Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane (74 page)

he boarded a
felucca
, and, suffering the bitterest pain, he started out for Rome . . . When he went ashore the Spanish guard arrested him by mistake, taking him for another Cavaliere, and held him prisoner. Although he was soon released, the
felucca
which was carrying him and his possessions was no longer to be found. Thus in a state of anxiety and desperation he ran along the beach in the full heat of the summer sun, and when he reached Porto Ercole, he collapsed and was seized with a malignant fever. He died within a few days at about forty years of age . . .
144

Mancini gives much less detail. Wrongly and a bit strangely, since he knew better, he has Caravaggio leaving for Rome from Malta. He also omits the story of Caravaggio’s imprisonment, release and desperate pursuit of the
felucca
, but agrees with Baglione and Bellori that the painter died at Porto Ercole:

He left with the hope of being pardoned and went to Civita Vecchia [Porto Ercole, to be precise, according to a marginal note in the text], where, stricken with a malignant fever, he died miserably and without care, at the height of his glory, being about thirty-five or forty years of age. He was buried nearby.
145

Certain elements of the early biographers’ accounts of Caravaggio’s death are questionable. He certainly did not travel to Porto Ercole on foot, for example. But in essence they got the facts right. What they said happened was, more or less, what actually happened.

The true sequence of events has been confirmed and fleshed out by two contemporary newspaper reports and a remarkable letter found in the state archive of Naples.

On 28 July a Roman
avviso
reported that ‘There has been news of the death of Michelangelo Caravaggio, the famous painter, excellent in colouring and in drawing from nature, following his illness in Port’ Ercole.’
146
Three days later, another Roman
avviso
confirmed the news, adding the detail that he had died at Porto Ercole ‘while he was coming from Naples to Rome, having obtained the lifting of the death sentence he was under’.
147
The speed with which these reports appeared suggests that the writers may have received their information direct from Porto Ercole itself, which was a day’s fast ride from Rome.

But the papal nephew, Scipione Borghese, had heard the news even quicker than the
avviso
writers. He knew that Caravaggio was dead as early as 23 July. But although he got his information with lightning speed, it was not entirely reliable, because Borghese’s source wrongly told him that the painter had died not at Porto Ercole but on the little island of Procida, a day’s sail west of Naples.
148
Presumably for that reason Borghese immediately wrote to the papal nuncio in Naples, Deodato Gentile, Bishop of Caserta, urgently demanding more intelligence. He wanted to know what had happened to poor Caravaggio. Even more pressingly, he wanted to know what had happened to the paintings in the dead man’s luggage. As far as Borghese was concerned, they were now his property.
149

The papal nuncio in Naples was indeed able to tell Scipione Borghese what had happened. His response to the papal nephew anticipates the accounts of Caravaggio’s death given by both Baglione and Bellori by many years. Yet it turns out to match their descriptions of what happened so exactly, albeit with more detail, that it was in all probability their main source of information in the first place. What Gentile told Borghese became common knowledge in Rome.

Gentile’s letter was dated 29 July. He began by acknowledging receipt of Borghese’s request for information, which had reached him on 24 July.
150
He confessed that Caravaggio’s death was ‘completely new’ to him. But he had made enquiries and found answers to the papal nephew’s questions. He gave Borghese the full story of the painter’s death, as he now understood it:

Poor Caravaggio did not die at Procida, but at Port’ Ercole, because having arrived with the
felucca
, in which he went to Palo, he was incarcerated by the captain there. In the uproar, the
felucca
went back out into the open sea and returned to Naples. Caravaggio stayed in prison, then freed himself by paying over a huge sum of money, and perhaps on foot reached Port’ Ercole by land, where, falling ill, he departed this life.

On its return, the
felucca
brought the things he’d left behind to the house of the lady Marchesa of Caravaggio, who lives at Chiaia, and from where Caravaggio himself had left. I immediately made sure the pictures were there, and found that there are no more than three, the two St Johns and the Magdalen, and they are in the above-mentioned house of the lady Marchesa, to whom I have sent [a message] straight away to ask that they be well looked after, so they are not ruined before they can be seen, or come into anyone’s hands, since they were intended [for Your Lordship], and it is necessary to negotiate on Your Lordship’s behalf with the heirs and creditors of the said Caravaggio and give them honest satisfaction.
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Deodato Gentile signed off with a promise to make sure that the paintings would end up in ‘the hands of Your Most Illustrious Lordship’.

