The Beheading of Saint John The Baptist (Caravaggio) - History

History

Completed in 1608 in Malta, the painting had been commissioned by the Knights of Malta as an altarpiece; it was the largest altarpiece which Caravaggio would ever paint. It still hangs in St. John's Co-Cathedral, for which it was commissioned and where Caravaggio himself was inducted and briefly served as a knight. Caravaggio's service to the Order was brief and troubled, however, as he was soon a fugitive from justice, having escaped while imprisoned for an unrecorded crime. When Caravaggio was defrocked in absentia as a "putrid and fetid limb" by the Order about six months after his induction, the ceremony took place in the Oratory, before this very painting.

Caravaggio did several pieces depicting the moments after the event depicted here. One of these is on display in London's National Gallery; the other, in the Royal Palace of Madrid. It is believed that one of these may be the image that Caravaggio was said to have sent in an effort to appease Alof de Wignacourt, Grand Master of the Knights who expelled Caravaggio, but this is not certainly known.

The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist has been badly damaged, though it did receive some restoration in the 1950s prior to a notable exhibition in Rome in 1955-56, which brought the work considerable attention. It was during the restoration that Caravaggio's signature in the blood became visible to modern viewers. The signature is a matter of some dispute. Some scholars, including Genevieve Warwick in Caravaggio: Realism, Rebellion, Reception (2006), suggest that the work is signed f. Michelang.o (the f to indicate his brotherhood in the order), but it is popularly claimed that Caravaggio signed "I, Caravaggio, did this" in confession of some crime—perhaps connected to the 1606 death of Ranuccio Tomassoni at Caravaggio's hands, which had caused the painter to flee Rome.