I revisited Caravaggio’s Tooth Puller again today and I got a crazy idea. Skip to the bottom of the post to read my speculation. First, here’s the wall text written by the exhibit’s curators:
The Tooth Puller is the painting by Caravaggio most mentioned in the Medici collections in 17th-century Florence. Caravaggio probably painted it in Messina in 1609 for Antonio Martelli, a Florentine knight of Malta and the Prior of Messina who may well have brought it back to Florence with him on his return to the city and offered it as a gift to Grand Duke Cosimo II. The picture undoubtedly played a crucial role in fueling the grand duke’s passion for collecting convivial scenes. (Emphasis mine.)
Some new observations to add to my previous thoughts:
- It takes a different mindset than mine to see a man in a lot of pain while a crowd gathers round as a “convivial scene”.
- That said, I can understand this painting being popular as it is very interesting and beautifully executed. This photo does not do justice to the texture of the wrinkled skin on the old woman on the right or the bald man center left.
- There’s something funny happening with the lighting. The photo from Wikipedia does a much better job showing Caravaggio’s management of light than the actual painting does. The light source is clearly coming from the left. Whereas the photo clearly shows shadows on the table (of the men on the left and the still life pot in the foreground), my memory of the painting has most of the table completely dark. Unfortunately, this exhibits prohibits all photography (with or without flash) so I couldn’t document this with my camera.
- Perhaps the way it’s lit in the exhibit or it was from an earlier, more restored time? Or perhaps the Wikipedia version is of a copy that has aged better?
- Last time I visited this painting, I didn’t notice the small boy in the lower left.
- The man in the lower right has a lot of skin showing and the pallor of his skin makes me wonder if he’s a symbol of death. His unhealthy paleness really comes through when looking at the painting in person versus in photographs. Perhaps he is a reminder of the poor dental patient’s mortality?
OK, so here’s my crazy new idea—suggested by my last two bullets above. Perhaps we see the cycle of life and death in a clockwise fashion starting with the young boy in the lower left. From there, we jump to the young man with a full head of hair on the left who represnts young adulthood. Then the balding man near the top, left of center, represents middle age. Finally, we reach old age on the far right in the form of the old woman. And after that, the death represented by the pallor of the man on the bottom right. At the center of it all, is mortal man, tortured by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. And as I mentioned in my previous post, Fortune looks pretty gleeful here.
Except…the bald dude on the left (just below the other bald guy who has a little more hair) really throws a wrench into this pretty theory of mine. He’s the wrong age to fit into the cycle of life as I’ve described it. :P