Despite this letter’s dispassionate clarity, and despite the fact that it was written within days of the events that it describes, all kinds of arcane conspiracy theories about Caravaggio’s death continue to proliferate.
152
He is said to have been the victim of a plot involving the Knights of Malta, or Costanza Colonna, or the pope himself – or all of them, acting fiendishly in concert. He is said to have been ambushed at sea, his body cut in pieces and dumped underwater in a sack. The proponents of such theories invariably claim that the information gathered by Deodato Gentile was nothing more than a smokescreen of falsehood and fabrication – a tall tale to cover up a murder. But there is no real reason to doubt the report that Gentile carefully filed to Scipione Borghese, who was not only one of the most powerful men in Italy but the head of the papal system of justice. Attempting to deceive such a man would have been foolhardy, and probably futile.

In truth, the supposed mystery of Caravaggio’s death is nothing of the kind. Conspiracy theories are a distraction. Caravaggio’s true fate was dark and dramatic enough to need no elaboration or reinvention. His last journey can now be clearly reconstructed, the cause of his death understood.

This is what happened.

Hoping that his pardon had been arranged, the painter set out from Naples to Rome on or around 9 July 1610. He left in a
felucca
, probably the
Santa Maria di Porto Salvo
, with his three paintings stowed in the hold. He is unlikely to have been the only passenger. A
felucca
was a two-masted boat with square-set sails and a spitsail, which could be rowed if winds were unfavourable. It was crewed by between six and eight men, and to hire one was expensive. The usual practice was for a skipper to wait until he had two or more customers going in the same direction before beginning a journey. It is probable that Caravaggio had a travelling companion who was going to Porto
Ercole, or the boatman had a delivery to make there. Either way, Cara
vaggio knew that Porto Ercole was the boat’s final destination.
153

About a week after setting sail, the
felucca
carrying Caravaggio and his paintings docked at Palo, a high-security fort manned by a Spanish garrison, some twenty miles west of Rome. It was not the most common landing place for travellers to Rome, especially travellers wanting to arrive discreetly.
154
But Palo was a centre for the distribution and transportation of goods and materials, as well as a fortress.
155
It made sense for Caravaggio to land there because with his three heavy paintings in large boxes he needed a horse-drawn carriage or cart to complete his journey.

When he got to Palo, however, something went badly wrong. His papers may have been out of order, or perhaps he just made a remark the captain of the garrison did not like. Whatever it was, before his luggage could be unloaded, he was taken away to a holding cell. ‘In all the uproar,’ Deodato Gentile told Scipione Borghese, ‘the
felucca
went back out into the open sea and returned to Naples.’ Gentile’s wording suggests a fracas, with Caravaggio resisting arrest, shouting and perhaps characteristically trying to draw his sword as he was forcibly restrained.

Avoiding further involvement in the scuffle, the skipper put out to sea again. He would indeed return to Naples, but not immediately. First, with his other customer, or to make his other delivery, he had to get to Porto Ercole, some fifty miles north and, depending on the wind, about a couple of days’ journey by sea further from Rome, and from Naples.

Meanwhile, Caravaggio was forced to cool his heels in jail. The cause of his imprisonment may have been trivial, because he was allowed to buy his way out. At this point all the accounts become a little vague, or fanciful, suggesting there were no witnesses to what happened next. According to Deodato Gentile, Caravaggio, ‘perhaps
on foot, reached Porto Ercole by land’. Baglione elaborated that specu
lation into the maddened run of a desperate man along a parched coastline in the height of summer: ‘in his desperation he started out along the beach in the cruel July sun, trying to catch sight of the vessel which was carrying his belongings.’ The story clearly appealed to Bellori, who repeated it.

