Caravaggio left Rome in May 1606, after he had killed a man in a duel,
and never returned. He traveled to Naples, then to Malta, where he found
employment with the Knights of Malta. There, he quarreled with a knight and
was imprisoned, but he escaped prison and À ed to Sicily, ¿ rst to Syracuse,
then Messina and Palermo, before returning to Naples. Wherever he went,
he left rapidly executed masterpieces behind him. In 1609 in Naples, he was
overtaken by agents from Malta and severely wounded in a knife attack.
During Caravaggio’s last years, his paintings were religiously resonant and
deeply personal, as we see in David with the Head of Goliath (c. 1609–1610).
This depicts the young David contemplating the decapitated head of Goliath.
The head has the features of Caravaggio. Just as Michelangelo endowed the
head of the À ayed skin of Bartholomew with his features, so Caravaggio put
himself into the picture. This painting could have sexual implications or hint
at defeat.
Caravaggio received a signi¿ cant commission in Rome for a chapel in Santa
Maria in Vallicella, called the Chiesa Nuova (the New Church). The church
was identi¿ ed with the priest and soon-to-be saint Filippo Neri, whose
devotion to the Counter-Reformation was profound. We see The Entombment
(c. 1602) from this chapel. In 1797, Napoleon took the painting from the
church and transported it to the Louvre (then the Musée Napoleon). When it
was repatriated after Waterloo, it was placed in the Vatican rather than in its
original location.
We see an echo of Michelangelo’s Pietà (1498–1499); Christ’s torso and arm
are similar, as is the hand supporting the shoulder. But the Pietà is a pyramid
in which Christ is embedded, and this Christ is at the bottom of a falling
diagonal. The diagonal begins with St. Mary Magdalene, standing at right,
both arms raised and looking upward. While one arm is vertical, the other
starts the slow fall of the composition. Another female saint presses a cloth
to her eyes, and beside her head is the Madonna’s blue-cowled head. Directly
below the Madonna’s head is Nicodemus who, we have seen, supported the
dead Christ in Michelangelo’s later Pietà (c. 1547–1555). Here he grasps
Christ’s legs with both hands; to the left of his head is St. John the Evangelist,
who supports the torso.