Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Narcissus at the Source, oil on canvas, 1597-99 (Palazzo Barbarini, Rome)
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Dr. Beth Harris: [0:06] We’re in the Palazzo Barberini, looking at beautiful painting by Caravaggio, “Narcissus.”
Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:14] “Narcissus at the Source” is their title.
Dr. Harris: [0:16] This is a story from Ovid of a boy who falls in love with his own reflection in the water, so much so that he falls in and drowns.
Dr. Zucker: [0:27] Of course, the flower is named after him, as is the word “narcissism.”
Dr. Harris: [0:32] That’s right. In a Christian context, a…
Dr. Zucker: [0:35] A morality tale.
Dr. Harris: [0:36] Yeah.
Dr. Zucker: [0:37] Yeah, a caution.
Dr. Harris: [0:38] About what’s important and what’s not important.
Dr. Zucker: [0:40] It’s an extraordinarily interesting subject for a painter.
Dr. Harris: [0:44] That’s true. It’s especially interesting because you get the reality of the figure and then the reflection.
Dr. Zucker: [0:49] The reflection of the figure.
Dr. Harris: [0:50] Of course, paintings themselves are kinds of mirrors, or reflections, in a way.
Dr. Zucker: [0:55] They certainly are. The idea of the artist’s responsibility in terms of depiction, in terms of creating faithfulness and the dangers that are inherent in that.
Dr. Harris: [1:05] That’s right.
Dr. Zucker: [1:05] It’s interesting, if you look at this painting, that the reflection — in a sense the painting within the painting — is a dimmer image.
Dr. Harris: [1:13] Much dimmer.
Dr. Zucker: [1:14] It’s really only the highlights that come forward.
Dr. Harris: [1:17] That’s true.
Dr. Zucker: [1:18] The painting is also incredibly abstract. The surface of the water or the edge of the water is almost dividing the canvas exactly in half. Not quite, but close, creating this continuity between the hands that are touching the arms.
Dr. Harris: [1:33] And a kind of circular form inscribed within that rectangle of the canvas.
Dr. Zucker: [1:39] It seems to me, absolutely, to be a kind of metaphor or a kind of meditation.
Dr. Harris: [1:44] On painting.
Dr. Zucker: [1:45] On painting and its goals and its dangers.
Dr. Harris: [1:48] Because of course he, as the painter, had to think about how he was painting the so-called reality — real figure.
Dr. Zucker: [1:55] That’s right.
Dr. Harris: [1:55] Versus the so-called reflection of the real figure. And painting itself is a reflection. The other thing that interests me is the foreshortening. The way it’s so close to us. The way that the figure himself leans out towards us with a kind of longing.
[2:11] All of those very Baroque elements of really moving into the space of the viewer are here. That tenebroso, that dark background, that really makes us focus on the figure that fills the shape of the canvas.
Dr. Zucker: [2:25] The thing that’s really vivid is the knee.
Dr. Harris: [2:27] Is the knee.
Dr. Zucker: [2:28] Also the shirt sleeve.
Dr. Harris: [2:30] He often draws our attention not to the thing that you’d think he should draw our attention to, [like] the back of a horse. It’s that interest in realism, where in reality the thing that you might look at or the thing that light falls on is not necessarily the most important thing in the room.
Dr. Zucker: [2:48] I want to look at his left hand on the right side of the canvas. Let’s take a close look, because what seems to be happening is his right hand on the left side seems to be firmly planted on the ground.
[2:59] He seems to be so absent-minded, so taken with his own image, that he seems not to realize that he’s about to support himself where he can’t, on the water.
Dr. Harris: [3:09] It looks like he’s about to fall in.
Dr. Zucker: [3:10] This might be that moment.
Dr. Harris: [3:12] It’s almost like he’s reaching out to embrace himself. He’s fallen in love with himself, literally.
Dr. Zucker: [3:18] But he’ll embrace only his reflection, which is of course intangible.
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