Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s First Masterpiece-The Rape of Proserpina

The sculpture that brings stone to life

The Rape of Proserpina (1622) by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Marble. Galleria Borghese, Rome.

The story of Proserpine — or Proserpina in Latin — is told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Proserpine is the daughter of the corn-goddess Ceres, who whilst out gathering flowers in the Vale of Nysa was seen by the powerful god Pluto, King of the Underworld.

According to Ovid, Pluto was struck by an arrow from Cupid and was suddenly enraptured by Proserpine. He gathered her up and swept her away on his chariot, taking her down to the Underworld and forcing her to become his bride.

This sculpture, carved in marble by the Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini was finished in 1622, and captures the tension-filled moment of Proserpine’s abduction.

With their twisted poses, the two figures come alive through Bernini’s captivating attention to detail. It is all the more remarkable when one thinks that Bernini’s was just 23 years old when he made this sculpture.

How Bernini became an artist

Bernini’s own journey began in Naples, where he was born in 1598. Son of the sculptor Pietro Bernini, the young artist was quickly recognised for his creative abilities, even attracting the attention of Pope Paul V, who is recorded as saying, “This child will be the Michelangelo of his age”.

When the family moved to Rome after Bernini’s father received a notable papal commission, Bernini began a personal study of antique Greek and Roman marbles at the Vatican.

His first patron came in the form of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, a member of the reigning papal family and a leading patron of the arts of the early 17th century. Under his sponsorship, Bernini carved his first important life-size sculptural groups, which included The Rape of Proserpina.

The drama

The first thing to notice is how Proserpine appears to clamber upwards as she attempts to wriggle free of Pluto’s grasp. As each figure strains in opposite directions, the effect acts as a brilliant device for suggesting where Pluto is actually dragging her to: downward into the Underworld.

Detail of ‘The Rape of Proserpina’ (1622) by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Marble. Galleria Borghese, Rome.

Despite Bernini’s young age, the work displays an incredible awareness of the surface textures of skin and hair. Look at the section where the fingers of Pluto’s hand grip Proserpine’s leg, for instance. See how his hand wraps around and compresses the skin, holding the thigh and kneading the flesh like fingers into dough.

The fingers of the other hand press and sink in a similar way around Proserpine’s torso, almost enveloping the fingernails in the folds of her skin.

The carving is so artful that it almost conceals the very materials of its making. In these sections, it becomes close to impossible to see the underlying stone material. Bernini has managed to portray fingers, muscle, tendons, veins and flesh through peerless handling of marble.

The cumulative effect of these details, which recur throughout the sculpture, from Pluto’s muscular legs to Proserpine’s straining neck, is to supply a palpable sense of drama. Bernini’s technical versatility in manipulating marble meant that he could imbue the cold stone with a level of energy hardly seen before in Italian sculpture.

Bernini’s inspiration

Bernini’s work was not without precedents. The Rape of Proserpina was most likely influenced by another sculptor by the name of Giambologna, a Flemish sculptor who based himself in Italy.

Giambologna’s Rape of the Sabine Women, which stands in the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence, is designed with a reminiscent upward movement and also provides a model for the way the Roman’s hand sinks into the hip of the Sabine woman (see below right).

Front (left) and rear (right) of ‘Rape of the Sabine Women’ (1581–83) by Giambologna. Marble. Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence.

Made in around 1581–83, Giambologna’s works exemplifies the emerging interest in sinuous lines, graceful curves and exaggerated poses that would come to characterise the late Mannerist and early Baroque periods.

Responses to The Rape of Proserpina

One of Bernini’s strengths as a sculptor was his ability to inject great drama into his work. His treatment of the story of Proserpine and Pluto is charged with vivid passages of spectacle, not least in the three-headed dog Cerberus which guards the entrance to the Underworld.

As we look at the sculpture, one has the sense that Proserpine’s feet are flinching before the open mouth of the growling hound — almost as if it’s happening right before our eyes. The violence of the abduction becomes evermore apparent the more closely the viewer looks.

In this regard, nothing is spared in Bernini’s sculpture. Proserpine’s intrepid fight against Pluto’s grip is bound to be futile.

At this point, we may want to ask: how do we respond when we look upon this subject of forceful abduction?

