ABSTRACT
Chad tells of his long-standing and unusual relationship with Caravaggio’s Doubting Thomas. It begins one night when a friend shows him an art book, in which Chad finds a painting recounting a story that, as a devout Christian, he knows well. What Chad sees in this version is something he has never seen before. It is somehow different. There is something about the painting that all of the other versions-no matter how faithful they have been to the biblical text-have lacked. Although incredibly evident to Chad, he cannot describe what it is. All he can say is that it is there and it is near, alive, and different. The painting seems to speak to Chad whereas the other versions have merely been mute allegories. And yet, the painting that so moves Chad is just that: a visual depiction of a
biblical story with a particular message. It is Caravaggio’s visual interpretation of a story that has been re-told innumerable times over generations. Moreover, what Chad encounters is not even the painting itself, but a reproduction that has been miniaturized to fit onto the page of a small booklet. Quite simply, it is a distorted reproduction of a representation of a mythic story. Despite these mediations and modifications however, somehow this painting
contains a particular appeal, an intensity that Chad has never before-and never since-experienced. It seems to bring the story closer to Chad and Chad closer to it. We might even say that Chad is brought into a personal relationship with this painting. Not just a pretty picture, this painting “pertains to [him]self” (personal, adj., Online Etymology Dictionary, 2014). Chad finds it has an animating force that addresses him uniquely. Indeed, this painting so engages Chad that, despite him not being interested in
art, it seems to evoke a deep affection. Chad falls in love with Caravaggio that night. But it seems a strange kind of love. It leads Chad, by his own admission, to learn about Caravaggio and search out his paintings, but nothing he finds ever compares to that first encounter. Rather than a fulfilling love, it seems to be a love that leaves Chad always unsatisfied. It is a love unfulfilled-promised but not found-or a love lost-something briefly encountered and then torn from his grasp; sweetly remembered but never re-experienced. Over the course of our life, we enjoy many images, including some that we may
even “love.” We may look upon them with fondness, pleasure, or sadness. We may, like Chad, keep them close to us, move them from house to hand and hang them on our walls. In some ways, they become our companions. They are the images in our lives and of our lives. Perhaps photographs of friends, camping trips, or favorite artworks, they may call forth memories or feelings when we look upon them. In containing these evocations, the images we love have a “completeness.” When we look, we remember or feel. They may even seem like old friends. But through their very evocation of memories, emotions, or people, these images also contain a distance. In looking upon a print of our favourite artwork, we may think, “It is as
lovely today as the first time we saw it,” but in that moment we are not only enjoying the artwork but also remembering when we saw “the original.” Or, if we have not seen the original, we might think that “this is it, and yet it is not it.” Similarly, looking at a favorite old photograph of our partner, it may be the case that he is called to mind. But we may also simultaneously notice how he has changed in the intervening years. It seems that even as images can call something near to us, they may also remind us that, by being images, they are always removed, distinct, and separate from the person, place, or event that they represent. Occasionally, however, an image may surpass the limitation of its form and seem
to contain-despite how strange or miraculous it may seem-the essence of its subject. For Chad, despite looking at a reproduction, the picture in his friend’s booklet seems to have the power of an original. It becomes the thing itself. In his phenomenology of photography, Barthes (1980/1981) describes sorting through his mother’s photographs after her death, “looking for the truth of the face that [he] had loved” (p. 76). Even though he recognizes aspects of her in each image, “none seemed to [him] to be really ‘right’” (p. 64). And then he finds “it,” a photograph of his mother that he calls the Winter Garden Photograph. Surprisingly, this photograph is of his mother at age five, an age at which Barthes never knew her. Yet, within the face of that child, Barthes perceives something that allows him to say “this is my mother.” Somehow, this single photograph shows him the essence, the “truth,” of his mother. He writes that it “contained more than what the technical being of photography can reasonably offer” (p. 70). “It achieved for [him], utopically, the impossible science of the unique being” (p. 71). But, Barthes concedes, this perception is likely unique and individual. He suspects that anyone else examining the Winter Garden Photograph would not see it as he does and, therefore, it is the one photograph that Barthes refuses to include in his text. Because of its specialness to him, it remains reserved from the sight of his readers. Images that achieve this kind of unique being are startling, powerful, and may
easily be fallen in love with. Might this be what Chad experienced that night long ago? Might he have encountered the painting’s unique being? Or was there, within the painting, the unique being of something captured there? (And can we differentiate the two?) Like Barthes, might Chad have perceived in Caravaggio’s painting some “truth” or “essence”? And if so, what? While Barthes recognizes in the Winter Garden his mother as who she was in life, what might Chad have perceived? The story of Doubting Thomas is a famous account of failing to stay faithful when challenged. In it, the Apostle Thomas refuses to believe in the resurrection of Christ until he has seen Christ, touched the nail wounds, and put his hand into Christ’s fatal side wound. On the eighth day, Christ appears to the Apostles and invites Thomas to verify his existence in order that Thomas may believe. The story concludes with Jesus saying, “Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” (John 20:29). It is a simple story that is oft repeated in sermons. Its message is to be taken to heart by the faithful: one should not need proof to believe. But Chad already knows this lesson. He learned it growing up. He has seen it in all of the other pictures and paintings of
Doubting Thomas. What startling aspect, then, does Caravaggio’s painting reveal that others have lacked? Like Barthes, Chad seems to literally see in the painting something fundamental
and crucial. We might even imagine both Barthes and Chad pointing and saying, “This is it!” even as they have difficulty saying exactly what the this of the image is. Zwicky (2008) writes,
The this strikes into us like a shaft of light. We are focused by it, and experience it as focused: what is this is unique, it has an utterly distinct… flavour or fragrance. The phenomenal experience often includes an awareness of not being able to give an account of the this-we can point, but not say.
