Caravaccio's Secrets Leo Bexsant ano Utysst Durorr AN OCTOBER Boox 4 | Tite MIT Press Cammioce, Massactuserrs Lonow, Evctann1 Sexy Secrets Ona is work, Caravaggio offers us his head. In a particu- lurid version of self-oblation, Caravaggio painted his own features on the bloody head of Gobath being held by the hair at arm’s length by a victorious David and thrust toward the viewer, in the Galleria Borghese representation of that Biblical episode. To judge from several other paintings, Caravaggio s to have found in decapitation a nearly ire ‘vo other versions of David with Goliath’s head been atributed to Caravaggio; ‘here are also Judith in the very act of cleaving through Holofemnes’ head with the liters sword; St. Johns partially severed head in the Malta Deapitation of St Joka the Bapis; the same lackles sain’ head being dropped onto a platter held London vesson of Salome Receiving the Head of St. Jon the Bap ( thitd version of thie episode, now in Madrid, has also been attributed to imlly, the Medusa head, mouth agape and eyes opened wide originally painted on a parade shield hel ted figure in the Medici original body and on view atthe Ufizi in Florence. Buc inthe other selfpor ‘we have in mind—the early Bachino Molato—the painters head rest fi enough on a provocatively curved should that head, whi gaze thetic appeal. Not only have and what we are being offered in dlizected toward us, could be read as an erotically‘We want to propose a cei Bacchus self portrait co the dec: tacking head-on, so to speak, the trap set for us by images of decapitation. The psychoanalytic association of decapitation with castration has become an inter- ted ‘without ever having been instructed to do so by Freud’ short piece on the Me- usa head. And yet, while we will be acknowledging the irresistible nature of that interpretasion— irresistible in large part because Caravaggio himself appears to be proposing it pictorially—we will also be arguing for the need to interpret castration. Far from being the final term in a reading of Caravaggio's images of decapitation, castration is “illuminated” by decapitation, by a cutting off of ¢ part of the body where interpr sf originates, without which we would never see deca} fon, Without our heads, we would not be specu- pretive reflex; many people are inclined to take that connection for gr lating about what the heads in Caravaggio’: paintings may “mean.” and one way to make us lose our heads—to nin any confidence we might have about "know- ing” him, of, a¢ we shall see, about the very possibility of knowledge—is for Carwaggio to decapitate avid thrusts Goliath's hhead toward the spectator) a bodyless head that ean no longer say or mean any- thing, that can no longer be read. If Caravaggio finally adopts thar extreme solution to what he seems to have anticipated as centuries of interpretive promiscuity in front of his work, he began by seductively inviting the spectator to read him. His paintings repeatedly eld more ot less urgently and resists its own symbolization. Caravaggio frequently paints the act of look~ initiate the conditions under which a vi ing—a looking at times directed outside the painting, toward the spectator, and at other time: ituated among the figures within the represented scene, Among the former, much attention has been given to those in which a boy appears to be looking more or less provocatively toward the spectator. We are thinking of ‘the Boy with a Basket of Fruit, the Bachino Malato (both from the mid-1590s and. both in the Borghese Gallery in Rome), the Uiai Baccus ftom a few years later, and the Berlin Victorious Cupid (c. 1601-02). The poses and the looks in th paintings have generally been recognized as erotically provocative, an 2c Sexy Suexers ‘enough description if we mean by that a body in which we read an intention to been called a perplexing, even indecorous nudity (Cy for example, exposes not only his genitals but also the cleavage of his buttoc bared shoulders, enticing smiles or sensuous parted lips: given all tis, plausible to say that Caravaggio has painted a ‘The come-ons are, however, somewhat ambiguous. In two of the paint ‘ngs, the Bacchino Malato and the Boy with a Basket of Fruit the erotic invitation is ualified by a partially self-concealing movement of retreat. The Bacchus self- portrait (c. 1593; fig, 1.1)' is at once exhibitionist and self-concealing: if the shoulder is enticingly curved, the movement of the entire arm closes