The Cerasi Chapel (July 11)
July 11
I’ve just come to the church now at four in the afternoon. This morning I went to Mass at Basilica di Santa Maria in Ara coeli. I got there early. A very rotund man who looked like a guy you might see on Shakedown Street outside a Grateful Dead show was lighting candles. I sat down. There was only one other person there, a woman sitting in the front row, waiting for Mass to start. The man reemerged as the priest. It was just the three of us. Fortunately, I was sitting a little behind the woman, so I could stand when she stood, sit when she sat. Later, when we rose to take communion, a voice I thought had been an echo turned out to be a man in brown Franciscan robes. Taking communion with these few people felt tender and intimate — that anecdote about Merton serving Mass to his friends at the hermitage before leaving for Asia, never to return. How he called each of them by their first name. During Mass I let my feet slip out of my sandals. The cool stone floor felt delicious. There was a pigeon up near the ornate ceiling. It was like being in a fantastic house that had been abandoned, and we could do whatever we wanted. I figured that the woman probably lives near by, and comes to Mass every morning. She probably thinks of it as hers, which she should. Who else’s would it be?
When I walked out, it was already very warm. I waited for the Doria Pamphili Gallery to open, knowing only that there were Caravaggios there. I’ve become a kind of Caravaggio addict. Nothing else quite does it for me now. I was amazed to find that the first room was full of Poussins. One of my favorite books, mentioned above, is T.J. Clark’s The Sight of Death, in which he obsessively studies two of Nicolas Poussin’s paintings. But I was confused. These looked like Poussins, but they were by Gaspard Dughet. Apparently he called himself Gaspard Poussin in homage to his brother-in-law Nicolas. Hence the similar style.
Though I tried not to rush, I was eager to reach the Caravaggios. Three of them — SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST, PENITENT MAGDALENE, and REST ON THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT. I spent the longest time looking at the Magdalene. In fact, I tried to leave but rushed back, like I was in love. She seemed almost Midwestern, a hippie come back to her family farm. The same strong demarcation of light that one sees in THE VOCATION OF SAINT MATTHEW is present here, as well. She has divested herself of her jewelry. How did he get the depth of that oil, both luminous and rich? I even love her somewhat clumsy hands. I was sitting down, staring. A guard came in, looked at me looking. He nodded, left. One is allowed to look here.
I remember, once, in Tucson, Arizona, I was sitting on the curb. Not in the way, or anything. Just sitting. A cop came over and told me to stand up. I said no. Then I stood up. You can sit here. Actually, the other night, we were all sitting on the Spanish Steps and a cop lazily blew his whistle and made a few gestures. Everyone stood up out of politeness, then sat right back down.
Well I’m here now, at Santa Maria del Popolo, looking at CONVERSION. I’ve learned that there is another Caravaggio called, also, THE CONVERSION OF SAINT PAUL. It’s much wilder — rearing horses, a battle scene. Christ is depicted as descending from Heaven with his arms outstretched, like someone trying to save someone from drowning, while Saul/Paul himself lies on the ground, his hands over his eyes. I think it’s my least favorite of all the Caravaggios I know of. It lacks that focus that I love in his work. The eye doesn’t quite know where to rest.
Today, looking at the version I’ve been thinking about, I’m struck again by how private a moment he manages to depict here. It must be a strange sensation for a painter to paint a figure whose eyes are closed. This contrast between our eyes being open and his being closed is, it seems to me, a big part of the painting’s power — I am looking at someone who is no longer capable of looking in the way I am looking, but is looking in the way I am being told I should look. Hence, there is a kind of disconnect between looking at the painting and obeying the painting. The painting itself contains a critique of the visible world, such that we are caught in that wonderful bind that certain works of art gleefully catch us in. So many paintings I saw today, hundreds, failed to do this. They were there to be looked at, whereas one experiences a Caravaggio painting. The wonderment we feel before the paintings, while not identical to what the characters in the paintings are undergoing, is of the same quality. We are at least transfixed. If we’re lucky, we’re transformed. They suggest that, while looking at a work of art that is good enough, in an attentive enough way, one can have something akin to a spiritual experience. And that this experience is made available to us by a man who murdered a man makes it even better, because we sense, perhaps, that we’re not supposed to be feeling what we’re feeling. There is something very mundane about Caravaggio, so that his entire body of work (both the subject matter of his paintings and his own biography) challenges the idea that we need to raise ourselves above the dusty world to experience something of God’s.
Caravaggio creates in certain paintings, especially CONVERSION and PENITENT MAGDALENE, a feeling that, by looking at all, we’re being voyeuristic. Again, the only metaphor I can think of is how some paintings are canvases while others are windows. Almost every other painting I saw today was in the past tense. Caravaggio paints in the present. And it’s more than just the fact that he dressed up characters from the Gospels in the rakish fits of his time, because those fits are old for us. I don’t even want to use the word cinematic, which seems to obvious, too easy. Nor is it his use of light and shadow, because he had plenty of imitators, and their paintings do nothing for me.
The only other painter I can think of who effects me like this is Andrew Wyeth. There is a quality about certain Wyeths, too — I’m thinking of CHRISTINA’S WORLD, in particular — that seems voyeuristic. We’re right there in the grass behind Christina. The story behind that painting is that she’d crawled down to visit the family cemetery, and now has to crawl all the way back up to the house. So we’ll have to crawl back up there, too. Or maybe we’re one of her dead, in which case, we should be allowed to rest.
Another Wyeth, of an actual window, so that one cannot look at the painting without looking through it.
Maybe this is why I’ve never been able to get very interested in sculpture. It comes too far into my world. Hence, similar to film, TV? I love paintings and literature because, perhaps selfishly, they invite co-creation. Somehow, there is no Anna Karenina without a reader to imagine her, but a statue has as much material existence as a tree. Though my favorite sculptor — sculptress — Camille Claudel, somehow her work works for me. I’m thinking of THE WAVE (also called THE BATHERS), which invites us into their world, to go in under the wave just as it is about to break over them. And THE GOSSIPS, too, which, impossibly, combines three senses — touch, sight, sound.
I read today of how Caravaggio focused what had been a flat, monotonous light onto the dramatic center(s) of his scenes, guiding the eye. Maybe we love Caravaggio because he directs our gaze. One is never confused as to where to look. In general there is a quality about his paintings that feels characteristic. I like some more than others, of course, but none offend me. I feel this way about certain poets, too — Bishop, for example. The poem is worth reading because she wrote it. After that, the poem is on its own, but one begins from a place of basic respect. I feel this way about very few poets — Jean Follain, Jared Carter, Hughes, Eliot, Hecht, my dad. I don’t know much about classical music, but I imagine this quality is present in Beethoven and Bach as well. It’s less about what they wrote, painted, composed than that they possess some quality one can put one’s trust in. Basically, one is in good hands. It’s deeper than mere talent. A chef who makes everything they touch taste good. Not necessarily delicious, but good. They have a touch. It’s probably a matter of love. I’m always, admittedly unfairly, frustrated by those who can’t cook. It seems a failure not of skill but of care.
All of this takes us beyond the dichotomy between bad and good. When I encounter something I love, I am simultaneously deprived of my ability to like or dislike it. I can no longer stand outside of it and make judgements. I have been obliterated by what I love.