Xll,t (a,oaa) CARAVAGGIO'S TONGUE Norman E. Land Stories or anecdotes told of Renarssance and Baroqueartistsby early biographers are often overlookedbecause they usually do not help art historiansascertain the actual circumstances in which an artistlived or the events bearing upon the making of his works. In truth, anecdotes should not be considered "documents" in the strict sense, for they are used rhetorically and poetically by most authors. In many cases, however, theytell us a great deal about the perception of artists and their works. Certainlythat is true of two little-appreciated seventeenth- century anecdotes, one told by the Dutch painterCarel van Mander and the other by the Germanpainter Joachimvon Sandrart, about a picture that Caravaggio'allegedly painted in the church of San Lorenzo in Damaso in Rome. In his Het Schilder-Boeck (Haarlem: 1604), van Mander says that Caravaggio painted a "Historie" in the church of San Lorenzo in Damaso, nexl to a paintingby Giuseppe Cesari,il Cavaliere d'Arpino. In the picture, van Mander continues, Ca- ravaggio"painted a dwarf or midget ["een Naenken oft Reusken"] who sticks out his tongue at Giuseppe'spainting, making it seem as if in this way he wantedto ridicule Giuseppe's work: he is one who thinkslittle of the works of other masters, but will not openly praisehis own."' In the corrigenda to his book, van Mander recanted his story; he had "been misinformed,"he says,"that MichelangeloCaravaggio made fun of the work of Giuseppino by painting that dwarf."2 The meaning of van Mander's recantation is not clear. He could meanthat Caravaggio depicted a dwarf in a paintingin the chapel, but did. not use it to makefun of Cesari's work. Or he might mean that Ca- ravaggio did not paint a dwarf at all. Today we assume that, although Giuseppe Cesari painted in San Lorenzo in Damaso,Ca- ravaggio did not work there.r Seemingly a person unknown,either in- tentionally or unintentionally, misinformed van Mander about Caravaggio, saying that he had painted a little person ridiculing a paintingby Giuseppe Cesari. After printing his book, van Mander, in some way un- known to us, determined that he had been mislead andthat his earlier reportwasfalse, suggesting that historical accuracy hadbeen his original intention. His informant, how- ever, might have been confused, reporting a story about paintings in onechapel thatreal- ly applied to works in another place. We might assume, then,that the story is correct but pertains instead to works of another moment and location,perhaps thosein the Contarelli Chapel in the church of SanLuigi dei Francesciin Rome, which contains paintings by both Caravaggio and Cesari.' Thereis, however, no evidence in the paint- ings in that chapelto supportthat assump- tion. If we assume that the anecdote is not true SOURCE: Notes in the History of Art, 21, 4 (2002) © Norman E. Land