in on the ody, which it could be understood as thereby concealing or protecting from very advances it simultaneously invites, Also, the greenish hue of the flesh (which accounts for the designation of the bahino as “malato”) adds a repellent and repelling note to the provocation. The provocation and the withdrawal are, however, quite evidently poses, which should make us he selE exposure or the sel-concealment as natural ‘The curious inclusion of as fe to see either the 1 as psychologically significant, tion of the yout steuct the moment before he turned to raise the bunch imagine the painter, the mirror in which he will ee himself he will paint himself, posing as Bac- chus,) There is something grossly natural about those thematically irrelevant knees; they emphasize, by contrast, che youth's role-playing with the rest of body. Thus, there is ‘on the double movement we will qualify as erotic: the soliciting move toward the viewer, and the self-concealing move away from the viewer. It is, we will argue, the movement away that fascinates, indeed that eroticizes the body's ap- Parent (and deceptive) availability, The latter is at once put into question and semualized by the suggestion of a secret, although the exaggerated artfulness ofsexy Seoxers 1 Bain Mi (Sick Baceht"),¢, 1593, Rome, Galleria Borghete. (Ako plate 1 Sexy Seoners the entire operation in the Bacshino Mi one elemes kes of that very suggestion only if dis remarkable and frustrates, in a nonerotie process of aes work included a warning about the rea Furthermore, not o: den, and yet they are also visible. More exactly, they are ng ese e knotted sash, and as the two peaches h of grapes on the table. Look at my sex, Bacchus can perhaps be anywhere, inaccurately re stitute 2 visual sensuality for a concealed sex y. The look that would center our look is itself decentered by such displacements, as well as by a certain, bunch of grapes on the table end somewhere outside ng. The self-withdrawing pose we originally noted cou! thought of not only as a pa identity frame (@ ‘The most compelling other center of interest in the painting is, howe ts hori rion contrasts with the vertiality o ore different from the psychic and pose, although a certainSrey Stents cally other order of being, Caravaggio pos we shall see, he richly elaborates elsewhere ‘ne human body not family of adings hasis in these early works is on the apparently body ve of the wrist in the Boy witha Basket of Fruit (1593-94; fig. 1.2) suggeses a drawing of the basket toward the boy and away fiom the prospect yuyer, at the s ¢ that the painting fosters che jon that we are looking at an offering, What is the boy offering us—the basket of fuit he see that i a effect pushed toward us? By ‘mouth undecidable: is ‘mouth been opened to thereby shifiing the merchandise fi the vendor himselP And yet iis easier te ‘we might possess t rawn basket of of fruit as something x the boy who, by looking directly at the viewer, reflects and resists the invasive gaze that would “take him in.” He has only to look at us to remind us thatthe erotic gaze is itself invasive as well as invit 1g, Fis looking us protects him from our looking 2t him. The invasiveness is, however, illusory sides. What we primarily see in looking atthe ffuit vendor’ eyes is an ic point of light in his left eye. We are looked at by ¢ an has said in his seminar on “The Gaze as objet pet 15" in the depths of our eye is not an object ora “constructed relat depth of fel, 10 way mastered by me.” The eye is appro- we viewer’ eyes are penetrated look out at, measure, 2 Boy witha Beet of Fiat, 1598-94. Rome, Galleria BorgheseSee Stearns from a cognitive point of view, illuminates nothing. The eye is an unreadable transparency (a fact made viscerally evident by the opening shot of Beckett once obscenely exposed and wholly pose transforms the otherwise neutral cence, as if we were readability ofthe eye into a willfl reti- ied by a desire determined to remain hidden, Let’ note, finally, that che eye's brilliant opacity in Boy with a Basket of Fruit, ‘which repels the look it he principal element in a complex system of double movements. The fut, which would otherwise be the pasive object of an appetitive attention, is being withdrawn. What the boy thrusts toward us is ‘the unreadabilty that keeps us ata distance. The one part of the basker's contents ‘that has escaped the boy's protective embrace—the leaf in the lower right sec- tion—could be