XIX
Clement VIII died in March 1605, and by the end of spring Paul V was pontiff. Clement is often described as the last of the Counter-Reformation popes, while Paul is sometimes called the first “Baroque” pope. This is an oversimplification. The Counter-Reformation remained very much alive even if the Baroque was in full swing by the end of Paul’s reign.
Despite Clement’s indecisiveness, he had been surprisingly successful, and not merely because of his saintly life and austere court. He had restored the Papacy’s political influence to an extent that had not been seen for centuries. France was saved for Catholicism, while both the French and the Spanish competed for Rome’s favor.
Inevitably, a papal conclave to choose a new pope was fraught with tension. So, too, was the entire city of Rome. Everyone knew that a completely new court with new favorites was about to emerge. From the moment the Cardinal Camerlengo took the Fisherman’s ring from the dead pontiffs hand, he ruled Rome in his place until the election of a new pope, and struck coins that bore his own name. In practice, during a conclave the city was virtually ungoverned. Armed guards were doubled outside the palaces, with chains placed across their gateways. A “Lantern edict,” ordering householders to place a light at a window each night, did little to deter wrongdoers. The sbirri were far too busy to worry about the brawls of Caravaggio and his friends.
The cardinals were divided into French and Spanish factions, and there was much lobbying. News of the surprisingly swift election on April 1 of the elderly Alessandro de’ Medici was greeted in Paris by fireworks and cannon fire. But the new pope, Leo XI, died before the end of the month, so the conclave reassembled. On May 16 it chose the mild-mannered, gentle-seeming Cardinal Borghese.
Like more than a few pontiffs, Camillo Borghese’s mild manners and gentleness soon vanished. In Ranke’s words, “immediately after his election, Paul V evinced a peculiarly rugged disposition.” From then on, Rome was to be ruled by an iron and seemingly merciless hand. A penniless, half-insane Lombard scholar had written a ridiculous parallel history of Clement VIII and Tiberius Caesar, comparing the late pope to the sinister Roman emperor. The manuscript stayed in his garret until he foolishly showed it to a woman in the same house, who denounced him. He was arrested with all Rome laughing at the story. There was a general impression that Pope Paul would take a lenient view, several people petitioning him to show mercy, but the wretched man was beheaded on the Ponte Sant’ Angelo, and his pitiful possessions were confiscated. Paul swiftly issued draconian edicts against loose women, swindling innkeepers, and those who spread false news. Gentlemen faced still sterner penalties for wearing swords. Although the edicts were largely ignored or evaded, everyone in Rome was uncomfortably aware of an unusually frightening presence on the papal throne.
Some historians believe that Caravaggio’s prospects were darkened by Paul’s election; in reality they had never looked brighter, and if the pope, the future patron of Bernini, was more interested in architecture and sculpture than in painting, his nephew was a very different story. By the end of Paul’s reign, Cardinal Scipione Borghese had amassed one of the most wonderful private collections known to history.
Caravaggio did his best to satisfy so important a customer. “For the same Cardinal, he painted St. Jerome, who is shown writing, absorbed, and reaching out a hand to dip into the inkwell,” Bellori tells us. The artist’s portrayal of the compiler of the Vulgate derived from the account in The Golden Legend: “After doing penance for four years, he went to Bethlehem and obtained permission to dwell at the Lord’s crib like an animal.” Fasting each day until evening, “he persevered in his holy resolution, and labored for fifty-five years and six months at translating the Scriptures.” The picture is still to be seen at the Villa Borghese.
The painting delighted Cardinal Scipione, whose collection eventually included thirteen Caravaggios. Five of them were confiscated from the Cavaliere d’Arpino, no longer the pope’s favorite artist, since he fell foul of the authorities over tax arrears. Scipione was a ruthless collector of pictures, imprisoning at least one rash artist who failed to oblige him. He could be equally forceful, however, in defending his favorites, and his benevolent role in Caravaggio’s career has been underestimated. He tried to protect him whenever he could, even in exile.
Caravaggio’s new patron was not only the cardinal nephew, but the cardinal secretary of state as well, the most powerful person in Rome after his uncle. While the Venetian ambassador may have reported that the cardinal nephew was not particularly clever, he was undeniably astute. As soon as Scipione received the Red Hat, shortly after his maternal uncle’s election, he changed his name from Cafarelli to Borghese. He knew how to interpret Pope Paul’s wishes and ensure that they were put into effect. Nor could anyone deny his good taste.
