"È la prospettiva dilettevole e giocondissima": Caravaggio, gli Insensati e il dibattito sulle pitture ‘nella sommità delle volte’

With reference to the art works of Giovanni and Cherubino Alberti, the “insensate” academician Cesare Ripa defined perspective a "delightful and very joyful” science (Iconologia 1603). Yet during the sixteenth century the vaulted ceilings featuring too daring perspectival foreshortening were often regarded as “difficult” inventions. Not by chance Raphael had always avoided such foreshortenings, and the same did Tommaso Laureti in the vaulted ceiling of the Sala di Costantino (1582-1585). In the years between sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the issue of perspectival foreshortening was intensely debated, involving also another “insensate” academician, namely Federico Zuccari. Above all, such academic dispute involved Annibale Carracci and Caravaggio, the two greatest artists of the time in Rome.