towards sexual excess. Some examples can be found in the painting by the painter Simon Vouet, a disciple of Caravaggio, entitled The Temptation of Saint Francis, in the Church of San Lorenzo in Lucina, in which a prostitute is undressing near a bed in a whore house and is lifting her skirt as did the famous Caterina Sforza.
Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto
1597–1600
Ceiling painted in oil, 300 × 180 cm
Casino Boncompagni Ludovisi, Rome
She is watched by a priest who is violently tormented at the sight of such a spectacle, and Vouet represents the scene frankly. How many artists have since been inspired by this very audacious duo to represent the “temptation of the saints”, a very fashionable subject at the time. It is clear that Caravaggio, the father of pictorial verismo, never indulged in this type of sensual exuberance. His imagination did not lead him to the fantastical excess that one can see in the numerous depictions of the temptations of Saint Francis and Saint Anthony.
Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto (detail)
1597–1600
Ceiling painted in oil, 300 × 180 cm
Casino Boncompagni Ludovisi, Rome
If he sometimes portrayed a female sinner, he has always draped her arms and chest with a heavy shirt. It never occurred to him to represent Venus, Galatea, or Andromeda, any more than Salome performing a provocative dance or the scandalous Suzanne at her bath. Neither does he depict Lucretia or Cleopatra with naked breasts, an idea that nevertheless seduced Guido Reni.
Judith Beheading Holofernes
c. 1598
Oil on canvas, 145 × 195 cm
Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica di Palazzo Barberini, Rome
It is not his lack of technique in painting the nude that is responsible for this absence of nudity. We know how successfully he reproduced the lines and textures of the human body, of children and angels, going as far as rendering the quivering and tensed breast overflowing with maternal milk.
One cannot accuse a rebel of his calibre, who did not hesitate to reproduce feminine and masculine anatomy, of being afraid to scandalise the religious figures and the laymen for whom he undertook commissions.
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