The Raising of Lazarus

When Pasquale Ottini came to Rome from Verona in 1609, Caravaggio's Calling of Saint Matthew had hung in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi for nine years, where any painter could study it. The scholar Pietro Zampetti saw its trace here, in the long arm stretched out with one finger pointing, the gesture with which Caravaggio's Christ summons a tax collector. Around 1614 Ottini gave it to a different summons, Jesus calling his dead friend out of the grave. Lazarus sits up on the edge of his tomb, almost naked, a white cloth across his lap, while women beside him stare and two youths have climbed up behind for a better view. Cardinal Scipione Borghese obtained it from Martiniani, a neighbour with a vineyard beside the cardinal's estate, and early inventories mistook the owner's name for the painter's.