The Torchbearers of Queer Legacy – Profiling Caravaggio (And Jarman)

By Luke Dunlop

In a previous article, I put a spotlight on the poetry of Mark Doty, and the work it does to not only reflect on the poignancy of the queer past (in relation to the AIDS epidemic), but also how it ruminates on queer futures through the processes of remembrance and community building. His literature promotes the notion of art as a vehicle of unification amongst queer bodies, old and young, dead and alive, to ensure their legacy continues and is represented by them, for them. To him (and to me), art is permanent, and transcends temporal, societal and biological limitations. 

In regarding the notion about the temporal bounds that art can overcome, and how this relates to queer art in particular, one can look no further than the relationship between the late 16th – early 17th century painter Caravaggio and the 20th century filmmaker Derek Jarman. 

Michelangelo Merisi, more commonly known as Caravaggio, was an Italian painter deriving his influence from religious iconography. His work derives from the Counter Reformation in Italy between the 16th-17th centuries, a retaliation to the Protestant Reformation by the Catholic Church that sought to strengthen the doctrines of their institution. Specifically, it reaffirmed the need for beauty and grandeur in manners of religious practice, with one of the key vehicles being the art created for the church. Caravaggio, along with painters such as Reni and Boracci, imparted aesthetic elegance to their works by richening colour and light, in contrast to Renaissance painters, who worked with a comparatively muted palette. Additionally, with the shift of focus to the beauty that can be derived from religious art, Caravaggio endeavoured to present subjects as sensuous yet ethereal entities, both within Biblical recreations, and works concerning other beings from different mythologies. His use of chiaroscuro light (a high contrast between light and dark) imbued his work with harsh shadows, promoting notions of secrecy and unorthodoxy. 

Despite his presumed ties to the Catholic Church, an institution known widely for its views on both homosexuality and promiscuity, it is reported that Caravaggio took multiple male lovers throughout his life. He even used some of these alleged partners as models, like Mario Minniti and Cecco Bonneri, which amplifies the erotic overtones of his religious depictions. The voyeuristic quality that his biography imparts on his artistic practice aligns the creation of art itself with romance and queerness. This knowledge, perhaps, frames his paintings as an eccentric resistance to the cultural zeitgeist, while remaining a prominent symbol of religious iconography.

His portrayal of the Roman god Bacchus (circa 1596) is just one example of the romantic sensuality that male figures embodied in his work. The subject is a young male, with ethereally pale skin, surrounded by symbols of debauchery and abundance – wine and fruit. He is presented as an almost messianic figure, dressed in white with a crown of foliage that imparts a royalty to the subject. The voyeuristic relationship between subject and observer is extremely potent, with a sense that this depiction of Bacchus is simply a young queer lover of the audience, aligning himself with fertility and sexuality as he becomes intertwined with the natural.

Derek Jarman, a British filmmaker, artist and writer who passed away due to AIDS related complications in 1994, was known to revisit the biographies of historical male figures and queer their experiences and representations through erotic and controversial film portrayals. Both his 1976 film Sebastiane (a Latin work concerned with the life of St. Sebastian), and Caravaggio (1986) sought to reconcile the forbidden queer lives of these men with sexual freedom and ability to express their queer selves. 

In exploring Caravaggio’s biography, Jarman not only overtly queers the art produced by the painter, but also endeavours in making queer the act of creation itself. The sexual relationship between subject and observer is substantiated by Jarman’s directorial choices, and promotes the idea further of Caravaggio’s hidden queer desire ingrained within his works. Jarman, then, does the work many queer individuals do now – delegates the power of modern queer freedom (though still limited in Jarman’s case by today’s standards) back to those in the past with queer biographies fraught with secrecy. By memorialising these artistic pillars through the creation of new art, we can break down temporal limitations between past and present, and continue to appreciate and make relevant the works of queer artistic icons.

• https://lwlies.com/articles/derek-jarman-queer-history-caravaggio-sebastiane/
• https://queertuscanytours.com/en/posing-as-a-gay-bacchus-caravaggio-and-the-queer-art-at-the-uffizi-gallery/
• https://www.glennis.net/post/caravaggio-counter-reformation

Edited by Laura Ward