Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane (82 page)

75.
According to Malta’s Liber Conciliorum for 1608–10, less than two years after the ‘tumult’ involving Caravaggio, De Ponte was sentenced for two months for fighting ‘
cum levi sanguinis effusione
’ with a certain Fra Francesco Sarsale. See Keith Sciberras, ‘“Frater Michael Angelus in tumultu”: The Cause of Caravaggio’s Imprisonment in Malta’, fn. 37.

76.
I am grateful again to Fr John Azzopardi for helping to find the ladder and letting me into the
guva
. Keith Sciberras doubts that Caravaggio would have been kept in the
guva
, arguing that he would most probably have been detained in one of Castel Sant’Angelo’s semi-open prisons. But, given Wignacourt’s stated desire ‘not to lose him’, expressed in the petition to the pope for Caravaggio’s knighthood, I share Fr Azzopardi’s view that he would indeed have been confined in the
guva
, which was after all the most high-security of the island’s jails. It may also be worth noting that, according to a long oral tradition on Malta, the
guva
was Caravaggio’s place of imprisonment.

77.
Helen Langdon,
The Lives of Caravaggio
, p. 81.

78.
See Faith Ashford, ‘Caravaggio’s Stay in Malta’,
Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs
, vol. 67, no. 391 (Oct. 1935), pp. 168–74.

79.
See Keith Sciberras and David Stone,
Caravaggio: Art, Knightood and Malta
, p. 34.

80.
See Faith Ashford, ‘Caravaggio’s Stay in Malta’, p. 174.

81.
Ibid.

82.
The document was published by A. Spadaro, ‘Il percorso smarrito e l’importante inedito: la presenza del pittore a Caltagirone’, in
Foglio d’Arte
, vol. 8, no. 2 (1984–5), pp. 6–7; I was alerted to it by Gioacchino Barbera and Donatella Spagnolo’s essay ‘From
The Burial of St Lucy
to the Scenes of the Passion: Caravaggio in Syracuse and Messina’ in the catalogue to the exhibition
Caravaggio: The Final Years
, pp. 80–87.

83.
See George Sandys,
A Relation of a Journey
, p. 234.

84.
Susinno’s manuscript containing biographies of artists to have worked in Sicily, and particularly Messina, was first published by Valentino Martelli in Florence in 1960. Susinno’s life of Caravaggio, which was included in that manuscript, was usefully reprinted and translated in Howard Hibbard,
Caravaggio
: see p. 381. Minniti had lived a chequered life since returning to his native Sicily in about 1604, at one point having been forced to seek sanctuary in the Carmelite monastery at Syracuse ‘for a homicide casually committed’ – for which see Francesco Susinno,
Le vite dei pittori messinesi
of 1724, Valentino Martelli (ed.) (Florence, 1960), p. 117. By the autumn of 1608 Minniti had long since redeemed himself, by painting numerous altarpieces for the religious institutions of Syracuse and Messina. He often worked for the Franciscans, which indicates that he had a close relationship with the order. His sister, Maria, was a Capuchin tertiary. See Gioacchino Barbera and Donatella Spagnolo, ‘From
The Burial of St Lucy
to the Scenes of the Passion: Caravaggio in Syracuse and Messina’ in the catalogue to the exhibition
Caravaggio: The Final Years
, p. 81.

85.
See Susinno in Howard Hibbard,
Caravaggio
, p. 381; in fact, the church and its adjacent monastery were not assigned to the Minorite friars of the Franciscan order until 1618. But they had been lobbying to have the site restored and given to them for many years, so they are also likely to have had a strong say in the choosing of Caravaggio. The Franciscans were the poorest of the poor orders. They are likely to have been highly sympathetic to an artist whose work so aggressively insisted on the poverty of Christ and his early followers. Franciscan involvement also supports Susinno’s account of the part played by Minniti in winning the commission for Caravaggio.

86.
St Lucy’s name was derived from the Latin word
lux
, meaning ‘light’, a fact that had not been lost on the early Church fathers. St Ambrose, in his commentaries on her martyrdom, noted that ‘In Lucy is said the way of light.’