thought of as the most unambiguously available element in the ; but it is limp and faded, highlighting, by contrast, the inviting ripeness the rest of the baskets contents and the boy himself, the paintings just sussed, erotic soliciting is countered by a move- rent away from the solicited viewer, a holding back that complicates the idea haps because of the movement away we identify these looks and these poses as erotic, Inherent invitation isa concealment, and the concealment generat of erotic both what we recog nie asthe erotic invitation and possibly our own exoticized response to it. Sexi- ress advertises an availability somewhat opaque. The erotic here is a le address, ‘We should emphasize “here” because the word could, of course, be used to describe an invitation without concealment. In Georges Bataille, for example, the erotic refers to an unqualified openness, an reticence or secretiveness. Any such reticence might be the sign of an individual- ity resistant to that “communics which, for Bataille, che boundari define and separate individuals no longer exist In this state of radical indis- tinctness, psychic and pl ig s reduced to pure openness; being has fanction of the nonintexpret tation, he seems comparatively indifferent to a whol int openness, Even the frequently open mouths in Caravaggio's work (think of te boy rushing away at the right of the scene ftom the martyrdom of St. yy a lizard) are more frequently figured as a defensive cry against the world than asa readiness to be penetrated or invaded. “What scems to interest Caravaggio more is a body at once presenting and with drawing iteelf—a somewhat enjgmaric body. The distinction between nonerotic another s0 that it may enjoy narcisistically a secret to which the subject \f may have no other access. to say that he or she has any knowledge of it this secret homosexuality? It has come to be taken for granted in most he subject performs a secret, which is not at all, 1 painter himself was homosexual (or perhaps bisex- ‘work—especially the early ps clad boys— basa powerfil homoerotic component. These perceptions, or assumptions, have ts of scan produced some astonishing critical documents. The most authoritative—and tendentious—text for the documentation of homoeroticism in Caravaggio is 2 1971 esay by Donald Posner. For Posner, Caravaggio's lipped, langorous young boys” assure us ofthe painter’s homosexual tastes. These tastes are portrayed in an innocgpily spontaneous manner in such early works as Boy with a Basket of Frit; they receive a slyer, more sophisticated treatment later on. in the Concert, Bacchus, Boy Bitten by a Lizard, and Lute Player The representation vy remain limp in a lan~ shout” from even the most lan guorous gay reader. Unfortunately, the motexuality and his work's homoerot 1n of Caravaggio’ presumed ho- hhas not progressed since 1971 toSexy Seentts more invigoratin Howard Hibbard rem: tual exercises. The distinguished Caravaggio scholar ‘bly neutral on the subject: “Whether Caravaggio ally or exclusively homosexu: is, however, Michelangelo (in such works as 2 Ram) he seeks, a Hibbard put ” and ec ‘generally agreed that when Caravaggio q fi he Bap the true source” of Caravaggi subject oflively debate. As recently as 1995, Creigh 1e vigor in order to defend Caravaggio’s het igths to show the siven by Tommaso Salini during the 1608 judicial hearings of lawsuit the artis’ Giovanni Baglione was suing Caravaggio for Ii mony about ced with a frend a bardassa ("a male who takes a female " Caravaggio was merely jons of Bacchus. The hired male model is common around 1600, and muscles were a fication for the represes fof male nudity that were be ing more frequent. Caravaggio’ in naked pleasure” (Creighton invokes the heady atmosphere of the locker room in contemporary Amer ‘checrfing] on hetero “boasting of [their] sexual succ vy are not the most persuasive argument for ‘erosenuality. At his best, Gilbere emphasizes the differences be- isance perspectives on male beauty and homo- the idea that Caravaggio may be “hinting” Jf'a modern prejudice. When same-sex love and sixteenth-century painting, it is generally pre~ sented in a direct and explicit manner. On the other hy ‘ould be said that sach as Annibale Caracci would have no trouble paint | | ing a frankly homosexual scene (there are, for example, two small homosextal scenes on the Famese ceiling) ited feelings about their own, comfortable about treating such subjects fe