Research bite: Caravaggio’s Madonna of the Rosary

Here follows a taster of my PhD research, looking at Caravaggio’s Madonna of the Rosary and its acquisition by the Dominican Church in Antwerp (today the Sint-Pauluskerk).

The altarpiece, today in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, was painted in Rome c.1601, just as Caravaggio exploded on the city’s religious art scene with the Contarelli Chapel altarpieces, most spectacularly the Martyrdom of St Matthew (San Luigi dei Francesi). It was put up for sale in 1607, brought to Naples probably by Caravaggio himself when on the run. It was offered by two Caravaggesque artists, Louis Finson and Abraham Vinck, to the Duke of Mantua via his court portraitist, Frans Pourbus. Its high price (400 ducats) was probably what deterred its purchase by Vincenzo I Gonzaga.

It next appears in Amsterdam, bequeathed in full to Vinck by the dying Finson. The Rosary Madonna is then purchased before Vinck’s death in 1619 by Peter Paul Rubens and a consortium of artists and “liefhebbers” – amatori. A painting by Pieter Neefs has it displayed amidst a painting cycle depicting the 15 Mysteries of the Rosary. Its function is nominally devotional, yet more apparently secular, like a masterpiece shown off in a princely kunstkammer.

Its price, 1800 gulden, is extraordinarily high, vastly outvaluing the iconic Death of the Virgin today in the Louvre (purchased by the Duke of Mantua on Rubens’ recommendation). Like the ideal home of Richard Hamilton’s pop collage, what made the Rosary Madonna so different, so appealing?

Its large scale and high finish put it at a premium among Caravaggio’s works for sale. Its many figures are choreographed within a clear pyramidal hierarchy of intercession, from Virgin and Child at the apex to saints and prostrate pilgrims below. The theology expressed is entirely orthodox, the composition conservative – as a didactic tool, it fits in nicely with any “Counter-Reformation” decorative scheme, crystallising devotion to the rosary, a cult intensified in the Battle of Lepanto’s victorious wake.

My argument is, this altarpiece was purchased not as mere ecclesiastical furniture or even an “icon”, but as a Caravaggio, described as ‘outstandingly great art’ and a ‘rare piece’. Caravaggio’s brand equity was at a premium in the early years of the seventeenth century, before being cast out as an anathema by later Italian critics, most prominently Bellori. Above all I am interested in this altarpiece’s value as a commodity, accumulating as it changed hands from Caravaggio to Finson, by association with Vincenzo I Gonzaga, Rubens and the European aristocracy, including Marie de’ Medici. My critical apparatus is constructed from economic and sociological theory, beginning with Karl Marx and Adam Smith.

On Friday 17 March 2017, I will present my research at the York HoA PhD conference. Be there, or be square!