I think one response is to treat the sculpture as if it were a piece of theatre: that is, as a depiction of a dramatic scene. And just as we might applaud the performances of the actors and actresses in a play, so we can respond to this sculpture as an achievement of artistic dexterity.

In fact, Bernini was a man with a strong interest in the theatre: through his career he wrote, directed and acted in plays for which he designed stage sets and theatrical machinery.

Looked at in this way, the 225cm tall piece carved from Carrara marble is the epitome of hair-raising action. Bernini has captured texture, emotion and movement in a solid piece of stone.

For the remainder of his life he worked in Rome, becoming one of the great sculptors and architects of his time — and rivalling Michelangelo in his eminence. Later artists would draw much inspiration from Bernini, including the Victorian sculptor Lord Frederic Leighton.

What is Renaissance Architecture Symmetric Style?

It had an emphasis on symmetry.

Symmetry is economy.
Symmetry is simplicity.

“The architecture of our brains was born from the same trial and error, the same energy principles, the same pure mathematics that happen in flowers and jellyfish and Higgs particles.” — Alan Lightman.

This style has an emphasis on symmetry, proportion, geometry, and the regularity of parts, as demonstrated in the architecture of classical antiquity.

Renaissance architecture is the European architecture of the period between the early 14th and early 16th centuries in different regions.

Renaissance architecture followed Gothic architecture and was succeeded by Baroque architecture.

Developed first in Florence, with Filippo Brunelleschi as one of its innovators, the Renaissance style quickly spread to other Italian cities.

Filippo Brunelleschi.

Italian, also known as Pippo 1377–15 April 1446 is considered to be the founding of Renaissance architecture.

He was an Italian architect, designer, and sculptor, and is the first modern engineer, planner, and sole construction supervisor.

The style was used in Spain, France, Germany, England, Russia, and other parts of Europe at different dates and with varying degrees of impact.

Renaissance style places emphasis on symmetry…

It was demonstrated in the architecture of classical antiquity and in particular ancient Roman architecture.

Systematic display of columns, pilasters, and lintels, as well as the use of semicircular arches, hemispherical domes…

Plan of Bramante’s Tempietto in Montorio.

Raphael’s unused plan for St. Peter’s Basilica.

Brunelleschi’s plan of Santo Spirito.

Michelangelo’s plan for Saint Peter’s Basilica, Rome (1546), superimposed on the earlier plan by Bramante.

“But why are we attracted to symmetry?

Why do we human beings delight in seeing perfectly round planets through the lens of a telescope and six-sided snowflakes on a cold winter day?

The answer must be partly psychological.

I would claim that symmetry represents order, and we crave order in this strange universe we find ourselves in.

The search for symmetry, and the emotional pleasure we derive when we find it, must help us make sense of the seasons and the reliability of friendships.

Symmetry is also economy.
Symmetry is simplicity.”
― Alan Lightman

The emphasis on symmetry is very much noted on all construction from that time.

Palazzo Medici Riccardi by Michelozzo. Florence, 1444.

Symmetry is also economy.

Symmetry is simplicity.

Symmetry is repetition.

Botticelli’s Primavera-The Enigma

An art piece that encapsulates mythology, nature, love, and beauty

Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera is one of the most magnificent and popular paintings in western art. Apart from its grandeur visual appeal and intricate detailing, it is also famous for its unfathomable symbolism that has attracted art historians time and again.

Primavera means ‘spring’ in English. This painting encapsulates a mythological illustration of the Greco-Roman deities, an allegory of the arrival of spring, and a symbolic depiction of the neo-Platonic ideas about the nature of love.

Giorgio Vasari saw this painting after 70 years and named it Primavera. This painting is housed in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy.

In this article, we’ll walk-through the painting’s composition, the allegorical representation of spring, and the symbolic depiction of Primavera.

Composition of Primavera

Mercury, clothed in red (Left) and The Three Graces (dancing figures) (Right)

Zephyrus, the god of the west wind, chasing the nymph Cloris (Left) and Venus and blindfolded Cupid (Right)

The painting was created around the 1470s and supposedly commissioned by Lorenzo de’ Medici, a wealthy Italian statesman and enthusiastic art patron, probably for the marriage of his cousin Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco. Primavera portrays nine mythological figures positioned around an orange grove that might reflect the family tree of the Medici family.

