Posted in: Comics | Tagged: bonelli, caravaggio, Comics, entertainment, italy

The Comic Book Straight-Washing Of Caravaggio

Published Fri, 22 Aug 2014 18:00:17 -0500

Italian comics publisher Bonelli recently published a comic about the life of the artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, entitled Kill Caravaggio which manages to totally avoid the fact that he was bisexual or homosexual.

After that, one of the publisher's star writers, Gianfranco Manfredi (from Magic Wind) made a few declarations about it:

The idea to focus an issue of the anthology series Stories on Caravaggio is not a bad one, as it was not bad idea to dedicate a special issue all in colour, so his paintings could be digitally inserted in the comic without losing their colouring … That, however, puts emphasis on the fact that none of the chosen paintings by Caravaggio had subjects who were homoerotic.

Now, some could argue that maybe they were not essential to the story. True. However, the fact that Caravaggio has become famous for his voluptuous young peasant and his angels, for which models used which – at least in some cases – it is assumed they were also her lovers, is one of the keys to understanding of his art and his person … and the fact that he had many protectors in high places, because – even if you never realized the extent to which Caravaggio was homosexual and / or bisexual – it seems fairly certain that they were homosexual cardinals and nobles that have commissioned some of his most famous paintings, and that – just happened – in more than one occasion have pulled it out of trouble.

However, in Kill Caravaggi, it refers only to its patrons, but not to the flourishing homosexual underground of which were part of the patrons of the time, or even just the fact that Caravaggio used as models of male prostitutes as well as female prostitutes.

But the thing that perplexes me in particular was the presence, alongside Caravaggio, his apprentice and model Leonello Spada, who already according to the biographer Carlo Cesare Malvasia (1616-1693) was one of his "fellow debauchees" as well as "very close to his heart" … Yet in Kill Caravaggio, the most intimate moment that the two share is a malaria attack upon the painter, who tries to mitigate his apprentice with a medicine … And, in order to dispel any suspicion of the average reader Bonelli, Leonello Spada turns to Caravaggio calling him "my friend".

He also mentions "the writer of this story is also known for his contribution to Dylan Dog, if you know what I mean". You would never see a homosexual character in Bonelli's top selling Western comic Tex, but I don't remember seeing one even in the publisher's edgier series, like the mentioned Dylan Dog...

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