#Caravaggio. The Seven Acts of Mercy

[vizuart]

Caravaggio. The Seven Acts of Mercy, 1607

[tarabyte3]

The 2 sides of my personality (I'm trying to narrow down my picks for a new phone case)

The artworks:

The Fall of the Damned by Peter Paul Rubens

Dante and Virgil in Hell by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

The Seven Acts of Mercy by Caravaggio

Plate 10 from Canto III, Dante's The Inferno by Gustave Doré

[famousinuniverse]

The Seven Works of Mercy (Caravaggio)

The Seven Works of Mercy (Italian: Sette opere di Misericordia), also known as The Seven Acts of Mercy, is an oil painting by Italian painter Caravaggio, circa 1607. The painting depicts the seven corporal works of mercy in traditional Catholic belief, which are a set of compassionate acts concerning the material needs of others.

The painting was made for, and is still housed in, the church of Pio Monte della Misericordia in Naples. Originally, it was meant to be seven separate panels around the church; however, Caravaggio combined all seven works of mercy in one composition which became the church's altarpiece. The painting is better seen from "il coretto" (the little choir) in the first floor.

The titular seven works/acts of mercy are represented in the painting as follows:

Bury the dead, Visit the imprisoned, and feed the hungry, Shelter the homeless, Clothe the naked, Visit the sick

With regards to his choice of iconography, Caravaggio may have been inspired by his predecessor Perino del Vaga, whose fresco of Roman Charity he could have seen during his stay in Genoa in 1605

Roman Charity

Roman Charity or Cimon and Pero is an ancient Greek and Roman exemplary story (exemplum) of filial piety (pietas) in which a woman secretly breastfeeds her father or mother, incarcerated and supposedly sentenced to death by starvation.

Cimon and Pero, Rubens (c.1625)

Caritas Romana, Gaspar de Crayer (c. 1645)

Fresco from Pompeii

Drawing by Sebald Beham, 1540

Version by Artemisia Gentileschi (17th-century)

Mammelokker, Belfry of Ghent

Jan Janssens (1620–25)

Jean-Baptiste Greuze (c. 1767)

Rembrandt Peale (1811)

The 1973 surrealist film O Lucky Man! also contains a scene of Roman Charity when the protagonist is starving and a vicar's wife nurses him rather than let him plunder the food gathered for an offering.

The Seven Works of Mercy painted by Caravaggio (1571 - 1610)

[travelingue]

Naples (7): Finding Caravaggio

Hotel stays make for interesting behavioural observations.

For a few days you live in proximity to people who are both complete strangers and similar to you in significant ways – most obviously in their choice of holiday destinations and hotels. 

This cultural and socio-economic homogeneity allows the observer to focus on other variables, notably personal traits.  You get used to idiosyncratic relatives, neighbours or colleagues.  Only in a hotel do you really see how unlike you people like you can act.

On our final morning a middle-aged, English-speaking couple – a good demographic match for us - stormed into the top-floor breakfast room and complained that the lift was not working.

The teenager behind the counter did not speak fluent English.  She just gave the malcontents a look that said: "I could investigate the issue, but I'm no mechanical engineer and serving coffee is a better use of my time."

Her passivity enraged the older woman.  "What's the point of you?" she screamed.  "Are you here just to look pretty?"

Later, at reception, we chatted with a French couple - who matched my own background even more closely than the breakfast complainants. While waiting for the rain to clear, I shared a few tourist tips with them.  They decided to head for the archaeological museum.

"Let's go by taxi," the woman said. "It's wet and I'm tired after Pompeii yesterday." "No, I feel like walking," the man shrugged.  "I have an umbrella."

She hurried after him as he walked out the door.

Now, was such behaviour objectively odd?  Was I right to feel superior to any of these people?  I did not have time to ponder these questions.

Having missed out on the Flagellation of Christ at the Capodimonte Museum, we had one last chance to see a Caravaggio: a church in the Centro Storico had one on display. The plan was to go there before flying back to London in the afternoon.

When we got to the church, we found that it didn't open until 10 am.  With half an hour to kill, we sought refuge from the drizzle at the Caravaggio hotel next door.

The young man at the desk invited us to sit down, gave us bottled water and refused any payment.

