At the beginning of April two years ago, an Ecce Homo that appeared in one of Madrid’s best-known auction houses with the unlikely attribution to a painter of Ribera’s circle, and a starting value of €1500, suddenly went viral.1 Indeed, it was almost unanimously attributed to Caravaggio, an absolutely unprecedented fact in the critical history of the painter, on whom scholars have rarely agreed, at least in the last forty years.2 The Ecce Homo is destined to leave a deep mark in the panorama of Caravaggio scholarship not only for the unexpected possibility of acquiring a new element to be inserted into the artist’s career, of the history woven around the painting and of the range of the questions that it raises on the painter’s creative process, of which I will try to give an account shortly, but also for reflection it provokes on the exercise of connoisseurship in general, and in the field of Caravaggio studies in particular. There are in fact at least three aspects that the appearance of the canvas has unrelentingly brought to the fore: the rapidity with which the critical debate took place, the singular nature of its venues, and the intertwining of critical positions, the market, preservation and the enhancement of knowledge.

The Media Launch

The first report that something out of the ordinary was taking place in Spain appeared on Dagospia.com, the online Italian gossip site that followed the business of two society dealers: what were they doing in Madrid at a time when the planet was at a standstill in the grips of the latest lockdown? Apparently, there was a Caravaggio masterpiece to be had at a bargain price. Gossip definitely stole the show away from the discovery of the painting, its significance and even its correct attribution.⁴ From then on, within hours, an avalanche of more or less reliable information filled the pages of newspapers in Europe and the United States. On those same pages, hypotheses chased one another as to its market value, the attempts to acquire it, but also as to the provenance of the canvas, the first elements of which indeed surfaced intermittently in the columns of El País.⁵ There were those who thought it a scandal, and I do not deny that the media whirlwind was overwhelming. However, while speed is certainly a product of the new millennium, communication and critical debate in the pages of newspapers is not, at least not as far as Caravaggio is concerned.

The famed exhibition that can be considered the very beginning of modern studies on the artist, held in 1951 at the Palazzo Reale in Milan and curated by Roberto Longhi, filled the pages of the newspapers⁶ for the three months it remained on the billboard. From then on, the appearance of paintings by Caravaggio in newspapers would not be infrequent. I recall as a single example, since it is pertinent to the subject of the painting being presented here, the discovery of the Ecce Homo in Palazzo Bianco in Genoa, attributed to Caravaggio in the newspapers.⁷ But it is not only paintings, also the documents relating to the biography of the master that would make their first appearance in the press: his deed of baptism in Milan,⁸ and the account referring to the moneys collected in Rome from Ottavio Costa,⁹ for example. Caravaggio, in short, is among the very few “Old Masters” to have ever earnt a place on the front pages of newspapers, and in all likelihood always will be. Over and above the accuracy or otherwise of the trouvailles (which does not, however, depend directly on where these were announced), this extraordinary and growing interest does not seem, therefore, to signal so much the decadence of the times, but rather the extraordinary popularity of the artist from the day of his appearance on the modern and contemporary scene, an aspect that is not a incidental for critical reflection either. The appearance of autograph works in publications neither scholarly nor referenced scientifically, however, also opens up the no-less pressing question on the trustworthiness of attributions of paintings to the master. The role of the scholarly community is and will continue to be crucial in this regard. If there is one thing, however, that this Ecce Homo has brought to the fore, it is that despite the fact that connoisseurship does not work through a majority vote, the stylistic attribution of a painting will retain a character of objectivity: when, as in this case it is correct, then be comes easily shared.¹⁰

