Professor Butter Beard, Caravaggio, and Bacchus
“It’s becoming apparent that I like bad boys. That’s one of my problems. They’ve all been bad boys. You’re one too. You’re a bad boy. But I think you are a good bad boy.” - Jeffery Deaver, “Edge.”
It’s true. I do quite enjoy a “good bad boy.” And the artist Caravaggio wholeheartedly embodies and owns that tantalizing title!
Michelangelo (yep, Michelangelo) Caravaggio was born in 1571 and trained as a painter in Milan before moving to Rome in his rambunctious twenties where he quickly earned for himself a considerable name as a talented artist with a violent, touchy and provocative manner. A drunken brawl led to a death sentence for murder and forced him to flee to Naples. There, he established himself as one of the most prominent Italian painters of his generation experimenting with focused light and pure human naturalism.
Within a short span of time, Caravaggio was able to secure a string of prestigious commissions for religious works featuring violent struggles, grotesque decapitations, torture and death. Each new painting increased his fame, but according to historians, quite a few were rejected by the various patrons for whom they were intended, at least in their original forms, and had to be re-painted or sold to new buyers. It is believed that while Caravaggio's dramatic intensity was welcomed, his ultra-realism was interpreted by some as unacceptably vulgar.
The artist travelled through Malta and Sicily, eventually returning to Naples in 1609. But this was a violent return involving at least one brutal clash where his face was disfigured, and subsequent rumors of his death circulated the city. His demise was eventually confirmed in 1610 with reports that he had died of a fever, but there are suggestions that he may have been murdered or perished due to lead poisoning.
I want to refer back to his early time in Rome, when Caravaggio was hired to contribute “hack-work” for the highly successful Giuseppe Cesari, Pope Clement VIII's favorite artist, painting flowers and fruit in Cesari’s factory-like workshop. It was during this period that Caravaggio painted a small “Boy Peeling a Fruit” (his earliest known painting), a “Boy with a Basket of Fruit,” and the “Young Sick Bacchus,” which historians believe to be a self-portrait completed during his convalescence from a serious illness that ended his employment with Cesari.
According to historians at the Galleria Borghese, the artist was so ill that he spent six months in the hospital of Santa Maria della Consolazione. They also believe the painting indicates that Caravaggio’s physical ailment involved malaria, as the appearance of his skin and jaundice in the eyes are key factors of an active hepatic disease.
The choice of Bacchus was a delicious one for the artist. In Roman mythology, Bacchus was the youthful god of wine, inebriation, fertility and theater. He was known to be joyous and kind to those who admire him, yet cruel and mischievous to those who cross him – much like the artist himself. During the dawn of the seventeenth century, scenes from ancient mythology were often found in the private spaces of aristocrats and artistic patrons who valued the finer things in life and possibly saw Bacchus as the perfect allegory for wealth and excess.
Professor Sir Ernst Gombrich (my art historian Dumbledore) writes that Caravaggio must have read ancient mythology and the Christian Bible again and again, pondering the words intensely in order to create the most faithful, and natural, visual interpretation. Gombrich believes Caravaggio to be one of the great artists who “wanted to see the holy (and mythological) events before his own eyes as if they had been happening in his neighbor’s house.”
He writes, “Caravaggio did everything possible to make the figures of the ancient texts look more real and tangible. Even his way of handling light and shade helps to this end. His light does not make the body look graceful and soft: it is harsh and almost glaring in its contrast to the deep shadows. But it makes the whole strange scene stand out with an uncompromising honesty which few of his contemporaries could appreciate.”
Caravaggio would revisit Bacchus in a later version commissioned by Cardinal Del Monte in 1596. Here a softer and more inviting Bacchus reclines in a classical fashion with grapes and vine leaves in his hair, suggestively fingering the drawstring of his loosely draped garment. He offers a shallow goblet of wine, inviting the viewer to join him, where in the earlier version, the unhealthy god savors the golden grapes alone.
Much later, Cindy Sherman, as part of her History Portrait photography series (1989-1990), produced a parody on “Young Sick Bacchus,” in an ironic photographic self-portrait named “Untitled #224.” Lucy Gallun, a curator at MOMA, writes: “It's a female artist in the role of a male artist in the role of the Roman god of wine. It's a way of reminding us of art history.” Sherman’s works continue to fascinate and challenge me and I love witnessing my student’s reactions to her photographs.
Focaccia has always been a safe bake for me. This week, I was inspired to rethink the standard and incorporate a more seductive approach. My new version includes some of my favorite autumnal flavors woven together within the crusty bread enhanced with your best olive oil. In one bite, you experience ripe sumptuous figs, aromatic fresh sage from my garden, sweetly caramelized red onions and the delicious crunch of coarse sea salt. It’s a bit of a “bad boy” enjoyment. But honestly, who doesn’t like an occasional dance with a “good bad boy?”
Fresh Fig, Sage and Red Onion Focaccia
One large focaccia to serve a dozen people
3 ½ cups bread flour
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp fine sea salt
1 ½ Tbsp instant dry yeast
1/3 cup fresh sage leaves, julienned
1/2 cup of your best olive oil
2 ¼ cups warm water
½ cup of your sour dough starter
1 Tbsp honey
½ red onion, very thinly sliced
16-20 ripe figs, stem removed, and fruit sliced in half vertically.
1 Tbsp coarse sea salt
1) In a standing mixer, mix together the two flours, the fine sea salt, the yeast and the julienned fresh sage with the paddle.
2) In a glass measuring bowl, combine the warm water, the sour dough starter, the honey and 3 Tbsp of your olive oil. Whisk to combine.
3) Remove the paddle from the mixer and replace it with the dough hook. With the mixer running on low, pour the wet into the dry and knead to form a dough for about two minutes. Turn the mixer to medium high and knead for seven to eight minutes more until the dough is silky smooth and still a bit damp. Oil a large glass bowl with 2 Tbsp of your oil and scrape the dough into the bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled, about one hour.
4) Punch down the dough and let rise until doubled again.
5) Line a 12”x18” baking pan with parchment paper. Slide the risen dough into the pan and use your fingers to gently stretch the dough to the edges of the pan. Use your fingers to make indentations all over the dough and then sprinkle the dough with another 2 Tbsp of the oil. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for thirty minutes while you heat your oven to 450 degrees.
6) Thinly slice the onion and prep the figs. Toss both the onion and the figs with 1 Tbsp olive oil. Deeply press the figs and the onion slices into the risen dough. Sprinkle the dough again with oil and the 1 Tbsp of coarse salt.
7) Bake the focaccia for 20-25 minutes until golden brown. When you remove it from the oven, sprinkle again with olive oil.
