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Caravaggio and Violence27-1800 Hi H ^^m r-

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lohn Varriano

Caravaggios art, like his life, was filled with violence. More than a third of the paintings attributed to him depict scenes of violence or individuals contemplating death. It was with a grisly martyrdom that he launched his career as a public painter jfi the Contarelli chapel and the theme reached a climax in late pictures like the Borghese David with the Head of Goliath. The insertion of self-por- rraits in both the Martyrdom of St. Matthew and the David [7, 9] suggests his personal identification with such subjects. His own life, in turn, was no less marked by regular occurrences of social conflict and physical violence. When his biographer Giovanni Baglione called attention to his "quarrelsome and belligerent" nature, he spoke from first-hand experience1. The

libel suit that he brought against Caravaggio in 1603 ended without bloodshed, but throughout the artist s brief tempestuous life, his readiness to trade insults frequendy led to the drawing of knives and the shedding of blood2. The police records preserve ample evidence of his possession and carrying of illegal weapons, his willingness to use them against others, and his own occasional injury after an unlucky encounter3. When he stabbed Ranuccio Tomma- soni to death on May 28, 1606 after a disputed tennis match, he had reached the peak of both his artistic and personal selfexpression. While his earliest biographers, Carel van Mander, Giulio Mancini, and Giovanni Baglione, each comment on his aggressive and

fiery temperament, they do so independently of their discussion of the art he produced and make no mention of the moral climate of the times in which he worked \ G.P. Bellori, whose Vita was not published until 62 years after the artist s death, was the first critic to suggest a link between Caravaggio's paintings and personality \ Loosely applying the physiognomic theories of his day, Bellori began his conclusion of the biography with a discussion of the artists appearance: "Caravaggio s style," he wrote, "corresponded to his physiognomy and appearance; he bad a dark complexion and dark eyes, and his eyebrows and hair were black; this coloring was naturally followed in his paintings." But the paintings, like the painters swarthy appearance, were for Bellori only the outward manifestations of deeper disorders. "Driven by his own nature, he retreated [in his

mature work] to the dark style that is connected to his disturbed and contentious temperament*6. For centuries, critics continued to flail Caravaggio and his art, finding in his work, as Ruskin put it, "definite signs of evil desire ill repressed"While his insistent realism disaffected those who favored more conventional revelations of the sacred presence, his graceless personality and bad manners offended others who believed an artists life should be as unblemished as his pigments. Until the twentieth century, dark and light pictures carried moral as well as aesthetic values, and Caravaggios dark palette was understood as a natural sign of his unseemly nature. With the advent of Freudian approaches to the subconscious, Caravaggio subsequently became an apt subject for those who wished to reunite the work of art with its

creator. Patrizi

pittore criminale

Mariano s Un

of 1921 was the first monograph to do so, and in the last quarter century psychobiographie s by Herwarth Rottgen, Laurie Schneider, Charles Lewis, and John and Mary Gedo have taken up the s. theme Viewing Caravaggios art through the lens of his own life, such studies have found the artist to be "autoscopic" and "reactive rather than creative" (Patrizi), "phallonarcissistic* selfdestructive, and sadomasochistic" (Rottgen), "haunted by

"castration anxiety" (Schneider), fascinated with figures who are killed "because they interfered in the sexual relationships of a powerful male authority' (Lewis), and even prone to getting into trouble during the month of October (Gedo) '. One problem with such psychoanalytic readings, as Gom- brich has pointed out, is that "the innumerable chains of causation which ultimately brought the work into being" become confused with its meaning Pictures become "overdetermined" while

external factors and pictorial conventions tend to be forgotten. That so many of the mores and morals of late Counter-Reformation Rome differ from our own make the contextual understanding of Caravaggios affinity for violence even more essential. However offensive Caravaggios personal behavior may have been, the occurrence of violent themes in his painting strictly adhered to the established pictorial norms of his day. With the exception of his mythical Medusa, all of his confrontational paintings depict religious subjects. While at different times in his career he was drawn to paint gypsies, card-players, pretty boys, prostitutes, and probably even a man having a tooth pulled, he never once portrayed a secular act of violence. Naturally, he was not always in a position to choose his own subject matter and among his most brutal pictures are commissioned works like the Martyr- dom of St. Matthew; the Crucifixion of St. Peter, and the Beheading of St. John the Baptistn. By the time Caravaggio arrived in Rome in the early 1590 s, religious devotions commemorating the lives and deaths of the early martyrs were at their peak. Catholic reformers, conscious that their church had lapsed into disciplinary decline, promoted through texts and images the exemplary sacrifices these stalwart early Christians had made for their faith.. In so doing, they were also able to remind sceptics of the ancient lineage of Roman Catholicism. The most widely used texts were Cesare Baronios Martyrologium Romanum, first published in 1582, and Antonio Gallonios Trattato degli istrumenti di martirio of 1591. Gallonios text was illustrated with engravings by Antonio Tempesta after Giovanni Guerra, and it was through the visual medium that the real atrocities of martyrdom were illuminated 12. Almost every theologian of the period who

