Editing Caravaggio (section)

== Sexuality ==
[[File:Portrait of a Courtesan by Caravaggio.jpg|thumb|upright=.8|[[Fillide Melandroni]]]]

Since the 1970s art scholars and historians have debated the inferences of [[homoeroticism]] in Caravaggio's works as a way to better understand the man.<ref name="kimmelman-nyt-2010-03-09">{{Cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/arts/design/10abroad.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220101/https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/arts/design/10abroad.html |archive-date=2022-01-01 |url-access=limited |title=Caravaggio in Ascendance: An Antihero's Time to Shine |last=Kimmelman |first=Michael |date=9 March 2010 |work=The New York Times |access-date=17 December 2019 |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}}{{cbignore}}</ref> Caravaggio never married and had no known children, and Howard Hibbard observed the absence of erotic female figures in the artist's oeuvre: "In his entire career he did not paint a single female nude",<ref>Hibbard, p.97</ref> and the cabinet-pieces from the Del Monte period are replete with "full-lipped, languorous boys ... who seem to solicit the onlooker with their offers of fruit, wine, flowers—and themselves" suggesting an erotic interest in the male form.<ref>Louis Crompton, ''Homosexuality and Civilization'' (Harvard, 2006) p.288</ref> The model for ''Amor vincit omnia'', [[Cecco del Caravaggio]], lived with the artist in Rome and stayed with him even after he was obliged to leave the city in 1606. The two may have been lovers.<ref name="Andrew Graham-Dixon 2011, p.4">Andrew Graham-Dixon, ''Caravaggio: A life sacred and profane'', Penguin, 2011, p.4</ref>

A connection with a certain Lena is mentioned in a 1605 court deposition by Pasqualone, where she is described as "Michelangelo's girl".<ref>Bertolotti, ''Artisti Lombardi''. pp.71–72</ref> According to G. B. Passeri, this 'Lena' was Caravaggio's model for the ''Madonna di Loreto''; and according to Catherine Puglisi, 'Lena' may have been the same person as the courtesan Maddalena di Paolo Antognetti, who named Caravaggio as an "intimate friend" by her own testimony in 1604.<ref>Catheine Puglisi, "Caravaggio" Phaidon 1998, p.199</ref><ref>Riccardo Bassani and Fiora Bellini, "Caravaggio assassino", 1994, pp.205–214</ref> Caravaggio was also rumoured to be madly in love with Fillide Melandroni, a well known Roman prostitute who modeled for him in several important paintings.<ref name="ReferenceA">Andrew Graham-Dixon, ''Caravaggio: A life sacred and profane'', Penguin, 2011</ref>

[[File:Boy with a Basket of Fruit-Caravaggio (1593).jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|left|''[[Boy with a Basket of Fruit (Caravaggio)|Boy with a Basket of Fruit]]'', 1593–1594, oil on canvas, {{convert|67|x|53|cm|0|lk=out|abbr=on}}, [[Galleria Borghese]], Rome]]

Caravaggio's [[sexuality]] also received early speculation due to claims about the artist by [[Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau]]. Writing in 1783, Mirabeau contrasted the personal life of Caravaggio directly with the writings of [[St Paul]] in the [[Book of Romans]],<ref>"''Masculi, relicto naturali usu faeminae, exarserunt in desideriis suis in invicem, masculi in masculos turpitudinem operantes, et mercedem quam oportuit erroris sui in semetipsis recipientes.''"" – Romans I:27.</ref> arguing that "[[Rome|Romans]]" excessively practice sodomy or [[homosexuality]]. ''The Holy Mother Catholic Church teachings on morality'' (and so on; short book title) contains the Latin phrase "''Et fœminæ eorum immutaverunt naturalem usum in eum usum qui est contra naturam.''" ("and their women changed their natural habit to that which is against nature").{{sfn|Bouchard|1791|p=270}} The phrase, according to Mirabeau, entered Caravaggio's thoughts, and he claimed that such an "abomination" could be witnessed through a particular painting housed at the Museum of the [[Grand Duke of Tuscany]]—featuring a [[rosary]] of a [[blasphemous]] nature, in which a circle of thirty men (''turpiter ligati'') are intertwined in embrace and presented in unbridled composition. Mirabeau notes the affectionate nature of Caravaggio's depiction reflects the voluptuous glow of the artist's sexuality.<ref>{{cite book
| first=Honoré
| last=Mirabeau
| title=Erotika Biblion
| publisher= Chez tous les Libraries
| others=Chevalier de Pierrugues
| year=1867
| url=https://archive.org/stream/erotikabiblion00mirauoft#page/92/mode/1up
}}</ref> By the late nineteenth century, Sir [[Richard Francis Burton]] identified the painting as Caravaggio's painting of St. Rosario. Burton also identifies both St. Rosario and this painting with the practices of [[Tiberius]] mentioned by [[Seneca the Younger]].<ref>{{cite book
| first=Richard Francis
| last=Burton
| title=A Plain and Literal Translation of "Arabian Nights."
| volume=10
| publisher= Press of The Carson-Harper Company
| year=1900
| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ApUWAAAAYAAJ&q=Caravaggio+%22thirty+men%22&pg=PA215
}}</ref> The survival status and location of Caravaggio's painting is unknown. No such painting appears in his or his school's catalogues.<ref>{{cite book
| first=Chris
| last=White
| title=Nineteenth-Century Writings on Homosexuality: A Sourcebook.
| publisher= Routledge
| year=1999
| url= https://books.google.com/books?id=BPv4WuX0CzIC&q=%22St.+Rosario%22+Caravaggio&pg=PA232
| isbn=9780415153065
}}</ref>

