Caravaggio

Next time I teach this class, here’s a new(er) book we’ll read: Caravaggio: Painter of Miracles, by Francine Prose (HarperCollins, 2005). We’ll go off tomorrow to the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi to see three paintings done by Caravaggio who was much reviled in his own time, the 1600s, and not discovered and appreciated until the 1950s.

We’ll see The Calling of St. Matthew¸ another depicting Matthew’s martyrdom, and a third entitled The Inspiration of St. Matthew. About this last one, Prose writes that the saint kneels at his desk, “writing, and turns to find an angel suspended in the air, hovering over his shoulder, distracting or reminding him of something that belongs in his gospel” (8). Prose had watched a tour guide speak about these paintings, suggesting that they notice that the gesture of Jesus in The Calling of St. Matthew recalls God’s gesture in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, but adds “There is nothing she is telling them that they need to hear, and the power of the paintings is drowning out her voice (9).

We’ll stand before those paintings in the morning and consider the power of art to teach, and the power of inspiration which enflames the human heart.

Look at the previous post about Pope Benedict speaking on art and the comment from the Catechism I appended to it. (fr wcg)