Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane (80 page)

97.
Ibid., document 55.

98.
Ibid., document 56.

99.
See Walter Friedlaender,
Caravaggio Studies
, p. 285.

100.
Ibid.

101.
See Sandro Corradini,
Materiali per un processo
, document 58.

102.
Ibid., document 59. This is a slightly free translation; Masetti uses the phrase ‘
un’ altra questione
’, meaning ‘another question’.

103.
Ibid., document 67.

104.
Ibid., document 68.

105.
Ibid., document 71.

106.
Carracci did eventually deliver his own picture for the duke, thought to be identical to the painter’s
The Birth of the Virgin
now in the Louvre.

107.
See Helen Langdon,
The Lives of Caravaggio
, pp. 73–4.

108.
See Luigi Spezzaferro, ‘La pala dei Palafrenieri’,
Colloquio
(1974), which reprints the documents from the archive of the confraternity associated with the commission.

109.
Ibid.; the translation is given in John T. Spike,
Caravaggio
, where the painting appears as entry no. 48. The same is true for the two documents that follow. For a reproduction of this document in Caravaggio’s handwriting, see illustration no. 65.

110.
See Helen Langdon,
The Lives of Caravaggio
, p. 90.

111.
See Gabriele Paleotti, ‘Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane’, in
Trattati d’arte del Cinquecento fra Manierismo a Controriforma
, vol. 2, P. Barocchi and P. Barocchi (eds.) (Bari, 1961), p. 370.

112.
See Roberto Longhi,
Opere complete
(Florence, 1968), vol. 4, p. 58.

113.
The date of
The Death of the Virgin
is disputed, but there are compelling reasons to place its completion close to the very end of Caravaggio’s Roman period, i.e. around May 1606. Before the discovery of the contract
for the painting, of 14 June 1601, the work was dated 1606 by most art historians on purely stylistic grounds. There seems little reason to reverse that view simply because of the discovery of the contract. It was common for paintings to be delivered late, sometimes years late (witness the travails of poor Fabio Masetti). The picture is certainly much closer in its
facture
, palette and mood to Caravaggio’s later, post-Roman works than it is to such paintings of 1601–2 as
The Supper at Emmaus
. In my opinion, it was finished directly after the
Madonna of the Palafrenieri
, since it is painted in the looser, freer style of that picture’s right half – the half containing St Anne – which directly prefigures the style of the artist’s last years. As a compromise solution some experts have chosen to date the painting to 1604, but this seems perverse, bearing in mind both the picture’s appearance and the existing documentary evidence. The first detailed reference to the picture occurs in a letter by Giulio Mancini, dated 14 Oct. 1606, in a context strongly suggestive of the picture having been finished just a matter of months earlier. Another reference to it from around the same time occurs in the correspondence of an agent working for the Duke of Mantua, who noted that the painters of Rome were complaining that they had not yet been able to see the painting. If it really had been finished as early as 1604, it would seem strange indeed that Caravaggio’s friends and rivals had still not seen it all of two years later. In addition, in his biography of the painter Mancini explicitly connects its rejection with ‘the trouble’ that ruined Caravaggio’s life, i.e., the killing of Ranuccio Tomassoni. It would therefore seem logical to assume that it was the very last picture the artist painted before his flight from Rome.

114.
Saints should never be given the recognizable features of ‘persons of ill repute’, Paleotti had written. Gabriele Paleotti, ‘Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane’, p. 360. I am obliged to Opher Mansour for pointing out both these references to me.

115.
See Giulio Mancini,
Considerazioni sulla pittura
, vol. 1, pp. 120, 132; see also Walter Friedlaender,
Caravaggio Studies
, p. 195.

116.
See Michele Maccherini, ‘Caravaggio nel carteggio familiare di Giulio Mancini’ in
Prospettiva
, vol. 86 (1997), pp. 71–92.

117.
See Sandro Corradini,
Materiali per un processo
, document 78. It is not clear what type of document this is; perhaps a journal.

