Displacing Caravaggio: Art, Media, and

Humanitarian Visual Culture Francesco

Zucconi
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 DI SPLAC I NG C AR AVAG G I O
A RT, M E DI A , A ND H U M A NI TA RI A N V I SUA L CU LTU RE

FR A N C ES C O Z UC C O N I
Displacing Caravaggio
 Francesco Zucconi

Displacing Caravaggio
Art, Media, and Humanitarian Visual Culture

Translated by Zakiya Hanafi

Francesco Zucconi
Iuav University of Venice
Venice, Italy

ISBN 978-3-319-93377-1    ISBN 978-3-319-93378-8 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93378-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018951806

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
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electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
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exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
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lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
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tional affiliations.

Cover Illustration: Michael Miller / EyeEm

Cover Design: Emma J Hardy

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
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 Acknowledgments

This book was written over three years, mainly in Paris, Boston, and
Barcelona. Moving between different languages, not always with a sure
foot, I decided to write it in the only language I think I know well and in
which, in any case, my ideas tend to take form. I’d like to thank Zakiya
Hanafi, who took care of my writing and stimulated me to reflect on the
book’s lexical and conceptual issues. My thanks to Palgrave Macmillan,
especially to my editor, Lina Aboujieb, her editorial assistant Ellie
Friedman, and the reviewers who believed in my proposal.
Most of the research was conducted at the École des Hautes Études en
Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, where I received funding from the
European Union (H2020, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship,
HumanitarianPassions, No. 658512). There I was able to benefit from
daily contact with Giovanni Careri, Director of the Center for History and
Theory of Arts (CEHTA), to whom I’d like to express my deepest admira-
tion and appreciation. I also want to thank the other members of the
Center for welcoming me into their midst: Jean-Claude Bonne, Emanuele
Coccia, Georges Didi-Huberman, Pierre-Olivier Dittmar, André Gunthert,
Anne Lafont, and Eric Michaud.
The final work on the manuscript benefited from the excellent working
conditions provided by Harvard University, thanks to the Lauro de Bosis
Fellowship that I received for the Spring 2018 semester. I’d like to thank
Francesco Erspamer and the other Committee members of the program
commemorating the Italian intellectual, aviator, and anti-fascist: Giuliana
Bruno, Gennaro Chierchia, James Hankins, Charles Maier, Alina
Payne, Lino Pertile, Robert Putnam, and Jeffrey Schnapp. A special thanks

v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

goes to Pier Luigi Sacco for involving me in extraordinarily interesting

scholarly and cultural projects.
During the months spent in Barcelona, a good part of my concentra-
tion was owed to the serene atmosphere of the Biblioteca de Catalunya. I
was fortunate to have the company of Elsa Soro during the writing pro-
cess, when the work can seem like an emotional see-saw, and my gratitude
to her goes well beyond the space of these acknowledgments.
Parts of this book were presented at conferences and seminars with
Maria Cristina Addis, Enrico Camporesi, Guillaime Cassegrain, Lucia
Corrain, Paolo Fabbri, Sara Guindani, Stefano Jacoviello, Tarcisio
Lancioni, Andrzej Lesniak, Carmelo Marabello, Angela Mengoni,
Philippe-Alain Michaud, Jonathan Pouthier, and Catherine Sussloff. Over
these years, I’ve also had the opportunity of discussing topics regarding
media theory and contemporary visual culture with Francesco Casetti,
Roberto De Gaetano, Ruggero Eugeni, Pietro Montani, and Antonio
Somaini. I am profoundly grateful to all of them. A very special thanks to
Mieke Bal, for her willingness to entertain a dialogue with me on the
themes of this book, whose title alone testifies to the profound inspiration
her work has given me.
Several friends have read parts of the manuscript and offered valuable
suggestions. Others have participated unknowingly in the labor of writing
by engaging with me in discussions on topics of shared interest. My thanks
to Luca Acquarelli, Michele Campanini, Maurizio Corbella, Massimiliano
Coviello, Matteo Giuggioli, Matthieu Griffith, Francesco Guzzetti, Maria
Anna Mariani, Céline Krauss, Angela Maiello, Valentina Manchia, Chiara
Quagliariello, Antonio Rafele, Marie Rebecchi, Giacomo Tagliani, Matteo
Treleani, Nicolas Tripet, Anna Tuli, Luca Venzi, and Massimo Zucconi.
I’d also like to thank Sabine Guermouche, Clara Lieutaghi, Matteo
Vallorani, and the other doctoral candidates and students who organized
workshops on the concept of the “theoretical object,” which took place at
CEHTA between 2015 and 2017. Without Lorenzo Sibiriu and Pietro
D’Aietti, my trip to Lampedusa would have been nothing like it was.
Lorenzo Alunni, Giorgio Fichera, Nicola Perugini, and Kendra Walker
have supported me with their friendship during the ebbs and flows of this
research. To them I dedicate this book.
 Contents

1 Introduction   1

2 Humanitarian Archeology  27

3 Un-Still Life  57

4 Pathos, Survival, and “Quasi Immanence” 105

5 On the Limits of the Virtual Humanitarian Experience 149

6 Caravaggio on Lampedusa 183

7 On Displacing 199

Bibliography  207

Index 227

vii
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Caravaggio, The Seven Works of Mercy, 1606–1607, Pio Monte
della Misericordia, Naples, courtesy of Alamy 35
Fig. 2.2 Alice Seeley Harris, missionary, photographer and campaigner
with large group of Congolese children, early 1900s, The Harris
Lantern Slide Show, ©Anti-­Slavery International/Autograph
ABP46
Fig. 2.3 Giovanni Gerolamo Savoldo, The Venetian Woman or Mary
Magdalene, 1520–1530, Gemäldegalerie—State Museums,
Berlin49
Fig. 3.1 Caravaggio, Madonna di Loreto/Madonna of the Pilgrims,
1604–1606, Basilica of Sant’Agostino, Rome, courtesy of
Alamy60
Fig. 3.2 Caravaggio, The Resurrection of Lazarus, 1608–1609,
Regional Museum, Messina, courtesy of Alamy 63
Fig. 3.3 Caravaggio, Boy Bitten by a Lizard, 1595–1596, Roberto
Longhi Foundation of Historical Studies, Florence, courtesy
of Alamy 67
Fig. 3.4 Willoughby Wallace Hooper, “Objects deserving of gratuitous
aid in Madras” (during the famine 1876–1878), Tamil Nadu,
South India, ©The Royal Geographical Society 72
Fig. 3.5 From Mark Twain, King Leopold’s Soliloquy (Boston:
F.R. Warren, 1905) 74
Fig. 3.6 Jean Mohr, A young Mozambican refugee, Muhukuru clinic,
Tanzania, 1968, ©HCR/Mohr 78
Fig. 3.7 Shehzad Noorani, A young girl drapes her hand over the
shoulder of a man she is soliciting outside a brothel in the city of
Tangail, Bangladesh, 2008, ©UNICEF/0986/Noorani 81

ix
x LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 3.8 From “Atlas of framboesia. A nomenclature and clinical study

