Caravaggio’s Rumore: Fact, Fiction and Authority in Giovanni Baglione’s Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects

Abstract

Since its publication in 1642, Giovanni Baglione’s Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects from the Pontificate of Gregory XIII of 1572 until the times of Pope Urban VIII in 1642, has been classified as either largely factual or obviously biased, a reflection of the culture of slander in early modern Rome. Definitions of what constituted textual ‘truth’ have changed dramatically since Baglione wrote his Lives, though this has not adequately informed debate. Also overlooked is the degree to which Baglione staked his entire rhetorical agenda around notions of truth and untruth, rumour and opinion, which emerge as central themes throughout both the framing elements and the individual artists’ lives. The present article adopts a new methodological approach to these questions, reassessing Baglione’s central themes of rumour, fama and truth in relation to questions of textuality and intertextuality, fiction and disinformation, rhetoric and agency, and drawing upon recent literary and historical studies of rumour, fame and news when doing so. At the same time, this study investigates conceptions of fame and rumour in relation to contemporary practices of art criticism in oral, manuscript and print cultures and in light of the rivalry between Caravaggio and Baglione.