Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Crucifixion of St. Peter, 1601, oil on canvas (Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome)
Smarthistory images for teaching and learning:
[flickr_tags user_id=”82032880@N00″ tags=”CaravaggioPeterCrucifixion,”]
[0:00] [music]
Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:04] We’re in Santa Maria del Popolo.
Dr. Beth Harris: [0:07] In Rome.
Dr. Zucker: [0:08] Looking at one of the great Caravaggios of the Baroque.
Dr. Harris: [0:12] This may actually be my favorite Caravaggio, although I think I said that about the last Caravaggio we did.
Dr. Zucker: [0:17] You may have. This is the “Crucifixion of Saint Peter.” You know, we talk about the diagonals of the Baroque, and the sense of action, and the momentary, but Caravaggio just makes that seem so pedestrian. It’s such an activated, complex set of movements and weights.
Dr. Harris: [0:33] Counter-movements. Yes.
Dr. Zucker: [0:34] Yes. Gravity plays this intense role.
Dr. Harris: [0:38] A very, very, very powerful feeling of the pull of gravity, but what gets me is Peter. Caravaggio went out into the street and got a guy.
Dr. Zucker: [0:46] He’s a real, and powerful, intense figure, and he looks really crabby, just the way Peter should be. Now the story, of course, is Peter.
Dr. Harris: [0:54] He asked to be crucified not the way that Christ had been crucified.
Dr. Zucker: [0:57] That’s right, so, upside down.
Dr. Harris: [0:57] They’re turning the cross upside down, right? Look at him. He looks poor and kind of messy and…
Dr. Zucker: [1:03] Not idealized at all.
Dr. Harris: [1:04] No.
Dr. Zucker: [1:04] This is in such contrast to the pomp and ceremony…
Dr. Harris: [1:07] He’s a guy hanging out in a bar in Rome.
Dr. Zucker: [1:10] Well, that’s what Caravaggio is so well known for. It’s all the pomp and ceremony of Rome, of the Catholic Church, is here turned on its head by Caravaggio. Think about this in contrast to the medieval traditions, where there’s no sense of gravity, no sense of weight, no sense of physicality.
[1:24] We’re really seeing the ramifications of the Renaissance, but brought into the Baroque era with a kind of intense emotionalism and physicality that even puts the Renaissance to shame.
Dr. Harris: [1:34] Yeah, and shoved in your face. The guy who’s lifting the cross, he’s got all the way under it and is hoisting it with his back. We see his butt in our face. We see his leg, his dirty feet.
Dr. Zucker: [1:45] That’s right. And this notion of really pushing out past the picture plane into our faces is absolutely…
Dr. Harris: [1:51] Into our space.
Dr. Zucker: [1:52] Look at the diagonal of Peter as his feet come towards us. You’re absolutely right. It breaks out into our world.
Dr. Harris: [1:59] In fact, the cross, as it moves out into our space by his feet, gives us a very close up view of the nails. There’s a kind of way that it gets you in your body so that you almost go, “Ugh,” and you can feel that.
Dr. Zucker: [2:10] There’s all this tension.
Dr. Harris: [2:13] The nail through his hand, it’s all very, very real and descriptive, the way that there’s that black background.
Dr. Zucker: [2:19] Because light is really emphasizing what you’re talking about. The way in which the knees protrude, the way in which the body is pushed forward, all of that is highly controlled by the way that the light is played here.
Dr. Harris: [2:30] Right. And on his abdomen and his knees.
Dr. Zucker: [2:32] That’s right. That kind of raking light.
Dr. Harris: [2:33] That make his body look very normal, like it’s a regular man’s body, so different than the kinds of bodies we’re used to seeing in the Renaissance.
Dr. Zucker: [2:41] It’s true. Although there is a heroicism here in terms of its mass and its strength, but it’s only expressed through…
Dr. Harris: [2:46] Belied a little bit by the face, though, which is so vulnerable.
Dr. Zucker: [2:49] It’s true, there is this kind of incredible tension, because you’re right, all the forces of nature play here. We’re not quite sure if that rope is strong enough. We’re not quite sure if those men are strong enough because it may just fall.
[3:03] [crosstalk]
Dr. Harris: [3:03] It may, the whole thing, collapse at any second.
Dr. Zucker: [3:05] Absolutely, there’s this kind of sense of transience in the momentary…
Dr. Harris: [3:09] And sort of human frailty.
Dr. Zucker: [3:11] That’s right. In a sense, Caravaggio’s brilliance is to be able to create this sense of newness and freshness, and as if this hadn’t been rehearsed hundreds of times and paintings for hundreds of years.
[3:23] crosstalk]
Dr. Harris: [3:23] I know, but no one did it like this.
Dr. Zucker: [3:25] It’s as if it’s the first time.
Dr. Harris: [3:26] Yeah.
[3:26] [music]