Michelangelo, be able to express those impulses only homosexual iy directly and might through an idealized treatment of the snale body in works with nonhomosexval subjects (such as David and the Creation). Nothing forbids an indirect presentation ofthe homoerotic, even in a period when direct presentations were acceptable (Acceptability tury: after the Council of Trent which had homoerotic component hardly disappeared from post-Trident Indeed, Caravaggio may be indicating his taste for homoerotic subjects through his androgynous male figures, figures at once muscular and yet recog nizably “feminine” in some of their poses and expressions. Since anti and pagan themes, many of ly condemned, although they the androgynous had been associated with effeminacy and therefore bisexual This code might lead ihe differences between modern and premodern notions of sexual reconsider a favorite contemporary not only that “the homosexual” existed Jong be sexology elaborated it as an object of medical xin the form mos a man’s body, While a homosexual androgyne, strictly con- ceived, could only meaa a male-female who would desire other male-female the fact that androgyny operated as a code for male homosexuality —th desire of a male for another male—suggests that the androgynous subject was not seen as belonging by fone sex by the other, that ‘aynes are fieaks: they are male bodies anomalously harboring, female de Similacly, Proust evokes che myth of androgyny in the essay on homosexu~ ality that opens Sodome et Gomorne, The invert gives hi male soul—like disembodied spirit seeking the incamate form unjustly denied—“takefs] advantage of the narrowest apertures in sure to both sexes but rather asa kind of corruptionSexy Sreners wall to find what was necessary to her existe visible” inthe inver’s body. The very hair on tunbrashed, undisciplined, as he lcs sally in long curls over the cheek that one marvels how the young woman has contrived 50 ingen manifest hersel longer on its guard, the inverts body might be painted as an androgynous body, and having thus been feminized, it would be recognized as belonging to ah sexual. If Proust call because his emphasis here is on homosexuals not as desired object ing subjects. The androgyne becomes fre: body with female desires. By the same token, however, the legitimizes heterosexual male desire for boys—legitimizes \drogynous youth, as heterosexual. If teally” desire women, the androgynous youth can be represented as beautifal. The question of the latter's own desires becomes not only irrelevant but also a potentially dangerous speculation that might ‘men who desire androgynous mal sad tosome troubling general conclusions al ut the “hideousness” of any desire. If homosexual desire renders a man effeminate and potentially androgynous, who knows when the adult male lasciviously enjoying the male ‘youth's feminized body might suddenly begin showing a feminine ripple in his androgyny within a discussion of the psychology of desite. Once the androgy- nous male's desires are centered, he risks becoming, “hideo 38 feminized body, he can be admired and even desired. Th ic for Posner to call Caravay Sexy Sreners| looking fruit vendor (but less appeal raved intentions except an irreleva from the way we think his contemporaries might have read his work. Indeed, pechaps all we can say with any confidence is that if viewers of Caravaggio's time found his youths androgynous, they may have concluded that he was repeesent ing hom y be, not rrespondence between Caravaggi in such subjects and a particular (homosexual) identity. Finally, even if such a correspondence were justific what we take to be the greatest origin: it would be unfortunate, For it would ignore ty of these paintings: their intractably ste not meant to be read. At le ization has been an epistemological chal- Uunreadabilty has been fantasized as provisional and, far from blocking Knowledge, the enjgma holds forth the promise of new knowledge, of ex- panding the field of epistemological appropriations. Caravaggio resolutely te~ ions, The distinction between heterosexual rakes the soliciting the truth chanks to which, scovers that the baroris de- sires are for other men, “everything chat hitherto had seemed . .. incoherent became intelligible, appeared self-ev Now we “know” Chat if we could confidently identify his works as homoerotic and Caravaggio himself as homosexual. The secrets an be broken down—on the way to knowledge