waddressed the issue-agreed that works of art should portray t the subject in the most realistic o manner possible. Gilio da Fabriano, whose dialogue Degli errori delpittori appeared just one year after the closing of the Council of Trent, recommended that painters should depict Christ and the marryrs not with idealized poses and expressions, but "afflicted, bleeding, spat upon, with torn skin, wounded, pale, and unsightly" M. Antonio Possevi- no added that the painter must experience the horror himself if he was to move the spectator, while G. P. Lomazzo further exhorted the artist "to go and watch the gestures of condemned men when they are brought to the scaffold, to note the arching of the brow, those movements of the eye" . Scenes of martyrdom proliferated in Rome during the second half of the Cinquecento. A census of new churches indicates that one out of four had a martyrdom either on the high altar or on a side all, while some programs were entirely ) the theme l\ The fresco decoration^ church of S. Stefano Rotondo stand r the e popubr I cribed . tnt I

^r()Vvd of men wearing cloaks andand body was further subjected to drawing and quarteringS6. Most of the masks of cloth, time, however, the head or body of Hj^se were said to be the chief the wrongdoer was put on display to gentlefolk of Rome, a confraternity serve as that days reminder of the sworn to accompany criminals to triumph of justice Artists since the execution and corpses to the grave. Quattrocento relied upon criminal Two of these - or two |T1onks in executions for anatomical and similar garb helped the technological authenticity when condemned man into the cart and painting pictures of martyrdom preached to him, one of them Painters as diverse as Leonardo, letting him kiss continually a Pisanello, Uccello, Mantegna and Del picture of our Lord. This they jjd so Sarto are each presumed to have that those in the street might not incorporated in their work realistic see the mans face. At the gibbet, details observed in actual executions. which was a beam upon two posts, Lomazzo, as already noted, ^ey held this picture before his sanctioned the practice in his 1584 face till he was thrown Lff the Trattato ladder. He died as criminals commonly do, Lvithout movement or cry; a dark man of thirty or thereabouts, and after he was strangled they cut his when he encouraged artists to scrutinize the ex- body in four quarters. It is the custom amongst these pressions of those gathered at the scaffold 59. For (people to kill criminals without torture, and after death personal as well as aesthetic reasons, Caravaggio to subject the body to very barbarous usage49.would seem to have been uniquely predisposed to benefit from the opportunities afforded by such vi- For the execution to be successful it was essential olent spectacles. But his assimilation of these that the criminal repent in public by making some staged and ritualized events was, like most of his visible sign toward the tavoletta held in front of "realistic" conceptions, highly selective and sharply him. A drawing by Annibale Carracci gives a graph- accentuated. ic image of the ritual attendant to a double hanging Caravaggios depictions of historical violence differ that took place in Rome around 1599 [2]50. The from contemporary giustizie in two respects. One figure on the right is identifiable as a thief from the is the natural consequence of changes that oc- moneybag hanging from his waist, a key attribute curred during the intervening centuries in methods in the morality play of retributional justice. Al- of execution. Hanging, which was the most com- though in this instance the executions were staged mon form of contemporary execution, does not behind a wall probably at the end of the Ponte figure in Early Christian iconography while be- SantAngelo - a crowd of spectators still managed heading, which does, was no longer carried out to witness the event. However, most executions with a long sword. By 1600, a primitive form of took place in spacious piazza that were open to the guillotine known as the mannaia was used in- public . stead60. Wielding a heavy mallet, the executioner During the years that Caravaggio was in Rome be- needed only to strike or release a blade fixed in tween 1592-1606, there were 658 executions carplace over the prostrate prisoners neck to achieve a ried out in the city52. Most of these occurred dur- clean decapitation. Such a device is depicted on ing the early years of Clement VIIIs reign, when the right side of Annibale Carracci s drawing f An the number of capital punishments reflected a variExecution [2]. Although anomalous for public exe- ety of cultural changes that included a more law- cutions of his day, Caravaggios consistent use of