To the far left of the painting is Mercury, clothed in red, wearing winged shoes and the caduceus he uses to dissipate the clouds.
Next to Mercury, are the Three Graces (dancing figures), adorned in a translucent white and represent beauty and purity.
The center of the composition is the Roman goddess, Venus, a red-draped woman.
In the air, above Venus, is cupid who is blindfolded and aims his arrow to The Three Graces.
To the extreme right of the painting is Zephyrus, the god of the west wind, chasing the nymph Cloris.
Botticelli shows the spilling of flowers from Cloris’s mouth who transforms into Flora, the goddess of spring.

The allegory of spring and depiction of aromatic symbols

**Tiny blue myositis adoring Flora’s hair**

**Flora’s dress is embroidered with carnations**

The bottom part of the painting with iris flowers (symbol of Florence)

Venus is surrounded by myrtle, a very well-known plant in ancient Greece and Rome. Flora’s hair and the dress have tiny blue myositis also known as forget-me-nots that have a strong fragrance and her dress is embroidered with carnations.

The bottom half of the painting consists of an amalgam of flowers including iris (symbol of Florence), jasmine, and grape hyacinth that are used in perfumery for thousands of years.

The symbolic depiction of Primavera

Mirella Levi D’Ancona, an American-Italian art critic, defines Primavera with neo-Platonic ideas about love discussed in the humanist circles surrounding Botticelli.

Marsilio Ficino, one of the most influential humanist philosophers in the early Italian Renaissance described love —

There are two kinds of love, the terrestrial and the divine. Love cements the union between mortals as well as between a man and God. Love originates from God, and all humans tend to return to God when they are inflamed with love. The lower kind of love, which is common to humans as well as beasts and plants, is responsible for the continuation of the species through the generative act. This lower type of love, in turn, induces man to seek the higher kind of love, which links man with God.

The two kinds of love illustrated in the painting are from right to left. While Zephyrus’s love is “terrestrial” who is abducting Cloris, Mercury embodies the idea of “divine love” who turns his back on other figures.

We could expand the idea further using Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil opening lines: Supposing truth is a woman — what then?

Supposing the truth of the Primavera is a woman — what does the painting itself tell us about this woman, and man’s (i.e. the interpreter’s) attempt to acquire it? On the one hand, there is Zephyrus, violently penetrating the horrified virginal truth embodied by Chloris — could this not be compared to the rigid relationship of identity, which does not take into account the fragile and nebulous nature of visual truth? On the other hand, does the disinterested, noble stature of Mercury, the disperser of clouds, not resemble the seeker of metaphorical relationships, a stoic figure intent on unveiling the complexities of the semantic knots tying the Primavera to a multiplicity of discourses?

Last thoughts

Primavera as a painting is one big open window that is literally radiating the season of spring and metaphorically is open to human interpretations.

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Judith Slaying Holofernes by Artemisia Gentileschi

How a female artist broke with convention in this vivid and gruesome painting

Judith Slaying Holofernes (between 1614 and 1620) by Artemisia Gentileschi. Oil on canvas. Uffizi, Florence, Italy.

Take some time to look at this painting. It is dramatic and gruesome. It is also complicated.

It was painted by the Italian artist Artemisia Gentileschi. Not only was she a supremely talented painter, she was also unusual for being a woman in a predominantly male profession. In 17th-century European art, Artemisia was an exception. Her willingness to challenge convention meant she become the first woman to gain membership to the Florence Academy of the Arts of Drawing in 1616. This self-confidence is also evident in her art, not least in this painting, Judith Slaying Holofernes, made sometime between 1614 and 1620 when Gentileschi was in her twenties.

The event depicted is the climatic moment of the story of Judith and Holofernes, as told in the Old Testament and later elaborated in apocryphal texts.

Judith was a beautiful and wealthy widow from the Jewish city of Bethulia. The city was at war with the Assyrian army. Desperately under siege, Bethulia was on the point of surrender. The Assyrians were led by a general called Holofernes. In order to save her city, Judith devised a scheme to kill Holofernes; she pretended to desert her people and cross over into enemy territory. Captivated by her beauty, Holofernes put on a banquet for Judith, and then later took her back to his private quarters. Intent on seducing her, he was instead sedated by too much wine, at which Judith seized his sword and with two swift blows, severed his head. She and her maidservant took the severed head in a sack and returned to Bethulia. After the fate of Holofernes had been discovered, the Assyrian army quickly fell into disarray and consequently retreated.

