The Babuino: A Talking Statue and a Libel Trial
Why is it significant?
Partway down the street, beside the church of Sant'Atanasio dei Greci, a battered stone figure lounges above a fountain basin, so worn and so ugly that Romans named him the baboon, il babuino. The street took its name from him.
Key Facts
| Place | The Babuino: A Talking Statue and a Libel Trial |
|---|---|
| Address | Via del Babuino, 00187 Roma RM, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.90710, 12.47990 |
| Part of Walk | Caravaggio's Rome: Masterpieces, Brawls and a Killing |
| Generated | Generated |
Partway down the street, beside the church of Sant'Atanasio dei Greci, a battered stone figure lounges above a fountain basin, so worn and so ugly that Romans named him the baboon, il babuino. The street took its name from him. He is really an ancient Silenus, a drunken companion of Bacchus, and he is one of Rome's talking statues.
In papal Rome, where you could not criticise a pope or a cardinal openly, people hung anonymous verses on a handful of old statues at night. Pasquino, near Piazza Navona, was the most famous, but the Babuino joined in, and so did a few others. The verses were sharp, funny and often obscene, and by morning half the city had read them.
Caravaggio lived inside this culture of anonymous verse, and in 1603 it landed him in court. A rival painter, Giovanni Baglione, sued him, his friend Orazio Gentileschi and the architect Onorio Longhi for spreading poems that mocked Baglione and his new Resurrection for the Jesuit church. The verses were crude, full of jokes about his talent and worse. Caravaggio denied having written them.
The court record is one of the few places where we hear Caravaggio's own voice. Asked which painters he thought good, he named a few, and explained that a good painter, a valentuomo, is one who knows how to paint well and how to imitate natural things well. In one sentence, he summed up his whole revolution: paint what you actually see. He spent about two weeks in prison, and was let out thanks to the intervention of the French ambassador.
Baglione got the last word, though. Decades later he published a book of artists' lives, including Caravaggio's, full of grudging praise and poisoned little details, and much of what we think we know about the painter still comes from his enemy. Keep walking toward Via del Corso, and turn south along it to a huge domed church built by the Lombards of Rome.