Today we return to talk about Caravaggio, after having already done so here, for example, and we also talk again about how this painter drastically changed the way of understanding and making art. After all, as a tour guide, I can tell you that admiring a masterpiece by Caravaggio is a unique and unrepeatable experience, as his art changed art itself. And in a city like Rome, it is easy to come into contact with the genius (but also the recklessness) of our famous painter. Like, for example, in the Pinacoteca of the Capitoline Museums, among the great masterpieces of numerous artists, one of Caravaggio's most ambiguous works stands out: his John the Baptist. 

We are certain that this oil painting represents the saint because all the documents we have, especially those of the Mattei family (who lived, among other things, in a monumental palace in the area of the current Ghetto) who, at the beginning of the Seventeenth century, commissioned Caravaggio for the work, clearly indicate that the subject represented is John the Baptist. However, there is a problem: nothing really tells us that the young semi-reclining nude, in this somewhat provocative pose with a gaze and face halfway between surprised, amused and seductive, is really John the Baptist. We have no halo or the typical reed cross, typical attributes of the saint. No lamb skin covering the shoulders or nudity. In fact, the animal that seems to almost emerge from the darkness, catching the young man by surprise, looks more like a ram than a lamb. The whole scene is enclosed in a narrow and dark space, and only one figure stands out, taking up all the pictorial space. In short, no clue that it is really the saint. For this reason, over the centuries, another name was given to this youth. For some, he is the protagonist of some episodes, unknown to most, taken from Greek-Roman mythology. According to others, the young man would even be Isaac embracing the lamb that will replace him in the sacrifice. Certainly fantasies, as in the end Caravaggio followed his style. Only he managed to make saints and other biblical figures so human, humble, and similar to us. The model used by the artist to paint the Baptist is probably one of the many street youths that Caravaggio encountered every day in the neighborhood where he lived, near the current Via della Scrofa and Via di Ripetta. A young man with a difficult existence, certainly, who with Caravaggio later had his moment of glory. After all, this is also the art of this master: humanization. Even important saints like the Baptist, to be, in some way, closer to the common people, to the human being in general (and not just to members of high society who could discuss art). 

This canvas by Caravaggio, exhibited in the same Pinacoteca of the Capitoline Museums in Rome where, for example, a painting by Rubens is displayed that I mentioned some time ago (here to go into detail) indicates even more how he overturned the roles, canons, and models that everyone was accustomed to at the beginning of the Seventeenth century. In conclusion, the pose of the young man is similar to another painting by Caravaggio, the Amor Vincit Omnia, and very similar to one of Michelangelo's Ignudi on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Even Caravaggio, after all, took inspiration from other great masters...