Riposo durante la fuga in Egitto

One of Caravaggio’s most expressive and lyric naturalistic paintings of this period, is Riposo durante la fuga in Egitto from 1595. With one of the few landscapes in his paintings- an indication of the Lombard and Venetian influences of his youth- the painting presents the peaceful moment when, fleeing from Herod’s soldiers, the Holy family pauses to rest before continuing to Egypt.

The most important change in relation to earlier representations of the theme, is introduced by the prominent place of the angel in the centre of the composition instead of the conventional background position. With his back turned, totally absorbed in his playing, the Angel divides the painting in two contrasting parts. The first, occupied by the figure of Joseph with shadowed face and bare feet placed on a stony and infertile ground, is set in a dark background. The contrast with the illuminated figures of the Angel, the Virgin and the child, makes even more visible the apparent rudeness of Joseph and the graceful figure of the angel, with white drapery spirals around his limbs. On the other side, the delicate representation of mother and child, surrounded by lush vegetation, is circumscribed in a closed circle, feature that Caravaggio had already used in the painting Maddalena Penitente, with the same female model.

Zeffiro Torna e il bel tempo rimena

A similar contrast between the symbolic elements expressed by the fertile luxuriant background on one side and an hostile outside world on the other, can be found in Monteverdi’s setting of Petrarca’s sonnet Zeffiro torna e'l bel tempo rimena. Included in his Sixth Book of Madrigals from 1614, it was probably composed in 1607 when the composer was still Maestro di Capella in Mantua and therefore closer to the madrigals of his Fifth Book from 1605.

The late sixteenth-century pastoral character of the poem, in its conventional context of the exploration of amorous situations or the sorrows of love, is set into music combining a traditional five voice madrigal with the incorporation of new forms derived from native dance music, the canzonetta.

In the opening section, Monteverdi’s choice for a triple meter derived from the canzonetta form, illustrates the outside world rejoicing at the coming of Spring, with melismatic rapid phrases building up a landscape of luxuriant vegetation. Comparable to the setting of the Virgin in Caravaggio’s painting, the triple meter, commonly associated with the soft or tender genre (molle), is visually expressed by the rounded protective gesture of the mother and child enclosed in a circle.

Due to the sudden shift to a hard (durus) environment, one of the few examples in his madrigals of the change of key signature for expressive purposes, the music texture slows down to quadruple meter in a declamatory style, introducing the pain of the poet left alone by the death of his beloved. The slow movement of the voices, could be related  with the rigid and angular pose of Joseph holding the music. His bare feet touching each other, perhaps a sign of his concern with the dangerous situation they face, transpose into Monteverdi’s madrigal by means of a dissonant harmony towards the end. In an poignant progression, the poet’s ultimate cry for the loss of his beloved, is expressed through the building up of an hostile musical landscape of a dusty and stony desert, where no others than wild animals and beasts can survive.

San Carlo alle quatro Fontane, ground plan

The spatial equivalent to Leonardo da Vinci’s formulation, comparing music and painting as sisters sharing the same proportional and harmonic “body”, could be related to Michelangelo’s interpretation of architecture resulting from the coexistence of contrasting elements, coming together in a homogenous and plastic form. These concerns are present in many of his works, among them the Capella Sforza and Saint Peter’s basilica in Rome, two works that influenced Borromini's own spatial solutions.

In both architects, the relation-dialogue between order-wall has in its essence the means to transform the “impassible art”, in an architecture that is permeable to the expression of the feelings.

In the context of his humanist background, the naturalism in Borromini manifests itself mainly in the variation and fantasy of the decorative details, which are part or enhance the structural elements and are related to symbolic or allegorical motifs. This process is described by Borromini as "fantasticare" (to imagine), not in the sense of playing with the form but rather the opposite; the methodical elaboration of audacious ideas which vocabulary is grounded in his profound knowledge of the materials, legacy of both his training as a mason in Milan and later work in Rome under the direction of his mentor Carlo Madeno, from whom he developed his architectural skills.

Borromini's constant impulse to innovation, expressed in his Opus Architectonicum “Non mi sarei mai posto a quella professione, col fine d’esser solo copista”, (I would never have started with this profession, only with the idea of being a copyist) is a reminder of Monteverdi own motivations expressed in the preface of his Eighth Book of Madrigals, in the reference that his goal was not the revival of ancient music - which he considers beyond reconstruction - but to use it as an inspiration for the development of his Seconda prattica. An important evidence of the humanist sources of both artists but above all of their shared view towards the renovation of a traditional language, through practice and experimentation.