118.
See Helen Langdon,
The Lives of Caravaggio
, pp. 29–31.

119.
Ibid., p. 52.

120.
Ibid., p. 76.

121.
See Peter Burke, ‘Rome as Center of Information and Communication for the Catholic World 1550–1650’, in
From Rome to Eternity: Catholicism and the Arts in Italy, c. 1550–1650
, Pamela M. Jones and Thomas Worcester (eds.) (Leiden, Boston and Cologne, 2002), p. 259.

122.
See Sandro Corradini,
Materiali per un processo
, document 81.

123.
The tennis courts were all destroyed in a fire during the eighteenth century. The site is now occupied by an underground car park. I am grateful to Maurizio Marini for showing me its exact whereabouts.

124.
See Sandro Corradini,
Materiali per un processo
, document 85; the translation given here is from Walter Friedlaender,
Caravaggio Studies
, p. 286.

125.
Ibid., document 82.

126.
His report on the man’s injuries can still be consulted in the ‘Barbitonsores’ section of the Roman State Archives. This document confirms that Caravaggio’s ally in the fight had indeed been badly wounded. See ibid., document 80.

127.
Ibid., document 83.

128.
Ibid., document 84.

129.
Ibid.document 95: ‘
initi duelli cum Michelangelo de Caravaggio . . . ac pro presenti duello
’.

130.
For the document discussed below, see ibid., document 101.

131.
Ibid., documents 163, 164.

132.
Ibid., document 145.

133.
Ibid., document 111.

134.
I am grateful to Sandro Corradini for talking me through this series of archival documents, which remain unpublished. For another precis of their contents, see Helen Langdon,
Caravaggio: A Life
, p. 313.

135.
See Sandro Corradini,
Materiali per un processo
, document 109. Pontoni, who was a lawyer, also appears in document 17, testifying in the case of Fillide’s knife attack on Prudenza Zacchia.

136.
Ibid., document 151.

137.
See Romolo Caggese (ed.),
Statuti della reppublica fiorentina. Volume 2: Statuto del podestà del anno 1325
(Florence, 1921); and
Volumen statutorem civitatis Maceratae
, facsimile reprint of the 1553 edition, Arnaldo Forni (ed.) ([n.p., n.d.]). I am indebted to Elizabeth S. Cohen and Thomas S. Cohen for allowing me to read their essay ‘
Sfregio
: Facial Mutilation as Expressive Act’ when it was still in draft form. It was that essay that called my attention to the legal penalties cited in the statute books noted above.

PART FIVE: THE ALBAN HILLS, NAPLES, MALTA, SICILY, NAPLES, PORTO ERCOLO, 1606–10

1.
See Helen Langdon,
The Lives of Caravaggio
, pp.31, 76.

2.
A picture in a private Roman collection has been put forward several times as a candidate, but it is so clumsy and sentimental that it cannot possibly have been painted by Caravaggio.

3.
No documents relating to this work survive. It has been romantically placed at the end of Caravaggio’s life – in the quatercentenary exhibition in Rome in 2010 it was once more dated to 1610 – but it was not among the pictures listed as being on the boat with him when he travelled to Rome for the last time in July of that year, and it is besides painted in a style quite
different
from that of Caravaggio’s last-documented picture,
The Martyrdom of St Ursula
, now in the boardroom of the Banco di Napoli. Given that the style of the
David with the Head of Goliath
is so close to that of
The Seven Acts of Mercy
of 1606–7 in Naples – compare, for example, the handling of light in striated
drapery in both pictures – and given that it indeed entered the Borghese collection (it can still be seen in the Villa Borghese in Rome), I believe that Caravaggio painted it expressly for Scipione Borghese to try to secure a pardon for his crimes. The identification of the severed head of
Goliath
as a self-portrait has been universally accepted, on the basis of visual comparison with Ottavio Leoni’s portrait of Caravaggio in the Uffizi, and with other known self-portraits that occur within Caravaggio’s
œuvre
.

