Caravaggio’s Black Paint
Toby Klingsmith is a longtime friend of CAI, now serving as an Upper School English Teacher at Second Baptist School in Houston, Texas. A graduate of Biola University and the Torrey Honors College, he enjoys cooking, traveling, building computers, hiking, and spending time with his wife and two sons. You will find him most days enjoying a good cup of coffee while helping students find joy and wonder in the simple moments of life.
I often wonder why we are so afraid of the dark. It has no substance, no power, and is in nearly every conceivable measure non-existent. It is a lack—physically, a lack of light, and spiritually, a lack of knowledge.
The cliché stands true: we fear what we do not understand. We fear what we cannot control. “Where am I going to go to school?” “Where am I going to live in two months?” “When will God heal my mother?” Because such spiritual darknesses frighten us, we begin to villainize them. But when we attempt to fight them, we are fighting nothing. We begin to equate black and darkness with sin, with despair, with Satan, and with nearly everything negative in the human experience.
This association between black and everything negative contributes to many severe social problems. Colorism actively harms large communities today, as it has for millennia across the globe. And Renaissance Italy was no different. There too, darkness and blackness often meant evil and despair, and those connotations fueled prejudice.
But that symbolic and social context, to me, is what makes Michaelangelo Caravaggio’s paintings so remarkable.
Caravaggio was an expert at using black. Unlike every painter before him, black became perhaps his most dominant color, covering large parts of nearly every canvas he painted. He was fascinated with contrast and discovered that black could be a powerful tool. Dubbed Tenebrism, his method not only highlights his bright and vibrant colors, putting them strikingly in front of the viewer, but also removes parts of the painting that would normally be seen. It shrouds many of his paintings in mystery, forcing the viewer to look intently into the darkness and discern what is hidden there. It begs speculation; it begs wonder. It forces us to look at the dark.
“The Conversion of St. Paul,” Carravaggio, Odescalchi Balbi Collection of Rome. Fair use.
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Take for example "The Conversion of St. Paul"—nearly half of this iconic painting is black. St. Paul’s body and parts of his horse are brilliantly illuminated, yet he is surrounded by darkness. We can see a man in the background holding a second horse and staring down at St. Paul confused. Those of us who know this story, however, know that a third person is missing; given the traditional depiction of this scene we might expect Jesus to be represented as a blinding figure, yet Caravaggio chooses not to. Instead, he depicts this meeting, not in a flash of light, but swimming in darkness. If we were to assume, following old, ingrained symbolism, that black and darkness are negative things, we might interpret this painting to mean that St. Paul was consumed and overpowered by despair, swimming in doubt and fear. Yet we know the truth: Jesus overcame St. Paul on the road to Damascus and in that moment he was saved. Caravaggio represents Paul's encounter with God not with light, but blackness.
I believe in this painting Caravaggio is warning against the biggest problem with our hatred of blackness: our failure to recognize that God resides there. God is among the maligned, the downtrodden, the disadvantaged, and he is within our darkest ignorances and confusions too.
In Exodus 20, Moses walks towards "the thick darkness where God was." Christian Medieval mystics were very taken with this notion that God resided in blackness, and sometimes referred to God as the "Divine Shadow." Pseudo-Dionysius was especially taken with this idea, and believed men to be so limited in their capacity to comprehend God that to them, the True God would always be a shadow.
If we return to Caravaggio and to perhaps my favorite series, his Matthew Cycle, we find that he confirms this notion of meeting God and being transformed in his darkness. The Matthew Cycle consists of three paintings hanging above the Contarelli chapel altar in San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, Italy, "The Calling of Saint Matthew," "The Inspiration of Saint Matthew" and "The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew." While each painting is brilliant by itself, the theme of God dwelling in the darkness pervades all three.
“The Calling of Saint Matthew,” “The Inspiration of Saint Matthew,” and “The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew,” Carravaggio, The Church of St. Louis of the French, Rome. Fair use.
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In "The Calling of Saint Matthew," Jesus, the Son of God, the Light, is the figure least illuminated. The patrons around the table and St. Peter are all more illuminated than Jesus. That might be understandable if the light were coming from Jesus, but the light source originates above him, casting the Son of God in a deep shadow. St. Matthew is being called and spoken to from the darkness.
In "The Inspiration of Saint Matthew," Caravaggio again surrounds Matthew in blackness. Matthew is being inspired to write his Gospel and, surprisingly, he is not being hit by a beam of light, but rather is immersed in darkness. God speaks to him not from the light, but out of the darkness. Even in this most special and intimate connection between our Creator and St. Matthew, God clothes himself in darkness.
Finally, in "The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew," we again find Caravaggio placing God in the darkness. St. Matthew is being slain for his faith in his own church as the angel passes him a palm frond—the traditional symbol of martyrdom. What strikes me most is that it is not the angel nor heaven itself that is brilliantly illuminated, but rather St. Matthew's executioner. It is the human, not the divine, which is illuminated. God, who calls his joyful servant home, once again is clouded in darkness. Caravaggio rewards St. Matthew not with brilliant light but in the warm and powerful embrace of black, of darkness. In all three pieces God is the Shadow.
This notion that God resides in the darkness is, however, not merely a theological precept or a nice artistic move. Indeed, in my own life I have most often found God in the darkness, when I seem to be stumbling around in a pit of blackness. My future was black, hidden from me by my inadequate faculties. I felt lost, abandoned. I hurt. I had no light. Yet in this very blackness I felt the purging fire of God, burning the dross out of me. Though my eyes were dim, God guided my steps towards him and though I could not see, I felt God's presence. The pain was not diminished, but it was transformed by the grace of our Lord to where, as Eustace would say after having his dragon skin removed by Aslan, "It was a good kind of pain."
Isaiah offers wisdom about surviving the darkness: "Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God" (Isaiah 50:10 ESV). We get from this passage a much more vibrant and helpful view of darkness. While a depraved view of darkness fears what it hides, a redeemed view embraces it. To fear the darkness belies only our own insecurities and our unwillingness to trust in the Lord. But Isaiah shows a way out of the pitfall. While it may be uncomfortable, to love the darkness is to love the Lord's provisions. It is to live by faith and not by sight. To embrace living in the darkness is to accept what we are given, and to accept that God is at work. To be comfortable in the darkness requires the maturity to know that simply because something is painful does not mean it is bad; just because we hurt does not mean God does not love us. It is to remember that God disciplines those he loves, and that we are called to grow up.
Indeed, there is a clear spiritual danger of being afraid of or fighting the dark. Isaiah warns: "Behold, all you who kindle a fire, who equip yourselves with burning torches! Walk by the light of your fire, and by the torches that you have kindled! This you have from my hand: you shall lie down in torment." (Isaiah 50:11 ESV)
Therefore, for both your sanctity and safety, when you are walking in the darkness of your uncertainty, cry out, and proclaim that these are moments for which you live. Do not despair but sing your anthem. In the sometimes-overwhelming pressure of the night, our faith may be tested and found true. We may cry out to God, straining to discern, within the darkness, our Redeemer and Savior who has been working through history to bring us here. We may trust that he will continue to care for us.
I'll tell you the truth: having faith in the light is easy and requires no courage. But faith in the dark —trusting that God is leading, though you don't know where— now there is courage. There is the wise endurance of our faith. Thus, as Christians, we may reframe darkness within ourselves. We can transform it in our minds until it is not evil or the color of despair, but rather the color of faith, and of human dignity. It may be for us the place of revelation and martyrdom, the place where Jesus is waiting to transform. For us, darkness may reveal our unimaginably merciful call to accept the challenges of God and build our faith, purifying our souls in the fire of the divine unknown.
