Caravaggio by Francine Prose Read Free Book Online

The Gypsy Fortune-teller and The Cardsharps , invited Caravaggio to live in the Palazzo Madama and to become part of a household that included numerous artists and sculptors, singers and musicians. Bellori remarks on the boost this gave Michelangelo Merisi’s confidence and reputation, and surely it must have been a great relief to him to find a stable, congenial living situation and a dependable means of support after the uncertainties of his first years in Rome. Soon the artist was turning out canvases as consciously charming and seductive as Boy with a Basket of Fruit, but now geared to the sensibility, tastes, and interests of his munificent new patron.
    The first painting that Caravaggio appears to have done expressly for Del Monte was The Musicians , also called A Concert of Youths , which, according to Baglione, he painted “from nature, very well.” The work depicts four boys, each prettier and more adorable than the next, who have come together, presumably in preparation for a concert. In the center of the canvas, a handsome young man in a loose and nearly transparent white blouse, with a length of heavy red brocade draped diagonally across his chest, tunes a lute. He has not begun performing, but already his eyes are brimming with tears. Over his left shoulder, a dark-haired youth who closely resembles the boy with the basket of fruit (both of whom are thought to have been modeled on Mario Minniti, Caravaggio’s Sicilian friend, with whom he may have lived at the Palazzo Madama) holds a shawm—an early wind instrument—as he gazes out at us, attentive and expectant. The two other boys seem unaware of our presence. On the left, a winged Cupid, even younger than his companions, concentrates on separating some green grapes from a bunch, while, on the right, another boy, draped in a white toga tied with a bow, turns his half-naked, beautiful back and the tender nape of his neck to us while he studies a musical score. A violin and bow rest on the bench beside him.
    The boys are clothed, it’s true, but their flowing white garments are depicted in a way that suggests casual disarray and undress, and manage to reveal enough bare flesh so that they seem effectively naked. Or perhaps that impression is the result of the perfect intimacy, the ease, the relaxation, and above all the air of erotic indolence with which they cluster together to fill the space of the picture. Like the boy with the fruit basket, their pink lips are gently parted, their eyes veiled. We may have watched groups of musicians tuning up and preparing to play, but rarely have we seen any as dreamy, as delectable, or as enticing as these.
    Not long afterward, Caravaggio painted the The Lute Player , another offering for Del Monte on a musical theme. Here a pretty, curly-haired, dark-eyed, and even more androgynous youth in yet another flowing white shirt stares seductively at us as he plays his lute, an instrument known for its aphrodisiac qualities; many love songs were composed for its particular tonal range. Indeed, the musician’s gender is so ambiguous that Bellori describes the work as a portrait of a woman in a blouse playing a lute. It has also been suggested that the model for the painting was the singer Pedro de Montoya, a Spanish castrato who was part of Del Monte’s household.
    In this painting, unlike The Musicians , we can read the score from which the boy is singing. It’s a madrigal by the sixteenth-century Franco-Flemish composer Jacob Arcadelt, a song whose lyrics say, “You know that I love you.” At the left of the canvas is a vase of flowers and an arrangement of ripe and overripe fruits and vegetables, including some figs and a cucumber that viewers of the period would have recognized as a sly sexual joke.
    Looking at the musical paintings Caravaggio made for his cardinal and that he intended to gratify the tastes of his new employer, it’s all too easy to recall the unfriendly