But it is obviously false. Assuming that Caravaggio got out of jail within a day of his arrest, he left Palo on 16 or 17 July. Scipione Borghese knew that he was dead by 23 July, which means that he actually died on 21 July at the very latest, and probably earlier. In other words, his journey from Palo to Porto Ercole can only have taken a few days, probably just a couple. But the distance between the two places is some fifty miles. In high summer, a man convalescing from serious injuries would have struggled to make that journey on foot in less than four or five days.
156

Caravaggio may have been desperate, but he was not mad. Throughout his life he had shown a cool head in tight situations. It suited Baglione’s purposes to invent the story of the enraged pursuit, because it paved the way for his smug ending – ‘he died miserably – indeed, just as he had lived’ – but the truth is that Caravaggio had to catch up with the boat because it was carrying the paintings that were the price of his compact with Scipione Borghese. If he did not, he could not return to Rome. He knew from conversations with the skipper, or with his travelling companion, that the boat had gone to Porto Ercole. Given the ‘uproar’ that had accompanied his arrest at Palo, he certainly could not count on the boat returning there with his possessions. So he had to go to find it.

Palo was a staging post, so even though the boat had a head start, he could easily get to Porto Ercole first. He would simply have to ride post along the coastal delivery route. With a change of horse, he might cover the whole distance in a single day. It would have been exhausting, but it was no insane race against fate. It was the logical thing to do. He left Palo probably on 16 or 17 July, and a day later arrived in Porto Ercole, another small coastal settlement, manned by a Spanish garrison. But the stress of his arrest at Palo, and the effort of getting to Porto Ercole to recover his paintings, finally broke him. In Porto Ercole, probably on 18 or 19 July, Caravaggio died.

The boat carrying his paintings arrived almost simultaneously, perhaps shortly afterwards. The skipper and crew soon learned the news of Caravaggio’s illness and death. The painter was buried, hurriedly and without ceremony. In the heat of summer a body would decay quickly, so there could be no delay. Since he died alone, without relatives or friends to care for him, he was placed in an unmarked grave. His death was not recorded in the parish records. This has been regarded as a sinister omission by the conspiracy theorists. But there is an unsinister explanation for it. Porto Ercole’s only priest was in dispute with the town fathers and on strike at the time. No deaths were recorded there in the summer of 1610.
157

The boat carrying Caravaggio’s possessions could do no more than return to Naples. Presumably the vessel left immediately. It was certainly back in Naples by 29 July, when Deodato Gentile reported to Scipione Borghese that Caravaggio’s paintings had been returned to Costanza Colonna’s palace.

The exact cause of Caravaggio’s death is unknown. Deodato Gentile, writing just over a week after the event, simply said that he fell ill and departed life. On the evidence of the agonized self-portrait in
The Martyrdom of St Ursula
, and the shakiness of the hand that painted it, he was already unwell when he set out for Rome. The stress of his arrest, and the frantic ride to Porto Ercole in the extreme heat of July, was more than a man in his condition could take. Heat exhaustion, or perhaps a heart attack, may have been what finally killed him.

One question remains. Where did Deodato Gentile get his information? What was his source for all this close detail about the final journey and strange, sad death of a sick man trying to reach Rome from Naples? Whatever it was, it was also the source on which the later biographers drew when they elaborated their own accounts of the painter’s death. No one added anything meaningful to it, except red herrings like Bellori’s mistaken arrest or Baglione’s headlong footrace along the coast.

It might be thought that Gentile had put his feelers out in Porto Ercole, where the death had taken place, or had sent for information to Palo, where Caravaggio had been arrested. But he could have done neither of those things: the dates of his correspondence with Scipione Borghese preclude it. Borghese wrote to Gentile on 23 July and Gentile received the letter the following day. He replied to Borghese just five days later, on 29 July. It was two or three days by boat to Palo, the same again to Porto Ercole. By horse, even riding post, it would have taken at least four days in each direction, since it is two hundred miles from Naples to Porto Ercole. A week, more likely ten days, would have been needed to get there, make enquiries, and then report back. So Gentile must have found his information in Naples. Who could he have spoken to? Who would have known all this?