Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio,

a troublemaker who gloried in sadistic

violence, especially in his paintings,

was the Prince of Darkness of Baroque,

the pioneer of the style dubbed tenebrism.

Together with his realistic portrayals

of the subjects who populate his canvases,

“the terrible naturalism that attracted

and ravished human sight”, as Scannelli put it,

they are the distinctive features of his work.

His painting, The Crucifixion of St. Peter,

commissioned by Monsignor Tiberio Cerasi,

is an archetype of Caravaggio’s tenebrism

and how he exults in depicting brutality.

The distribution of the four individuals

conjures the shape of St. Andrew’s cross.

A beam of light traverses the canvas

from the top left of the frame

to the bottom righthand corner

illuminating St. Peter’s torso, left arm,

and hand nailed to the crosspiece,

every muscle and sinew of the martyr

tensed. A blend of pain and terror cross

the face of the Saint. High to the left,

the only executioner to escape anonymity

embraces Peter’s shins and the upright

of the cross to help a second executioner

whose woollen jacket is rucked up

by the rope he’s using to haul the cross

upside down as it is placed in the hole,

dug by the third executioner’s shovel.

Petra, the rock in the foreground,

evokes Peter’s name, the rock

upon which the Christian Church

is unified, emphasised further

by the shadowy rocky landscape

in the background darkness.

Tony Dawson

(Image is of the author; would be strange if another fellow, now wouldn’t it?)