tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post1055903356876852032..comments2024-03-29T03:56:08.315-04:00Comments on johnshaplin: Dirty Feet by Andrew Graham-Dixonjohnshaplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post-39629793626200356462012-01-29T10:52:03.303-05:002012-01-29T10:52:03.303-05:00For all his sensitivity and genius, there could ul...For all his sensitivity and genius, there could ultimately be no place in this new Baroque sensibility for an artist such as Caravaggio.johnshaplinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post-72955449608965423272012-01-29T10:51:34.971-05:002012-01-29T10:51:34.971-05:00The Catholic Church was moving decisively away fro...The Catholic Church was moving decisively away from the severe Counter-Reformation piety embodied so powerfully in Caravaggio’s work. The religious attitudes he had grown up with in Milan were falling increasingly out of favour among those in positions of power. Carlo Borromeo’s belief that the princes of the Church should clothe themselves in humility and model their lives on those of Christ’s poor disciples was falling terminally out of fashion. Poverty and the poor were there to be controlled, regulated, put in their place. In parallel, the idea that Christian art should exalt poverty was increasingly regarded as eccentric and distasteful by senior churchmen, from the pope downwards. It was the function of art to hymn the majesty of God in his heaven – and therefore to bathe the papal court and upper hierarchies of the Church in the reflected glory of that higher, celestial court. Like the art of Caravaggio, the art favoured by a newly triumphalist Church aimed at the poor as well as the rich. But its approach was different. It did not welcome the poor and the meek or make them feel that they, ultimately, were the inheritors of the earth. It was here to awe, daunt and stupefy them, to impress them, with visions of a force so [powerful it could not be resisted – and must, therefore, be obeyed.johnshaplinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.com