of the skin lesion,” WHO Bulletin 4, no. 2 (1951) 83
Fig. 3.9 Claude Huber, Searo Medical Education, India, 1967,
©WHO/Claude Huber 86
Fig. 3.10 Sebastião Salgado, In the hospital of Abéché, Chad, the German
organization CAMS in charge of the surgical unit, Chad, 1985,
©Amazonas/Salgado88
Fig. 3.11 William Daniels, Hit by an arrow, Mpoko airport camp,
Central African Republic, 2014, ©MSF/Daniels 91
Fig. 3.12 Sebastião Salgado, Polio vaccination at the cattle camp of
Wumpul, Rumbek, Southern Sudan, 2001, ©Amazonas/
Salgado95
Fig. 3.13 The Doctors Without Borders campaign “La próxima vacuna
ponla tú” (The next vaccine you can give yourself),
photographer: Pedro Ballesteros, 2015, ©MSF/Ballesteros 98
Fig. 4.1 The UNICEF campaign “Bambini in pericolo” (children in
danger), photographer: Tomislav Georgiev, 2015,
©UNICEF/Georgiev106
Fig. 4.2 The Pope on Lesbos: the desperate tears of a migrant, 2016,
Repubblica.it, still frame 111
Fig. 4.3 Caravaggio, The Entombment of Christ, 1603–1604,
Pinacoteca Vaticana, Vatican City, courtesy of Alamy 117
Fig. 4.4 Samuel Aranda, Fatima al-Qaws cradles her son Zayed, 18, who
is suffering from the effects of tear gas after a street
demonstration in Sana’a, Yemen, on 15 October, 2011, Sanaa,
Yemen, ©The New York Times/Aranda 124
Fig. 4.5 John Vink, Rumanian refugees in their rented apartment,
Budapest, Hungary, 19 March, 1989, ©Magnum/Vink 138
Fig. 4.6 John Vink, Guatemalan refugees rehearsing songs for Sunday
mass, Maya Tecum, Mexico, 27 June, 1988, ©Magnum/Vink 140
Fig. 4.7 John Vink, Nicaragua refugees playing cards, Guasimo,
Honduras, June 4, 1988, ©Magnum/Vink 142
Fig. 4.8 Caravaggio, The Cardsharps, 1594, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort
Worth, courtesy of Alamy 143
Fig. 4.9 Caravaggio, Rest on the Flight into Egypt, 1595–1596, Galleria
Doria Pamphili, Rome, courtesy of Alamy 145
Fig. 5.1 Rob Thom, A delegate at the supporting Syria conference checks
out an immersive story—“Clouds over Sidra”—following the life
of one young Syrian refugee living in Za’atari Camp in Jordan,
London, February 4, 2016, ©Thom/Crown 151
Fig. 5.2 Gabo Arora and Chris Milk, Clouds over Sidra, 2015, selection
from a 360-degree video 157
 LIST OF FIGURES xi

Fig. 5.3 Gabo Arora and Chris Milk, Waves of Grace, 2015, selection
from a 360-degree video 159
Fig. 5.4 Gabo Arora and Chris Milk, Clouds over Sidra, 2015, selection
from a 360-degree video 166
Fig. 5.5 Caravaggio, The Taking of Christ, 1602, National Gallery of
Ireland, Dublin, courtesy of Alamy 172
Fig. 5.6 Caravaggio, The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, 1599–1600,
Chiesa di San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome, courtesy of Alamy 176
Fig. 6.1 Towards the Museum of Trust and Dialogue for the
Mediterranean, Lampedusa, September 26, 2016 186
Fig. 6.2 Magnus Wennman, Mahdi, 18 months old, Horgoš/Röszke,
Serbian-­Hungarian Border, 2016, ©UNHCR/Wennman 195
Fig. 6.3 Magnus Wennman, Moyad, 5 years old, Amman, Jordan, 2016,
©UNHCR/Wennman196
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

A Humanitarian Caravaggio?
It was certainly not the first time something similar had taken place.
Masterpieces of Italian, Flemish, “Oriental,” and other traditions of art
have been transported from one museum to another on countless occa-
sions. There was something particularly interesting about this time,
though—interesting enough to warrant a few pages and draw inspiration
from it for a book.
In the summer of 2014, a painting by Michelangelo Merisi, also known
as Caravaggio, became embroiled in negotiations among a group of insti-
tutions and representatives of civil society. The talks concerned the possi-
bility of its temporary transfer. The painting in question was The Seven
Works of Mercy, delivered by Caravaggio to the Confraternity of the Pio
Monte della Misericordia of Naples on January 9, 1607 and rarely moved
since then.1 The negotiations—which lasted for several weeks, at times
sparking off public debate—focused on the possibility of transferring
Caravaggio’s iconic masterpiece from Naples to Milan, specifically for the
2015 Universal Exposition. The institutions involved in the talks included
the Vatican State and the Italian Republic’s Ministry of Cultural Heritage,

1
See Vincenzo Pacelli, Caravaggio. Le Sette Opere di Misericordia (Naples: Art Studio
Paparo, 2014), 93.

© The Author(s) 2018 1

F. Zucconi, Displacing Caravaggio,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93378-8_1
2 F. ZUCCONI

Activities and Tourism.2 The possibility weighed by the lay and religious
institutions was that of exhibiting the seventeenth-century work inside the
pavilion of Caritas: the pastoral body of the Italian Episcopal Conference
for the promotion of charity; but also the Italian branch of Caritas
Internationalis—one of the largest nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs) in the world, whose humanitarian activities spread out over doz-
ens of countries.
As will be explored in greater detail, Caravaggio’s painting is a powerful
representation of the iconographic theme of the corporal works of mercy,
which every good Christian is expected to perform in aid of the needy by
providing basic necessities such as food, water, clothing, shelter, and so
forth. The reasons behind the request to borrow the painting can there-
fore be found in the Expo 2015 theme—“Nourish the Planet, Energy for
Life”—and even more so in the humanitarian campaign launched for the
occasion by Caritas called “Divide to multiply” and its global action cam-
paign “One human family, food for all: it’s our duty.”3
Despite the authority of the institutions involved, the idea came to
nothing. The painting remained where it was. The pavilion had to manage
without Caravaggio’s work or, at best, refer to it indirectly. As soon as
news of the painting’s possible transfer came out, protests erupted in
Naples—not so much because of the risks associated with transferring any
work of art, or even because of potential issues bound up with introducing
Caravaggio’s painting into a contemporary humanitarian framework. The
demonstrators demanded that the historical and artistic heritage of south-
ern Italy be defended from a predatory attitude on the part of political and
cultural institutions in the north. As it turned out, the vision of the
Minister of Cultural Heritage, Activities and Tourism, Dario Franceschini,
would ultimately promote an idea of Expo as a journey along the Italian
peninsula in discovery of its cultural and culinary delights.
At the beginning of 2016, Caravaggio’s The Seven Works of Mercy found
itself enmeshed once again in a controversy, also involving several institu-
tions and a possible transfer: this time, from Naples to Rome. The idea was
to display the work inside the Palazzo del Quirinale—the residence of the

2
“Un Caravaggio all’Expo ma scoppia la polemica,” La Repubblica, August 29, 2014,
http://napoli.repubblica.it/cronaca/2014/08/29/news/un_caravaggio_all_expo_ma_
scoppia_la_polemica-94651107.
3
For all content regarding these campaigns and initiatives, please refer to the Caritas pavil-
ion web page, http://expo.caritasambrosiana.it/english.html.
 INTRODUCTION 3

President of the Republic and a symbol of the power of the Italian state—
during the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, which was inaugurated by
Pope Francis on December 8, 2015 and ended on November 20, 2016.
This was a tribute to the desperate condition of migrants attempting to
reach Europe along the Mediterranean routes and, by extension, to every-
one suffering from the hardships of war or natural disasters.4 At first it
seemed as if the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, was person-
ally involved in implementing the proposal. However, not long afterwards
the Presidency was forced to specify that a group of people linked to the
Pio Monte of Naples had put forward the idea of the loan for the Jubilee,
so it was not the Quirinal who had spearheaded the initiative.5 As a matter
of fact, a few days earlier the President of the Republic had been addressed
in an open letter published in the newspaper Corriere del Mezzogiorno, in
which intellectuals and art historians, including Paolo Isotta, Aldo Masullo,
and Tomaso Montanari, had asked him to give up on the idea of exhibit-
ing the masterpiece. They reminded him that in 1613 “the Founding
Members of the Pio Monte established the ‘perpetual immovability’ of the
painting because the chapel, on whose main altar it is preserved, was cre-
ated specifically for Caravaggio’s masterpiece: the architecture, the con-
text, is complementary to and inseparable from the extraordinary pictorial
work.”6
From the Expo to the Jubilee, then, this time too, prompted by its
relevance to a large public event with a strong symbolic impact, someone
had the idea of moving the same painting by Caravaggio. Then controver-
sies arose and everything stayed where it was. In both cases, the arguments
aimed at preserving the painting in the artistic and historical context in
which it was created. The polemics, it should be noted, remained largely

