literature

Giovanni Baglione Speaks Out

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Literature Text

Not many in this city still remember
how inauspiciously young Merisi's career
began, how he was driven from Milan,
a hounded fugitive, after he murdered
some other drunken, brawling lout.
That's why he arrived at Rome a beggar
with only his body to offer for bread,
                          all those years ago.

Now he's running again. He loves
that sword of his too much. Yet another
drunken wastrel paid for a quarrel
in the worthless coin of his life.
Even those bankers and Cardinals,
whose gold encouraged his pretensions,
even they could see that this time
he had put himself beyond the reach
                              of their protection.
    
Rome is well rid of him.
Those wealthy friends and patrons
got him out of the City. They made sure
at least that the hangman was cheated.
He's gone, the scandals that surrounded him
linger, a noisome miasma
the stench poisoning the City's Godly air.
Pity, I could have taken pleasure
                   in seeing him hanged.

Most scandalously, his monstrosity,
that supposed master work of his,
the Death Of The Madonna, has now
been claimed by the Duke of Mantua.
His agent, some Netherlandish
dauber, (Rubens, his name might have
been) convinced him that Leonardo
himself could not have bettered it. The Fathers
at the church it was intended to desecrate
thought otherwise, they threw it out.
No doubt the Duke picked it up cheap.

He portrays the Mother of God
as if she were some slattern,
exhausted by her short and vicious life.
And for this hideous blasphemy
they all reward him with their godless praise!

This contemptible man
presumes to call himself
a painter!
                              He's nothing
but a pernicious fraud,
a man who drags our high calling
into the gutters of disrepute!
This poem is the last one in my cycle Caravaggio in Rome, which must now be considered finished, about twenty years after the project began

Bagglione made painting for the Church into big business. He and Carravaggio loathed each other.

I have previously posted just one other poem from the cycle, The Artist Discovers Saul [link]
© 2009 - 2024 AlecBell
Comments19
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PrettyCrazy's avatar
I love your small windows into great minds, Alec.

Two minor details:

- "He's gone, The scandals that surrounded him
linger after him, a noisome miasma
the stench poisoning the City's Godly air."

I think 'The' should not be capitalised.

- "thought otherwise, they threw it out"

Should there be some form of punctuation after that line?