I recently finished reading Francine Prose’s book “Caravaggio: Painter of Miracles.” The book is an easy to read summation of the artist’s life and accomplishments. Prose’s text makes for an enjoyable read, but it is the artist who captivates the imagination. Caravaggio’s artistry represents one of those breakthrough moments in human culture. He was able to communicate a vision of the potentiality of human creativity that remains, despite his many imitators, unique. He also was a scoundrel and therefore the details of his personal life capture our attention in the same manner that one "just can’t look away" from a traffic accident. It is not just his paintings that make us stop and stare, it is also the man, the artist himself...
“[Just] as the arrival of Jesus awakened the enmity of Herod and the emergence of the Son of God on the public scene stirred the opposition of demons and humans, so the climactic expression of coinherence, the laying bare of who Jesus is, brings forth the dark powers. Immediately after the cup has been shared, Jesus says, ‘But see, the one who betrays me is with me, and his hand is on the table’ (Luke 22:21). Earlier, Luke told us that ‘Satan [had] entered into Judas called the Iscariot, who was one of the twelve’ (Luke 22:3), and thus we see the accusing and scattering power that had dogged Jesus from the outset of his work was still operative, even (we might say especially) here where the anti-Satanic act of coinherence was most vividly on display. How telling the detail of the betrayer’s ‘hand on the table,’ soiling the beauty and interrupting the flow of grace at that sacred spot...