The Known and Unknown History of Caravaggio’s Ecce Homo

Before delving into the iconographic and stylistic analysis of the Madrid Ecce Homo, it is necessary to first gather together the historical data relating to the painting, essential if we are to situate it in the artist’s career. Reference to an Ecce Homo painted by Caravaggio first appears in a text by Giovan Battista Cardi, nephew of the Florentine painter Ludovico Cardi, known as Cigoli, published in 1628: “Volendo Monsignor Massimi un Ecce Homo che gli soddisfacesse, ne commesse uno al Passignano, uno al Caravaggio et uno al Cigoli, senza che l’uno sapesse dell’altro; i quali tutti tirati a fine e messi al paragone, il suo piacque più degli altri, e perciò tenutolo appresso di sé Monsignore mentre stette a Roma, fu di poi portato a Firenze e venduto al Severi.”¹¹ Clearly the author of the text wished to glorify his uncle’s painting, and the quotation should certainly be understood in this light; it is therefore important to understand what holds water and what does not in this narrative, putting together the pieces at our disposal of a puzzle on which various scholars have focused.¹²

The commission seems in fact to be confirmed by two documents in the private archive of the Massimo family, which scholarship has generally put in relation with it. The earliest, signed by Caravaggio himself, is dated 25 June 1605, and is a bond;¹³ the second, dated 2 March 1607, is instead a receipt for an advance payment of 25 scudi, signed by Ludovico Cigoli.¹⁴ The patron for both commissions, however, was Signor Massimo Massimi, and not Monsignor Innocenzo Massimi, who, according to Cardi, was the origin of the competition.¹⁵ In fact, on 25 June 1605, Caravaggio signs an undertaking to paint “Un quadro di valore e grandezza come quello ch’io gli feci già dell’Incoronatione di Cristo” (a painting of the same size and value as the one I already painted for him of the Crowning of Christ), for the “Illustrious Signor Massimo Massimi”, having already been paid for the work he was to carry out by the following August; while two years later, Cigoli received 25 scudi from Massimo Massimi for a “Quadro grande compagnio di uno altro mano del Sig.r Michelagniolo Caravaggio” (Large painting companion of another by the hand of Sig.r Michelagniolo Caravaggio). The canvas painted by Cigoli has been identified with certainty with the monumental and beautiful Ecce Homo in the Galleria Palatina in Florence [fig. 1], while Caravaggio’s canvas has been thought to be the Ecce Homo in Palazzo Bianco in Genoa [fig. 24, p. 67].¹⁶ 

I have already argued elsewhere how the latter identification is by no means a foregone conclusion: even leaving aside the attribution of the painting in Genoa to Caravaggio, which is far from certain, it is by no means clear whether the work commissioned from Caravaggio in 1605 was ever painted.¹⁷ According to Cigoli’s receipt, the documented commission could not have been part of a competition since the two works were not ordered concurrently, but at different moments in time. Another certainty is that the painting requested from Cigoli and the one by Caravaggio must have been pendants, this is in fact the most common seventeenth-century meaning of “quadro compagnio” (companion painting); the work in question is also unequivocally large: the payment specifies a “quadro grande” (large painting). Now, neither the Ecce Homo in Genoa nor the one in Madrid are of comparable dimensions to Cigoli’s painting now in Palazzo Pitti, but are considerably smaller.¹⁸ Caravaggio, on the other hand, most certainly painted a Crowning with Thorns generally identified with the painting which now hangs in the Galleria di Palazzo degli Alberti in Prato [fig. 2], the dimensions of which coincide perfectly with those of Cigoli’s Ecce Homo.

It is therefore more likely that the commissions evoked in the two documents should be read in sequence: as the Lombard master had not completed the commission with which he had been entrusted, Massimo Massimi, having lost all hope of seeing the painter return to Rome, decided to commission Cigoli to execute the Ecce Homo that he had first asked Caravaggio to paint. The preparatory drawing for the Pitti canvas [fig. 3] also seems to confirm this reading, as three compositions, almost visual notes, are sketched-in along the lower margin. Two of them refer to ideas for the Ecce Homo, while the first to the viewer’s left is a Crowning with Thorns, and seems to be comparable to Caravaggio’s in the invention of the henchman in the foreground with his back turned to the viewer.¹⁹ It is therefore probable that Cigoli painted his Ecce Homo as a pendant for Caravaggio’s Crowning, while it is by no means certain that the latter artist had produced the promised painting even though he had already collected his fee, at least not before 1607, and therefore certainly not in Rome.²⁰