In this painting, Gentileschi chose to show the actual moment of the assassination. The challenge that she poses to the viewer is to look upon the scene without recoiling. She gives us the most direct view possible, with fierce attention paid to the bloody realism of the slaying.

Gentileschi’s style was strongly influenced by the preeminent artist of Rome at the time, Caravaggio. As artists looked to each other for ideas and inspiration, Gentileschi and her father (Orazio Gentileschi, who was also an artist) incorporated elements of Caravaggio’s painting style into their work.

Caravaggio was admired — and sometimes reviled — for the intense and unsettling realism of his work. His extreme form of chiaroscuro, using contrasts of light and dark, meant his scenes became events of heightened drama, where the details of gesture or facial expression were pronounced in the vivid language of highlights and shadow.

Caravaggio painted his own version of Judith and Holofernes in 1599, some two decades before Gentileschi. It was, up until Gentileschi’s version, perhaps the most macabre version of the scene ever painted.

Judith Beheading Holofernes (c.1599) by Caravaggio. Oil on canvas.

Prior to Caravaggio, artists tended to show Judith holding or carrying the head of Holofernes after the slaying. Judith is seen holding the severed head in her hands or in a basket, or else displaying it on a plate. These works tended to emphasise Judith’s wealth, making her fine clothes and jewellery a central emblem of the image and thereby underlining her noble status — and by implication, the nobleness of the deed.

Judith and Holofernes (c.1579) by Tintoretto. Oil on canvas. Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain.

Gentileschi’s painting, under the influence of Caravaggio, focuses on the more graphic moment of the murder. Judith has taken hold of Holofernes’ head by grasping a clutch of hair and turning his head away from her, drawing the sword across his neck. It is a gruesome and vivid portrayal that has no intention of softening the brutal nature of the act.

Detail of ‘Judith Slaying Holofernes’ (between 1614 and 1620) by Artemisia Gentileschi. Oil on canvas. Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, Italy.

Spiralling around Holofernes’ contorted head is a complex arrangement of overlapping arms, which array outwards like the spokes of a wheel. This patterning of flesh tones acts as a kind of semi-circle around Holofernes’ head, against which his dark beard, the shape of the sword and the spray of blood stand out vividly. The triumph of Gentileschi’s composition is in how we look directly into Holofernes’ eyes, which are wide open as if he is watching his own death unfold.

To foreground Holofernes’ head in this way helps to anchor the composition on a single point. All of the elements of the work are built up around this atomic core. The arms of all three protagonists, as they flare outwards, form a sort of spiral around Holofernes’ twisted face.

Detail of ‘Judith Slaying Holofernes’ (between 1614 and 1620) by Artemisia Gentileschi. Oil on canvas. Uffizi, Florence, Italy.

Beyond this, there is another semicircle made up of the red, blue and gold fabrics of the protagonists’ clothing. The red cloak that covers Holofernes begins the shape; it passes through the blue of the maid’s clothing and culminates in Judith’s golden dress.

The two women who undertake the deed, Judith and her maid, are painted with intense concentration on their faces. It is neither disgust nor vitriol they express, but instead a type of practical determination. In this way, the psychological tension of the work is somehow balanced out: Judith undertakes her deed with a steadfastness that regulates some of the horror of the scene. Still, the macabre touches persist: in the spray of blood from Holofernes’ severed arteries, Gentileschi has substituted Judith’s jewellery with a ruby necklace of blood.

Judith Slaying Holofernes was in fact Gentileschi’s second attempt at the subject. An earlier version, painted sometime before 1612, operates as a kind of forerunner to the later version.

Left: Judith Beheading Holofernes (c.1612) by Artemisia Gentileschi. Oil on canvas. Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, Italy. Right: Judith Slaying Holofernes (between 1614 and 1620) by Artemisia Gentileschi. Oil on canvas. Uffizi, Florence, Italy.

The similarities between the two paintings are quite clear. In the first, the overall composition is fully laid out and changes little into the second. Where the differences show are in the intensity of the scene. For in the more recent work, the chiaroscuro is stronger. There is almost no suggestion of depth in either painting; yet in the second, the highlights are painted with greater conviction. Judith’s dress has switched to yellow. The tonal contrasts in Holofernes’ face are more noticeable. Both the nocturnal setting and also the main event in the foreground are emphasised. Everything is more intense.

