6 Caravaggio works to see in 3 churches in Rome

Here we are at a new appointment with our travels! Today we are headed to the capital, to Rome: did you know that in the Eternal City it is possible to see as many as six masterpieces by Caravaggio completely free of charge, without queuing, and enjoying priceless tranquility? In fact, not everyone knows that some churches in Rome preserve inside them several important paintings by Michelangelo Merisi (1571 - 1610), who went down in history as Caravaggio, from the Lombard town where his mother was from. So today we propose a magical tour that will take us to three churches in Rome where Caravaggio’s six paintings are preserved! This is a really interesting tour also because these churches are the places for which the works were conceived and painted, so they have been there since the moment Caravaggio delivered them to the patrons. And to find a work in the environment for which it was made, besides being a unique emotion, because it is as if we were seeing it through the eyes of those who saw it then, is a historical-artistic testimony of considerable importance that allows us to better immerse ourselves in the reality of the time and thus better understand it.

1. St. Louis of the French
Near Piazza Navona, the church of St. Louis of the French is (and was also at the time of Caravaggio) the national church of the French community living in Rome. The term national church means precisely a church that, in Rome, represents the community of a foreign nation. The saint to whom the church is dedicated is a French saint: he is King Louis IX who was canonized (i.e., proclaimed a saint) by Pope Boniface VIII in 1297. And French, too, was the cardinal to whom was dedicated the chapel for which Caravaggio’s works found inside the sacred building were made: he was Mathieu Cointrel (Italianized as Matteo Contarelli: the chapel is thus the famous Contarelli Chapel). Caravaggio obtained the commission to decorate the chapel with three canvases thanks to the intercession of his patron, Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, with the French community. The three canvases tell episodes from the life of St. Matthew: this saint was chosen because he bore the same name as Cardinal Cointrel. Michelangelo Merisi received the commission in 1599 and immediately set to work, painting the Martyrdom of St. Matthew, which he finished the following year, as well as the Vocation of St. Matthew, and St. Matthew and the Angel, which was instead done in 1602. These are three masterpieces of fundamental importance for the history of art, because thanks to them Caravaggio subverted the schemes, especially in terms of realism (very evident in St. Matthew and the Angel: an early version of the work was, moreover, rejected) and the use of light, which, for example, in the Vocation of St. Matthew becomes almost the protagonist of the work: a natural light that, however, guides the observer and helps him to understand the scene, illuminating the saint called by Christ and leaving in the shadows those who do not care for the Lord’s presence.

2. St. Mary of the People
Among the most famous churches in Rome, the basilica of Santa Maria del Pop olo is located in the scenic Piazza del Popolo, on the opposite side from Via del Corso and its twin churches, Santa Maria dei Miracoli and Santa Maria in Monte Santo. Caravaggio was commissioned to work in this church following the great success he achieved with the canvases he made for the Contarelli Chapel. Here, in St. Mary of the People, the patron was Tiberio Cerasi, one of the most prominent jurists in Rome at the time, who also held important institutional positions (he also became treasurer of the pope). Tiberio Cerasi had a chapel in the basilica (the Cerasi Chapel, precisely) and decided to have the paintings that were to decorate it done by the two greatest artists active in Rome at that time: Annibale Carracci, who did theAssumption of the Virgin, and of course our own Caravaggio, who painted the Conversion of St. Paul and the Crucifixion of St. Peter. These two works were also distinguished by their exceptional realism and the distortion of the iconographies: suffice it to say that in the Conversion of St. Paul, the horse occupies a far greater space than that reserved for the saint, and furthermore the episode does not take place outdoors, as tradition wanted, but in a dark stable. The realism is such that scholars have led to speculate that Caravaggio painted the works making use of some models. Both works were begun in 1600 and finished in 1601.

3. St. Augustine’s
The church of St. Augustine is also located in the vicinity of Piazza Navona. Here, Caravaggio worked when he was at the height of his success: we find ourselves in 1603 when Orinzia Cavalletti, widow of the Bolognese notary Ermete Cavalletti, wanted to commission Caravaggio to paint a painting for the chapel the family had purchased inside the church according to a precise will of the deceased, expressed in the will drawn up just two days before his death. The family and the executors of the will thus began negotiations with the painter, who set to work and, perhaps in 1606, delivered his masterpiece, the Madonna of the Pilgrims. The chapel was in fact dedicated to Our Lady of Loreto, to whom Ermete Cavalletti was very devoted, so much so that he himself went on a pilgrimage to the Marche region shortly before his death.Caravaggio therefore chose to make a painting on the theme, presenting us with the Madonna appearing before two poor pilgrims, dirty and in threadbare robes. Due to the high degree of realism and the fact that the protagonists are two simple people (and not to mention the fact that the Madonna is also depicted in a very simple way, as if she herself were a commoner of the time), the work achieved great success among the poorer strata of the Roman population of the time.

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