Caravaggio's enigmatic youths propose something quite different: the secrct is inherent in their erotic appeal, although there may be nothing to know about them. A provocative unreadabilit a sexual arousal, Sexual ident and homosexual reduces soliciting to a sexual identity look transparent: homosexuality is the unveiled seer the Proustian narrator says of Charlus when he ‘we would presumably know Caravaggio bet accident—or a defense that c presented as an occasion that might lead to however probable, deprive these works of their erotic charge. Caravaggio’s enigmatic bodies have not yet been domesti- cated by sexual—perhaps even gendered—identities3 Morrai Mepiraions sg presence. In the Boy witha Basket of vaggio’ other early work 10 adacess isa male figures. The soliciting in the Fore Tel his hand, the young man i presumably possesses his secrets, or his future, Butrather than confidently search his palm, she spies om his face, a if looking there for the key to who he is. But since, as we have argued, since he is nothing, ‘more than his presence (attd the spatial extensions of that present her probing look with a very different kind of invitation, Rec say, that there is nothing hidden to be read, that my “secrets” are entsely vi in the largely unnoticed ways in which we are already connected—connected not because you know me, but because we occupy, punctuate, and define a com- mon space, he answers nize, he might summoning Matthew to follow him is the le teresting of these it is certainly not because Caravaggio unrellectively dismisses ianity. The subjects of nearly half his paintings ate taken from the New ‘Testament, and much of the work executed for specific churches—even whenwwe take into accout the rejected altarpieees of Caravaggio’ Rome—was accepted and presumably admired by the et nied it Ithas even been argued that ape cized as showing iereverence toward thei details in ind especially of the dead Virgin) uthfully reflect popul in the Church at the time of the Counter Reformation.’ But in being responsive to this tendency, Caravaggio perhaps found the freedom to reflect, not onl the app in more unsetdling ways, on Christianity asa particular mode of seructaring relations. that commis representations of si tendencies wi we profound humanity of Christianity, 1g ordinariness of its origins, bur a K and pose of the barchino mi ty more appears ta be that gesture the look of the bacchino immedi- ‘complicates them, Christ’s call is so clear that it could also be read as an injunction to renounce the unreadable. Itis therefore all the mote interesting that in Caravaggio’ version of the Biblical episode, Matthew appears not to un- derstand Christ's gesture, Ifthe ently not clear to whom the summons space Matthew repeat subject is not exactl fr is unambiguously a puzzled resp co given Matthew's 6 displacement of the stot weakly delineated Jesus to the more boldly designed representation of Matthew Monrat Mepitarioss ‘The Calling of St. Matthews a questioning of the sense, as well asthe power, of certain tures. In Caravaggio’ work, Christianity is judged, toa significant degree, by the kinds of messages the gestures associated with it bring into space. ‘The life-giving power of the divine gesture is most spectacularly manifested by sing of Lazarus from the grave, In Caravaggio's representation ofthat ‘episode (one of his last works, painted during his stay in Messina from late in 1608 to the middle of 1609 on his way back to the talian mainland from Malta; fig. 3.1), we have another “calling” through he gesture. But whereas the target in the earlier painting suggests that the pointing may be somehow off target, ot that it lacks che power to be at once recognized and obeyed, in the Resurrection of Lazar, as in the Gospel account, Chriss gescare literally calls Lazarus back merely to celebrate the success of that gesture. The painting is one of hs largest, and to see a reproduction) isto be struck by the differences between the two groupings. On the let, there isthe crowded grouping of Christ and the six figures behind him and above hi outstretched arm. The four figures to the right—Lazarus’ sisters ‘Mary and Martha, Lazarus himself and the man holding him —almost seem to they are more prominent than the huddled group to the lef (both in terms of light and the generous space given to them), and nothing, indie (ather than be in another pai heir awareness of Ch presence. (The principal structural continuity ‘ovo parts of the work is the diagonal made by Lazarus’ legs extend into the group to the left) The two figures half-turned toward Jesus narratively connect the two groups, b jon thus established is ambiga- cous, Theit positions and their curious or surprised expressions suggest chat Jesus is not the cause of their liffing the tombstone so that Lazarus may be mited up, but rather char he has interrupted their activity. Both structurally and dramati~ y, Christ could be read as an intruder. Ifwe didn't know the story, we might feel thatthe resurrection of Lazarus was already taking place before Jesus unex- pectedly appeared on the scene, an appearance the group to the right seems not ‘yet to have noticed. In Lzzarus, we have a metaphoric rehearsal of Christ's own destiny. As Hibbard writes: “The unusual pose of Lazarus may be meant to foreshadow the ‘crucifixion of the Christ who resurrects him, thereby encapsulating the Pasion betweer the rel na 09. Messina, Museo Nazionale Monrat Mi e when we note ead of Lazarus’ sister and, on right band (o the left leg of the m: ‘what extent does it also presumal ely more portentous event ipates, Hibbard recognizes something “unusual” in Lazarus’ pore, especially in the posi that “the right hand, which is deberately raised in an antique gesture of acclamation, yn of his arms. He approvingly refers co Herwort Rotigen’s argumen ‘whereas the left arm leads our eyes down to the sk we think again of Golgo: tha) a8 ffto show that Lazarus isin a struggle, both physical and pear, resurrected; there is not between-ness Caravagai attention on what is going on here, with ing, the gesture can also be read as simultaneously open to contacts and repelling, left hand'ppeats mone ready to ec ‘of as at once reaching out to receive the gift o Adam of whom Caravaggio’s work ironically re The entire body is ambiguously posit the man holding it could just as well be low energy oflife and t This double pul Christ’ resurrected being ann: an. Its natural tension its victory over death, ‘meanings of Lazarus's gestuce is that he is resisting Christ’resentable an existence, Death does not merely follow life; itis a moveme Lazarus’ “unusual pose” i perhaps an jon to the unresolvable ambiguity of a body that can't help being “lowered” every time that moves ward its destruction wi spective, d could cach of its affirmations. From this per: fof Christ's gestures—follow me! return to of space, Far traces the ke sacred the space signs y readable mesage, whereas Lazarus's enigmatic gesture reminds us that awaits us is actually, ry of spectacular tran i story—from the Ani and the Assumption of To pain n and the virgin birth to Christ's As 1 Virgin—was nec ly to engage in a kind nature of thi th ofthe Virgin (1605-06; fig. 3.2) is espe ned for Santa Matia della Scala in Trastevere in Rome, it was rejected Church. Or ly instru cplains that the church fathers had the Death of the moved because Caravaggio had used 2 courtesan as the model for the Madonna, an example for Mancini of modern artists’ deplorable tendency to portray the ving ke some filthy whore from thes the seventeenth-centuryMoarat Maprrarions biographer Giovanni Pietro Bellori, in his Vi 1672, echoes these accounts and reproaches: Death ofthe Vixgin cause the Virgin had been made to look too much like the swollen corpse of an ordinary dead woman:"* ‘The transcendental aspect of Mary’s death is certainly absent from Cara~ the idea of her death as a transition from earth to heaven, the verticality of the dhher dying. Far from oppos- the yysterious and original aspect, wan” to the transcendental, Caravaggio reinvent ing the spirimuality of the of the painting isthe Floating red curtain above the bed, To say, as Hibbard does, “fll the otherwise empty space st the top of the picture and is to be understood as the bedhanging, pulled up to reveal the functions asa filler) and how it i's death. Perhaps the mos un making a stab at them is the invention of someone, wit the fictive world ofthis scene, having raised the curtain before the figures we see settled in place and posed for the painting, What we do see are the similarities, in color and, to a lesser degree, in form between the curtains and the Virgin's robe. And its those similarities that heighten the body and the undulating, wavelike movement of the curtain. That undulating. piece of drapery is the most alive part of the painting, as if there had been @ transfer of energy to the curtain