4
On the idea that the “‘Jubilee Year of Mercy’ issued a call to journalists, multimedia
experts and social media communicators to report on facts, people, ideas and evangelization
by using Christian art to explore benevolence, pardon, and mercy,” see Ralf van Bühren,
“Caravaggio’s ‘Seven Works of Mercy’ in Naples. The Relevance of Art History to Cultural
Journalism,” Church, Communication and Culture 2, no. 3 (2017): 80.
5
Anna Paola Merone, “Il Quirinale rinuncia al Caravaggio. Ecco la lettera al Corriere,”
Corriere del Mezzogiorno, February 23, 2016, http://corrieredelmezzogiorno.corriere.it/
napoli/cronaca/16_febbraio_22/ecco-lettera-quirinale-che-rinuncia-caravaggio-48eb7aa8-
d99c-11e5-97be-11f35f9213e8.shtml.
6
“Signor Presidente, Roma rinunci alle ‘Sette Opere’ del Caravaggio,” Corriere del
Mezzogiorno, February 16, 2016, http://corrieredelmezzogiorno.corriere.it/napoli/
arte_e_cultura/16_febbraio_16/signor-presidente-mostra-rinunci-sette-opere-caravaggio-
05b88266-d4e8-11e5-988b-47e1acade9a1.shtml.
4 F. ZUCCONI

indifferent to any in-depth examination of the social and political issues

involved in the transfer: the fact of allying the religious theme of mercy
with the mostly secular field of contemporary humanitarianism; the ethno-
centrism potentially implied in the gesture of associating the work of a
master of Italian painting with the conditions of people assisted by NGOs
located around the world; the risk of creating a sort of forgetfulness or, at
the very least, of upstaging the real sufferings of individuals affected by
catastrophic events by giving center stage to a work of art.
Anybody who goes to Naples does so to plunge into the maze of streets
that make up the city’s enormous historic center. One climbs up and down
streets coming from the Spanish Quarters, crosses via Toledo and takes
Spaccanapoli or the Decumano Maggiore, which cuts the city in two: it is
a long alley that, in terms of place names, coincides with today’s Via dei
Tribunali. At number 253, there stands a building with a large loggia.
Since 1602, this structure has been the seat of the Pio Monte della
Misericordia, a registered charity founded by seven Neapolitan noblemen;
an institution linked to the values of the Counter-Reformation but con-
ceived from the outset as a lay organization.7 It is one of the most active
associations in the city as well as the owner of a picture gallery, the
Quadreria, that is endowed with a priceless collection. The paintings dis-
played in the chapels located inside the octagonal church of the Pio Monte
della Misericordia alone, which take the theme of mercy in multiple direc-
tions, include works by artists Giovanni Bernardino Azzolino, Fabrizio
Santafede, Luca Giordano, Giovanni Vincenzo Forlì, and Battistello
Caracciolo. Caravaggio’s painting hangs on the left side of the entrance,
mesmerizing visitors and bringing them to a halt.
During Expo 2015, as during the Jubilee, anybody who went to Naples
to see The Seven Works of Mercy might have been surprised by what was
exhibited for the occasion on all sides of the Caravaggio: not only the
paintings by the artists mentioned earlier but also a series of works in dif-
ferent media. These were contemporary art pieces installed inside the vari-
ous chapels of the church. They formed part of the “Seven Works for
Mercy” project, developed in 2011 from an idea by Maria Grazia Leonetti
Rodinò, a cultural heritage management consultant. The idea she had was
simple and original: to invite seven artists every year to freely engage with

7
For an overview of the Pio Monte della Misericordia, see the various papers published in
a collection edited by Mario Pisani Massamormile, Il Pio Monte della Misericordia di Napoli
nel quarto centenario (Naples: Electa, 2003).
 INTRODUCTION 5

the theme of mercy, showing its topicality on the contemporary scene.8

Among the works of the 2016 edition, those of Rachel Howard and Olaf
Nicolai create an explicit link between the theme of mercy and contempo-
rary tools for emergency management: in Howard’s mixed media piece,
Controlled Violence, she folds and stacks white sheets stained with red. The
German artist uses instead seven disposable isothermal blankets, like those
currently employed by NGOs: he spreads them out and plays with their
color scheme, creating a relationship with Caravaggio’s painting and in
particular with the Christian duty to “clothe the naked.”9 The works by
artists from previous editions now form part of the Confraternity’s collec-
tion and can be viewed in the Quadreria gallery: from Jannis Kounellis,
who crosses and nails five men’s shoes, to Anish Kapoor; from Mimmo
Jodice to Joseph Kosuth; and from Francesco Clemente to Douglas
Gordon.
Anyone disappointed by the failure to transfer Caravaggio’s painting to
the Caritas Pavilion at the Milan Expo or to the Quirinal in Rome and
who managed to visit the marvelous spaces in the Pio Monte della
Misericordia would have surely picked up on the ironic associations to be
made between these aborted projects and the act of installing contempo-
rary pieces in its home location. “If Caravaggio won’t come to contempo-
rary events, then contemporary events will just have to go to Caravaggio,”
a slightly cynical spectator with a dry sense of humor might well have
remarked while exiting the Pio Monte. This is a way of encapsulating the
“topicality of Caravaggio” in a simple sentence or motto: the continuous
references to the artist and to the composition of his paintings (the inten-
sity of the passions, the spectacularity of the composition, the chiaroscuro),
as if the secret of contemporary communications were locked up inside
them—effective images that bear witness to today’s most tragic events and
evoke an attitude of “common humanity.” But this was hardly the last
word on the matter: attempts to juxtapose Caravaggio’s art with humani-
tarian emergency conditions did not end in Naples; nor were they limited
to the failed cases mentioned here.
In June 2016, President Mattarella inaugurated the exhibition “Towards
the Museum of Trust and Dialogue for the Mediterranean” on Lampedusa.

8
Please refer to the project’s web page, available on the Pio della Misericordia site, www.
piomontedellamisericordia.it/la-collezione/sette-opere-per-la-misericordia.
9
The original work of mercy of clothing the naked will be examined in the next chapter.
For now, the Gospel reference is Matthew 25, 35–36.
6 F. ZUCCONI

Located in the heart of the Mediterranean, the island has been the main
arrival point for migratory routes from the African continent since the
1990s and a host for NGOs regularly engaged in rescue and hospitality
operations along its shores and in its interior. The exhibition center,
located only a short distance from the sea, brings together works of art
with a variety of objects salvaged during recent years from shipwrecks. The
centerpiece of this exhibition was a painting: Caravaggio’s Sleeping Cupid
(1608), normally displayed at the Galleria Palatina in Florence but loaned
to the fledgling museum for the occasion. After the many failed attempts
to move Caravaggio in the name of “humanitarian relevance,” then, the
initiative finally met with success. One of the forces behind the loan was
the director of the Uffizi Galleries, Eike Schmidt, who emphasized that
“Sleeping Cupid reminds us of the many children on the boats who did
not make it. But our message is also one of hope and solidarity and serves
as a warning about the love we need to awaken toward those in need.”10
The exhibition ended on October 3, 2016, in a flurry of journalists who
arrived on the island for the event.
So far we have surveyed the main circumstances linking Caravaggio’s
pictorial corpus to the topicality of current events and to the so-called
European migrant crisis. The question arises whether these episodes were
minor occurrences, which will naturally fade from public interest, or
whether they point to a problematic entanglement between the icono-
graphic models of the Western artistic heritage and media representation
of contemporary suffering. If the latter is true, then the forms and critical
issues of this entanglement need to be explored and investigated. If, as the
ironic title of a pamphlet by art historian Tomaso Montanari states,
“Caravaggio’s mother is always pregnant”11 (an explicit reference to art-­
history “hoaxes” and to the profitable business of forgeries and false attri-
butions), then, on closer inspection, the series of transfers presented here
have created something akin to “a humanitarian Caravaggio.” Obviously,
this does not involve a new painting or a forgery but, rather, a visual con-
figuration that seeks to keep past and present together, to unite the reli-
gious and the secular spheres in a sort of mutual promotion: humanitarian

