Luke, Lena, and the chiaroscuro of the sacred

Abstract

1. For the most complete overviews of the older literature on the painting, the catalogue entries by Mia Cinotti and Maurizio Marini remain fundamental: M. Cinotti, Michelangelo Merisi detto il Caravaggio: Tutte le opere (Bergamo, 1983), 524–25; M. Marini, Caravaggio “pictor praestantissimus”: L’iter artistico completo di uno dei massimi rivoluzionari dell’arte di tutti i tempi, 4th ed. (Rome, 2005), 487–90. The documentation regarding the pilgrimage of the confraternity members to Loreto was published by M. Pupillo, “La Madonna di Loreto di Caravaggio: Gli scenari di una committenza,” in Caravaggio nel IV centenario della Cappella Contarelli, ed. C. Volpi (Città di Castello, 2002), 105–21. Alessandro Zuccari noted Pupillo’s findings in an important earlier essay, “Caravaggio, sus comitentes y el culto lauretano,” in Caravaggio, ed. C. Strinati and R. Vodret, exh. cat. (Madrid, 1999), 63–73, now republished in Italian as “Caravaggio, i suoi committenti e il culto lauretano,” in A. Zuccari, Caravaggio controluce: Ideali e capolavori (Milan, 2011), 187–203, with updated bibliography. A sustained consideration of the painting is offered by P. M. Jones, “The Place of Poverty in Seicento Rome: Bare Feet, Humility, and the Pilgrimage of Life in Caravaggio’s Madonna of Loreto (ca. 1605–06) in the Church of S. Agostino,” in Altarpieces and Their Viewers in the Churches of Rome from Caravaggio to Guido Reni (Aldershot, 2008), chap. 2. Cavalletti’s will and the documents relating to the concession of the chapel and the disposal of the earlier Caravaggio’s Madonna di Loreto was painted sometime between 1604 and 1606 for the altar of the Cavalletti Chapel in the church of Sant’Agostino in Rome, where, happily, it remains today (fig. 1). Its subject was determined by the devotional inclinations of Ermete Cavalletti, an aristocratic Roman citizen of Bolognese origin and a member of the Roman Archconfraternity of the Most Holy Trinity of Pilgrims and Convalescents. The confraternity’s primary charitable mission was ministering to the needs of the poor on pilgrimage in Rome, who arrived in great numbers particularly during jubilee years. In 1602, the confraternity members undertook their own pilgrimage to the Holy House of the Virgin, enshrined in the city of Loreto in the Italian Marches. Archival records confirm Cavalletti’s participation in the preparatory meetings for the trip, but since the final list of participants does not survive, it remains unclear if he ultimately made the journey, which took place between April 12 and May 3. It is known that by July 19 of the same year, the forty-six-year-old Cavalletti was gravely ill and prepared his will, dying two days later. In his testament Cavalletti expressed his desire to be buried in Sant’Agostino in a family chapel he wished to establish. His wife and two executors saw that his wishes were carried out, acquiring the first chapel in the left aisle in September 1603. Cavalletti’s will specified that the chapel should be dedicated to Our Lady of Loreto and the altar equipped with a painting of this subject. The chapel’s preexisting altarpiece of the Pietà was given to Cardinal Scipione Borghese in early March 1606, indicating that Caravaggio’s painting was in place by that time. Scholars have sought to determine if the choice of Caravaggio to carry