ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Caravaggio’s paintings in the Cerasi Chapel in Rome, focusing on the peculiar interaction of different temporalities experienced by the beholder. Conceived as devices of actualization of the Gospel, the paintings associate what Walter Benjamin defines as Now-Time and the time of Then in different ways. A close reading of these celebrated works will thus disclose the heterochronic structure of the internal temporality of the paintings, yet it will also approach the wider question of temporality in the history of art as academic discipline.
