Focusing on the Analysis of Il Perdono di Gesualdo, analyze the Infanticide about the Allegories or "Black Legends".
Infanticide Dennis Morrier notes that “the presence of the small child at the centre of the painting has caused much speculation.” Three possible explanations have been considered.
According to “a legend propagated in the village of Gesualdo, the representation of this child in purgatory would be the proof of a second assassination attributable to Carlo. In fact, this popular legend evokes the birth, after that of Don Emmanuele around 1587, of a second child to Donna Maria." During his reclusion, “Believing that he recognised in its features a resemblance to the Duke of Andria, he had the cradle, and within it the unfortunate child, suspended by means of silk ropes attached to the four corners of the ceiling in the large hall of his castle. He then commanded the cradle to be subjected to ‘violent undulatory movements,’ until the infant, unable to draw breath, ‘rendered up its innocent soul to God’.” It is even said that Gesualdo covered up the child’s cries with the sound of musicians performing one of his macabre madrigals.
The docufiction Death for Five Voices, directed by Werner Herzog for ZDF in 1995, associates this event with the madrigal Belta, poi che t’assenti of the Sixth Book of Madrigals, a composition “on the beauty of death” with audacious chromatics that “completely disorient the listener” even today:However, for twentieth century historians, “it is clear that this horrible crime, many times retold and embellished, is nothing but an invention of the ancient chroniclers. No official document has ever confirmed it.”Another story recounts that “Maria d’Avalaos was supposedly pregnant by the Duke of Andria when her husband killed her. The child in the painting would be this little lost soul in limbo before being born. Here again, no testimony worthy of faith can be cited to confirm this thesis.”There is “another explanation, less sensational but more plausible,” for the presence of this infant soul. Gesualdo's second son, born on January 20, 1595, from his marriage to Eleonora d’Este, named Alfonsino in homage to the Duke of Ferrare, Alfonso d’Este, died on October 22, 1600, “dealing a fatal blow to the conjugal relations of the princely couple.” According to Glenn Watkins, “we see a child understandably identified by many as Alfonsino, […] now somewhat unusually provided with wings and rising from the flames of purgatory.”The hostility shown by Eleonora's family, especially by her brother Cesare d’Este, towards the Prince of Venosa comes across in their private correspondences, where “Carlo Gesualdo figures as a veritable monster who even prevented his wife from assisting her young son in his agony.” They accuse him, directly and indirectly, of the death of his own child. For this reason, “commentators of the Perdono di Gesualdo could not help themselves from associating these allegorical figures with the assassinated lovers and with an even more horrible crime: infanticide.”
Werner Herzog Cesare d’Este Glenn Watkins Gesualdo Madrigal allegorical Eleonora d’Este Carlo Gesualdo Venosa madrigal