An example of Borromini's exceptional inventive capacity and synthesis of traditional and new, is the ground plan level of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane. One interpretation of the geometry of the plan is made by Leo Steinberg, based in drawings from Borromini made after the construction of the church: a geometric construction related to the symbol of the trinitarian’s order,Tre et uno asieme, (three and one together), represented by a triangle circumscribed in a circle, a motif which is repeated throughout all levels of the interior, from the ground plan to the lantern and exterior façade.

Another possible interpretation, defended among others by Paolo Portoghesi, points out the fusion of two contrasting spatial forms and the juxtaposition of two opposite axes; one longitudinal, derived from a classical oval shape (molle/ figure of Maria in Caravaggio) and one transversal which can be related to the Greek cruciform shape (durus/ figure of Joseph).

The result of the fusion of these contrasting elements, is made visible in the walls of the church through alternating opposite curved surfaces: concave/expansive at the extremes of the two axes, (entrance, main altar and lateral altars) and convex/contracted in between, leading to outer compartments within the convent  of the Trinitarians (lateral chapels, stairs and cloister).    

The three works described above, - Monteverdi’s combination of a traditional form and innovative musical structure in the madrigal Zeffiro torna e'l bel tempo rimena, Caravaggio’s unconventional representation of a religious theme introducing new elements of contrast and tension in Riposo durante la fuga in Egitto, and Borromini’s dynamic reinterpretation of classical and medieval geometric impulses brought together in the ground plan of San Carlino - are three examples of a practice that finds its inspiration in traditional models but is simultaneously free and dynamic, uses elements of contrast to create space and aims to fulfil the humanist aspiration to communicate at the level of the human passions. 

A real tradition is not the relic of a past that is irretrievably gone, it is a living force that animates and informs the present[...]. Tradition assures the continuity of creation.

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Part 1- Tradition and innovation

Music cannot be called other than a sister of painting, because it is subject to the ear, the sense second to the eye , and composes harmony by the simultaneous conjunction of its proportional parts which are made to live and die within one or more harmonious beats; and these beats circumscribe the proportionality of the individual members that compose such a harmony, just as line circumscribes the individual members that make human beauty.

Leonardo da Vinci’s view of music and painting sharing the same harmonious relation as members related in a “body”, can be seen in the context of the interpretation of polyphony as one coherent organism consisting of different parts, described by Edward Lowinsky as “a new organization of space by the placing of the different voices in commensurable and harmonic intervals”.

In the further development of sixteenth century polyphony, the gradual increasing of a vertical music organization, first appears in secular music under the influence of native forms like the frottola and canzonetta in Italy and the Spanish villanella. Further developed by composers such as Luca Marenzio and Luzzasco Luzzaschi in Italy, these progressive techniques coexisted with the conservative horizontal thinking of the religious counterpoint.

It is in this environment  of change, following the path open by the technical achievements of composers such as Giaches de Wert in Mantua, that Monteverdi seems to find his roots in combination with a deep knowledge of the contrapuntal techniques learned from his teacher Ingegneri in his city of birth, Cremona.

In the context of his humanist background, according to Gary Tomlinson, in its "recognition of the passions as dynamic forces directing human thought and action", Monteverdi will add, as many of his contemporaries did, another dimension of music in which poetry has a fundamental role as a generator force, leading to alternating phases of experimentation and consolidation throughout his nine Books of Madrigals. This centring of Monteverdi’s music on the word and the close contact he had with the poets of his generation like Guarini, Rinuccini and Marino, or inspired as he was by the ones that preceded him, like Tasso and Petrarca, could therefore be seen as an important indication of his humanist concerns to join music and poetry in order to achieve a persuasive and expressive language.   

The wonder of Monteverdi’s achievement, simply put, is the increasing imagination he brought to the fundamental act of the musical transfiguration of poetry.

The humanist revival of Plato’s and Aristoteles´ ancient notions of “imitatio” (imitation) and the related concern of Monteverdi to pursue what he called in the preface of his Eight Book of Madrigals the via natturale d’ imitatione, has a parallel development in the search for "truthfulness of appearance in artistic representation", the Naturalism, from which legacy, Caravaggio- being a humanist artist and working for humanist patrons- could not be indifferent in his youth.

In this context, the influence of the Lombard school and the tradition of painting "ad vivum" using direct observation, is an important formative factor, reinforced by Leonardo da Vinci’s theories about the primacy of nature and the central role of light, colour and expression in painting. All influencing Caravaggio’s naturalism and his concerns with the contrasts of light and shadow to enhance the realistic visual representation of the human emotions.