I

less underclass, the raising and more vigorous en- the sword as the instrument of beheadings was forcement of moral standards, and the increased both truer to the sacred narratives and more in persecution of heretics 4 The statistical high point keeping with the weaponry he carried himself came in 1592 when 117 people were put to death sometimes unlawfully, in the streets of Rome, for offenses ranging from abortion to weapons vio- Moreover, in real executions, regardless of the lations. This gave rise to the comment that "one method, the condemned was raised well above the sees more heads at the Ponte [Rome's headquarters ground either on a platform or a scaffold so as to for executions] than melons in the piazza" 34. The be more visible to the crowd assembled below. In Hcnmsjnduded a few members of the clergy and Annibale s Execution, both the gibbet and the nobility as well as unruly beggars and wooden platform on which the mannaia vagabonds . Giustizie, or "justices, is set give took several forms during ihis period. * p Hanging was the most common punsome idea of the relative height at ishment and was the method used for thieves, ordinary murderers, which such devices were placed and chronic offenders. Burning, Caravaggios conceptions, on the which was far rarer, was he other hand, follow his natural instinct penalty lor sodomy and for heresy, for bringing the viewer close to, and while decapitation was reserved tor level with the pictorial stage. w those of higher social standing and But if he overlooked the technology and staging of actual executions, lor women. Mutilation and f amputation sometimes preceded rhe Caravaggio was apparently trans i final vimtwiti dim in the worst fixed by the expressions of those he observed around the scaffold. His case** the lifeless interest in expression is

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la vita e le opere a . ______r*_ _ ____________________i. ! f I/ document!, Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Ce 1996, pp. 7179. See also S. Corradini, Caravaggio, ili per un processor Rome 1993. i ]tfru Van Mander described Caravaggio in his SchiUer-Boeck of L,04 as "always ready to argue or fight, so that he is impossible to get along with," while adding that "this is totally for- L to Art; for Mars and Minerva have never been good Ljends/' Mancinis Considerazioni sulla pittura of 1617-21 L[CS his "hot nature and high spirits" but likewise separates Le artists biography from the discussion of his works (Hib- UflA, pp. 343-344 and 34651.) Hibbard, cit., pp. 360-74, especially p. 373. L fhe literature on physiognomies is extensive but a succinct bibliography is given by R. Brilliant, Portraiture, Cambridge Li, p. 180, n. 39. Modem Painters, Boston 1873, III, p. 381.[,'n pittore criminate. II Caravaggio. Ricostruzione psicologica e L nuova critica d'arte, Recanati 1921. The immediate $ re- nse to this book was sop o P a n

controversial that two vears later published an anthology of the reviews and letters he l-ived. This was entided Ad armi cortesi, trapsicologi e polemica sul Caravaggio e

Tindirizzo antropologico nella [ii'arte,Riflessioni sul rap- / Li personality del Caravaggio e la sua opera, in II Cara- ]

Recanati 1923; H. Rortgen,

, Caravaggio and his Two Cardinals, University Park 1995, chap. 8, Patrons, Assertive and Not, explores the artist-patron relationship with respect to choice of subject matter. 12See J. von Henneberg, Cardinal Cesare Baronio, the Arts and the Early Christian Martyrs, in F. Mormando ed.. Saints and Sinners: Art and Culture in Caravaggio's Italy, Boston 1999; O. Bonfait, De Paleotti a G. B. Agucchi: thiorie et practique de la peinture dans les milieux eccUsiastique a Rome, in Roma 1630, II trionfo del pennello, Milan 1994, pp. 83 ss.; A. Herz, Imitators of Christ: the Martyr-Cycles of Late Sixteenth-Century Rome Seen in Context, Storia deirArte, 62, 1988, pp. 5270; and L. Monsscn, The Martyrdom Cycle in Santo Stefano Rotondo, Acta ad Archaeologiam et Artium Historiam Pertinentia, Rome 1982, especially III, pp. 70 ss. All of these studies are indebted to the pioneering work of E. MAle, L'art religieux de la fin du XVI sihle, du XVII et du XVIII sihle, 2nd edition, Paris 1951. 13G. A. Gilio da Fabriano, Due Dialogi, Camerino 1564; reprinted by P. Barocchi, Trattati d'arte del Cinquecento, fra manierismo e controrifbrma, II, Bari 1961, pp. 1-115, esp. 42; cited by A. Blunt, Artistic Theory in Italy 1450-1600, Oxford

