e Caracci were reviving art at Bologna in the way that I have
described, Caravaggio in Rome opposed the Mannerists after his own and a
very different fashion.[230] The insipidities of men like Cesari drove
him into a crude realism. He resolved to describe sacred and historical
events just as though they were being enacted in the Ghetto by butchers
and fishwives. This reaction against flimsy emptiness was wholesome; and
many interesting studies from the taverns of Italy, portraits of
gamesters, sharpers, _bravi_ and the like, remain to prove Caravaggio's
mastery over scenes of common life.[231] But when he applied his
principles to higher subjects, their vulgarity became apparent. Only in
one picture, the Entombment in the Vatican, did he succeed in affecting
imagination forcibly by the evident realization of a tragic scene. His
martyrdoms are inexpressibly revolting, without appeal to any sense but
savage blood-lust. It seems difficult for realism, either in literature
or art, not to fasten upon ugliness, vice, pain, and disease, as though
these imperfections of our nature were more real than beauty, goodness,
pleasure, and health. Therefore Caravaggio, the leader of a school which
the Italians christened Naturalists, may be compared to Zola.

[Footnote 230: Michelangelo Amerighi da Caravaggio (1569-1609).]

[Footnote 231: For the historian of manners in seventeenth-century Italy
those pictures have a truly precious value, as they are executed with
such passion as to raise them above the more careful but more lymphatic
transcripts from beer-cellars in Dutch painting.]

A Spaniard, settled at Naples--Giuseppe Ribera, nicknamed Lo
Spagnoletto--carried on Caravaggio's tradition. Spagnoletto surpassed
his master in the brutally realistic expression of physical anguish.
His Prometheus writhing under the beak of the vulture, his disembowelled
martyrs and skinless S. Bartholomews, are among the most nauseous
products of a masculine nature blessed with robust health. Were they
delirious or hysterical, they would be less disgusting. But no; they are
merely vigorous and faithful representations of what anybody might have
witnessed, when a traitor like Ravaillac or a Lombard _untore_ was being
put to death in agony. His firm mental grip on cruelty, and the somber
gloom with which he invested these ghastly transcripts from the
torture-chamber, prove Ribera true to his Spanish origin. Caravaggio
delighted in color, and was indeed