cit., pp. 131–41.201 Cf. note 200 and M. Maccherini,

43

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nly Caravaggio

42

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y C

arav

aggi

o Francesco Boneri,known as Cecco delCaravaggio, Christ Driving theMoney Changers fromthe Temple(detail)1610–15oil on canvas, 129.5 x174 cmBerlin, GemäldegalerieStaatliche Museen zuBerlin

1. Annibale CarracciJohn the Baptist in theDesert, 1596–97Oil on canvas, 117 x90.5 cmPrivate collection

2. Giovanni BaglioneSaint Peter and SaintPaul, 1600Oil on canvas, 300 x130 cmRome, church of SantaCecilia in Trastevere

3. Giovanni BaglioneSaint Sebastian Tendedby an Angel1601Oil on canvas, 95.9 x75.5 cmPennsylvania, ThePalmer Museum of Art

4. Giovanni BaglioneSaint Francis inEcstasy, 1601 (dated)Oil on canvas, 155.3 x116.8 cmChicago, The ArtInstitute of Chicago

5. Giovanni Baglione,Sacred and ProfaneLove, c. 1602oil on canvas, 183.4 x121.4 cmBerlin, GemäldegalerieStaatliche Museen zuBerlin

6. Michelangelo Merisida CaravaggioLove Triumphant,1602Oil on canvas, 156 x113 cmBerlino,GemäldegalerieStaatliche Museen zuBerlin

7. Giovanni Baglione,Ecce Homo,1606(dated)Oil on canvas, 163 x116 cmRome, GalleriaBorghese

8. Michelangelo Merisida CaravaggioJohn the Baptist, 1610

Oil on canvas, 152 x125 cmRome, GalleriaBorghese

9. Giuseppe Cesari,known as Cavaliered’ArpinoAscension of Christ,1600FrescoRome, basilica of SanGiovanni in Laterano,transept, altar of theSacrament

10. GiovanniFrancesco Barbieri,known as Guercino,and Agostino Tassi(architecturaldecoration)Aurora, 1621Tempera wall painting,5.3 x 10.3 mRome, CasinoLudovisi, Saladell’Aurora

11. GiovanniFrancesco Barbieri,known as Guercino,and Agostino Tassi(architecturaldecoration)Fame with Honour andVirtue, 1621Tempera wall painting,5.3 x 10.3 mRome, CasinoLudovisi, Stanza dellaFama

12. Francesco Albaniand assistantsThe Toilet of Venus1609FrescoBassano di Sutri,Palazzo Giustiniani,Gallery

13. DomenicoZampieri, known asDomenichinoScenes from the Life ofDiana,1609frescoBassano di Sutri,Palazzo Giustiniani,Sala di Diana

14. DomenicoZampieri, known asDomenichinoMeeting of St. Nilusand Emperor Otto III,1608–10FrescoGrottaferrata, abbey ofSan Nilo, FarneseChapel

15. DomenicoZampieri, known asDomenichinoSt Nilus Healing theSon of Polyeuctes,

1608–10FrescoGrottaferrata, abbey ofSan Nilo, FarneseChapel

16. Guido Reni,Annunciation,1609–10Oil on canvas, 330 x200 cmRome, PalazzoQuirinale, Chapel ofthe Annunciation,altarpiece

17. Guido ReniThe Virgin Sewing,1609–10FrescoRome, Palazzo delQuirinale, Chapel ofthe Annunciation,entrance wall

18. Guido ReniSaint Dominic,1611–12FrescoRome, church of SantaMaria Maggiore,Pauline Chapel

19. Guido ReniSaint Cyril, 1611–12FrescoRome, church of SantaMaria Maggiore,Pauline Chapel

20. DomenicoZampieri, known asDomenichinoGlory of Saint Cecilia,1612–15FrescoRome, church of SanLuigi dei Francesi,Polet Chapel

21. DomenicoZampieri, known asDomenichinoMartyrdom of SaintCecilia, 1612–15FrescoRome, church of SanLuigi dei Francesi,Polet Chapel