87.
Susinno as reprinted in Howard Hibbard,
Caravaggio
, from which the translation used here derives. See p. 381.

88.
See Keith Sciberras and David Stone,
Caravaggio: Art, Knighthood and Malta
, pp. 35–6.

89.
Susinno as reprinted in Howard Hibbard,
Caravaggio
, from which the translation used here derives. See p. 386.

90.
Ibid. The name of the dog is disclosed by Giovanni Baglione in a comic aside in a passage from his life of Caravaggio’s follower Carlo Saraceni. See Giovanni Baglione,
Le vite de’ pittori, scultori, architetti, dal pontificato di Gregorio XIII del 1572, fino a’ tempi di Papa Urbano VIII
nel 1642
(Rome, 1642), p. 147.

91.
See Francesco Susinno,
Le vite dei pittori messinesi
, p. 119.

92.
See Vincenzo Mirabella,
Dichiarazioni della pianta delle antiche Siracuse, e d’alcune scelte medaglie d’esse e de’ principi che quelle possedettero
(Naples, 1613), p. 89. The whole passage is quoted in Italian in Maurizio Marini,
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio ‘pictor praestantissimus’
, p. 100. The translation given here is my own.

93.
See Ferdinando Bologna, ‘Caravaggio: The Final Years’, in
Caravaggio: The Final Years
, p. 32.

94.
See Keith Sciberras and David Stone,
Caravaggio: Art, Knighthood and Malta
, pp. 36–7.

95.
See George Sandys,
A Relation of a Journey
, pp. 245–6.

96.
Susinno as reprinted in Howard Hibbard,
Caravaggio
, from which the translation used here derives. See p. 382.

97.
The documents recording this commission are now lost, presumed destroyed in the catastrophic earthquake that struck Messina in 1908. Before their destruction, they were transcribed and published. See V. Saccà, ‘Michelangelo da Caravaggio pittore. Studi e ricerche’, in
Archivio storico messinese
, vol. 7 (Messina, 1906), p. 58, and vol. 8 (Messina, 1907), p. 78.

98.
There is proof positive that he was familiar with the knights’ book of statutes in his Maltese altarpiece,
The Beheading of St John
. The image of the prison, with inmates, is clearly drawn from one of the illustrations in the order’s book of statutes. See David M. Stone, ‘The Context of Caravaggio’s
Beheading of St John
in Malta’,
Burlington Magazine
, vol. 139, no. 1,128 (Mar. 1997), pp. 161–70. It should also be noted that the document of consignment in which he is referred to as a Knight of Malta is dated June 1609, a full seven months after his expulsion from the order. It therefore seems highly unrealistic to argue that he did not know about his expulsion.

99.
See Helen Langdon,
The Lives of Caravaggio
, p. 84. Caravaggio had made a similar plea for his head to Scipione Borghese just after the murder. The London picture is much weaker than the Borghese
David and Goliath
, however. It is not Herodias (or Salome) with the head, but a female servant.

100.
See V. Saccà, ‘Michelangelo da Caravaggio pittore. Studi e ricerche’. Caravaggio’s name is not mentioned in the document of 6 Dec., but, given his strong association with the poor orders and charitable ministries, and given Susinno’s remark that he left Messina soon after completing
The Burial of St Lucy
, which must have been ready by her feast day on 13 Dec., it is a reasonable assumption that Giovan Battista de’ Lazzari had Caravaggio in mind from the start. Indeed, he may have been spurred to make his undertaking by the very opportunity that Caravaggio’s arrival provided. I take the document of 6 Dec. as a
terminus ante quem
for Caravaggio’s arrival in Messina from Syracuse.

101.
Susinno as reprinted in Howard Hibbard,
Caravaggio
, from which the translation used here derives. See p. 382.

102.
As George Sandys noted, the Eastern faith was tolerated in Sicily: ‘Their religion is Romish yet there are not so few as ten thousand who are of the
tollerated Greeke church.’ See George Sandys,
A Relation of a Journey
, p. 238.