He was a proud Neapolitan.  I congratulated him on the city's footballing glory.  The Serie A title, he said, proved to the world what Napoli was capable of: "They hate our guts in the North.  But now they have to show us a little respect." He was speaking more in sorrow than in anger, as if he knew that northerners would spit on Naples again as soon as they got a chance. I said we were sorry to have to leave, but we would be back.  He took a map and drew an itinerary for our next visit.  It started in the graffiti-covered central area, where we were, and stretched to the Via Toledo shopping area to the west, the Aragonese fortress and the seafront promenade beyond.

"This will show you what Naples is all about," he said.  It struck me that his route was a total rejection of my dichotomy between seedy Nablus and swishy Neapolis.  Maybe I had been wrong.  Naples was not a city of contrasts: it was one.

At 10 we said our goodbyes and went to pay the €10 entrance fee (each) for the Pio Monte della Misericordia church.

Caravaggio’s Seven Works of Mercy glares at you as you come in. It was painted in 1607, when the pathologically quarrelsome painter fled to Naples after his patrons in Rome could no longer shield him from the law.

This altar piece celebrates various deeds of Christian mercy – sheltering strangers, giving water to the thirsty, etc.  We had just experienced these from the receptionist at the Caravaggio Hotel.  It is unclear whether the artist himself cared about such acts, but he certainly knew how advertise them (full image at the bottom of this post).  

The Seven Works was an instant hit.  The government banned any copy.  Caravaggio was fêted and commissions abounded until he was forced to skip town again after one too many brawls.

We got to the airport in plenty of time.  I’d done everything to make our return flight more pleasant than the outward journey.  I'd bought reserved seats (for £18 each), preventing the airline's check-in software from separating us.

What I had not been able to do was print the boarding passes from my laptop.  After queuing for 15 minutes, I gave the desk attendant my booking reference. "You need a QR code," she said.

I stepped aside and found the code on the laptop. After another spell in line, I showed the screen to the same Ryanair operative.

"The QR code needs to be either printed or on your phone," she said. "Could you print it?" "Yes.  There is a €20 fee..." "What?" "... per boarding pass.  It's in the terms and conditions." 

I stepped aside again, got an idea, rejoined to queue and eventually asked the attendant: "Can take a picture of the QR code on the laptop screen using my phone - and then check in with that image?"

She was clearly tired of helping unprepared, dim-witted customers: "As I told you before, if it's on a phone it's FINE."

Previous entries on Naples:

1. Ryanair 2. Neapolis or Nablus? 3. Daylight robbery 4. Sybaritic afternoon 5. The benefits of getting bombed 6. The benefits of getting high

[herrpercyperkins]

Caravaggio - Sette opere di Misericordia

seven acts of mercy

[nyxbarb]

— by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio; The Seven Acts/Works of Mercy (+detail)

[artstvdies]

15-09-2017 ~  Alright, so for the ones who don’t know it yet, I’ve started college two weeks ago. Today is the friday of my second week in college, and my i say, i love it, but it’s A LOT to get used to. I’m still struggling with coming up with a schedule so if anyone has some tips, i’d like to know. Primary and High school have both been kinda easy for me and i’m not saying i’m having a very hard time now but it’s just very different.  Also, if anyone can recommend me some good ass studyblr worthy laptops i’d like you to message me! I’m in serious need of a new (and lighter!) one asap. So if you have a good 13′’ laptop please let me know! 

Continue reading for the travel journal entry!

02-08-2017 ~ Napoli, Italy.  Our second day in hectical but beautiful Naples. Today we were more prepared, we knew exactly which train and subway to take to our first destination. Today we had much more of a plan than we had the last time we came here. We had a purpose today, and that was be in Naples early and see the churches we missed due to siesta. First church on the list was my picking; the Pio Monte della Misericordia, or for short: the Miscordia. In this tiny ass church, hidden between Italian laundry filled balconies, hangs the (in my opinion) most amazing masterpiece of the Baroque. The Seven Acts of Mercy by Caravaggio. It’s was a weird but beautiful experience, to walk into the tiniest church i’ve ever seen, through a small and narrow hallway and suddenly the big masterpiece is hanging right is front of you, out of nowhere. No big rows of benches leading up to it, no preachers chair near it, no, only two small steps up the small altar. That’s it. Four steps across the church and you’ve hit the other wall. That’s all that was to it, one small circle with on every side of you a painting and right in front of you, big as can be in this church, the Seven Acts of Mercy. Breathtakingly beautiful, the clair-obscure contrasts, that are so typically Caravaggio, even brighter than you think would be possible. The angel’s wings so realistic you can almost hear them flap, the emotions almost too much.  I don’t want to leave but we have to if we still wanna see the other church on our list, The Duomo of Napoli. In contrast to the Miscordia this church is huge, like you’d expect a Duomo to be. It was stunning, with gold and marble everywhere you looked. And insanely high, the ceiling so high it made your neck hurt.  When the churches closed we took the subway all the way down to the harbor to visit Castello Nuovo, a castle turned into a museum. But the view from the castle windows made more impact than the paintings and statues (not only because there was a nice breeze coming through so windows, though it did help with the heat). The empressionism art in the castle was weirdly enough very not Italian like. But that could be because i’m not a big fan of impressionism. It was fun to walk through the museum but i didn’t leave with pain in my heart, like i had done the Miscordia.  We decided to eat some lunch in the harbor before we would start the hour travel back home. It would be the last time we make this train trip. Ciao Naples, hope to see you soon again. 

