Caravaggio, Conversion, and Why the Internet Had Better Never Replace Actual Books & Pictures

So this morning, in the midst of a howling blizzard, Gomes is on about St. Paul, whose Day it will be on Tuesday.    With his characteristically cheerful, impeccable scholarship, Harvard's Plummer Professor of Christian Morals leaves intact what we bring to the table--our impressions of Paul as an odious, egocentric misogynist/homophobe--while convincing us that Paul also goes a long way toward redeeming himself by being crucial to Western civilization's understanding of what it means to change one's mind. 

When he fell off his horse that day on the way to witch-hunt Christians in Damascus, in other words, Paul taught us all a big, fat lesson about enlightenment (political, religious, romantic--whatever, says Gomes):  it takes time, during which it will knock you on your ass, leave you blind, and kill your appetite for a while--in Paul's case, three days. 

(You'll probably be able to hear this sermon, along with a bunch of Gomes' other pearls, on the Mem Church website sooner or later, whenever they get around to posting them.  His sermon isn't actually my topic here.)

So I'm lying on the floor of my mother's bedroom (we had a little sleepover last night), listening, and when Gomes mentions Paul's horse, I suddenly think about Caravaggio's painting, which I vaguely remember from some biography of the wildman 15th-16thC painter.   Click on the postage stamp above to get a far better view.  I'll wait.

OK.  Forget Campbell's soup cans.  What we have here is one of the great breakout, boundary-busting paintings of all time.  Back then (early 16th C), religious figures were considered the only suitable subjects for visual art, and they were to be painted Religiously--i.e., reverently:  haloes aglow, beatific expressions at full wattage, clothing in place (unless you were carving David out of a hunk of marble, and even then you had to have a fig leaf).

But in "The Conversion of St. Paul," Caravaggio thumbs his nose at contemporary conventions and paints a picture of a horse, mostly.  And oh yeah, its rider--flat on his back, helpless and glowing strangely.  I'd much rather look at the palomino (sorrel?) than at its rider--that is one hell of a horse--but what I find far more interesting than either of them is the groom. 

Other than holding the horse while looking eerily like the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, what's the guy doing there?  Paul may very well have had a servant with him on the road to Damascus, but there's no servant in the Biblical account--the story's all about Paul, the horse, and Jesus--so why would Caravaggio put the servant in the painting?  The horse looks sturdy and loyal, like he (?) wouldn't just clatter off and leave Paul lying there.  Doesn't need anybody to tell him what to do, this horse.

The servant barely appears in the painting; most of him is behind the horse, but we do see some of his face, one hand, and his lower extremities in some detail.  But Paul seems to be supplicating him.  And he seems to be looking benevolently down at Paul.  So I have to wonder: Is the servant a servant--or is he Caravaggio's version of Jesus?  After all, that's who supposedly knocked Paul on his butt, there, on the way to Damascus.   So what, if anything, is Caravaggio saying about Jesus in this renegade painting?  We'll never know, but it's entertaining to think about.

Then I look again at how shadowy the servant figure is.  I think how easy it would be to Photoshop (or whatever) him entirely out of there.  You could change the whole meaning of the painting, maybe! 

But as long as the real painting survives in Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome, and as long as prints of it appear in books, or the books in which it already appears survive, it won't stop raising its provocative question in our minds.  (Unless, of course, something like Jasper Fforde's vision of the future of art and literature comes to pass--then we'll be in real trouble!)  Or am I being naive in thinking this?  Wouldn't surprise me.

Comments

[chorusgirl]

According to the now teenager who upon looking way up at Michaelangelo's David, at the age of six, pronounced that "He's sucking it in.", there was no fig leaf(I just asked her). And she ought to know.

[Doc Rock]

Goes to show what *I* know: nada. I've never been there, never seen it, really thought I remembered (just from photos) that he was wearing a shrubbery. So next time I'll do my homework better.
But I'll still never catch up to you, who discovered entirely on your own that the apple in the basket that the statuary-boy was holding wasn't an apple. In the Vatican--where else? I defer to you entirely, Chorusgirl!

[Pica]

I didn't want to say it about the fig leaf so I'm glad chorusgirl did. (I once did a drawing of David for an illustration class so I remember that bit.)

But I'd certainly forgotten about the groom in the Caravaggio painting, so thanks for showing us that again.