toward rrience, and -tist and his

elebra ted

the Peo-

1940, p. 127. 14A. Possevino, Tractatio de poesia et pictura, Lyon 1595,1 chap. 26; cited in Blunt, cit., p. 136; G. P. Lomazzo, Trattato deliarte de la pittura, Milan 1584, reprinted Hildesheim 1968, p. 107; quoted by L. Puppi, Torment in Art, Pain, Violence and Martyrdom, New York 1991, p. 67, n. 253. 15M. J. Lewine, The Roman Church Interior 1527-1580, Ann Arbor 1963; cited by Monssen, cit., Ill, pp. 60-62, who emphasizes that the greatest number of martyrdom pictures in Rome were painted during the post-Tridentine period, 1563-1600. 16See Monssen, cit., for the Fullest discussion and illustration of the frescoes in S. Stefano Rotondo. Other major martyrdom cycles painted in Rome include those in SS. Nereo ed Achilleo and St. Thomas of Canterbury. Monsscn, cit.. Ill, Appendix V lists all the martyrdoms painted in Roman churches between 1550-1605. 17S. Ditchfield, Liturgy, Sanctity and History in Tridentine Italy, Cambridge and New York 1995, p. 86. 18Monssen, cit.. Ill, p. 51, n. 99. 19H. Rottgcn, Reprasentationstil und Historienbild in der Rbmischen malerei um 1600, in Beitrdge fur Gerhard Evers. Darmstadt 1968, pp. 71-82, emphasizes the ornamental and essentially theatrical nature of gesture in Roman painting before the time of Caravaggio. On the other hand, S. Fermor, Movement and Gender in Sixteenth-century Italian Painting, in The Body Imaged, The Human Form and Visual Culture since the Renaissance, Cambridge 1993, pp. 129-45, points to the aesthetic similarites between painting and dance in this period. 20Paleottis Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane is reprinted in Barocchi, cit., II, pp. 117-509. See also M. Bel- | tramme, La teoriche del Paleotti e il riformismo delTAccademia di San Luca nella politica artisttca di Clemente VIII, Storia dcl- Parte, LXIX, 1990, pp. 201-33; and P. Jones, Art Theory as Ideology: Gabrielle Paleottis Hierarchical Notion of Paintings Universality and Reception, in C. Farago, ed., Reframing the Renaissance, New Haven and London ll)95, pp. 127-39, M Discorso, chap. 32, in Barocchi, cit., p. 406. u Discorso, chap. 35, in Barocchi, cit., pp. 416-18. 13 F. Bologna, I incredulity del Caravaggio e Tespertenza delte "cose naturaliTurin 1992, p, 39, This is the view, for example, of L I

nomas, Caravaggio and the Roman Oratory of Saint Philip Nth, Studies in Iconog-

raphy, XII, 1988, pp. 61-89, who concludes his essay by saying "It is clear that Caravaggio did not follow the prescriptions of the reformers who discussed art such as Cardinal Pa- leotti". J. F. Chorpenning, Another Look at Caravaggio and Religion , Artibus et Historiae, VIH, 1987, n. 61, pp. 149-58, prefers to set the issue into the broader context of Counter- Reformation meditative techniques and liturgical piety which both "nourished and were nourished by Caravaggio's religious painting". For the religious content of Caravaggio's art, see also the seven essays that comprise the section / tetni religiosi, in Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, La vita e le opere attraverso i documenti, Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, S. Ma- cioce ed Rome 1995 [1996], as well as my own essay Cara- vaggio and Religion, in Morman do, cit., pp. 139-153. 25In 1593 Cardinal Girolamo Rusticucci issued an edict requiring the licensing of church commissions pending the advance approval of bozzetti furnished by the artist. Around the same time Clement VIII began the practice of personally conducting pastoral visits to Rome's churches in order to guarantee doctrinal correctness in the sacred arts. For reasons that in each case remain unknown, Caravaggio's first St. Matthew, Death of the Virgin, and Madonna of the Snake were rejected by their ecclesiastical patrons. The issue of censorship during the pontificate of Clement VIII has been taken up by M. Batilori et al., La regolata iconografia della Controriforma nella Roma del Cinquecento, Ricerche per la storia religiosa di Roma, II. 1978, pp. 11-50, especially 23 ss.; and by D. Beggiao, La visita pastorale di Clemente VIII (1592-600% aspetti di riforma post-tridentina a Roma, Rome 1978, who in Appendix IV reprints Cardinal Rusticucci s Editto per gli altari e le pitture nelle chiese. 26For the years that Caravaggio was in Rome between 1592 and 1606, see the avvisi in the Vatican Library, Cod. Urb. Lat. 1060-1074. 27Urb. Lat 1067, fol. 376v; Urb. Lat. 1073, fol. 312r/v; Urb. Lat. 1067, fol. 554r; the parricide of Francesco Cenci was by far the most renowned of these crimes, and accounts of the investigations run through Urb. Lat 1067. 28For references to Caravaggio's anti-social behavior, see note 3 above. For the term "lay liturgy of affront," see note 29 below. 29In recent years, two scholars in particular have focused on the honor codes prevailing in Rome in Caravaggio's day. See . V. Cohen, The Lay Liturgy of Affront in Sixteenth-Century Italy Journal of Social History, XXV, 1991-92, pp. 857-77; E. S. Cohen, Honor and Gender in the Streets of Early Modern Rome, Journal of