10
The quotation is taken from an article by Alessandra Ziniti, “Lampedusa, Mattarella
inaugura il museo della fiducia e del dialogo: ‘La piccola Favour è ormai italiana’,” La
Repubblica, June 3, 2016, http://palermo.repubblica.it/cronaca/2016/06/03/news/
lampedusa_migranti_museo_dialogo_presidente_mattarella-141200798.
11
Tomaso Montanari, La madre di Caravaggio è sempre incinta (Milan: Skira, 2012).
 INTRODUCTION 7

communication would receive a problematic “ennoblement” from art his-

tory, while the latter would enjoy a no less questionable “return to
relevance.”
What is immediately worth highlighting, therefore, are the similarities
and differences in the stories told thus far. Picking up on a term in media
theory that has met with some success, it might be said that the first two
anecdotes express the strategic intention of remediating Caravaggio. The
reference is to the idea of “remediation” introduced by Jay David Bolter
and Richard Grusin to examine ways in which “[a medium] appropriates
the techniques, forms, and social significance of other media and attempts
to rival or refashion them in the name of the real.”12 Remediation serves
in this case to describe how The Seven Works of Mercy would have been
inscribed in the communication strategies of the Expo pavilion belonging
to one of the most important humanitarian organizations in the world, or
in the context of the Jubilee year exhibitions.
What can be recognized in the third anecdote is, in a certain sense, a
programmatic recycling of the idea developed by Mieke Bal in a ground-
breaking study dating from 1999: that the contemporary arts straddling
the new millennium have given form to explicit or implied “quotations”
of Caravaggio’s works; and that an artistic practice of this type generates
inevitable feedback effects on the ways we observe and interpret
Caravaggio’s pictorial corpus. The creation of works such as the ones
mentioned earlier by Howard, Kounellis, Gordon, and Nicolai explicitly
express the intention of quoting Caravaggio13—making The Seven Works of
Mercy an attractor for new expressive languages and social discourses, and
for turning the entire Pio Monte Church into a contemporary media
environment.
On closer inspection, the last example—the voyage of the Sleeping
Cupid from Florence to Lampedusa—does not represent a simple transfer
or common loan between museum institutions. A concept developed by
Francesco Casetti is useful here for identifying the ways in which a work
and a medium are transformed during the passage from one environment
to another, so that “a form of experience […] reestablishes itself in a new

12
Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media
(Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 2003), 98.
13
On this topic, which will be discussed several times in this book, starting from the next
sections in the introduction, see Mieke Bal, Quoting Caravaggio: Contemporary Art,
Preposterous History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
8 F. ZUCCONI

context.”14 Borrowing this notion, one might describe the last case as an
attempt to relocate Caravaggio to Europe’s southernmost strip of land. It
seeks to relocate the pictorial experience to the place where migrant bod-
ies disembark—forced into desperate journeys using whatever means they
can find—and where the spectacular rescue operations of NGOs attempt
to compensate for the inability of the international community to come up
with political responses that are compatible with the human right to move
freely around the planet.
Caravaggio’s pictorial corpus appears to have formed the axis of a
moral, political, and aesthetic discourse that plays on the most tragic
aspects of the contemporary world. What position should we take on these
types of actions? Should we offer generic praise for the attempt to bring
the artistic and historic heritage of the past into the present? Or should we
firmly criticize acts that not only decontextualize paintings but are also,
ultimately, impertinent toward the real conditions of suffering experienced
by the people assisted by the work of NGOs? When pressured to take a
position, one runs the risk of limiting oneself to a binary opposition,
thereby losing sight of the levels of complexity that exist in even the most
trivial of phenomena. By embracing one or the other of these two solu-
tions, one actually misses out on the opportunity—effectively offered by
the construction of “a humanitarian Caravaggio”—to examine the pro-
found interweaving between the composition strategies of the most tragic
images of the present day and the iconographic repertoire of the history of
western art. This question was also examined, for that matter, by Susan
Sontag, in one of the most compelling pages of her book entitled
Regarding the Pain of Others:

Photographer-witnesses may think it more correct morally to make the spec-

tacular not spectacular. But the spectacular is very much part of the religious
narratives by which suffering, throughout most of Western history, has been
understood. To feel the pulse of Christian iconography in certain wartime or
disaster-time photographs is not a sentimental projection.15

In this passage, as in others in her book, Sontag appears to lower the

lexical rigor of her argument so as to use words that are eminently
understandable in public discourse but highly vague in theoretical

14
On relocation, see Francesco Casetti, The Lumière Galaxy: Seven Keywords for the Cinema
to Come (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 17–42.
15
Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (New York: Picador, 2003), 80.
 INTRODUCTION 9

­ iscourse. Although taking an indirect approach, the pages that follow

d
will disambiguate the meaning of expressions such as “to make spec-
tacular,” “to feel the pulse,” and “a sentimental projection” as they
appear in thought on past and present images of suffering. Of immedi-
ate note in the quotation from Sontag is the opportunity and impor-
tance of investigating photographs, videos, images, and, more generally,
the various forms of communications produced by NGOs, both reli-
gious and secular—and, hence, of investigating contemporary forms of
representation of the pain of others—in a comparative relation with the
repertoire of Christian iconography.
Beyond the reasons stated by supporters or detractors of these sorts of
initiatives, juxtaposing the representation of mercy and suffering in
Caravaggio’s paintings with the scene of contemporary humanitarianism
assumes a certain theoretical weight if we consider the growing impor-
tance of a notion such as “anachronism” in the discourse of history and in
the theory of art and the image.16 As does, even more explicitly, the idea
of the “dialectical image” developed by Walter Benjamin, according to
which the images of the past are bearers of specific questions about the
present, and vice versa: “the image is that wherein what has been [das
Gewesene] comes together in a flash with the now [das Jetzt] to form a
constellation.”17 Instead of taking a position by unconditionally embrac-
ing or simply opposing the construction of a “humanitarian Caravaggio,”
it is certainly more productive to try to analyze and deconstruct its inher-
ent ideological implications. The task is to accept the challenge it holds in
order to usher in other possible comparisons between images that are dis-
tinct from each other and distant in time.
The idea that guides the following pages is, therefore, to start off from
these transfers and juxtapositions between Caravaggio’s work and the
context of contemporary humanitarianism in order to venture farther
afield. The aim is to carve out a path in the open field of humanitarian
visual culture through Caravaggio. What, then, are the underlying factors,

16
Regarding the topic of anachronism, see Georges Didi-Huberman, Devant le temps.
Histoire de l’art et anachronismme des images (Paris: Minuit, 2000). On anachronism as a
theoretical problem and a methodological tool in the history and theory of the arts, see also
Alexander Nagel and Chris Wood, Anachronic Renaissance (New York: Zone Books, 2010),
and Angela Mengoni, “Anacronismi, tra semiotica e teoria dell’immagine,” Carte Semiotiche
1 (2013): 12–18.
17
Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin
(Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2002), 462.
10 F. ZUCCONI

if any, that propel his work outside the museum and art history circuit
and make a juxtaposition possible with NGO communications and with
the social and political practices characteristic of today’s humanitarian-
ism? And—once its depths have been plumbed and all its potentialities
have been put to the test—where does this sort of juxtaposition lead?
Does it create a simple, reassuring confirmation of some of the rhetoric of
contemporary humanitarian communications, or does it put them in cri-
sis? A preliminary, possible answer to these questions is that the icono-
graphic theme of the works of mercy offers an implicit model of the
communications strategies of contemporary organizations, whether the
latter are faith-based or secular. Another possibility is that the celebrated
“naturalism of Caravaggio” and its ability to bring life itself into focus, in
all its forms, provides a prism through which images of humanitarian
assistance can be observed and, thus, offers a direct passage into the heart
of today’s “biopolitical regime.”18
Reflection on the juxtapositions that have given rise to “a humanitarian
Caravaggio” thus necessarily produce other types of juxtapositions. The
task, then, is to start from his work and the aesthetic, ethical, and political
issues it raises, in order to create what Benjamin called a “constellation”—
a compass for navigating through the most haunting and compelling
images of the present.

Humanitarian Visual Culture as Montage

But what is “humanitarian visual culture”? What does it mean to couple
the name of a field of studies that has profoundly renewed thought on arts
and images with an adjective that refers to the modern culture of human
rights? When talking about humanitarian visual culture, are we referring to
images explicitly produced during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
by NGOs and by the health and aid agencies of the United Nations? Or
does it refer to something like a style or a canon of photography that is
somehow independent from the communications put out by humanitarian
organizations?

