The Beheading of St.John the Baptist

The Ancient Roman author Pliny the Elder [Cayo Plinio Segundo] tells the story of Apelles of Cos, antiquity's greatest painter, who went to visit an artist friend who was not home. Apelles had missed him. In order to let his friend know he had visited, Apelles went to an aisle and wrote a perfect line. Returning home, the friend sighed "Ah, my friend Apelles had been here, for no one can create a line so perfect."

All Apelles needed was the perfection of a singular line as his mark. 

This concept was sustained until the Baroque, the idea that the work of a true genius is manifested in the touch of their hands. Caravaggio seemed a disciple of this idea, never signing a work of his till the Beheading of St.John.

The story goes to the book of Mark 6:14-29, before Christ's ministry began. 

The beheading of John the Baptist is a scene not frequently depicted in art, and when it was, the action of beheading is clean. Puritan in the way it is presented without carnage; almost pure in its straightforwardness. The actual violence was hidden away, minimized. 

We are hidden from the violence, the horror, but Caravaggio forces us to see. It is very much a story of real life... Few protagonists, the executioner (looking very real, an identifiable person), John, and onlookers-- people at the court of the King, one holding a tray. The executioner with his sword on the ground giving us an illusion of guilt... Instead, the executioner has a small knife by his back that he'll use to carve off John's head. John is bleeding, and in the same colour of the blood, is Caravaggio's signature. Almost as if Caravaggio was a bystander in this piece, seeing it in real life, dipping his finger into the blood and writing his name. 

John is laid bare, vulnerable, pale. 

It is more horrifying than Giovanni di Paolo's rendition. Here the sword on the ground suggests the executioner moments before this had stabbed John with the longsword, and as the Saint fell, pulled out a scabbard from his back and pulling out the knife to cut off the head. Though the execution happened, the beheading had begun. The executioner grabbed John by the hair, held steady as he sawed off from the neck... he is not finished with him yet. This act of inhuman brutality is unfolding in front of our eyes yet we are powerless to do anything, we are about to see something even more horrifying. The girl-servant seem removed from this violence, it is simply her job, detached from the life. Only the old woman overcome by grief sees it as the human tragedy as it is.

Beheading-- beheading, the danger of the reality Caravaggio had lived with all his final years were spelled out here in its true horror. Could there be another way to read his signature in the St.'s blood? This is Him, this is his future, this is his fate unless Caravaggio changes. This spectacle of people consuming death and violence as if it were an ordinary thing without any human makes it much more horrible to watch.

Caraavaggio gives us details-- the rope that the saint has been tied with, behind his back like a dog. His cable here, the only clothing that he had covered by the red cloth..

The restored signature looks very ghostly. It looks that is is part of the painting, it is a finer painting-- crude, written like anyone would write from a puddle of blood with our fingers

Beheading-- beheading, the danger of the reality Caravaggio had lived with all his final years were spelled out here in its true horror. Could there be another way to read his signature in the St.'s blood? This is Him, this is his future, this is his fate unless Caravaggio changes. This spectacle of people consuming death and violence as if it were an ordinary thing without any human makes it much more horrible to watch.

The restored signature looks very ghostly. It looks that is is part of the painting, it is a finer painting-- crude, written like anyone would write from a puddle of blood with our fingers

Passion-plays. Figures not positioned in this timeless pose Caravaggio is known for. Caravaggio creates a theatre of empty space, allowing so much empty space to create the feeling of a theatre in which we see scenes that are more real because they are being acted out in front of us. Either actors who are playing a role, in doing that which creates a sense of Reality. This is connected to our real world, being enacted for us. THe painting as THeatre. The power of emptiness; the power of Silence.

Gerusalemme Liberata
("Jerusalem Delivered")
Twelfth Book

"Like his dead lady, dead seemed Tancred good,

In paleness, stillness, wounds and streams of blood."

XXXVI