Nussdorfer, cit., p. 183. Cinotti, cit., pp. 243-44. 40Bassani, Bellini, cit., p. 236. 41Hibbard, cit., p. 373. 42F. Bellini, Tre documenti per Michelangelo da Carava Prospettiva, LXV, 1992, pp. 70-71. 43On duelling etiquette at this time, sec S. Anglo. How to fc/ \a Man at your Ease:18

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Fencing Books and the Duelling Chivalry in the Renaissance, ed. S. Anglo, banditismo ntllo pontificio nella seconda metd del cinquecento, Roma 1985, p 45R. Bassani, F. Bellini, La casa, le "robbelo studio del C* avaggio a Roma. Due documenti inediti del 1603 e del I fa singulorum bonorum di Michelangelo da Caravaggio "pittore",

Woodbriijge I Rochester 1990, pp. 1-12. 44 I. Polverini-Fosi, La societh violenta, il

Prospettiva, LXXI, 1993, pp. 68-76, and M. Marini, radini, Inventarium omnium et Artibus et Historic XIV, 1993, pp. 161-76. 46For Caravaggio's realistic depictions of musical instruments see F. Camiz, Music and Painting in Cardinal del Montr Household, Metropolitan Museum Journal, 26, 1991, 313-26; for his maiolica and carpets, J. Varriano, trvrmmj and the Decorative Arts in the Two Suppers at LXVIII, 1986, pp. 218-24; for his costumes, S. M. ft**' Costume in Caravaggio's Painting, Magazine of Art, 46, pp. 147-54; for his swords, D. Macrae, Observation lb-fa Sword in Caravaggio, BurlMag, CVI, 1964, pp. 41216; aad for his unidealized portrayals from life, L. Salerno, The An- Historical Implications of the Detroit "Magdalen*, BurLMag, CXVI, 1974, p. 589. 47The most frequently cited source for this subject is M. fofr- cault. Discipline and Punish, the Birth of the / translation by A. Sheridan, New York 1979. Bur see also J; JC Brackett, Criminal Justice and Crime in Late RenaissawW* rence 1537-1609, Cambridge and New York 1992; P. Spierenburg, The Spectacle of Suffering Executions and ! , lution of Repression: From a Preindustrial Metropolis ropean Experience, Cambridge and New York 1984; and cspt~ daily V. Paglia, Carceri e marginalita a Roma XVII, chap. 1 in "La Pi eta dei Carcerati" Confitemit*e eta a Roma nei secoli XVI-XVIII,

The Journal of Montaigne s Travels in Italy by Wayma^^Kl land and Germany in 1580 and I5SL translated bf; Waters,40

Rome 1980. 48Foucaulr, cit., p. 57.

London 1903, II, pp. 89-90. 50 Royal Library, Windsor Castle, in v. 1955. Less wcltbwpt is an unpublished drawing in an American private atifcuipe that depicts seven men hanging from a \taffoM wttht&f names of their crimes inscribed underneath. Wroii| uted by a later hand to SaJvator Rosa, it appears n mR the Carracci school (photo on deposit in NX indsor Print Room). For a discussion of the role played by gious brotherhood entrusted with (he spiritual condemned, see J. Weisz, IHttunt t

Mtserkoniu. 7 ofS. Giovanni Decollate in Rome, Ann Arbor Paglia. l a morte confortata. riti della /t f ^ nelTeta rnoderna, Rome 1982. 4 Paglia, cit., 1982, p. 108, n. \H. u Archivio di Srato. Rome,

