Crisis of the Early Modern Period, Caravaggism, and the Rise of Gallery Painting

Abstract

In this essay, the emergence of Caravaggist naturalism has been analyzed at the intersection of two historical configurations. The first was a macro-process, an epochal crisis that the Reformation brought with it. The Reformation turn caused a comprehensive crisis of legitimacy that manifested itself in all spheres of life in Western culture: from religion to politics and to the status of images. The most important element of this early modern paradigm was the gradual formation of a new episteme (or system of knowledge organization) that can be defined as postclassical or modern. The classical episteme implied a fixed, stable, and static relationship between images, i.e. phenomena and words, i.e. discourse. The modern episteme was the moment of disintegration of this static worldview, when the organic connection between things and words, the visible and the sayable, came into danger and even a complete discrepancy. The second process took place on the micro-level and was related to the social structuring of Rome at the end of the 16th century, when there was an obvious gap between the “official” policy of the Church and the taste of high aristocratic circles; from this structuring arose the difference between the “official” art of the Counter-Reformation (which nurtured the aesthetics of the altarpiece) and the “unofficial” art, intended for the art market and consumption in a semi-private or completely profane social setting. The once unquestionable space of religion was thus split into the “micro-spaces” of politics and art, with their own special systems of legitimization.