His contemporaries reproached him for not mastering the fundamental basis of perspective, though many details in his works prove his ability to represent figures using this technique. The best illustration of his ability to use the principles of perspective is the ceiling painted in oil directly onto plaster in Cardinal Del Monte’s villa entitled Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, which was only discovered in the 20th century. Caravaggio was presumably inspired by the work of Giulio Romano, who had undertaken one of the famous decorated ceilings of Palazzo del Tè in Mantua.

 

In the painting Saint Matthew and the Angel, Caravaggio achieved complex foreshortening in the angel’s arm that guides Saint Matthew’s quill, as in that of David lifting the severed head of Goliath (David with the Head of Goliath) and in the sword held in the left hand of the supper guest in Supper at Emmaus, which seems to pop up perpendicularly to the plane of the canvas and to advance towards the viewer. All these examples contradict the criticism wrongly addressed to him. He was also reproached for working without preliminary studies, therefore denying the importance of drawing. By scoffing at the rules of the institutions, he provoked the wrath of his contemporaries.

 

His representations of anatomy were by no means scientifically accurate, as Unger suggests: “For anatomical purposes, Caravaggio as well as Ribera quite often made the mistake of depicting the skin stretched too tightly, because they were more concerned about what was beneath.”[74] We can accept such things to a certain extent in his youthful figures, such as his Cupid in his allegories of love, the angel in The Inspiration of Saint Matthew, the shepherd with the ram in the painting in the Capitolinian Collection, and also in the faces of older figures such as Saint Matthew in the paintings in San Luigi dei Francesi or Saint Peter in the Cerasi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo if we only remember that the charming impression created by the physical anatomy compensates for the impossible aspects of the events represented by taking them apart. The extreme roundness of his figures that Caravaggio, as we have seen, on occasion sought to increase with a reflective complexion in order to emulate polished marble sculptures, has to be recognised as a fundamental impact of his work. When there are several figures within his works, the principal composition should be assessed in a similar way. Baglione’s censure of his inability “to place two figures together”, which is understandable in view of the Carraccis’ art[75], is dismissed by the extreme expressiveness of the composition of the figures in Caravaggio’s paintings. The refreshing irrationality of the grouping, which is so strongly expressed in The Entombment, is repeated in all his works, probably most strikingly in one of his later paintings, the Madonna of the Rosary. This work demonstrates an equalising counterbalance through its colouring as well as its lighting, which brings a greater richness of movement and counter-movement into the picture than was ever achieved by the Carracci through their rules of contrapposto. This distinctive gesture, which can be pursued beyond the School of Naples to The Surrender of Breda by Velázquez, merits this accolade. If we look for similar efforts in the field of the developing of Baroque sculpture itself, the comparison would most likely lead to the works of Taddeo Landini.[76] In the youthful figures of the Turtle Fountain in Rome, a direct parallel with Caravaggio’s figures can be seen, such as those of Cupid, the angel in the cycle of Saint Matthew, or the shepherd. All these figures, both in the sculpture and in the paintings, tend to represent the human body as slim and extraordinarily flexible. But from the year 1585, Caravaggio adapted Landini’s soft, elegant forms to the principles of his own art, and changed the melodious lines of the sculptor’s whole composition into harsher contours.

 

Although he was without doubt endowed with great sensuality in his work, Caravaggio acquired the virtuosity of the best Venetians in his manner of reproducing various materials such as items of clothing, curtains, furs, and feathers, and he excelled in the representation of hair and flesh. Due to this, he received the appreciative insult of “meat mincer” from Annibale Carracci and, from the public, the favourable judgement of having achieved, in The Calling of Saint Matthew, “one of the most beautiful representations of modelling”. Having worked a lot as a young painter in the still-life genre, he treated the nude in a corresponding manner, always trying to stay “faithful to reality”.

 

In addition to his extraordinary capacity to paint reliefs, an expertise shared by most painters, sculptors, and architects, Caravaggio must also have been endowed with an exceptional kinaesthetic acuity judging from the sculptural character of his figures and highlighted even more by the magic of the chiaroscuro that he invented. The figures of Saint John the Baptist and the infant Jesus in the Madonna dei Palafrenieri are modelled in the round; our hands as well as our eyes are invited to caress their contours. In The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist painted in Malta, the power that emanates from the naked torsos adds to the dramatic character of the scene.

 

Regarding the human body, Caravaggio knew how to capture and reproduce not only the vivid colour of blood and the plasticity of living human flesh, but also the somewhat transient displacements that gestures provoke on the torso and limbs (see Saint John the Baptist and Supper at Emmaus). He managed to seize, with the precision of a camera lens, the moving groups of muscles that suggest a series of gestures and movements of the characters in space or the slight contraction of groups of muscles. The painter favoured powerful movements of the arms and legs, gestures, impulses, and tension at the expense of the pose, of peaceful and graceful attitudes and fixed facial expressions.