103.
Susinno as reprinted in Howard Hibbard,
Caravaggio
, from which the translation used here derives. See p. 384.

104.
Ibid. See p. 385.

105.
It can be found in countless icons of the Virgin and Child, one of the most famous examples being Russia’s most sacred icon,
Our Lady of Vladimir
, which was painted in Constantinople in the eleventh century and taken to Kiev a hundred years later to mark the conversion to Christianity of the
peoples
of Russia. Caravaggio will have been familiar with the motif from icons in Sicily, or from the rich traditions of Italo-Byzantine painting of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, examples of which were to be seen all over the Italian peninsula.

106.
Susinno as reprinted in Howard Hibbard,
Caravaggio
, from which the translation used here derives. See p. 385.

107.
Ibid. See p. 386.

108.
Ibid.

109.
Ibid.

110.
Helen Langdon,
The Lives of Caravaggio
, p. 84.

111.
I arrive at this date by common sense. We know that Caravaggio was seriously wounded by a gang of assailants in Naples in late Oct. 1609, as will be explained below, pp. 415–20. He was very badly injured indeed. The only two paintings that can be dated to after that time,
The Denial of Peter
and
The Martyrdom of St Ursula
, are so radically unlike his Sicilian paintings that the difference can only logically be explained by incapacity and illness. We also know that Caravaggio painted a large altarpiece for the Fenaroli Chapel in Sant’Anna de’ Lombardi during his second and last stay in Naples, i.e. after arriving there from Palermo in 1609. He cannot have painted it on his first visit to the city, because the patron had only acquired rights to the chapel on 24 Dec. 1607, when Caravaggio had already left Naples for Malta. In my opinion, it is clear from the visual evidence of
The Denial of Peter
and
The Martyrdom of St Ursula
that when he painted those works Caravaggio could barely wield a brush. On the empirical evidence of the pictures, his eyesight had been damaged as well as possibly his nervous system. It is there
fore inconceivable that he could have painted any kind of large and ambitious
altarpiece after the assault of late Oct. 1609. In other words, he must have painted the Fenaroli altarpiece in Naples before the wounding took place. Assuming he worked flat out, and assuming it was commissoned from him the moment he disembarked from Palermo, he still would have needed at least four to six weeks to paint it. Therefore, he must have been back in Naples from Sicily some four to six weeks before the wounding of late Oct. On that basis, I set a date some time around the first week of September for his return to Naples.

112.
See Helen Langdon,
The Lives of Caravaggio
, p. 53.

113.
Ibid., p. 84.

114.
I make this assumption because we know for sure that Caravaggio
left
Naples from the Colonna Palace at the end of his second stay in the city, in July 1610: that fact is documented. Given that the early sources all say he went to Naples from Palermo because he was in fear of pursuit, it seems logical to suppose that he was at the Colonna Palace at Chiaia throughout his time there in 1609–10, under the protection of the Marchesa Costanza Colonna.

115.
See Helen Langdon,
The Lives of Caravaggio
, p. 77.

116.
For the reasoning behind these assertions concerning the date of the lost
Resurrection
, see n. 111 above.

117.
See Charles-Nicolas Cochin,
Voyage d’Italie
. . . (Paris, 1758), vol. 1, pp. 171–2; the passage is quoted in Maurizio Marini,
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio ‘pictor praestantissimus’
, p. 568.

118.
‘
orgie siffatte
’: for a useful summary of the poem, see Giuseppe Ferrari,
Opuscoli politici e letterari
(Naples, 1852), p. 462. For the poem in full, see Giulio Cesare Cortese,
Opere
(Naples, 1666), 6 vols.

119.
See Giambattista Basile, ‘Talia, overo lo Cerriglio’,
Egloca III
,
Le Muse Napolitane
, in
Collezione di tutti i poemi in lingue napoletane
, tome 21, vol. 2 (Naples, 1788), p. 267: ‘
Lloco le Cortesciane
/
Fanno lo sguazzatorio
: /
E all’
uocchie de corrive,
/
A spesa de perdente
/
Ne sporpano tant’ ossa . . .
’

120.
As cited in Salvatore di Giacomo,
La prostituzione in Napoli nei secoli XV, XVI e XVII: documenti inediti
(Naples, 1899), p. 82.