[[File:Baglione.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|''Sacred Love Versus Profane Love'' (1602–03), by [[Giovanni Baglione]]. Intended as an attack on his hated enemy, Caravaggio, it shows a winged male youth with an arrow, most likely a representation of Eros, the god associated with Aphrodite and sexual (i.e., profane) love, on one side, a devil with Caravaggio's face on the other, and between an angel representing pure, meaning non-erotic or sacred, love.]]

Aside from the paintings, evidence also comes from the libel trial brought against Caravaggio by [[Giovanni Baglione]] in 1603. Baglione accused Caravaggio and his friends of writing and distributing scurrilous doggerel attacking him; the pamphlets, according to Baglione's friend and witness Mao Salini, had been distributed by a certain Giovanni Battista, a ''bardassa'', or boy prostitute, shared by Caravaggio and his friend Onorio Longhi. Caravaggio denied knowing any young boy of that name, and the allegation was not followed up.<ref>The transcript of the trial is given in Walter Friedlander, "Caravaggio Studies" (Princeton, 1955, revised edn. 1969)</ref>

Baglione's painting of "Divine Love" has also been seen as a visual accusation of [[sodomy]] against Caravaggio.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> Such accusations were damaging and dangerous as sodomy was a capital crime at the time. Even though the authorities were unlikely to investigate such a well-connected person as Caravaggio, "Once an artist had been smeared as a pederast, his work was smeared too."<ref name="Andrew Graham-Dixon 2011, p.4"/> Francesco Susino in his later biography additionally relates the story of how the artist was chased by a schoolmaster in Sicily for spending too long gazing at the boys in his care. Susino presents it as a misunderstanding, but some authors have speculated that Caravaggio may indeed have been seeking sex with the boys, using the incident to explain some of his paintings which they believe to be homoerotic.<ref>Andrew Graham-Dixon, ''Caravaggio: A life sacred and profane'', Penguin, 2011, p.412</ref>

The art historian [[Andrew Graham-Dixon]] has summarised the debate:
<blockquote>A lot has been made of Caravaggio's presumed homosexuality, which has in more than one previous account of his life been presented as the single key that explains everything, both the power of his art and the misfortunes of his life. There is no absolute proof of it, only strong circumstantial evidence and much rumour. The balance of probability suggests that Caravaggio did indeed have sexual relations with men. But he certainly had female lovers. Throughout the years that he spent in Rome, he kept close company with a number of prostitutes. The truth is that Caravaggio was as uneasy in his relationships as he was in most other aspects of life. He likely slept with men. He did sleep with women. He settled with no one... [but] the idea that he was an early martyr to the drives of an unconventional sexuality is an anachronistic fiction.<ref name="Andrew Graham-Dixon 2011, p.4" /></blockquote>

''Washington Post'' art critic Philip Kennicott has taken issue with what he regarded as Graham-Dixon's minimizing of Caravaggio's homosexuality:
<blockquote>There was a fussiness to the tone whenever a scholar or curator was forced to grapple with transgressive sexuality, and you can still find it even in relatively recent histories, including Andrew Graham-Dixon's 2010 biography of Caravaggio, which acknowledges only that "he likely slept with men".<ref>{{cite news| url = https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/lgbt-artists-sent-messages-from-the-closet-to-survive-before-stonewall-now-homophobes-coopting-the-technique/2019/06/20/96540414-8c8a-11e9-adf3-f70f78c156e8_story.html| title = "LGBT artists sent messages from the closet to survive before Stonewall. Now, homophobes are coopting the technique." ''Washington Post'', June 10, 2019| newspaper = [[The Washington Post]]}}</ref> The author notes the artist's fluid sexual desires but gives some of Caravaggio's most explicitly homoerotic paintings tortured readings to keep them safely in the category of mere "ambiguity".</blockquote>