“Touching is Believing: Caravaggio’s Doubting Thomas in Counter-Reformatory Rome”
Caravaggio’s depiction of the Doubting Thomas was a groundbreaking image in the iconographic history of this subject and began, I contend, what was to become a Roman pictorial tradition of the Doubting Thomas which capitalized on the powerful message of faith embodied in a story about doubt.
No previous study has yet considered the Doubting Thomas with regard to how Saint Thomas and his cult were perceived in Rome at the turn of the seventeenth century. In so doing, I argue for the importance of these factors in interpreting the interplay of touch and gaze at the center of one of Caravaggio’s most compelling works.
Citation: Benay, Erin. “Touching is Believing: Caravaggio’s Doubting Thomas in Counter-Reformatory Rome.” In Caravaggio: Reflections and Refractions, edited by Lorenzo Pericolo and David Stone, 59-82. Burlington: Ashgate, 2014.
Caravaggio, The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, 1601-2, oil on canvas, Sanssouci, Potsdam