In any case, in Massimo Massimi’s bedroom, the following remained: “Un quadro grande della Coronatione di spine di N[ostro] S[ignore] con cornice messe a oro, con coperta di taffetà rosso . . . un quadro grande dentro vi è un Ecce Homo con cornice messe a oro e un taffettano rosso per coprire detto Quadro.”²¹ The gentleman thus possessed two pendant works: a Crowning with Thorns and a large Ecce Homo. However, whether the author of the Ecce Homo was Cigoli, or whether it was Caravaggio, by 1644, the date of the nobleman’s post-mortem inventory, the painting would already have been far from Rome. Against the presence of Caravaggio’s canvas chez the Massimi is the testimony of Bellori, the only Roman source to mention the work. He refers to an Ecce Homo that Caravaggio had “colorito per li signori Massimi” (painted for the Massimi family), without specifying whether this was for Monsignor Innocenzo or for Massimo, nor does he mention a possible competition, adding that the canvas had been taken to Spain. Therefore, by 1645, when the scholar wrote his biography of Caravaggio, the painting was no longer visible in Rome.²²

Moreover, at the time Cigoli’s painting had long since been moved to Florence, according to Cardi’s account of how the painting had been moved from Rome to Florence and thereafter ended up in the hands of the musician Giovan Battista Severi.²³ This is endorsed by correspondence regarding an unsuccessful journey that the work made to Spain more than twenty years later, when the Grand Duke of Tuscany Ferdinand II proposed it as a possible diplomatic gift to the King of Spain, and the Florentine ambassador to Madrid, Lodovico Incontri, sent the work back to Florence, judging it unsuitable for Philip IV’s taste. In the meantime, however, Incontri recounted that he was very familiar with the work, since on his advice, Don Lorenzo de Medici had bought it some twenty years earlier and then donated it to the court musician Giovan Battista Severi, who in turn had presented it as a gift to the Grand Duke.²⁴ Knowledge of the work must have come directly via Monsignor Innocenzo Massimi, who held the position of Apostolic Nuncio in Florence between 1620 and 1621, and from there had moved to Madrid to the Spanish court in 1622, where he remained until May 1624, to then return to Rome. Having been appointed bishop of Catania, Innocenzo Massimi moved to Sicily in 1626 and died there seven years later, maintaining all the while close contact with the Spanish court.²⁵ How then to explain the presence of the two paintings in the Massimi residence in 1644? The most probable solution is that in order not to deprive himself of the Ecce Homo, Massimo Massimi had procured a copy, whoever its author might have been, unless one were to hypothesize that Caravaggio had honoured his commitment to the gentleman at a later date, but in that case the painting would have had to be of a similar format to the Crowning, which means that it cannot be the Madrid painting.

But conjectures relating to the Massimi Ecce Homo do not end here. On the basis of the identification of the painting in Palazzo Bianco with the painting that Caravaggio may have painted in 1605, and the presence of copies of the work in Sicily,²⁶ it has been suggested that the painting should be identified with an Ecce Homo attributed to Caravaggio, recorded in 1631 with an exceptionally high valuation of 800 ducats, in the collection of Juan de Lezcano, secretary to Pedro Fernández de Castro, Spanish ambassador to Rome until 1616, and later viceroy to the court of Palermo, brother of Francisco de Castro, viceroy of Naples “Un eccehomo con Pilato que lo muestra al pueblo y un sayon que le viste de detras la veste porpurea. Quadro grande original del Caravagio y esta pintura es estimada en mas de 800 ducados.”²⁷