22. DomenicoZampieri, known asDomenichino,Alessandro Fortunaand Giovanni BattistaViolaApollo Slaying TwoCyclopes, 1616–18 Fresco transferred tocanvas and mountedon board, 316.3 x190.4 cmLondon, The NationalGallery, formerlyFrascati, VillaAldobrandini, Stanzadi Apollo

23. DomenicoZampieri, known asDomenichino,Alessandro Fortunaand Giovanni BattistaViolaThe Judgement ofMidas, 1616–18Fresco transferred tocanvas and mountedon board, 267 x 224cmLondon, The NationalGallery, formerlyFrascati, VillaAldobrandini, Stanzadi Apollo

24. Guido ReniEcstasy of Saint PhilipNeri, 1614Oil on canvas, 180 x110 cmRome, church of SantaMaria in Vallicella,rooms of St PhilipNeri

25. DomenicoZampieri, known asDomenichino,Communion of SaintJerome, 1614Oil on canvas, 419 x256 cmVatican City, VaticanMuseums, formerlyRome, church of SanGirolamo della Carità

26. Annibale CarracciSaint Margaret, c. 1599Oil on canvas, 239 x134 cmRome, church of SantaCaterina dei Funari(property of theConservatorio SantaCaterina della Rosa,Rome)

27. Giuseppe Cesari,known as Cavalierd’ArpinoSanta BarbaraReceiving a WhiteRobe from an Angel,1596–97Oil on canvas, 255 x145 cmRome, church of SantaMaria in Traspontina

28. Guido ReniMartyrdom of SaintPeter, 1604–05Oil on canvas, 305 x175 cmVatican City, VaticanGallery, formerlyRome, church of SanPaolo alle Tre Fontane

29. Anonymous (copyafter Caravaggio)John the Baptist,1604–05Oil on canvas, 170 x

136 cmAlbenga, MuseoDiocesano

30. Guido ReniDavid and Goliathc. 1605Oil on canvas, 237 x137 cmParis, Musée duLouvre

34. Guido ReniAurora, 1614FrescoRome, Casino diPalazzo RospigliosiPallavicini

35. Antonio CarracciThe Prophet Daniel,c. 1614frescoRome, church of SanBartolomeo all’Isola,Chapel of the Passion

36. GiovanniLanfranco Assumption of theVirgin, 1616/17–29Oil on canvas, 220 x160 cmVallerano, church ofSanta Maria delRuscello

37. GiovanniLanfrancoMoses and the BronzeSerpent, 1616–17FrescoRome, Palazzo delQuirinale, Sala Regia,now Sala deiCorazzieri

38. GiovanniLanfrancoMary Magdalene Borneup to Heaven byAngels, 1616Oil on canvas, 110 x78 cmNaples, MuseoNazionale diCapodimonte,formerly Rome,Palazzetto Farnese,Camerino degliEremiti

39. Agostino CiampelliVision of Saint JohnGualbert, 1594 (dated)Oil on canvas, 250 x185 cmRome, church of SantaPrassede all’Esquilino

40. Agostino CiampelliMartyrdom of SaintVitalis, c. 1599Tempera wall paintingRome, church of SantiVitale e CompagniMartiri in Fovea

41. Tarquinio Ligustri,Martyrdom of SaintJanuarius, 1603Tempera wall paintingRome, church of SantiVitale e CompagniMartiri in Fovea

42. Giovanni BattistaFiammeriSainted Virgins andMartyrs in Glory, c.1590–1606Oil on canvas, 270 x180 cmRome, church of SantiVitale e CompagniMartiri in Fovea

43. Andrea CommodiMartyrdom of SaintGervasius, c. 1600–10Tempera wall paintingRome, church of SantiVitale e CompagniMartiri in Fovea

