Caravaggio's Pitiful Relics

The renowned Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571and#150;1610) established his career in Catholic Rome, making paintings that placed particular importance on sacred relics and the glorification of martyred saints. Beginning with his early works, Caravaggio was intensely engaged with the physical world. He not only interrogated appearances but also experimented with the paintand#8217;s material nature. Caravaggioand#8217;s Pitiful Relics explores how the artistand#8217;s commitment to materiality served and ultimately challenged the Counter Reformation churchand#8217;s interests. In his first ecclesiastical commission, Caravaggio offered an unconventional representation of martyrdom that collapsed the borders between art, contemporary religious persecution, iconoclasm, and relics in early Christian catacombs. Yet his art controversially and eventually led to a criminal trial. After he had fled from Rome in disgrace, his major altarpiece depicting the death of the Virgin Mary, portraying her mortality rather than her sanctity, was removed. Caravaggioand#8217;s materiality came into conflict with changing notions of the sacred; thereafter, the sacred object became a secular work of art, marking the displacement of the relic.

This thought-provoking volume explores how Caravaggioand#8217;s interest in materiality conflicted with the Catholic Churchand#8217;s ideas about the sanctity of relics, resulting in controversies surrounding his paintings in early-17th-century Rome.and#160;

Todd P. Olson is associate professor, history of art, at the University of California, Berkeley.