The Cerasi Chapel (July 5)
July 5
When I walk up the steps to the church this morning, a beggar is sitting at the door. There was a time in my life when I never could have walked past him without dropping a coin into his hat, but I’m able to now, not because I’ve grown callous — if anything, I’ve grown more sensitive — but because I no longer acquaint giving money with morality. I saw him yesterday, too — I’m sure he’ll be here all summer. I’ll give him a bill when I’m leaving instead of changing it back to dollars.
The light is already on. A couple stands, looking. They leave before the light they paid for goes out. I stand looking in the light they left me. It goes out. I realize I love this moment when they’re sucked back into the natural dark that is their true medium. They say Caravaggio was a master of light. I think it is only his mastery of darkness that makes him appear so. These oscillations of light to dark, this coin-bought springing of night into bright day and the inevitable falling back into gloom, are part of the chapel’s power. I add two more euro, bring the light back, then go directly to the right side of the chapel to look at CRUCIFIXION.
Just as Saul/Paul’s assistant needs his veiny legs to remain standing on earth, the men crucifying Peter upside-down need all their strength to do so. They strain to turn the cross upright. The one underneath is in a kind of football or wrestling stance. I remember, in late summer, how we’d hurl ourselves at the blocking sled in football practice. He’s working like that, probably grunting. A second man is lifting, a third pulling with a rope. I worry about their backs.
I’ve seen these very men on Midwestern road crews, wearing neon green, sleeveless tees, cutting ditch grass, or putting up power poles. Two of the three are faceless. Maybe we only ever know a third of cruelty. The shovel on the ground chimes with Saul’s fallen sword. I remember this very shovel from the farm, whetted with light. It has been used to dig the hole into which the bottom of the cross will be inserted. The rocky earth it has displaced is spilled on the ground. An echo of the die thrown for Christ’s garments?
A tour group comes along. Italian. They look wonderingly, but briefly. Maybe they see the paintings better in this rapturous taking-in than I do in my obsessive visits. They demand nothing more of the paintings than what they offer at a glance, whereas I am here with a shovel, too, digging for meaning.
I read yesterday that Peter seems to stare across the space of the chapel at Saul/Paul. As I said yesterday, I resist this reading. I want the paintings to stand on their own, even as they obviously stand in relation to one another.
I refocus on the man trying to push the cross upright. Arendt described the banality of evil. There is something utterly banal about what they’re doing. They’re the same men who turned the gas on at Auschwitz, who press a button in a building outside Las Vegas that blows up the wedding party in Afghanistan, who kneel on a black man’s neck and try to blame their training. They’re the ones who will say, later, that they had no choice, that they were only following orders.
These men strain against matter — against stony ground, against a man’s actual weight and that of the cross. Curiously, while they have already driven the stakes mercilessly into his hands, his feet, they seem almost supportive of him now, as if helping him with his martyrdom. One is inclined to forgive them. They seem to know not what they do. They’ve granted his request to be crucified upside-down so as not to appear to claim that he is the same as Christ. They’re like jailers who reach between the bars to light the prisoner’s cigarette.
And while they strain to hoist him upright, he seems to float, weightless, like a kid on a swing. They’re sending him to heaven. Though, with Caravaggio, it’s never that easy. Hence all the dirt and grime. We’re all still very much on earth here, and heaven is here also if it’s anywhere.
I love the colors the men wear, while Peter alone wears white. He is innocent. Even the blue shawl he may have worn has fallen away, while the men themselves are still dressed like we dress on earth, preferring this color to that one. Yellow, red, green, blue, oriented like cardinal compass points around that white cloth that girds the man in the center. He is the foundation of the church and so, in a way, these men are in service to that whole world in which anyone who visits this chapel finds themselves. History is constructed in time, Judas as necessary as Jesus, Brutus as Caesar. From a far enough remove, even the cruelest acts take on the appearance of having been necessary. Part of God’s plan, we say. If we didn’t, would we ever cease screaming?
When I leave, the beggar cries out, “Professore! Professore!” I laugh, look back.