Much of Gentileschi’s reputation, particularly in recent years, has been shaped by the rape she endured as a teenager in 1611, at the hands of another artist, Agostino Tassi. The case went to trial and remarkably detailed court records exist. They capture Gentileschi’s entire testimony, from which her voice rings out clearly: “He then threw me on to the edge of the bed, pushing me with a hand on my breast, and he put a knee between my thighs to prevent me from closing them. Lifting my clothes, he placed a hand with a handkerchief on my mouth to keep me from screaming.”

Despite the clarity of Gentileschi’s court testimony, the outcome of the trial was complicated, owing to the fact that Gentileschi and Tassi continued to have relations after the event, and also because of the contemporary expectation of Gentileschi having been a virgin prior to the rape, without which the charges could not have been pressed. At the end of the trial, a disgraced Tassi was exiled from Rome, although no sentence was ever enforced.

Readings of Gentileschi’s art have been strongly influenced by these events, with many historians choosing to interpret her paintings as a proto-feminist response to her experiences. The idea is that Gentileschi took revenge on Tassi — and on men in general — through her gruesome depictions.

It is true that many of Gentileschi’s paintings focus on strong female heroines from myth, allegory and the Bible. Two of her most well-known works are Susanna and the Elders and Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist, both of which show strong female protagonists in opposition to men.

Yet it would be a mistake to ascribe the content of Gentileschi’s art to the events in her personal life. It is perhaps more appropriate to read her paintings within a wider historical context. For instance, as a woman it is likely that she was limited only to female models, including her daughters and sometimes herself, which explains her apparent preference for female subjects. She also worked under the patronage of grand-dukes and kings; in short, she worked within a marketplace and served tastes for dramatic narratives from the Bible or classical sources.

Gentileschi was an artist who, against the prevailing conditions of the time, developed a successful career as a painter in a male-dominated field. More than this, she made work that continue to astonish viewers even four centuries after they were made. Paintings like Judith Slaying Holofernes are evidence enough of a remarkable talent and a self-confident individual.

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450 Years of Caravaggio Tandem Obtinet

A brutal example of the relationship between art and justice

Judith Beheading Holofernes — Caravaggio (1598–1599 or 1602)

A truly worthy artist knows how to paint well and imitate nature.
Michelangelo Merisi from Caravaggio.

In the history of Western painting, Caravaggio occupies a unique place. Few geniuses had such an influence on the later development of the visual arts without, yet, leaving a school of their own.

Master of the chiaroscuro technique, Caravaggio anticipated modern painting by nearly three centuries, by bringing to the center of art the reality of human drama as experienced by common people. As the result of his turbulent life, Caravaggio’s art unveils the intricate relationships between creative genius, law, and diplomacy.

Born on September 29, 1571, in Milan, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio experienced human suffering early. In 1576, his family was forced to move to the city he adopted as his surname — Caravaggio — to escape a pandemic that devastated the Milanese population at the time.

We can only imagine what he went through. He lost his father and grandfather on the same day in 1577. The boy was only five years old. Less than ten years later, at the age of thirteen, Caravaggio would lose his mother, in the same year of 1578, in which he would begin his apprenticeship in the studio of Simone Peterzano, a pupil of Titian. We can say that a tall tree takes root in hell.

And that tree didn’t take long to grow and bear fruit. Fruits full of thorns. Caravaggio had a bohemian spirit, irascible and violent. He made history for his notorious inability to control his aggression. In short, dear reader, Caravaggio was arrogant, short-tempered, and a troublemaker.

He didn’t take shit home. He was the perfect type of indomitable genius, which led him to develop an intimate relationship with the court system at the time. The first trouble that is known is that, in 1592, at the age of twenty-one, Caravaggio would have attacked a policeman in Milan. This would have forced him to flee to Rome, with the clothes on his back.

Some evils come to the good, the saying goes. In Rome, a miserable Caravaggio found shelter with a stingy fellow, known as “Monsignor Salad”. The name exists because of the lousy provision he offered his guests. Caravaggio has a falling out with him and ends up homeless. So strong was Caravaggio’s genius and character that a few months after the incident he was already working in the studio of Giuseppe Cesari, Pope Clement VIII’s favorite painter. It was the beginning of his conquest of Rome.