not only from the Virgin but also from all static figures surrounding her. Mary, .0 be noted, is not completely inert if the upper part of her body lies heavily on the bed, her legs seem to be floating. To a certain extent, she is being raised—not in a vertical into heaven, but rather in a sort of horizontal lift toward the curtain. There is, this painting obliquely reminds us, no personal immortality—and we canit be nmast between Mary's inert smption consoled for stops circulating. Here the circulation isin part motivated loss ofa person—but the movement associated with life never color and form, Mozrat Mapirarions ‘the curtain recalls, and extends, che Virgin) but itis abo indiscriminate: anything ‘will do—a floating piece of cloth—as an agent of mobility. Death not only fils ighlight the depersonalized resourcefulness of the nly afterlife, and it is pethaps why no one is looking at her. don't know where to look, s us more than she asifthe Apostles to focus on the brightly ive center of Mary's face is a cue for us to de-narrativize our spectatorial ¢g2ze and to look above, where both much lest and much more are happening, than “the death of the Virgin: thinking is energized, even sensualized, by the This is as it were, the philosophical argument we infer from two other powerful representations of death: the Galleria Borghese St Je rome Writing and the Vatican Entomément. In the former (c. 1605-06; fig. 3.3), Caravaggio shows us the scholarly saint (Se, Jerome translated the Hebrew and Greek Bible into Latin) engaged in intellectual activity, but the painting empha- sizes the physicality ofthat activity: While Jerome appears to be wholly absorbed by books as well as by His pen is poised in midair, and death inseribed within ig, we dont see him writing or even reading, eyes seem to be focused on a point just off the lefé edge of the page to which his book is opened. He is and writing, as yetween reading I] as between what he may have just written and what he will 0 to write, and what he has jst ead and wat he wil read when his eyes retu othe book hes holding, This betweon-nes is emphasized bythe pin impremive single clement: the srikingly sinuous ara beeween the ead and the saints head. At the moment Caravaggio represent, Je rome’ intellectual activity is entered in his suspended arm, much 2 he pi fels his creative intention inthe arm he hols ot toward moment when the brash, like the si er is is the pen, is between d makes on pressures. In Jerome's arm, Caravaggio 1 energy from the head to the page (or the canvas); he gives us an image of philosophy or of art being carried by the body: 9 this energy is ambiguous. Is its point of origin St, Jerome's The painting i strongly centered: ewo vireual diagonals—one ‘head, the other originating toward the back of the sain starting at the deatMonra: Maorrarions 1605-06, Rome, Gale le just abave Jerome's forea a point probable position. The work is structured to center our look shout halfway between the two heads, neither ly apposite the painters, and the spectator cone of which is privileged. The saint’ express 1 would naturally arouse our interest, but his head is lowered and fice recedes from our view while the slell is ehruse more directly toward the viewer. T emphasis on reading and from left to right, and if we wore to read the a which old age and death are written, Jerome should Indeed, this is the order chosen by Caravaggio ing sugges like a page of life logically be tothe left of for the Mala St Jerome Wri is shown to be, as it were, at cy, but rather the not ¢ of the intellectual energy being carried by isness and in his death. More Jerome’ arm is both death is already in there since the beginning of fs text. Caravaggio articulates that dual presence both by separating the live death’s-head and connecting them through the arm that conducts y cizculating betweer too, From the centered triangles, our eye moves between the skull and the saint's head, unable to settle on either one as an origin or a terminal point. re that the body kgs of | death, This knowledge, w perhaps born with, directs and inflects che real; itis a powerful formalizing clement of the energy passing through the extended arm ab ‘write, about to paint, about to designate a follower, about to wel We think, we write, we paint under pressure, a pre nowledgs the other's beckoning gesture, The particular arfulness with whieh each of us moves through space i the creation of our mortal