We know what Scipione looked like from Bernini’s bust, almost comically corpulent and heavy-jowled but nonetheless impressive. He was unusually amiable, famous for his charm and tact. Romans who sampled his sumptuous hospitality called it delicium orbis, the world’s delight. Although no scandals of the flesh were ever linked to him, his wildly extravagant expenditure on food and drink earned him a rebuke from the pope on at least one occasion. It was common knowledge that within a few years he possessed an income of 140,000 scudi, and eventually he appropriated four percent of the entire papal revenue, enabling him to indulge to the full his passion for the arts. Bellori records in his lives that the Cardinal Scipione Borghese was so pleased with the pictures Caravaggio had painted “that he introduced him to the Pontiff, Paul V, of whom he painted a seated portrait, being richly rewarded by the said lord.”
Even Caravaggio must have been cowed by the prospect of painting the pope. No doubt he had to go through the ritual of alternately bowing and genuflecting at his first audience, since Paul was a stickler for protocol. He was a burly man of imposing presence, ponderous and taciturn. Heavily overweight, it was rumored that he sweated to such an extent at night that his barber had to comb his hair for an hour every morning to dry his head.
The authenticity of Caravaggio’s portrait of Paul V, which remains at the Villa Borghese, has occasionally been questioned on the grounds that it seems too tame. But faced with an exceptionally formidable sitter, ferociously careful of his dignity, Caravaggio is unlikely to have tried to make his subject adopt a striking pose. An unpleasant look in His Holiness’s eyes, verging on the malevolent, has been ascribed to short sight.
The pope’s patronage of the arts, and his nephew’s, undoubtedly helped to usher in the Baroque Age. No one knows when the term “Baroque” was first used, but the movement was fundamentally religious in inspiration, set in motion by the Counter-Reformation. Despite its exuberance, it was haunted by an all-pervading concentration on death and dying and how to face them. More than a few Baroque artists attended public executions, or watched corpses being dissected. Their age coincided with a long period of peace in Italy, when turbulent natures could find outlets only in the most savage violence.
The Counter-Reformation, which gave birth to the Baroque, succeeded because it harnessed profound human impulses, whether the female principle through the cult of the Madonna or the need for forgiveness through confession. Its gorgeous liturgy satisfied a thirst for theater and color while, despite its leaders’ asceticism, it exalted the human body and was not afraid of nudity in art. Baroque had genuine popular appeal. Instead of using classical Antiquity, accessible to only a small, highly educated audience, as had Renaissance art, it concentrated on the religion of the humble as well as that of the elite. Its novelties were breathtaking, and a novelty like Caravaggio’s experiments with light—compared by Kenneth Clark to the kind of lighting fashionable in films of the 1920s—had enormous dramatic impact. So long as the Catholic revival continued, Baroque art would retain its vitality.
Most of us have colorful images of the Baroque churches in their full, triumphant splendor, with gilded altars crowned by sunbeams amid serpentine columns, walls of marble, porphyry, and scagliola, even of bronze and silver, and statues of swooning saints. All this was still in the process of emerging when Caravaggio died. Because of his uncompromising realism and avoidance of decoration, many historians do not see him as an artist belonging to the Baroque. “Baroque is the last epithet I would apply to Caravaggio, although it is the one he is now so often graced with,” grumbled Berenson. “Indeed, a more descriptive one would be the un-Baroque, or even the anti-Baroque.”
Nevertheless, the churches for which Caravaggio painted his altarpieces, his greatest achievements, are unmistakably Baroque. And he was very much aware of these churches, painting his altarpieces in such a way that, if they have been removed to a gallery, they must be viewed from six feet below if they are to be appreciated properly. For all his realism, he cannot be understood outside a Baroque context. Certainly, no one can question that Caravaggio belonged to the Counter-Reformation. His utterly sincerc, down-to-earth treatment of sacred subjects moved the faithful deeply, and no artist was more successful in proclaiming the new Catholicism. As the first anniversary of Paul V’s accession drew near, Caravaggio’s prospects must have seemed enviable. His work was admired and collected by the all-powerful cardinal secretary, whose favorite he had become, and he had painted the pope himself.