44. Pietro da Cortona,Daniel in the Lions’Den and the ProphetHabakkuk, c. 1616FrescoFrascati, Villa ArrigoniMuti

45. Pietro da Cortona,Solomon and theQueen of Sheba,1622–23FrescoRome, Palazzo Matteidi Giove, ceiling of thegallery

47. Domenico Cresti,known as Passignano,Baptism of Saint Prisca,c. 1600Oil on canvas, 270 x175 cmRome, church of SantaPrisca all’Aventino,high altar

49. MichelangeloMerisi da Caravaggio(attributed)Ecce Homo, c. 1605–07Oil on canvas, 128 x103 cmGenoa, Galleria Civicadi Palazzo Bianco

50. MichelangeloMerisi da Caravaggio(attributed) Crowning with Thorns,c. 1604–05Oil on canvas, 125 x178 cmPrato, Galleria diPalazzo degli Alberti

51. MichelangeloMerisi da CaravaggioSaint Matthew and theAngel, 1602Rome, church of San

Luigi dei Francesi,Contarelli chapel,formerly Berlin, KaiserFriederich MuseumGemäldegalerie(destroyed in 1945)

52. Orazio Gentileschi,Agostino Tassi Concert with Apolloand the Muses (detail),1611–12FrescoRome, PalazzoPallavicini –Rospigliosi, Casinodelle Muse

53. Carlo Saraceni,Death of the Virginc. 1610oil on canvas, 459 x273 cmRome, church of SantaMaria della Scala

54. Carlo Saraceni,Martyrdom of SaintErasmus, 1610–12Oil on canvas, 316 x260 cmGaeta, Cathedral

55. Carlo SaraceniAngel and SaintCecilia (detail), c. 1610Oil on canvas, 172 x139 cmRome, GalleriaNazionale d’ArteAntica in PalazzoBarberini

56. Guy FrançoisHoly Family with StBruno and St Helena(detail)1626 (signed anddated)Oil on canvas, 214 x156 cm Bourg-en Bresse,Musée de Brou

58. Francesco Boneri,known as Cecco delCaravaggioMaker of MusicalInstruments, c. 1615Oil on canvas, 117 x98 cmAthens, NationalGallery

59. Francesco Boneri,known as Cecco delCaravaggioMaker of MusicalInstruments, c.1610–15Oil on canvas, 123.8 x98.4 cmLondon, ApsleyHouse, TheWellington Museum

60. Lodovico Cardi,known as Cigoli

Psyche Asleep in aMeadow, 1611–13Detached frescoRome, PalazzoBraschi, formerlyPalazzo PallaviciniRospigliosi, Casinodelle Muse

61. Giovanni AntonioGalli, known asSpadarino (attributed)The Finding of Mosesand Magnanimity,1616–17FrescoRome, PalazzoQuirinale

63. BartolomeoManfrediMars Punishing Cupid1613Oil on canvas, 175.3 x130.6 cmChicago, The ArtInstitute of Chicago

64. BartolomeoManfrediThe Sacrifice of Isaacc. 1615Oil on canvas, 180 x150 cmRome, church of theSantissimo Nome diGesù all’Argentina,sacristy

65. BartolomeoManfrediApollo and Marsyas, c.1616–20Oil on canvas, 95.5 x136 cmSaint Louis, The SaintLouis Art Museum

67.Gerrit van HonthorstChrist before the HighPriest, c. 1617Oil on canvas, 272 x183 cmLondon, The NationalGallery

68. Gerrit vanHonthorstThe Freeing of SaintPeter, 1616–18Oil on canvas, 129 x179 cmBerlin, GemäldegalerieStaatliche Museen zuBerlin

69. Nicolas Régnier,Supper at Emmaus,1617Oil on canvas, 282 x222 cmPotsdam, StiftungPreussische Schlösserund Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg,Bildergalerie vonSanssouci

70. Francesco Boneri,known as Cecco delCaravaggioChrist Driving theMoney Changers fromthe Temple, 1610–15Oil on canvas, 129.5 x174 cmBerlin, GemäldegalerieStaatliche Museen zuBerlin