I have shown elsewhere how in Lezcano’s inventory the large paintings were around 125 centimetres in height since “Quadros muy grandi” (Very large paintings), that is altarpieces,²⁸ were also included in the inventory. This time, the dimensions of the painting fully correspond to those of the Ecce Homo in Madrid and another Ecce Homo attributed to Caravaggio, recorded in January 1657 in the collection of García Avellaneda y Haro Delgadillo (1588–1670) second Count of Castrillo, Viceroy in Naples from 1653 to 1659, at the time he returned to his homeland bringing with him a rich collection of paintings.²⁹ In the inventory drawn up at the time of the departure of his wife Maria de Avellaneda for Madrid, two works by Caravaggio appear amongst the many paintings acquired during their Italian sojourn. One can be identified with no uncertainty with the Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist in the Palacio Real in Madrid [fig. 4], having been presented as a gift by the Count to King Philip IV, as is documented by the work registered in the inventory of the Alcázar in 1666.³⁰ The other is an Ecce Homo which is described as follows: “Mas otro quadro de un Heccehomo de zinco palmos con marco de evano con un soldado y Pilatos que le enseña al Pueblo es original de m° Miçael Angel Caravacho.”³¹ In addition to the description, it should be noted that the dimensions of the painting leaving for Spain are absolutely compatible with those of the Ecce Homo in Madrid, taking into account that the Neapolitan palm, the unit of measurement used in the Viceroy’s inventory, corresponds to approximately 26.33 centimetres and therefore the height of the painting including the frame (which is explicitly referred to in the inventory) must have been approximately 131 centimetres compared to the 111 of the Madrid painting.³²

In order to understand whether there may have been a transfer from the collection of Juan de Lezcano’s to that of the Viceroy or, perhaps a purchase of the work on the Neapolitan art market, the Spanish gentleman’s accounts for the period in which the painting was available for purchase (1653–1658) were carefully examined, but no trace of the painting was found. The search was also extended to Juan de Lezcano’s numerous bank transactions in Naples, unfortunately recorded without specific indications and therefore useless.³³ The Viceroy was mainly engaged in purchases of fabrics and clothes, carriages, sculptures, but paintings are scarce. During the terrible pestilence that struck Naples in 1656, he had arranged for accommodation in a house overlooking the sea at Santa Lucia, to which he moved with his family.³⁴ Among the few items of interest for our research is the recurring purchase of works representing Ecce Homos among the Viceroy’s favourite subject-matters, but never in association with a painting, as far as I was able to establish. One thing, however, is clear, the Count of Castrillo procured art objects in Italy not only for himself but also to supply Philip IV in Madrid, so the transfer of paintings from the gentleman’s collection to the royal collection may also have taken place through moneys received by Avellaneda from the King of Spain himself, and not only as gifts from the subject to his liege.

It is therefore possible to trace with a high degree of probability the transfer of the painting from Castrillo to its current owners through the royal collection. Indeed, we are certain that the canvas came to the Pérez de Castro family by inheritance from an illustrious ancestor, the Spanish diplomat Evaristo Pérez de Castro y Colomera (Valladolid, 1769 – Madrid, 1849).³⁵ “Por su notorio amor a las bellas artes y su dedicacíon a ellas” he was appointed honorary academician of the Accademia di San Fernando in 1800, when only a little over thirty.³⁶ At a later date, the diplomat was involved in an episode that decided the fate of Caravaggio’s Ecce Homo. In 1821, Evaristo selected four paintings from the freshly printed catalogue of works belonging to the Accademia against which he might exchange the Saint John the Baptist attributed to Alonso Cano that he owned [fig. 5].³⁷