18
The relationship between political and aesthetic configurations will be examined more
thoroughly in the following chapters. As an introduction to the concept of biopolitics, see
Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979, ed.
Michel Senellart, trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
Another random document with
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clever, amusing, good-looking, the life of his company, a first-rate
officer, and a matchless horseman; the man who got up the
regimental theatricals, ran the gymkhana, was editor of the
regimental paper, and so devoted to her always. No, no, she would
never abandon him, though every year he grew worse, and more
brusque, excitable, and unsociable; and every year saw them sinking
still further in the social scale.
At last an aged uncle died, and left Captain Ramsay Ivy House,
Ottinge, with its old-fashioned furniture, linen, books, and plate. This
windfall, with his pension, would keep them going, and at best it
afforded a retreat and a hiding-place. The neighbourhood with
flattering alacrity had called on Captain and the Hon. Mrs. Ramsay,
and she was declared to be charming, so agreeable and still
handsome. She duly returned their visits in a hired fly, left her
husband’s cards, Captain J. V. Ramsay, and made his excuses.
It soon was evident that the Ramsays were desperately poor, and
did not intend to keep a trap or entertain; that he was queer, and only
to be met about the fields and lanes, or in the Drum; but by degrees
the neighbours came to know Mrs. Ramsay better, and to like her
extremely. She had travelled, was a brilliant conversationalist, and a
sound bridge player; she was also an Honourable—one of the many
daughters of Lord Ballingarry of Moyallan Castle—so the neighbours
bought her little ‘Poms,’ recommended the hotel to their friends, lent
her carriages or motors, sent her game and books, and did their best
for her. But Captain Ramsay was beyond any one’s assistance; he
refused to see people, or to know Ottinge. He went abroad generally
with the bats and the owls, along lonely roads and footpaths; his
daily paper and the Drum were his sole resources, and only that, at
long intervals, a shrivelled figure was caught sight of shuffling up the
High Street, the neighbourhood would have forgotten that Captain
Ramsay existed.
Lady Kesters sent papers and wrote weekly letters to J. Owen,
Holiday Cottage, Ottinge. But her brother’s replies were short,
vague, and unsatisfactory, and in answer to a whole sheet of
reproaches, he dedicated a wet Sunday afternoon to his sister. He
began:—
“Dear Leila,—I had your letter yesterday, and it’s a true
bill that I am a miserable correspondent, and that my
notes are as short and sweet as a donkey’s gallop. I only
got twenty marks in composition when I passed. Now,
however, I’m going to put my back into this letter, and
send you a long scrawl, and, as you command me, all
details—no matter how insignificant. I am writing in my
room, because the kitchen is full of young women—Mrs.
Hogben’s at-home day, I suppose! The parlour windows
are never opened, the atmosphere is poisonous, and thick
with the reek of old furniture. So here I am! I’ve faked up a
table by putting blocks under the yellow box, for the
washstand is impossible. This room is old and low; if I
stand upright in some places, my head is likely to go
through the ceiling, and in others my legs to go through
the floor; but I know the lie of the land now. The window
looks into a big orchard, and beyond that are miles of flat
country; but you’ve seen Ottinge, so I spare you local
colour. I am all right here. Mrs. Hogben is a rare good sort,
and does me well, washing included, for twenty-three
shillings a week, and I make out my own bills—as she
neither reads nor writes, but takes it out in talking. When I
had a cold, she made me a decoction called ‘Tansie Tea’
and insisted on my swallowing it—the fear of another dose
cured me. Her son Tom is a decent chap, and we are pals;
he works at the Manor as second gardener of two. As to
the ladies there, I am disappointed in Miss Parrett; you
told me they were both ‘old dears.’ Susan really is an old
dear, but, in my opinion, Miss P. is an old D. Possibly you
only knew her as a tea-drinking, charming hostess, full of
compliments and sweetness; the real Miss Bella is a bully,
vain of her money, and shamelessly mean.
“The Manor is a nice, sunny house, flat on the ground,
with great oak beams and rum windows, and a splendid
garden enclosed in yew hedges run to seed; they are
trying to get it in order, clipping the yews and digging out
the moss, but two men and a boy are not enough, and
Miss P. is too stingy to employ more. As I’ve little to do, I
sometimes lend a hand. The motor is a faked-up old rattle-
trap, all paint and smart cushions; but its inside is worn
out. Miss Parrett is under the impression that petrol is not
a necessity, and I have such desperate work to get it, and
she always cross-examines me so sharply, and gives the
money as such a personal favour, that one would suppose
I wanted the beastly thing for my own consumption. It is a
riddle to me why she ever bought the car. She is afraid to
go out in it, and won’t let her sister use it alone. I’ve been
here four weeks; it’s been out six times, always at a crawl,
and within a four-mile radius. Miss Parrett likes to pay
visits to show off her ‘beautiful’ car; but I feel like a Bath-
chair man!
“One day we went over to Westmere, the Davenants’ old
place, where you used to stay. The Woolcocks, who have
it now, are enormously rich, go-ahead people, and the
married daughter pounced on me as Owen the steward on
board ship! No one here has any idea who I am, and I
keep a shut mouth; and when I do talk, I try to copy Tom
Hogben. There are few gentry about,—that is, in Ottinge;
the parson, Mr. Morven, the Parretts’ brother-in-law,
comes in sometimes and gives advice about the garden.
He is a cheery sort, elderly, a widower, and a splendid
preacher—thrown away on this dead-and-alive spot. His
sermons are sensible and modern, and you’ve something
to carry away and think of, instead of wanting to shy
hymn-books, or go to sleep. The church is a tremendous
age, and restored—the Ottinge folk are very proud of it. In
one chancel, the north chancel, lie our kin the Davenants;
there is a fine window, erected by a certain Edward
Davenant to the memory of his wife, the lady in a pink
scarf—quite a smart get-up of, say, a hundred years ago,
is represented as one of the angels, and he himself is
among the disciples. Both were copied from family
portraits. What do you think of the idea?
“Mr. Morven has let me in for singing in the choir; you
should see me in a surplice—it barely comes to my knees,
and makes me feel so shy! Thanks to the choir, I’ve got to
know the organist, and the schoolmaster—a very decent
chap; I go and smoke a pipe there of an evening, and also
a young farmer who has promised me some fishing when I
can get off—that’s not often. There is no village club, as
you may remember, and the men of the place assemble at
the Drum Inn. I drop in there sometimes, though, just as
often, I take a tramp over the country, accompanied by the
Manor dog, who has adopted me, and often does ‘a night
out.’ Mrs. Hogben leaves the door on the latch. She also
told me I should go to the Drum along with Tom, as she
thought I was a bit dull; so to the Drum I go, to show I’m
not above my mates, and I have a glass of beer and a
pipe, and hear all the village news, and the village elders
discussing parish rates, socialism, free trade, the price of
stock, and how Jakes’ Bob is going into the grocery, and
Harry Tews’ spring cabbage has failed!
“There is one queer figure there: a broken-down, decrepit
officer, Captain Ramsay, whose wife lives in the village
and keeps a dogs’ hotel. He looks as if he drank, and is
always muddled, or else he is mad. He speaks to no one,
but he never takes his eye off me. I tell you, Sis, I don’t
half like it—though I swear he has never seen me before.
“Well, I hope Martin is better. I’m sorry he has been feeling
a bit cheap; it’s a pity I can’t send him some of this air—
splendid; there’s an old chap of ninety-three in the place—
still going strong.
“Your papers are a godsend. I pass them on to the
schoolmaster, and he lends me books; but although I
seem to do little, I never have much time for reading. I’m
getting on all right, and intend to stick to the old birds, the
green car, and Ottinge; though, as it said in the Psalms
this morning, it does seem to be a ‘land where all things
are forgotten.’ At any rate our ways are primitive and
 virtuous—we have one policeman, he sings bass in the
choir,—and we hold little conversation with the outer
world. Indeed, news—other than local—is despised. The
sweep is our postman, and the village softy limps round
with the papers when he thinks of it. I’m about to be
enrolled in the Ottinge Cricket Club, and I’m looking
forward to some sport. They little guess that I played in the
Eton eleven! Here endeth this epistle, which must count
as a dozen and thirteen.—Your affectionate brother,
“O. St. J. W.”
Lady Kesters read this letter quickly, then she went over it very
deliberately; finally she handed it to her husband.
“He seems perfectly happy and satisfied, though he detests Miss
Parrett and says the car is an old rattle-trap. He has no pals, very
little to do, and has taken to gardening and singing in the choir.” She
paused expressively. “Somehow I don’t see Owen in that picture, do
you?”
“Can’t say I do,” replied her husband.
“Just the last sort of life to suit him, I should have thought. Martin, do
you suppose that’s a faked-up letter, and he wrote it to relieve my
mind?”
“No; the chap hasn’t it in him to fake anything. I’d rather like to hear
his attempts at the local dialect!”
“Then tell me what you really think; I see you have something in your
head.”
“My dear, I’m astonished you don’t see it for yourself! You are ten
times as clear-sighted as I am,” and he hesitated; “why, of course,
there’s a young woman in the case.”
“He never mentions her!” objected his wife.
“A deadly symptom.”
“Some village girl—no. And he is bound not to think of any love-affair
or entanglement for two whole years.”
“How long has he been at Ottinge—four weeks, eh?” She nodded.
“Well, I believe that, in spite of your uncle and you, Owen is in love
with some one already.”
 CHAPTER XIV
LIEUTENANT WYNYARD