Confraternity di S . . Decollator Norn* dei Giushfuatt, Inv. 285 II numbers of executions attended by the hmhIv^ terniiy enchargetl with comforting the cotidetniwdj nal hours ate published by Pa^u, lv>82. 1

'" I . . (./., The "Studio" of Francesco VilLtwena, BurlMag, CXXXVI,

Interdisciplinary History, XXII, 1992, pp. 597625; and . V. Cohen and E. S. Cohen, Words and Deeds in Renaissance Rome: Trials before the Papal Magistrates, Toronto 1993. 40 J. Gedo, cit., p. 177 and M. Gedo, cit., p. 298, n. 12. u Archivio di Stato, Rome, Tribunalc* Criminale del Governa- tore, Inventario 280 and 281, Processi 1505-99 and 1600- 1610. E. S. Cohen, citp. 606. * Bassani, Bellini, cit., p. 95, n. 4.

25

1994, pp. 506-16, especially 508 10. Bassani, Bellini, cit., pp. 196-200. As tabulated from the inventories of frocessi cited in n.3I. | . NussdoHer, I he Vacant See: Ritual and Protest m t arty Modern Rome, J he Sixteenth Century Journal, XVIII, 1987, pp. 173

,. , Rodocanachi, La Rtforme en Italic, Paris 1921, III, 9 for conditions in Rome during the reign of Pope Kent VIM, L passani, Bellini, cit, 1994, p. 17. L i pirpo, Esecuzioni capitali in Roma (15671671), in Eresia ^forma neiritalia del cinquecento, Miscellanea I, Dekalb and Chicago 1974, Appendix I and II, pp. 321-342 lists all the heretics, clergy, nobility, and "other notable persons" who Lerc executed in this period. D. Orano, Liberi pensatori bru- cjati i" Roma dal XVI al XVII secolo, Rome 1904, discusses the rare instances when unrepentant heretics like Giordano Bruno were burned at the stake. The eyewitness account of Montaigne (see n. 49) is corroborated by the statistical breakdown of execution methods published by Paglia, cit, 1982, Appendix II. In the case of the executions of Beatrice, Lucrezia and Gia- como Cenci, an a wis cited by C. Ricci, Beatrice Cenci, translated by M. Bishop and H. L. Stuart, II, New York 1925, p. 211, relates that "the corpses were left to the 23rd hour to the public view...with lit torches about, and Giacomo hanging in quarters." * S. Edgerton, Pictures and Punishment. Artand Criminal prosecution during the Florentine Renaissance, Ithaca and London 1985, chaps. 3 and 4, and L. Puppi, cit,

The similarity between the expressions of those affected by natural disasters, terrorist bombings, etc., and Caravaggios own depletions of grief is underscored by the belief of modern psychologies that emotional expression is essentially innate and culturally universal. See, for example, H. Seaford, Maxi- m/zJng Replicability in Describing Facial Behavior, in Nonverbal:

(Communication, Interaction, and Gesture. Selections from Semimta, ed. A. Kendon,

passim. 54 See n. 14 above. 1,0 For the mannaia as forerunner of the guillotine, see D. Gerould, Guillotine, its Legend and Lore, New York 1992, chap. 1. The device was used in Italy since the Middle Ages and is accurately depicted in Mantegnas now lost fresco of the Martyrdom of St. James in the Church of the Eremitani, Padua. The longsword continued to be used in Germany, however, as is evident from the accounts in AHangman's Diary, Being the Journal of Master Franz Schmidt, Public Executioner of Nuremberg 1573-1617, ed. A. Keller and

trans. . V. Calvert and A. W. Gruner, Montdair 1973. In Pictures from Italy, reprint, New York 1988, p. 131, Charles Dickens described the appearance of the scaffold upon which he saw a man beheaded in 1845. It was, he writes an untidy, unpainted, uncouth, crazy-looking thing, of course; some seven feet high, perhaps; with a tall, gallows- shaped frame rising above it, in which was the knife, charged with a ponderous mass of iron, all ready to descend, and glittering brightly in the morning sun." ' Hibbard, cit., p. 352; and R. Lapucci,Caravaggio e i "quadretti nello specchio ritrattiParagone, 529-531-533, 1994, pp. 160-

70.

The Hague and New York 1981, pp, 165-95. - Safari , Acqunti delta (jailer Nazionale d'Arte Antua 1470-72* 1972, *cheda n. 5; cited by Puppi, cit, p. 129. flic collected by Paglia, cit., 1982, Appendix II, I indicate chat in the year 1599 five people were simply behead