The academicians took the diplomat’s offer very seriously [fig. 6] and decided to use the unknown provenance of a work as a criterion for the selection of the painting to be exchanged, so that no one would be able to complain in the future. As a result of the requisitions following the conflict between the Spanish and the French, a large number of paintings whose ownership was difficult to follow or trace, were stored at the Academy at the beginning of the nineteenth-century. Although at first the Ecce Homo appeared to have no certain provenance, and was therefore chosen,³⁸ from the investigation conducted by the secretary Juan Pasqual Colomer into all the Ecce Homo held in the Academy³⁹ and from a later entry in the handwritten inventory of the picture gallery [fig. 7] we learn that the painting originated in the bequest of Manuel Godoy, Charles IV’s famous Secretary of State and passionate collector, and had therefore been in the Real Accademia di San Fernando since 1816.⁴⁰ Previously, the canvas had been in the keeping of the Palacio de Buenavista, where it most probably arrived together with the sovereign’s possessions from the Real Casa de Campo, a reservoir of royal paintings that Godoy was allowed to draw on by Charles IV himself.⁴¹ An Ecce Homo attributed to Caravaggio is indeed registered as present in the Real Casa: “Vara y medio de alta y cinco cuartas escasa de ancho. Un Ecceomo con dos figuras más, en dos mil reales. Estilo de Carabajio” the dimensions of which (125 centimetres high) correspond Giovan Battista Caracciolo known as Battistello, Immaculate Conception with Saint Dominic and Saint Francis of Paola, detail, Naples, church of Santa Maria della Stella with only a slight difference to those of the Madrid Ecce Homo.⁴² The work thus seems to have belonged to the royal collections: its presence can also be traced between 1701 and 1702 in the private apartments of Charles II,⁴³ and most probably in Philip IV’s inventory of 1664, in which the painting appears with an attribution to Gherardo delle Notti.⁴4 Like the Salome in the Palacio Real, therefore, the Ecce Homo most probably reached the collection of the King of Spain through the Viceroy, Count of Castrillo.

That the painting passed through Naples also seems to be confirmed by its influence on the local artistic milieu. For instance, we find similarities between the Saint Dominic painted by Battistello Caracciolo in the Immaculate Conception in Santa Maria della Stella [fig. 8] and the figure of Pilate [fig. 9], characterised by the same gestural expressiveness and position within the composition, which therefore can be linked not only  to Caravaggio’s Madonna of the Rosary now in Vienna, but also probably to this Ecce Homo.⁴⁵ The early date of Battistello’s masterpiece, certainly completed by 1608, could constitute a possible ante quem for the Ecce Homo, the as yet undulled palette and slightly rarefied handling of the paint in the work suggesting a date in the first period of Caravaggio’s Neapolitan sojourn.

The idea, therefore, of the half-length or three-quarter-length composition with Christ in a central position surrounded by Pilate in oriental dress and with mocking soldiers, was in circulation in northern Italy. It is possible however to further restrict the figurative horizon that Caravaggio drew on to Lombard and Milanese works, with which he must inevitably have been familiar. The Ecce Homo is in fact a subject that was very dear to Leonardo’s circle, and Andrea Solario, not by chance active between Venice and Milan, was a specialist in it. In the Serenissima, in fact, in addition to possible incursions by Mantegna, were also undoubtedly present the Heads of Christ painted by Antonello, veritable source of inspiration for Solario’s works. Indeed, it is in the wake of Antonello’s works that David Alan Brown placed what appears to be the earliest example of Solario’s Ecce Homo depictions, now in the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan [fig. 10].⁵⁰ But it is the work in Oxford, undoubtedly painted in Milan, that is of the greatest interest here, as Jesus is depicted between Pilate who points at him and in the foreground, close-up, a soldier—of extraordinarily sculptural quality—who taunts him [fig. 12]. Moreover, Christ’s body is marked by drops of blood in a decidedly more dramatic manner than in the Poldi Pezzoli panel, while the palette appears more varied. There is no doubt that Leonardo’s example, and in particular the dramatic relationship between Judas and Jesus established by Leonardo in the Last Supper, also changed the iconographic substance of the work, in this case becoming much more theatrical, with the extraordinary invention of the henchman entering the space from the right. Brown himself had already established a connection with the painting in Palazzo Bianco in Genoa (which he considers to be by Caravaggio), identifying in the Oxford panel the link between Mantegna and Caravaggio, despite not- ing inconsistencies in the Genoese painting which, in the light of the new painting presented here, are now more comprehensible.⁵¹ Without a doubt derived from Solario’s painting, is the later Ecce Homo by Bernardino Luini, now in Cologne, datable to the end of the third decade of the sixteenth-century [fig. 11].⁵² The influence of Solario on Luini’s Christ is evident, but the artist who most closely followed Solario’s example seems to me to be Giampietrino. The Milanese painter, a close follower of Leonardo, on several occasions represented the subject of Christ’s Passion: seated on a bench with green drapery,⁵³ with the figure of Mary⁵⁴ beside him, and finally— and this is the painting that is most relevant for us—with a soldier behind him almost swallowed up by the shadows [fig. 13].⁵⁵ This latter work, despite the extreme difficulty of chronologically ordering the master’s paintings, certainly belongs to the artist’s maturity, in the 1530s. Although mindful of Solario’s example, it presents Jesus with his head turned to the right with the reed in his hand, in a manner strikingly similar to that of the Madrid Ecce Homo [fig. 15].