[apencilandpen]

I, for one, have been trying to wrap my head around the importance of the paintings shown throughout Goncharov. I'll have to dust off my Baroque art history notes for specifics, but I'm almost 100% certain that most of them are Caravaggios. Caravaggio ALSO spent time in Naples in the end of his life and more importantly, he was in Naples because he'd been RUN OUT OF ROME. No, he wasn't trying to gain a foothold in Cold War era Italy, but he was trying to start a new life - or at least salvage the old one - with shadows, real and metaphysical, right behind him.

Talking generally, the use of Caravaggio in a mafia film makes sense. Tenebrism lends itself perfectly to the genre. You throw characters and scenes into intense light and shadow, and the tension practically builds itself. There are so many moments where the lighting choices are full of the warm light sources ao often seen in Caravaggio works, light that was very often indicative of God. But there are a few works that stand out.

When we first meet Goncharov, you know, the scene in the study where he introduces himself, in the back is this painting:

That's Cardsharps from 1594. It's an early Caravaggio of two men scamming a rich youth. It's a piece of set dressing that shows us at a glance what Goncharov is: a crook, a villain, someone not to be trusted. But upon further analysis, questions are raised. Is Goncharov the youth or the young crook? Is the older figure his father or himself later in life looking back on what he could've done differently? If Goncharov is one character, which one is Andrey? Who is being taken in, and who is doing the taking? And we, the audience, can see what the crooks are doing as we can see the machinations of the film as it will progress. But we can do nothing to help the youth, just as we are powerless to stop the steady march towards the final act.

Later, we see this Medusa associated with Sofia:

Sofia, who was never protected and now must protect herself. Sofia, who was saved and cursed over and over by the men around her. Sofia, who perhaps mightve found love, or at least a sisterhood, with Katya. But this image is of Caravaggios own face as the head of Medusa, a move that supposedly makes him immune to her gaze. Is this a moment of empowerment for Sofia? Or is this another example of men taking something from her? Knowing what we do about the fate of her relationship with Katya, is this superimposition of Caravaggio's face a stand in for Goncharov's place in their relationship? Is Medusa truly Sofia, or is Medusa Goncharov, or someone else entirely? Does is minimize Sofia's character to even ask if Medusa could be anyone else?

But the one that REALLY gets me, is from Goncharov's lone church scene.

This is The Seven Works of Mercy in Pio Monte della Misericordia in Naples. It can be seen as Goncharov and Andrey walk through the church, barely speaking. What makes this work important is a) the fact that Caravaggio painted it in 1607 while he was on the run from basically a mob out for his head and b) the subject matter. The seven mercies are: bury the dead, visit the imprisoned, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, clothe the naked, visit the sick, and refresh the thirsty. Let's take them in smaller chunks.

Refresh the thirsty: could this be a comment on the alcoholism present in the film, both with regar to Goncharov's past and his current present?

Visit the sick/visit the imprisoned: who in this film isn't sick of something? Who doesn't have some spiritual ailment that they are trying to heal with the presence of the other? Who isn't imprisoned in some way? Katya and Goncharov in their marriage, Goncharov and Andrey in their history and feelings, Katya and Sofia in their male dominated world, all of the in the tragedy of the narrative.

Feed the hungry: all of this was brought about by a hunger for power, for expansion, for victory. But at what cost? Whose hunger wins out, and at the expense of which of the other characters?