Before long, Caravaggio fell in the favor of one of the leading diplomats of the time, Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte (1549–1627), who became his patron. In 1599, influenced by the cardinal, Caravaggio was commissioned to decorate the Contarelli Chapel, in the Church of San Luigi Dei Francesi, and presented two masterpieces: “The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew” and “The Vocation of Saint Matthew”.

The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew -Caravaggio (c. 1599–1600)

Those pieces made Caravaggio the most famous artist in Rome.

From them, in an impressive procession of artistic genius, Caravaggio painted one masterpiece after another until he died in 1610. His success, however, was accompanied by growing brutality. His life was full of gambling, women, and unhealthy habits. But Caravaggio’s unlimited freedom would be the very mark of his art.

Hence its symbiotic relationship with the Italian law and judicial system at the time. Rome’s police archives are still being researched to reconstruct Caravaggio’s story. Yet, it is known that he was present in at least 11 legal proceedings, most of them for assaults and illegal possession of weapons. This one is particularly valuable.

Caravaggio’s fame and his unique style of unprepared painting — he painted directly on the canvas, without doing preparatory studies –, attracted some imitators. Caravaggio hated them. He even circulated offensive verses, in which he ridiculed Giovanni Baglione as a plagiarist. Baglione, who would later become his first biographer, sued him for libel in 1606, offering Caravaggio an opportunity, not realized, to record for posterity the principles of his theory of art.

The reader can imagine the historical importance of such a well-conducted and recorded court case. The State Archives in Rome contains the most vivid history of that artistic period, without which it would not be possible to understand the motivations, alliances, and relationships that spawned some of humanity’s greatest works of art.

Caravaggio wrote nothing, neither about himself nor about art. But, in judgment, he gave immortal statements like the following: “being a man of value is to deeply understand painting, as I do, is to be able to reproduce reality, the natural (…) I leave the arrogance of empty words to others, I let my works speak for me”.

Caravaggio invented the humanization of art, reproducing saints and biblical characters in the most brutal nudity of their most sincere and true humanity. And this was unheard of and scandalous until then.

And it is at this point that we are able to realize the immense diplomatic impact of Caravaggio’s work. It was the period of the Protestant Reformation, a time when the West had been fragmented with the wars of religion, which broke out, among other reasons, because the Catholic Church had alienated itself from the daily lives of common people.

In reaction to the Protestant revolts, the Church launched the Counter-Reformation, a movement of rebirth and restructuring, which aimed to bring Rome closer to the human experience as we lived in this world. The clash turned into a veritable culture war, in which no one understood and represented the Counter-Reformation worldview better than Caravaggio.

In his work, the saints are portrayed in the fragility of their most human aspect, creating such a strong identification with the viewer that many, at the time, could not even look at their canvases. Caravaggio was the absolute genius of Counter-Reformation cultural diplomacy.

There is an extra point, which connects Caravaggio to the legal world in an ever-current theme. Due to gambling debt, on May 28, 1606, Caravaggio involved himself in a duel with Ranuccio Tommassoni, which ended in his death. The episode forced Caravaggio to flee to Malta and then to Sicily, where he was commissioned to make many other masterpieces.

The case went to trial, and Caravaggio was sentenced in absentia to the death penalty, which in his case would have been by decapitation. Caravaggio, then, in search of mercy, paints the masterpiece “David with the Head of Goliath”, in which the biblical hero is portrayed with a look of mercy at the extracted head of the giant, which is, in reality, an autoportrait of Caravaggio with the mark of the damned on his forehead. The work is perhaps the greatest manifesto in art history against the death penalty. For Caravaggio, death is not a punishment, but a release.

David with the Head of Goliath — Caravaggio (1610)

The 450th anniversary of Caravaggio’s birth, finally, invites us to reflect on the intricate relationships between art, law, and diplomacy.

Caravaggio’s work was so intense that it was removed from the general public for three centuries, having only been rehabilitated in the 20th century, from the moment when Picasso, when painting the “Guernica”, declared that he wanted to be able to portray the horse throughout. its animality, as Caravaggio had done in the “Conversion of São Paulo”.

Caravaggio acted as a bass continuo, influencing the artists, but away from the public. Time, as it is, did him justice. Tandem Obtinet (Justice triumphs ).