It was an undeniable fact that the chauffeur spent much more time
in the Manor grounds than driving the car. The car was rarely used,
and anything was better than loafing about the yard or the village
with his hands in his pockets—one of the unemployed. Wynyard
liked the fresh smell of the earth, and growing things, the songs of
birds—especially of the blackbird, with his leisurely fluting note.
The garden, which lay to the left of the house, overlooked meadows,
and was evidently as ancient as the Manor itself. It was also one
after the heart of Bacon, “Spacious and fair, encompassed with a
stately hedge.” The farmer, who had neglected the roof and upper
floors of the dwelling, had suffered these same yew hedges to grow
as they pleased; and they now required a great deal of labour in
trimming them to moderate proportions. The soil was rich—anything
and everything seemed to flourish in the garden, which was
intersected by broad gravelled walks that crossed one another at
regular intervals; these were lined by a variety of old-fashioned
plants—myrtle, lavender, and sweetbrier, grown to gigantic
dimensions; here were also Madonna Lilies, London Pride,
Hollyhocks, Sweet-William, and bushes of out-of-date roses, such as
the “York and Lancaster,” and other Georgian survivals. Precisely in
the middle of the garden, where four walks met, was a hoary sundial,
which bore the inscription, “Time Tries All.” A path, leading direct
from the sundial to an ancient bowling-green, was enclosed with
rustic arches, and in the summer time the Manor pergola was a
veritable tunnel of roses, and one of the sights of the neighbourhood.
And here it was that the unemployed chauffeur spent most of his
time, clipping intractable hedges, planting, pruning, and digging.
Such occupation removed him effectually from the orbit of his enemy
—Miss Parrett—who merely pottered about the beds immediately
surrounding the house. This was Miss Susan’s realm—she was the
family gardener; his volunteered labour also afforded Wynyard the
now rare and priceless privilege of seeing Miss Morven when she
ran in to talk to her aunt and help in the greenhouse—since, thanks
to her active exertions, the Manor had been set in order, and her
visits were no longer of daily occurrence. Now and then he caught
sight of her, walking with Mrs. Ramsay and her “guests,” motoring
with Mrs. Waring, or riding with her father. Once or twice they had
passed him in the lanes at a late hour, riding fast, pursued by the
panting Mackenzie. His best opportunity of meeting the young lady
was at choir practice, and here he admired Miss Morven, not only for
her sweet, clear voice, but her marvellous tact and admirable skill,
the way she pacified Pither, the cranky old organist (a fine musician),
and smoothed down rivals who claimed to sing solos, applauded the
timid, and gently repressed the overbold. It was delightful to watch
her consulting and advising and encouraging; but how could any one
escape from the effect of that girl’s beauty and contagious spirits? or
withstand the influence of the subtle power called charm?
On Sundays she sat in the Rector’s pew, facing the square
enclosure of the Woolcocks, over which hung stately hatchments
and memorials of the Davenant family; and from his corner in the
choir Wynyard noted, with secret uneasiness and wrath, how the heir
of Westmere—a squarely built, heavy young squire—kept his
worshipping eyes fastened upon Aurea’s clear-cut profile. After all,
what was it to him? he asked himself furiously. Young Woolcock was
heir to twenty thousand a year, and what was he at present? but her
aunts’ servant!
There had been a good deal of excited speculation in the village
respecting Wynyard—as to who he really was, and where he came
from. But although some swore he had been a soldier, and others
vowed he had been a sailor, no one was any the wiser than the first
day that he had arrived at Mrs. Hogben’s, followed by his yellow tin
box. “Ay, he could hold his tongue, that was sure; and was always
ready enough to lend an ear to other people’s affairs—but tight as an
oyster with regard to his own.”
Miss Susan, who felt towards him a kindness that was almost
maternal, tormented by curiosity, had done her utmost to pump him.
One day, in the greenhouse, she had seemed to see her opportunity.
He had read off a French name on a label, and his accent and
glibness were perfection.
“Ah! I see you have had a good education, Owen,” she remarked,
beaming at him over her glasses.
“Oh, middling, miss.”
“You keep a boy to clean the motor, I hear!”
“Only once or twice, miss, when my hand was sore. His people are
poor, and a shilling doesn’t come amiss.”
“I feel certain,” clearing her throat, “that you are not accustomed to
this sort of life, Owen.” As she spoke, she kept her clear blue eyes
on his face, and looked at him with the direct simplicity of a child. “I
am interested in you, Owen. Do tell me about yourself, you know I
wish you well.”
“Miss Susan,” and he straightened his shoulders and set down the
pot he was holding, “you received my reference from Lady Kesters—
and I believe it was all right?”
Miss Susan became very red indeed, and the garden scissors
slipped from her thumb. There was something unusual in the young
man’s tone and glance.
“If you or Miss Parrett find that I am not giving satisfaction——”
“Oh no, no, no!” she broke in breathlessly, “I—I’m afraid I’m rather
inquisitive—but I take a real interest in you, and you have been such
a help to me—and I feel so friendly towards you—but, I won’t ask
you any more questions.”
This little scene was subsequently related to Aurea, as she and her
aunt drank tea together at the Rectory, and Miss Susan imparted to
the girl—between bites of buttered toast—her own eager
speculations. Mystery has a wonderful charm! A handsome young
man, who was both reserved and obliging, who, it was known, was
respected in the Drum, and kept to himself, and whom she believes
to be one of her own class—offers a dangerous attraction for a girl of
twenty! Aurea debated the puzzle in the abysmal depth of her own
heart, and when a girl once allows her thoughts to dwell persistently
upon a man—no matter what his station—her interest in him is
bound to develop far beyond the bounds of everyday acquaintance!
Aurea was startled to discover that her mind was dwelling on the
chauffeur more than was desirable; he occupied too large a share of
her thoughts, though she did her utmost to expel him, and fill them
with other matters—such, for instance, as the parish almshouses,
the clothing club, and the choir—but a taciturn, mysterious young
man, figuratively, thrust himself head and shoulders above these
commonplace matters. Owen had a good voice, and had been
impressed into the choir—a rollicking hunting song, sung at the
Drum, had betrayed him. It was customary there, on certain nights,
to sit round in a circle and call upon the members for entertainment,
and Owen’s “John Peel” had established his reputation.
Aurea was secretly annoyed by the way that girls on practice nights
set their caps at the newcomer—boldly attracting his attention,
appealing to his opinion, nudging one another significantly, and
giggling and simpering when they spoke to him. And he? He met
them half-way, shared hymn-books, found places, and talked, and
seemed to be entirely happy and at ease in their company. Why not?
He was ostensibly of their own class. He had not flinched from
accepting a peppermint from Lily Jakes,—on the contrary, had
received it with effusion,—and the overblown rosebud, tossed at him
by Alexandra Watkins, had subsequently decorated his buttonhole.
Aurea contemplated these signs of good fellowship with stifled
irritation. Was she envious, because the chauffeur, her aunts’
servant, usually so monosyllabic and self-contained, could laugh and
talk with these village girls? At this appalling arraignment her face
flamed, she shrank in horror from her own thoughts. No, no, no, a
hundred thousand times no!
Still, it must be confessed that, strive as she would, she could not
help wondering and speculating about Owen, the chauffeur—
whether she saw him vigorously washing the car, or trundling a
wheelbarrow in the garden; zealously as he worked, it seemed to her
observant eye that he looked as if he had not been accustomed to
such employment. Who was he? The answer to this question came
to her unexpectedly, and in a most unlikely place.
Aurea and her Aunt Susan went to Brodfield one afternoon, in order
to execute various commissions for the Manor; the car was
grudgingly lent for the occasion. There would have been no
expedition, only that Miss Parrett was out of a certain shade of pink
wool, the new cook was out of tapioca, and Miss Susan was a little
out of sorts, and declared that “a drive in the air would cure her.” The
car waited at the post office, whilst the ladies accomplished their
different errands in different shops. Aurea was the first to finish, and
was sauntering slowly up the street, when she noticed that rare sight
—a soldier in uniform—a smart Hussar on furlough, with a friend in
mufti, coming towards her. As they passed the car, they glanced at it,
and the soldier started, made a sort of halt, stared stupidly, and
brought his hand to the salute! Yes, and the chauffeur gave him a
little nod, and put his finger to his cap! (apparently unconscious of
Miss Morven’s vicinity).
As the two men approached, talking loudly, she overheard the
Hussar say, as he strutted by—
“Well I’m damned, if that fellow on the car wasn’t Lieutenant
Wynyard! I was in his troop at Lucknow—a rare smart officer, too.
What’s his little game?”
“You’d better go back and arsk ’im,” suggested the other, with a loud
laugh.
“Not me,” and they were out of earshot.
Aurea felt dumbfounded, as she moved on and got into her place.
Susan, of course, was lingering as usual, chattering and last-wording
to acquaintances, and she was not sorry to have a few moments to
herself, to sit and meditate on her surprising discovery. So Owen’s
real name was Wynyard—and he had been an officer in a Hussar
regiment. What was his game?
And her first impressions were justified; he was a gentleman, in spite
of Joey’s authoritative verdict and Mrs. Ramsay’s gloomy
forebodings. What dreadful thing had he done to be compelled to live
under an assumed name, and bury himself, of all places, in Ottinge?
Aurea was now more deeply interested and puzzled than ever! She
and Susan had no secrets from one another—for Susan was so
young in her mind and heart that she seemed to be almost Aurea’s
contemporary!
From the first they liked the chauffeur, and though they had not said
much, each was conscious of the other’s opinion. Now that Aurea
knew his name and former status for a fact, strange to relate, she
resolved to have just this one little secret from Susan—and keep the
knowledge to herself!
On the way home she proved an unusually silent and unsympathetic
companion. Her conversation was jerky and constrained; she was
not in the least interested in the scraps of local news that her aunt
had collected in street and shops, but appeared to be lost in a maze
of speculation and abstraction.
 CHAPTER XV
BY WATER