expression, or pressing outward, of death’s inscription within our bodies, Is the remarkable sensuousness of St. Jerome's arm also meant to suggest that the death inscribed in th its sensual appeal? The compat ing body's movements can also be a source of y of death with sensuality is the subjece oftually ignored. scene who may be tly at Christ is Sr. Jo! in darkness that persed glances are include sever oki ned by Nicodemus’s aggressive stare out of the picture frame toward us ovement away ffom Christ's body is accentuated by the jutting comer of of our visual attention, y closed eyes or the absence of eyes, And its the sheer physicality of the body that has neither the ideality of Michelangelo's David not taleites (1625). In in which death that blinds, a physi the posed eroticism of Poussin’s Vicory of the Entombment, Caravaggio has painted the sensuality of fes 0 be circulating, as energy. Christ's real death becomes for Caravag- je metaphor in ich we both see and are prevented from secing le fom ws: a body alive within its ow ely appealing, cannot, however, be ject of desire e secrets of an erotic appeal; like the dead C} s eyeless fice, it has ‘with which to fiscinate our gaze. Chris body proposes itself 2s neith reflect er plenitude nor emptiness; it can therefore nei r own sense of lick nor promise to restore us to an imaginary whole- ness. This is the pure being-therenest of an edenic body, need to be condemned « body that does né literal death to experience its own dying, The story ‘Chit, 1602-4, Rome, Pinacotecs Vat (Abo pte 5.)Mosrat Maprrarto%s of Christ is ambiguous in this respect. It makes the distinction between life and form of life from which death has been eliminated. On the other hand, the absolute uniqueness ofthat story is the commitment of Christ's body to its own death from the very beginning of his life. In Christ, God chose to be born in order to de. The ethically primitive nature of that choice (the sacrifice of God himself was necessary to redeem fiom sin) does not erase its more profound phenomenological signi parable of the human body's knowledge of its death, ‘The body can be filly loved pethaps only if we love that knowledge i “To see such an aware death excessively clear, and it even propos another body is not to be mystified by a secret ly soliciting gaze; itis to be blinded by the seductive nes of fully developed physicality, While the erotic gaze elicits a fundamentally paranoid fascination (what secret is bei the body whose death has become vis when we look atthe e ‘withheld fiom us), we look away from as part of the beauty of flesh. And this is perhaps because we recognize thatthe blinding body out there is also our own, In Caravaggio’s Entombment, she sign of this recognition is the ncar invisibility others’ eyes. We dontt see their eyes because their blinding recognition is a sclfreflexiveness, a seeing inward, To be wholly absorbed by Caravaggio’ chi ‘outward and looking in- ‘ward, The eye isthe threshold at which the two worlds separated by that thresh jody in the Entombment to obliterate the distinction between looki ical to an exceptional self-absorption. Having inhabits with 2 fall- ness it ean never have as long as the body is—is thought ro be—merely alive. 4 ‘Tue Ewiemarie SiGNIFIER ‘Caravaggio paints two kinds of concealment. The one to which we've devoted ‘most of our remarks so far is designated through an eroticized address, and iti read as enigmatic desire, The other, hinted at in different ways in the Fortune Teller and the Calling of St. Ma spatial though only part! the “concealment” of an unmappable ext “To speak adequately of the frst type of concealment invites a psychoanalytic look, perhaps the most refined interpretive look we have. Merely by positing the notion-of an enigmatic subject we have placed ourselves on psychoanalytic ground. Indeed, Jean Laplanche has recent at the very point of emergence of what might be constituted subject. He has spoken of an original and unavoidable seduction of the child by the mother, a seduction inherent in the very nurturing of the child in no way needs to be intentional; as Laplanche puts the paintings in the form of what Laplanche calls an enigmatic signifier—thati, a message by which the child is seduced but Laplanche speaks of the s sructaral formation of tunconscious of those elements in the enigmat Jhich he or she cannot read.” ive address mainly as an account of the ald be the making ‘which infants carit