Madonna di Loreto

The town of Loreto claimed to hold the actual house of the Virgin, flown there by angels, and pilgrims walked for weeks to reach it. Caravaggio, painting around 1604 for a family chapel in Rome, skips the flying house entirely. He sets the Virgin barefoot in a plain doorway of flaking brick, holding a heavy, squirming toddler, while two travel-worn pilgrims kneel before her on the threshold. What scandalised people was the nearest pilgrim, an old man whose bare feet are turned toward us, caked with the dirt of the road. Seventeenth century critics attacked those dirty soles as an insult to a holy image. It did not help that the Virgin was said to be modelled on a courtesan known around the city. The picture still hangs in the church it was made for, Sant'Agostino, a short walk from Piazza Navona.