Miss Parrett felt slightly embarrassed and uncomfortable when

people remarked how seldom her motor was seen! “Was it not
satisfactory?” they inquired. The old lady also recognised that her
chauffeur was doing the work of a really capital gardener, and was
Susan’s right hand; this annoyed her excessively. She disliked the
idea that her employé was slaving to please her sister; and
accordingly changed her tactics, gave instructions for the car to go
out twice a week with Miss Susan and Miss Morven, or Miss Susan
and Mrs. Ramsay.
Susan and her niece had promptly availed themselves of this
permission, and seized the opportunity of penetrating into far-away
villages and to distant country seats; and the poor old motor, at their
request, was racketted along at its best speed, as they were bound
to be in Ottinge before dark, in order that the car might be washed. If
they, by any chance, were a little late, they were received at the hall
door by Miss Parrett, in cold silence, watch in hand.
After the recent heavy rains, the low, marshy country was flooded,
and, returning one afternoon from a twenty-mile expedition, at a
sharp turn in the road where the ground sloped steeply, the motor
ran into a wide sheet of water—a neighbouring river had burst its
banks. There was no going back, that was impossible. Miss Susan
for once lost her nerve, and, putting her head out, asked the
chauffeur piteously—
“What shall we do?”
“There’s only one thing for it, miss,” he answered promptly. “I don’t
think the water is deep, and I’ll keep straight on—as near as I can
guess—in the middle of the road; you see, there are ditches at either
side, and I can’t turn; but you need not be nervous—as long as the
water doesn’t reach the magneto you are all right.”
But, as they crept forward cautiously, the water was gradually rising;
it rose and rose, till it stole in under the door, and then the motor
came to a full stop.
“Now, what’s going to happen?” demanded Miss Susan excitedly.
“I see the road is not more than fifty yards ahead, and the water is
shallower. We have stuck in the worst part.”
“But what is to become of us, my good man? Are we to sit here all
night—and the motor may blow up?”
“I’ll go to a farmhouse and borrow a couple of horses, and I dare say
after a bit I can start her again.”
“And are we to remain here, Owen, and be half-drowned? You know
my sister will be crazy if we are not home by seven.”
“There’s one thing I could do, Miss Susan,” he replied, “that is if you
have no objection; I can carry you and Miss Morven through the
water, and put you out on the road high and dry. I think I might get a
trap in Swingford village; you could drive home, and I’ll bring the car
along to-morrow. It seems the only thing to be done.”
After this suggestion there ensued a long and animated consultation
between aunt and niece; at last Miss Susan, raising her voice, said—
“Very well, Owen, I see no alternative; you can take me first—I am a
light weight.”
Owen now descended from his place and waded to the door, which
he opened.
“All right, Miss Susan, you may depend on me. I won’t drop you.”
“How am I to manage?” she asked shame-facedly.
“It’s quite easy! Just put your arms round my neck, miss, and hold
tight.”
After a moment’s coy reluctance—it was the first time in her life she
had ever put her arms round a man’s neck—Miss Susan timidly
embraced him.
“Hold on,” he commanded, and, lifting her bodily out of the car as if
she were a child, waded away, striding and splashing up to his
middle in water. When he had carefully deposited her on dry land,
the chauffeur returned for the young lady, who, it must be confessed,
awaited him with a wildly beating heart; it seemed to her that in his
air there was actually a look of mastery and triumph. If he had been
an ordinary chauffeur, such as the Woolcocks’, she would not have
minded; but this man—this Lieutenant Wynyard, who was of her own
class—oh, how she shrank from this enforced ordeal; she felt deeply
reluctant and ashamed.
However, she asked no questions, made no hysterical protests, but
rose as he appeared, put her arms on his shoulders—though she
would rather have waded up to her neck—and was borne into the
stream, upon which a laggard moon had recently arisen. Little, little
did Aurea guess that, as she leant her head upon his leather
shoulder, how Owen, the chauffeur, had to fight with a frantic, almost
overmastering, desire to kiss her! And what an outcry there would
have been, not merely from the young lady herself, but the sole
witness, her maiden aunt!
Fortunately, with a superhuman effort, he pulled himself together,
steadied his racing pulses, and thrust the dreadful idea behind him,
as he struggled to the end of his task, and presently placed Miss
Morven high and dry on the road beside her relative. Then, leaving
the rescued ladies to one another’s company, he set off to a village
two miles distant to hunt up some conveyance.
As Wynyard tramped along in his wet clothes, he had it out with his
ego. For all his youth and hot blood, he had always a cool power of
judgment—as far as his own acts were concerned—and he was now
prepared to discuss the present situation with himself. Since he had
held Miss Aurea’s light form in his arms, felt her sweet breath on his
cheek, he knew there was no use in playing the ostrich, and that he
was hopelessly in love—had been in love since the very first time he
had set eyes upon her! Looking back at the matter, calmly and
dispassionately, he realised that it was not on account of Leila’s
disappointment that he stayed on, and did not throw up his situation
—as Miss Parrett’s exasperating behaviour so often tempted him to
do. He remained at Ottinge solely to be near Aurea; it was for Aurea
that he kept his temper, slaved in the garden, and sang in the choir;
yet he could not say a word to Aurea, or endeavour to ingratiate
himself like other more fortunate young men; he had his bond to
remember, and his hands were tied—yes, and his tongue too. Was
ever any fellow in such a fix? And such was the contrariness of life,
he had gone about the world when he was free, and had never once
met a girl he thought of twice—and here he was always thinking of
Aurea, yet dared not disclose his feelings; meanwhile, some luckier
fellow would come along and make up to her and marry her! And at
the thought he stopped and ground his heel into the earth with
savage force.
There was Bertie Woolcock, rolling in money, heir to that fine place;
and he would have one year and ten months’ start, whilst he was left
at the post! Oh, it was enough to drive him mad to think of! Well,
Bertie had never held her in his arms, at any rate,—he had; how she
had trembled, poor darling! Yes, he was that to the good.
“Mean beast!” apostrophising himself; “when you know that the girl
could not help herself, and would have given everything she
possessed to get out of such a dilemma!” What would Leila say?
Should he tell her? No; she would only laugh (he could hear her
laugh) and ask, “What are you going to marry on, even if Uncle Dick
lets you off?”
He had two pounds two shillings a week, and if he made love to her
niece, Miss Parrett would naturally and properly send him about his
business. Oh, it was all an infernal muddle—there was no way out of
it—nothing to do but hide his feelings and bide his time; the wild,
haunting refrain of an old negro camp hymn came into his head,
“And hold the Lion down! and hold the Lion down!” Well, he was
holding the lion down, and a thundering hard job he found it!
He had no reason to suspect that Aurea ever thought of him—why
should she? She was always polite, gracious—no more. His only
little scrap of comfort lay in the fact that he believed Miss Susan liked
him—liked him really, in a nice, sentimental, proper, old-maid
fashion! She was romantic, so said her niece, who bantered her on
her passion for promoting love-affairs and love-matches—he had
heard her taunt her playfully with the fact. Undoubtedly Miss Susan
was his good friend, and that was the sole morsel of comfort he
could offer himself!
Presently Wynyard reached a sleepy little village, unearthed a
carrier’s cart, horse, and man, and returned to the place where the
two ladies were awaiting him with the liveliest impatience.
That evening, at nine o’clock, Miss Susan, who had deposited her
niece at the Rectory, arrived at home in a carrier’s cart—the sole
available mode of conveyance. Her sister, who had been roaming
about the hall and passages, accompanied by Mrs. Ramsay,
wringing her hands and whimpering that “Susan had been killed,”
was considerably relieved. But, as soon as her fears were subdued,
she became frightfully excited respecting the fate of her beautiful
motor, which, by all accounts, had been left standing in the middle of
a river—five miles from home.
“Oh, I assure you it will be all right, Bella; please don’t worry yourself.
Owen will manage.”
“Owen, indeed!” she echoed angrily; “it’s my opinion that he
manages you—you think a great deal too much of that young man;
there’s something at the back of him—it would never surprise me if
some day he went off with that motor, and we never saw him again.”
“My dear sister! You know you are overwrought, or you would never
talk such rubbish.”
“If the motor was stuck in the middle of a river, I should like to know
how you and Aurea got out of it without being half-drowned?” she
demanded judicially.
“Oh, we got out of it very simply, and it was as easy as kiss my
hand,” rejoined Miss Susan, with a gay laugh. “The only person that
got wet was Owen; he carried us.”
“What!” cried Mrs. Ramsay, with dancing eyes; “carried you and
Aurea—how?”
“Why, in his arms—where else? First he took me, then he took her;
and we were no more trouble to him than if we had been a couple of
babies.”
“Well, upon my word,” snorted Miss Parrett, casting up her hands, “I
think the whole thing is scandalous! You and Aurea flying about the
country, and spending most of your time in the motor, going here and
going there, coming home at night alone in a carrier’s cart, and
telling me you left the motor in the middle of a river, and that you
were carried out of it in the arms of the chauffeur! and that without a
blush on your faces! Upon my word, Susan Parrett, I don’t know
what’s coming to you! Either you are going mad, or you are falling
into your second childhood.”
Miss Parrett was profoundly relieved to see her valuable car arrive
on its own horse-power the following afternoon. It certainly looked
rather limp and sorry for itself, and did not recover from its
adventures in the river for some time. Water had a fatal effect upon
its organisation; indeed, its condition became so serious that it had
to be sent to a garage, there to be overhauled—and a bill, which was
the result, proved one of Miss Parrett’s favourite grievances for the
ensuing six months.
 CHAPTER XVI
TWO PRISONERS