4.
Mancini is the source for this information: See Helen Langdon,
The Lives of Caravaggio
, p. 31.

5.
It was only in 1613 that he ordered a frame to be made for it, according to a Borghese palace inventory: see the
CD
-
ROM
catalogue entry on the painting in John T. Spike,
Caravaggio
.

6.
Sandro Corradini,
Materiali per un processo
, document 106, 23 Sept. 1606.

7.
See George Sandys,
A Relation of a Journey
(London, 1615), pp. 253–4.

8.
Cited by Jeanne Chenault Porter in ‘Reflections of the Golden Age: The Visitor’s Account of Naples’, in
Parthenope’s Splendor: Art of the Golden Age in Naples
, published as Papers in Art History from the Pennsylvania State University, vol. 7, Jeanne Chenault Porter and Susan Scott Munshower (eds.) (Pennsylvania, 1993), p. 11.

9.
See Giuseppe Galasso, ‘Society in Naples in the Seicento’, in
Painting in Naples 1606–1705: From Caravaggio to Giordano
, catalogue to the exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, Clovis Whitfield and Jane Martineau (eds.) (London 1982), p. 28.

10.
It is probable that the open-weave Neapolitan canvases on which Caravaggio would paint some of his greatest pictures were of English origin: see Clovis Whitfield, ‘Seicento Naples’, in
Painting in Naples 1606–1705
, p. 19.

11.
Benedetto Croce,
History of the Kingdom of Naples
, Frances Frenaye (trs.), H. Stuart Hughes (ed.) (Chicago, 1970), p. 116. Croce’s text was first published as
Storia del regno di Napoli
(Bari, 1925).

12.
Quoted in ibid., p. 120.

13.
Quoted in Giuseppe Galasso, ‘Society in Naples in the Seicento’, in
Painting in Naples 1606–1705
, p. 25.

14.
See ibid.,
passim
.

15.
See ibid., p. 25.

16.
See Helen Langdon,
The Lives of Caravaggio
, pp. 76–7.

17.
For the details and documents concerning this commission, see Vincenzo Pacelli, ‘New Documents concerning Caravaggio in Naples’,
Burlington Magazine
, vol. 119, no. 897 (Dec. 1977), pp. 819–29; and Vincenzo Pacelli,
Caravaggio: Le sette opere di misericordia
(Salerno, 1984), p. 102.

18.
The quote is taken from the manuscript of C. De Lellis,
Aggiunta alla Napoli sacra del d’Engenio
1654–89
, cited in Vincenzo Pacelli,
Caravaggio: Le sette opere di misericordia
, p. 12.

19.
See Ferdinando Bologna, ‘Caravaggio: The Final Years’, in
Caravaggio: The Final Years
, exhibition catalogue, the National Gallery (London, 2005), p. 22.

20.
Tiberio del Pezzo was the member of the confraternity who signed the documents authorizing payment to Caravaggio, but since he was only a deputy his role is likely to have been marginal. For the documents concerning this commission, see Vincenzo Pacelli,
Caravaggio: Le sette opere di misericordia
, p. 102.

21.
See pp. 250–53, above. Caravaggio painted Marino’s portrait in 1600 or 1601. It does not survive.

22.
See Estelle Haan,
From Academia to Amicitia: Milton’s Latin Writings and the Italian Academies
(Philadelphia, 1998), p. 122.

23.
Ibid., p. 119.

24.
These documents are usefully summarized in John T. Spike,
Caravaggio
, in the
CD
-
ROM
catalogue entry on the picture.

25.
See Helen Langdon,
The Lives of Caravaggio
, p. 77, where Bellori states that ‘he was commissioned to do the
Flagellation of Christ at the Column
in the Di Franco Chapel of the church of San Domenico Maggiore.’ There is another, half-length depiction of
The Flagellation
in Rouen that many
scholars
believe to be an autograph Caravaggio, but I am not convinced by it. Two other versions of the subject, one in Lucca and the other in a Swiss private collection, were published respectively by Roberto Longhi and Denis Mahon in the 1950s. I am not convinced by those paintings either.