Back in the early part of 2016, I began planning to move to Italy for five-plus months. One of the things I was required to do was provide the Italian government with a purpose for being in Italy for that long (A tourist visa is good for 90 days). To acquire a visa for that length of time required a reason for staying in the country that long. I deliberated for a bit and decided to present myself as a student. A student of what you might ask. Fair question.
I decided that I wanted to study Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio a bit more. Four years previously, I wrote an essay on the painting, The Deposition of the Christ, by Caravaggio. I became enthralled with this painting when I saw it in the Vatican Museum. That musing remains one of my favorites. So, returning to Italy, I wanted to understand more about his painting. Having training as a therapist, I am constantly interested in the complexity of human beings, me included. Caravaggio, in his brief life, was exceedingly complex. He was a volatile genius. In his art, he contrasted light and darkness (chiaroscuro) and made his characters literally come out of the canvas and draw the viewer in to the story being told. I have looked at that painting several times in the Vatican Museum and walked away each time saying, “Huh.”
I went to Rome twice in 2016 and visited the French church, San Luigi dei Francesi, which is a block away from the Pantheon and near the Piazza Navona. This church has three Caravaggio paintings in the Contarelli chapel, all based on the life of St Matthew. One painting is The Calling of St Matthew. On the opposite wall is the painting of St Matthew’s martyrdom and between those two paintings is a third of St Matthew writing his gospel. On previous visits to this church, I studied The Calling of St Matthew while paying scant attention to the other two.
I viewed these three paintings for the first time in 2012 on a trip to Rome with a group of college students taught by Professor Jodie Mariotti, an art historian, who said something that quite moved me. Professor Mariotti said, “The Calling of St Matthew expresses Jesus extending grace to Matthew.” Matthew is seen sitting with four others counting the day’s take of tax money. Jesus’s hand is extended, almost coming out of the dark, toward Matthew. It is reminiscent of the famous hand of God reaching out to Adam in the Creation scene on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel by Michelangelo. With the sentence spoken by Professor Mariotti in mind, I returned a week later with my family and looked even more closely. In Caravaggio’s painting, as I looked again, I realized that it was so. Jesus was extending grace to the one some would think was the last person on earth deserving of it. Matthew was despised and despicable, himself a pawn of two systems that often found themselves in conflict with each other, the Pax Romana (Roman Empire) and the Jewish theocracy. I quite like the image of a man trapped between two competing realities, and it does create some sympathy for Matthew.
In that painting I was also struck by the thought that Caravaggio did not paint Matthew’s response to the offer. It was extended. The hand of grace is simply offering Matthew an opportunity to be something other than, until that moment, he was. The hand of grace is providing Matthew a way in which he could live in his own skin should he choose to take it like it does for the likes of you and me. In each of these three paintings Caravaggio captures the drama of the moment at hand.
Caravaggio paints the choice on canvas. It is not a cheap choice. One of the other two paintings in this trilogy shows that Matthew made the choice and is writing his story. His story is about following the path of grace. The last of the three paintings is Matthew being martyred for following the call of grace, an act hated by the dominant powers the world over. Matthew chose grace and paid for it with his life.
Caravaggio himself was conflicted throughout his life with who he was. He put on canvas powerful statements of grace and yet struggled with grace personally. At one point he is said to have become furious in a tennis match and killed his opponent. He ran from the Pope who was his patron. He wanted to be forgiven for his rash act and be reinstated as a favorite in the Papal court. He died a relatively young man still conflicted. It is curious, is it not, that while he could paint the most powerful scenes of grace and love and justice, he missed it personally? His painting of Judith beheading Holofernes is a picture of justice for an abused woman and an abused people. That painting became a theme used by numerous other painters later, including Artemisia Gentileschi. Caravaggio seems to me to have been a person who got life but had difficulty living it.
Many in the world I live in are constantly conflicted by what to believe. Many wish to let others do their thinking for them. I believe they do so because they lack certainty and hate ambiguity. They want to live in a world with no ambivalence, where right and wrong are absolute, not relative. By taking sides, one can belittle anyone who does not conform to their idea of right or wrong. Imagining the extension of the hand of grace is a third choice. I have, in other times and places, defined grace as the extension of undeserved favor to others. It is not a middle ground, but a profound choice to both accept the undeserved favor and offer it to others. Focusing on the hand of grace is political in and of itself, but it doesn’t follow party lines.
Coming into the election season in America, with its full blown, rancorous polarization of the populace, and the creation of a culture of fear and manipulation of emotions on both sides, I am reminded that there is always a third choice operative in life. The third choice is the hand of grace, extended to one and all. In many ways, in my more cynical moments, I believe we are all pawns in a strategy of manipulation by unseen forces attempting to control our destiny and the destiny of others. More often than not, these very forces create illusions and leave me, at least, trying to discern what is true and what is not.
Accepting the hand of grace, to me, means not treating others in a less than gracious fashion. If I have accepted the grace extended to me, it changes the game and means being gracious to others. Of course, behaving in such a fashion is not what the dominant powers want. The dominant powers cannot survive if you and I choose to accept and live with grace. It is their worst nightmare. Imagine if we did not accept being bullied or bullying others but rather, found a path to extend grace to our neighbors. That might include a willingness to pay greater taxes to enhance social networks for the poor, the aged, and the young who did not win the parenting lottery. It might mean changing the culture of imprisoning so many and finding ways rehabilitate them to society. It means choosing not to be punitive in our own actions. It means constantly working for values commensurate with grace. It means speaking up and working for peace and justice in the face of prejudice. It allows us to see immigrants – legal or otherwise – as human beings and to value their lives.
When I looked at these paintings again following the 2016 election, I found myself determined to choose grace again even though it is costly. I am and was unwilling to support any elected official who maligned or dismissed a part of the population beneath him or her.
Today, I will continue to the best of my ability to work for justice, equal rights, gender equality, and the right for all to experience health, hope, and peace in this difficult world. I will not be yanked like a puppet on a chain and dance to music that does not empower grace. I will speak out about against bigotry, misogyny, racism, and injustice. I will do so, I trust, with a measure of grace. I literally pray I will be able to discern the difference between illusion and reality. If grace is not popular, I will try to be gracious anyway. There is a price to be paid for being gracious. Caravaggio literally nailed the nature and cost of grace for me in his trilogy of paintings based on the life of St Matthew.
At the end of September, I will be in Rome overnight and I look forward to experiencing these paintings anew.
Ciao,
Jack
I decided that I wanted to study Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio a bit more. Four years previously, I wrote an essay on the painting, The Deposition of the Christ, by Caravaggio. I became enthralled with this painting when I saw it in the Vatican Museum. That musing remains one of my favorites. So, returning to Italy, I wanted to understand more about his painting. Having training as a therapist, I am constantly interested in the complexity of human beings, me included. Caravaggio, in his brief life, was exceedingly complex. He was a volatile genius. In his art, he contrasted light and darkness (chiaroscuro) and made his characters literally come out of the canvas and draw the viewer in to the story being told. I have looked at that painting several times in the Vatican Museum and walked away each time saying, “Huh.”
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