By the middle of June Miss Susan had departed to visit friends in the
south of England, escorting her niece as far as London, where she
was to spend some weeks with General and Mrs. Morven. The motor
was in hospital at Brodfield, and Owen, the chauffeur, had absolutely
nothing to do; no gardening, no greenhouse, no car. Miss Parrett
was now the undisputed ruler of Ottinge—manor and village—and
he kept out of her way in a crafty, not to say cowardly, fashion; when
at home, Miss Susan and her niece had intervened as buffers
between him and Miss Parrett’s despotic rudeness. Doubtless her
bullying and browbeating were a legacy from her burly grandfather,
the Hoogly Pilot; indeed, she was positively so insulting with regard
to repairs, his bill for petrol, and the extraordinary—the incredible
quantity he wasted, that sooner than face her and have rows, he
more than once paid for it out of his own pocket! But do not let it be
for a moment supposed that the chauffeur was afraid of the old lady;
he was afraid of himself—afraid that if she became altogether
insupportable, he might lose, in one and the same moment, his
temper, and his situation!
When Bella Parrett reigned alone, it was a sore time for the Manor,
and especially for Joss. The old lady did not care for any animals or
pets, save a venerable green and blue parrot—her own
contemporary. She had accepted Joss, a gift from Mr. Woolcock, as
she was assured that, having no man living at the Manor, a dog was
a necessity in case of robbers, but chiefly because Miss Parrett half
suspected that the Martingales—neighbours of the Woolcocks—
were anxious to possess the said amusing little puppy. Joss was
often in disgrace; but what could one expect of an idle young dog,
without companions, education, or pursuits? When Susan was at
home all went well; she looked after him and screened his failings,
and took him out—though her sister frequently expostulated, and
said—
“Now, I won’t have the creature attaching himself to you, Susan; he
must learn to know that he is my dog!”
All the same, she never troubled about “her dog’s” food or sleeping
quarters, and it was actually Susan who paid for his licence!
Now Susan was absent, also his good friend Aurea—and Joss was
in confinement and deep disgrace; even before his friends’ departure
he had been under a black cloud. His youthful spirits were
uncontrollable; Joss had inherited the keen sporting instincts of his
father, with the intellectual faculties of his accomplished mother,
Colette, the poodle, and was both bold and inquisitive. Recently, the
wretched animal had chewed off the tail of a magnificent tiger-skin,
and concealed it, no one knew where! Miss Parrett hoped he had
eaten it—as it was cured with arsenic—but more likely it had been
stored in one of his many bone larders. He had poked his nose into a
valuable jar, upset, and smashed it! he had come in all wet and
muddy from a rat-hunting excursion in the river, and recouped his
exhausted energies by a luxurious siesta in Miss Parrett’s own bed—
and there was also a whispered and mysterious communication
respecting the disappearance of a best and most expensive front,
which had undoubtedly gone to the same limbo as the tiger’s tail!
“The brute is worse than a dozen monkeys,” declared his furious
mistress, and he was accordingly bestowed on a farmer, who lived
miles away near Catsfield, merely to return, accompanied by a piece
of rope, the same evening. After this, the word “poison” was
breathed; but luckily for Joss, Ottinge did not possess a chemist.
Finally he was condemned to a fare of cold porridge, and solitary
confinement in an empty stable—being suffered to roam loose at
night after the house was closed.
The chauffeur and the brown dog had a good deal in common; they
were both young and both captives in their way. Oh, those long,
endless summer days, when the young man hung about the yard,
with nothing to do, awaiting orders, unable to undertake any job in
case the car should be wanted. When he called each morning for