Professor Butter Beard and Caravaggio’s “David with the Head of Goliath”
“Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.”
― Maya Angelou
I get angry. Like “Jekyll and Hyde” angry. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it feels like a deeply buried hurricane, impatiently whirling within a sealed ceramic pot in my soul, bursting forth sending a towering spew of swirling fire into the universe. All very dramatic, and thankfully much louder in my head than in reality.
And then it is gone. Nels usually sits, looking at me with a tip of her giant head, and I hear, “Ya done, Dad? That was a doozy. Got any bacon?” And we move forward, skipping together towards the deer park.
But what releases the sequestered beast? Is it a Tuesday of constant work-hen clucking while they woodpecker hammer me with their beaks? Or, reading with absolute shock about another devil-inspired, jaw-dropping decision coming out of Washington? Or maybe another slam as I continue to challenge my obsession with perfectionism? Or, maybe, just maybe, could it be as easy as a need for dark chocolate and some hydration…….
Acknowledging that swirling spew allows me to recognize the potential in others, hopefully before they also release their interior Smaug. The connection appears to be strongest with painters – when I look deeply into their frenzied patterns of brushstrokes, chosen color palettes, and the painted eyes their artist’s soul releases onto the canvas.
And a perfect example is my connection with Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.
The 1609 “David with the Head of Goliath” (his second painting of the same subject) is undoubtedly one of the most meaningful and most discussed work in Caravaggio scholarship. According to Giovanni Pietro Bellori, cataloguing the Borghese collection in 1672, “for Cardinal Borghese, he (Caravaggio) painted another half-length figure, of David holding Goliath’s head, which is a portrait of himself, by the hair and gripping his sword: he represented him as a youth exposed with one shoulder out of his shirt, painted with very deep shadows and background, which he would use to lend force to his figures and compositions.”
Ettore Giovanati, a leading contemporary Caravaggio scholar, writes: “the painting was dated to the end of 1609, and a gift from Caravaggio that Scipione Borghese delivered to Pope Paul V, in an attempt by the artist to obtain the pontiff’s pardon following the conviction for the murder of Ranuccio Tomassoni.” Because nothing says I’m sorry like offering your own head up on a platter?
Caravaggio’s David is perturbed, depicted with an expression mingling sadness and compassion. Many scholars agree that the decision to depict him as pensive and resigned rather than jubilant creates an unusual psychological bond between him and Goliath. This bond is further complicated by the fact that Caravaggio has depicted himself as recently beheaded Goliath, still dripping blood, while the model for David is “il suo Caravaggino” (“his own little Caravaggio”).
Giovanati believes the model for David is Cecco del Caravaggio, the artist's studio assistant in Rome some years previously, recorded as the boy “who lay with him.” No independent portraits of Cecco are known, making the identification impossible to verify, but “a sexual intimacy between David/model and Goliath/painter seems an inescapable conclusion, however, given that Caravaggio made David's sword appear to project upward, suggestively, between his legs and at an angle that echoes the diagonal linking of the protagonist's gaze to his victim.”
Alternatively, according to another contemporary scholar, based on the portrait of Caravaggio done by Ottavio Leoni, this may be a double self-portrait. The young Caravaggio (his own little Caravaggio) wistfully holds the head of the adult Caravaggio. The wild and lawless behavior of the young Caravaggio essentially had destroyed his life as a mature adult, and he reflects on his own condition in a painting of a related religious subject.
What I see is the thin and almost frantic rapid application of oil paint, the urgency with which the forms were traced, the limited choice of palate and the dramatic use of a non-existent light source. An erupting dragon spewing swirls of fire onto the canvas.
These swirls spun their webs throughout my weekend. As a “justifiable anger-suppression treat” for myself, I hunted down and purchased a large molcajete (the Mexican version of a mortar and pestle) to pound and grind pesto from my abundant late-summer harvest of basil. First came dinner and a horror movie with Nels: fresh pasta tossed with heirloom tomatoes and pesto, a viewing of “Abigail,” all finished with half of a pint of Nicholas Creamery Fresh Corn Ice Cream. (Nellie loves ice cream!)
This morning, the swirls also inhabited my daybreak baking. For my farmer friends, I spun together a Lemon Brioche dough, lathered on a layer of pesto and then jelly-rolled, sliced and baked them into individual mini-tornadoes bursts of flavor, brushed fresh out-of-the-oven with additional olive oil.
One final enlightened mantra for you, gentle reader: “Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.” - Mark Twain
Professor Butter Beard Pesto Brioche Rolls
2 Dozen Rolls
Pesto (in this order):
4 garlic cloves
¼ tsp Kosher salt
Leaves from one large bunch of fresh basil (about 5 ounces)
3-4 Tbsp toasted pinenuts
2 ounces freshly grated parmesan cheese
½ cup of your best olive oil
Lemon Brioche:
¼ cup granulated sugar
Zest of two lemons
4 cups bread flour
1 tsp fine sea salt
3 ½ tsp instant dried yeast
5 large eggs, room temperature
1 cup buttermilk
2 sticks (one cup) unsalted butter at room temperature
1) Using a large mortar and pestle, grind together in the following order: the garlic and salt, basil leaves (add in four additions), the toasted and cooled pinenuts and then the parmesan cheese. Fold in ¾ of the olive oil. Scrape the pesto into a bowl, pour the remaining olive oil over the top and cover with plastic. Refrigerate until use.
2) Using a standing mixer, whisk together the sugar and zest until evenly combined, moist and fragrant. Add the flour, salt, dried yeast, eggs and buttermilk and mix on a slow speed for 2 minutes to combine the ingredients, then increase the speed to medium for 10 minutes to form a soft elastic dough.
3) Add the butter, in 1 Tbsp pieces, and continue to mix on a medium speed to form a very shiny and soft dough. Scrape into an oiled bowl and cover with plastic. Set aside to double in size (or even better, refrigerate the dough overnight).
4) Line two muffin pans with parchment paper liners. Tip out the dough and divide it in half. Return one half to the oiled bowl while you work with the first half.
5) Roll the first half into a rectangle, roughly 12” by 16”. Spread ¾ cup of your pesto over the upper two-thirds of the dough. Roll the dough up into a tight log. Use dental floss to cut the log into twelve even pieces. Place each piece onto a parchment liner and place into the muffin pan.
6) Preheat your oven to 400 while you prep the second set of rolls.
7) Once your oven comes to temperature, your first batch of rolls should be ready to bake. Bake for 15 minutes, rotate the pan, and bake for an additional 3-4 minutes. After removing the pan from the oven, brush the tops of the rolls with additional olive oil.
8) Cool in the pans for five minutes, then remove to further cool on a wire rack.