That the affinity between the two works is well-founded is proven by another painting presented here as a trait d’union between Giampietrino and Caravaggio. It is a panel painting of moderate size, but one that renders an image of extraordinary power [fig. 14]. Jesus is represented in the centre of the composition in a manner clearly similar to that of Giampietrino’s painting, of which it is a later transcription if not a true copy as on the right the beautifully painted head of a worshipper in profile stands out in front of the figure of the Ecce Homo, probably a portrait, gazing fixedly in contemplation of the Mystery of the Passion with his mouth wide open in an expression of devout wonder. Along the lower margin of the panel runs a thin white band bearing the inscription “REX MEUS ET DEUS MEUS.”⁵⁶ The text appears in many Psalms (Ps. 83 for instance) and refers to the missal and the daily liturgy of the Hours. It is, therefore, a reference to a prayer probably uttered by the worshipper in front of the painting: a painting within a painting that results in an extraordinarily powerful conception and also clearly indicates the success of the image of the Ecce Homo by Giampietrino in the Lombard context.

The painting, which had passed through the art-market over a long period, entered the collections of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes a year ago as the work of a sixteenth-century Milanese artist. Previously, it had been cautiously compared to the early production of Giovan Paolo Lomazzo around the sixth decade of the sixteenth-century, and a generalised suggestion had been put forward of its possible derivation from a model by Giampietrino.⁵⁷

Were we talking about Lomazzo or his circle, we could be sure that Caravaggio was familiar with his production,⁵⁸ but I wonder whether an artist even closer to the very young Caravaggio might not also have been present at the crossroads between Milan and Venice at this time— namely Simone Peterzano. I must confess that my first impression of this extraordinary small panel was that of its close affinity with the Venetian master’s manner, which can be seen above all in the comparison between the portrait of the worshipper and the Self-portrait of the master recently donated by Maurizio Calvesi to the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo. A thin thread links this work, the Self-portrait in the Guise of Bacchus by Giovan Paolo Lomazzo in the Pinacoteca di Brera—which also had such a strong impact on the young Caravaggio—and the panel now in Nantes, which can also be seen in close-range of the compositional cut adopted, which is emphasized by the inscription written in dark capital letters on a light-coloured strip running along the lower margin, no different to a caption, a fashion that was widespread in the 1570s and 1580s in Milan.

But returning to Caravaggio’s Ecce Homo [fig. 15], we are surprised to observe that the Sorrowful Christ depicted is the seventeenth-century twin of the one contemplated by the worshipper in the Milanese panel, who in turn stood out before Giampietrino’s painting. Caravaggio, however, did not only rework the figure of Jesus from the Milanese painting, but also the idea of the superimposition of planes, of the figure who bursts into the scene from outside the plane of the painting in order to enter the spectator’s space. This is an idea which we have seen rooted in Milanese painting from Solario to the small panel in Nantes, and it is admirably taken up and at the same time brought up to date by Caravaggio. In the Madrid painting, Pilate leans out from the balcony, with extraordinary power; he is clothed in a dark garment with a strangely styled headdress, which has nothing to do with the figure often wearing sumptuous oriental clothing— and a turban, such as we see for example in the contemporary painting by Cigoli.

