Caravaggio F18 lecture notes 2

To better understand the art and the life of Caravaggio, we must fill in some historical background and
context related to three main areas:

1. Social context and the role of faith in medieval life

2. Art of Italy in the transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque

3. The papacy and the reformation

Social context and the role of Christian faith in medieval life.

Medieval society was largely hierarchic following the feudalist contract of receiving access to land (and
its cultivation) in return for loyalty and military service (see slide of feudalist pyramid). In northern
Europe nobility was a social class that could truly be only obtained by being born into landed aristocracy.
A noble was easily identified: “A man of virtue, pure blood, with right to bear arms, in the service of his
monarch… a man who was a skilled swordsman and horseman and would never dirty his hands with
trade”, p.11.

Looking back at history from our point of view in 2018, Caravaggio was in many ways still a product of
the Middle Ages. He was trained as apprentice to an artist but was much concerned with social status,
striving for the privileges and recognition of nobility. He was keen to cultivate relations to upper class
patrons, including the ruling family of his native Caravaggio and the wealthy clients of the Church.

In Western Europe the Christian religion was the matrix of medieval life. The law of the Church was
omnipresent and compulsory. The Church preached that the life of the spirit and the afterworld was
superior to the material life and the here and now. Between the 13th and the 16th centuries this “God-
focused” (theo-centric) life was slowly replaced by a “man-centered” (anthropo-centric) attitude which
began to esteem the worth of the individual and a preference of the “active, investigative” life over the
“passive, contemplative” life.

Much of the Middle Ages, which roughly cover the thousand years stretch from the end of the Roman
Empire to the Renaissance, had suffered from major perils: the plague, wars, the crusades, taxes,
brigandage (gang violence), bad government, insurrection and schism in the Church. Settlements,
villages and towns were often subject to armed aggression. Fortified manors or castles were built for
protection of the community and some of the larger ones could provide shelter and provisions for most
inhabitants of a town. Lorenzetti's Allegory of Good Government shows the town of Siena with houses
that had defensive features including towers to provide lookouts for trouble. Crenellated walls, towers
and massive donjons were built to withstand sieges and the outcome of many conflicts depended on
whose supplies outlasted the other, see slide Castello Sforza, Milano. To achieve an effect of
invincibility, mansions and palaces were built to grand scale which also transferred to interiors.

Fortresses, castles and palaces rose contemporary with churches and cathedrals. Castles and even urban
palazzi (palaces in Italy) were designed as if violent attacks were expected. The palazzo’s typological
predecessor was the ancient Roman villa, but Roman houses were not fortified. Security in ancient
Rome depended on Roman law and the legions rather than on moats and ramparts. After the collapse of
the Roman Empire, medieval society was fragmented, its parts clashing continuously. With lack of
effective secular authority the Church (ecclesiastical authority) filled a vacuum, offering an organizing
principle that was the reason for its success. Society cannot bear anarchy.

Growing from the turbulence after the fall of the Roman Empire, secular authority slowly cohered in
monarchy, soon to come into conflict with the Church, the nobility and, later, free “communes” or cities.
As towns grew more prosperous they offered their loyalty to barons, bishops or kings in return for
guarantees of liberty, so-called “charters” that authorized them to hold market days (see slide), tax
bridge users and households (hearth tax).

By providing freedom for development of commerce, charters paved the way to the rise of the
merchant class. Merchants ranked below nobility and clergy.

A person’s social class was determined by ownership of land. The feudal system (from Latin foedus =
oath) was based on hereditary ownership of land by the nobility. In theory, all land belonged to the
emperor who granted use of land to a king in return for an oath of loyalty which included military
service. The king, in turn would grant use of a fief of land to dukes in return for loyalty and service. This
relationship between lord and vassal (subordinate), followed a hierarchy that reached down throughout
the nobility, including earls, counts, barons and knights. The principal rural unit would be a manor house
surrounded by fields and forests. Here, the lord of the manor, in Italian a Marchese, a member of the
nobility, would oversee lower placed nobles and non-noble serfs and peasants, who, in return for
working the land, were allowed to cultivate part of the fields for their own benefit.