71. Simon Vouet Two Lovers1614–18Oil on canvas, 82 x100 cmMoscow, PushkinMuseum

72. Simon Vouet(attributed to)Two Lovers1614–18Oil on canvas, 97 x136 cmRome, GalleriaPallavicini Rospiglios

73. Simon VouetThe Fortune Teller1617Oil on canvas, 95 x135 cmRome, PalazzoBarberini, GalleriaNazionale d’ArteAntica

74. Simon Vouet (?)The Fortune Teller1617Oil on canvas, 97.5 x134.5 cmFlorence, Palazzo Pitti,Galleria Palatina

75. GiovanniLanfrancoChrist on the Way toCalvary, 1622–24Oil on canvas, 200 x292 cmRome, church of SanGiovanni deiFiorentini, SacchettiChapel

76. GiovanniFrancesco Barbieri,known as Guercino,Glory of SaintChrysogonus, 1622 oil on canvas, 500 x295 cm London, LancasterHouse, formerlyRome, church of SanCrisogono

79. Andrea SacchiSaint Isidore and theVirgin Mary, 1622Oil on canvas, 344 x190 cmRome, church ofSant’Isidoro

80. Pietro da CortonaTriumph of Bacchus,c. 1624Oil on canvas, 144 x205 cmRome, PinacotecaCapitolina

81. Giovanni SerodineChrist among theDoctors, 1625–26Oil on canvas, 145 x224 cmParis, Musée duLouvre

82. Giovanni SerodineThe Tribute Money, 1625–26Oil on canvas, 145 x225 cmEdinburgh, TheNational Gallery ofScotland

83. Giovanni SerodineThe Farewell of SaintsPeter and Paul beforeMartyrdom, 1625–26Oil on canvas, 144 x220 cmRome, GalleriaNazionale d’ArteAntica in PalazzoBarberini

84. Hendrick terBrugghenCrowning with Thorns, 1620Oil on canvas, 207 x240 cmCopenhagen, StatensMuseum for Kunst

85. Angelo Caroselli,Saint Wenceslas,1627–31Oil on canvas, 315 x184 cmVienna,KunsthistorischesMuseum

86. Valentin deBoulogne, Martyrdomof Sts Martinian andProcessus1629oil on canvas, 302 x192 cmRome, Vatican Gallery

87. Giovanni AntonioGalli, known asSpadarinoMiracle of Saint Valeriabefore Saint Martial, 1629–32Oil on canvas, 320 x186 cmRome, St Peter’s,sacristy

90. Giovanni SerodineSaint LawrenceDistributing Alms,

1625–1626Oil on canvas, 303 x271 cm Veroli, Museodell’abbazia diCasamari

94. Orazio Riminaldi,The Four HolyCrowned Ones,1626–27Oil on canvas, 185 x130 cmRome, Museo di Roma

95. Orazio Riminaldi,Love Triumphant, c. 1624oil on canvas, 142 x112 cmFlorence, Palazzo Pitti,Galleria Palatina

96. Francesco Rustici,known as RustichinoSaint Sebastian Tendedby Saint Irene, 1625Oil on canvas, 150 x211 cmRome, GalleriaBorghese

97. Nicolas Tournier,Dice Players, c. 1624Oil on canvas, 125 x173 cmAttingham Park,Shrewsbury, NationalTrust

98. Trophime BigotAdoration of the Magi,1630–34Oil on canvas, 208 x178 cmRome, church of SanMarco Evangelista alCampidoglio

99. Maestro JacomoPietà, 1634–35Oil on canvas, 233 x155 cmRome, church of SantaMaria in Aquiro,chapel of the Passion

100. TrophimeBigot/CandelightMasterFlagellation, c.1630–35 Oil on canvas, 185 x133 cmRome, church of SantaMaria in Aquiro,chapel of the Passion

101. TrophimeBigot/CandelightMasterCrowning with Thorns, c. 1630–35Oil on canvas, 185 x133 cmRome, church of santaMaria in Aquiro,chapel of the Passion