ABSTRACT
Decapitation went to Caravaggio and Shakespeare's heads and charmed their differently suspended, astonishing revelations of the "Power of Beyond-the-Grave" represented by Medusa, the "dying horror". A lovingly detailed dissection underlies a number of religious paintings by Caravaggio, ever greedy for spectacular moments of separation and discontinuity. Public decapitations were also topical in contemporary Rome, like that of Beatrice Cenci in September 1599, a thought constantly at the back of Caravaggio's mind after being sentenced to death for killing Ranuccio Tomassoni in a duel in 1606. Caravaggio often performs what Fried called "the invention of absorption" by showing persons "deeply or wholly absorbed in what they are doing, feeling, and thinking". Caravaggio portrayed himself by way of a round, convex mirror; a "scudo a specchio" figured among his personal belongings in August 1606, possibly the same appearing in Marta Converts Magdalene.