Shelter the homeless/clothe the naked: perhaps a comment of Katya's desire to raise Sofia from her circumstances, perhaps a comment on how all of the characters are adrift beyond their homeland searching for something they can never have.

Bury the dead: the fact that this painting is shown so close to the end of the film is no accident. We as the audience know what is in the works, we know that this can only end one way. Even some of the characters know it. But later, when Goncharov is dying, does he think of this painting? Does he wonder if he deserves mercy? Does he wonder who will bury him? His body will probably be thrown in the sea and forgotten about; those left will forget him. But we won't. The audience won't. We are the ones who will grant him this last mercy. We will bury our dead. We will bury him.

[mporium]

the seven acts of mercy by caravaggio the iconography represent of course the seven works of mercy (based on the catholic faith).

there are two kinds of works.

Corporal

To feed the hungry.

To give water to the thirsty.

To clothe the naked.

To shelter the homeless.

To visit the sick.

To visit the imprisoned.

To bury the dead.

and Spiritual

To instruct the ignorant.

To counsel the doubtful.

To admonish the sinners.

To bear patiently those who wrong us.

To forgive offenses.

To comfort the afflicted.

To pray for the living and the dead.

[vizuart]

Caravaggio. The Seven Acts of Mercy, 1607.

[georgiafont]

Bibliography

CASH, J. (2020) Theatre of Cruelty Conversions. The Drama Teacher. [Online] Available at: https://thedramateacher.com/theatre-of-cruelty-conventions/ [Accessed 3 April 2020]

CAVENDISH, D. (2016) The Seven Acts of Mercy Review. The Telegraph. [Online] Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/what-to-see/seven-acts-mercy-review-unwieldy-compassionate-work-political/ [Accessed 7 April 2020]

CHUBBUCK, I. (2004) The Power of the Actor.

ESPELAND, T. (2015) The Eight Efforts: Laban Movement. Theatre Folk. [Online] Available at:https://www.theatrefolk.com/blog/the-eight-efforts-laban-movement/ [Accessed 27 March 2020]

LANE, M. (2018) What is the new Right to Buy scheme? Money. [Online] Available at:https://www.money.co.uk/mortgages/what-is-the-new-right-to-buy-scheme.htm [Accessed 8 April 2020]

ROBERTS, A. (2016) Right to Buy Mortgage Scheme. Money Saving Expert. [Online] Available at: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/mortgages/right-to-buy/ [Accessed 7 April 2020]

Image-The Bluecoat (2020) [Online] Available at: http://www.thebluecoat.org.uk/content/performance-space [Accessed 15 April 2020]

Image-The Seven Acts of Mercy painting By Caravaggio. Caravaggio.org (2009) [Online] Available at:https://www.caravaggio.org/the-seven-works-of-mercy.jsp [Accessed 20 March 2020]

Image- BOOHOO.COM. Navy Blazer. [Online] Available at: https://www.boohoo.com/tailored-blazer/DZZ00512.html?color=148 [Accessed 18 March 2020]

Image- BOOHOO.COM. Navy Tapered Trouser. [Online] Available at:https://www.boohoo.com/tailored-tapered-trouser/FZZ88851.html?color=148 [Accessed 18 March 2020]

Video-The Royal Shakespeare Company. Trailer. [Online] Available from:https://www.rsc.org.uk/the-seven-acts-of-mercy/meet-the-characters [Accessed 2 April 2020]

[kylemclaughliin]

The Seven Acts Of Mercey

Naples, 1606. Inside an unfinished church, a painting is emerging from the darkness. The Seven Acts of Mercy is Caravaggio’s masterpiece - and his first painting since he killed a man and fled Rome. As the artist works, he is fuelled by anger, self-loathing and his driving need to create a work that speaks of compassion in a violent world.

Playing out across a gap of 400 years, Anders Lustgarten’s visceral new play confronts the dangerous necessity of compassion, in a world where it is in short supply. 1

[chloelma-blog]

The Seven Acts of Mercy, by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Painted in 1607, in Pio Monte Della Misericordia where it still hangs today. 

[walkupnycinysl]

The Seven Acts of Mercy - Caravaggio (1606)

[one-divides-into-two]

Caravaggio, The Seven Acts of Mercy (c. 1607)

[worldsandemanations]

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio The Seven Acts of Mercy