
Dark Knight of the Soul
Toward the end of his life, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610) entered a Sicilian church and was offered holy water. Caravaggio asked what good the blessing would do, and was told it would cancel his venial sins. “Then it is no use,” he replied, “because mine are all mortal.” Like most information about Caravaggio, this account may be a half-truth, if not an outright myth. But it captures a sense of the painter’s defiant character and resigned fatalism, and hints at the source of his intransigent aesthetic vision. In a portrait of Saint John the Baptist (painted soon before Caravaggio