By contrast, Caravaggio’s Roman governor is dressed in the modern manner, wearing a dark garment common both to the Jewish tradition and to politicians between the 16th and 17th centuries, and is so characterised as to appear to all intents and purposes a portrait.⁵⁹ The beautifully executed figure of the young henchman emerging from the shadows of the palace, which we can intuit almost rather than see, in a kind of fade-out, was already present to some extent in Giampietrino’s painting formerly on the art-market in Zurich. And it is precisely in this admirable invention that we can measure what Caravaggio’s thought owes to his Lombard past, but also his extraordinary innovative power. The young henchman is by no means a marginal, secondary character or confined to a negative role; he has completely lost the feral traits of the Northern tradition, to take on the role of a bystander who witnesses, transfixed, the Passion of the Just. With the scarlet cloak, he simultaneously veils and unveils Jesus’ body, his mouth falling open in an expression more of astonishment and resignation than one of mockery. In that half-open mouth, we now know, are condensed more than one hun- dred years of Milanese painting tradition straddling Solario and Peterzano, by way of Leonardo.

There is, however, one element that deviates from the Lombard repertoire identified up to this point, and that is the representation of the severed branch of the crown of thorns by means of a lighter brushstroke, so bright and luminous that it has led some to suggest a flame deliberately inserted by Caravaggio on Christ’s forehead with a strong symbolic value, perhaps alluding to the Holy Spirit [fig. 16]. ⁶⁰ The scholars who have attempted to decipher this point of light, have done so more or less openly with the caution imposed by not having viewed the work directly, and moreover when it was also in need of cleaning.⁶¹ Now, the restoration is completed, it has become more evident how that brushstroke of light is congruous with the entire representation of the crown of thorns and constitutes its terminal part, at the juncture where, precisely, the branch has been snapped. Giacomo Berra, to whom we owe the most in-depth study on the subject, has clearly shown how the idea of the representation of the broken branch in the crown of thorns does not have an exclusively northern ancestry (from Dürer’s Christ in Passion onwards, to be clear), but is in fact put into circulation in Italian painting by Correggio’s Ecce Homo [fig. 17] referred to above, a popular model also thanks to the copies made, as well as engravings, with which Caravaggio could, therefore, have been familiar.⁶²

Berra concludes by placing Caravaggio’s choice in the wake of the painter’s vocation for realism, albeit filtered through sixteenth-century artistic tradition.⁶³ Personally, I am certain that Caravaggio could have been familiar with the work of Correggio, whose inventions circulated in Milan when the young Caravaggio was studying there; representing the avant-garde, they would have been fuel for an adolescent as alert and rebellious as Simone Peterzano’s apprentice. However, it would be reductive to confine that detail to an extreme desire for realism: Caravaggio—as, above all Roberto Longhi, Mina Gregori and Mia Cinotti have taught us–was first and foremost a painter. That possibility of a glimmer of light in the darkness of the whirlpool of thorns must have exercised an irresistible fascination on his artistic sensibility, as well as constituting the fissure through which the light of a possible good shimmers in the darkness of the Passion, that of Christ and that of Caravaggio himself: more than a tragedy, an infinite, endless drama. The figure of Jesus crowned with thorns, bathed in light, breaks away from the naturalistic representation of the two characters who accompany him to the balcony, and this also in the painterly handling, since, as we have seen, the master resorts to an image dear to Lombard devotion and not to painting from the model, the first and perhaps only time in his repertoire. And therein also lies the exceptional nature of this painting. It admirably illustrates an, as yet unseen, aspect of Caravaggio’s works: in the depiction of this precise moment of the Passion, Caravaggio in fact unites narrative with contemplation, showing us how it too has to do with the human condition, the true one.