“The Caravaggio Syndrome”
“The Caravaggio Syndrome,” a 2024 novel by St. Lawrence University Professor Alessandro Giardino, weaves Renaissance-era fiction and a contemporary, campus-style storyline into a time-bending, historically rooted narrative.
“The Caravaggio Syndrome” is Giardino’s third published book, but notably his first novel. In it, Giardino dabbles with ‘head hopping,’ a literary technique in which different chapters are narrated by different characters — in this case three from two different time periods. “You know, I had this idea made from the very beginning that the past would shed light on the present and the present on the past,” he said of the style. “I wanted them to give meaning to each other.”
His first character, Leyla, is a down-on-her-luck art history professor who lands herself a gig at St. Luke’s University, a liberal arts college in upstate New York’s Saranac Lake (sounds familiar, right?). There, she studies works by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, an Italian painter. Specifically, she takes interest in a specific character, a breastfeeding female in his 1607 painting “The Seven Works of Mercy,” which fuels her real-life obsession with motherhood. Leyla’s obsession leads to her courting of Pablo, a colleague at St. Luke’s, who eventually gets her pregnant.
During her pregnancy, Leyla recruits a student in one of her classes, Michael, to help her produce further research on Caravaggio. Michael is the author’s second narrator. Through his character we learn of his college and early adulthood struggle for identity, which stems from his small-town upbringing and desire for more in life as well as his passion for art. However, after some progress on the research, a rift forms between pupil and professor once Leyla realizes both Pablo’s and Michael’s attentions have shifted from her to one another. Eventually the two flee Saranac Lake to start a new life in Naples, Italy.
The shift in setting to Italy helps introduce the historical aspect of the book. It was once the home of Giardino’s third narrator, Tommaso Campanella, whose chapters are inspired and rooted in the real-life philosopher of the same name. Campanella serves as an explainer of sorts, with his turn of the seventeenth century-set chapters often mirroring actions and developments of Leyla and Michael’s contemporary storyline, specifically those about identity exploration.
Campanella, who was best known for writing the utopian classic “The City of the Sun,” spent much of his writing life isolated in prison because of his progressive theology — something Giardino related to while writing book quarantined during the COVID-19 pandemic. “I felt particularly connected to Campanella’s confinement,” he said. “But also because we were both writing at a time when opinions on scientific matters could really divide people and be incendiary.”
What Giardino, who was born in Naples himself, most enjoyed about writing the historical section was further exploring his birthplace’s history. “It really allowed me to travel back in time and come away with a greater sense of what seventeenth century Naples was at the time,” said Giardino. “I got to be a little less narrow and a little broader in the study of the time period that was enjoyable.”
The author wanted his portrait of historical Naples and its fictional Campanella to be as accurate as possible. However, he said that the source material, Campenella’s seventeenth century diary, created some unique problems — especially since Giardino’s book was written in two languages. “We have Campanella’s writings in Italian, but we don’t have them in English,” he said. “Even in the Italian version I had to find a compromise so that the characters could be accessible. I wanted it to be good English but also for the reader to still feel that it was written by an Italian.”
St. Lawrence students familiar with “The Caravaggio Syndrome” noticed some similarities between Giardino’s St. Luke’s University and their alma mater. For example, they both share the “SLU’ acronym, are liberal arts colleges, and are located in Northern New York. “It wasn’t really about St. Lawrence, but I thought that people would like the illusion of [an] autobiography as a way for people to connect to the story more,” said the author. “So I found a middle ground where people could think, ‘wait, is this like fiction or is there something true about it?’”
That illusion he referenced has led some to think that other elements of the book are also autobiographical — specifically the three main characters who frequently display predatory, adulterous, and often abusive traits along their quest of relationship exploration. “They [readers] always think you’re speaking about yourself, and you are in a certain way, but you’re also speaking about all the people in the world around you,” said Giardino.
He said that when the book got published, he was worried that some of the people in his life that displayed those undesirable traits would catch on to the characters they inspired. “I was actually a little bit more afraid of other people recognizing themselves in the book than myself, because I can take it, and I have exposed a lot of things about other people and they may recognize themselves in these characters,” said Giardino. “The good thing is that people are not that self-aware.”
If you have an interest in the Italian Renaissance this could be a book of interest as Giardino’s depiction of Campanella is surprisingly accurate to the real-life man. Additionally, it’s a feat of writing, process-wise, as the author overcame the challenge of writing a book in two different languages that flows both clearly and poetically in both. In doing so, he uniquely recreates a portrait of Renaissance Naples and one of its most prominent philosophers, all while telling a morally ambiguous, contemporary narrative, both of which complement each other.
Giardino said that he has already started working on his next novel — this one will focus on French socialites in the 15th century.