A Name in Blood (21 page)

In the piazza, the boar upended one of the armoured attackers. The others beat the beast into the corner of the ring, while the fallen man scrambled to his feet.

After his
Madonna with the Serpent
had hung two days in the Pope’s basilica, Caravaggio received a message from Cardinal del Monte that it may be removed. He
hurried across the Tiber and elbowed through the Easter pilgrims in St Peter’s Piazza. Threading between the piles of building materials laid by for its final construction, he entered the
greatest church in Rome.

He crossed the nave to the altar of St Anne. A sombre group of men surrounded his painting. He recognized them as the members of the Fabbrica, the committee charged with overseeing works
commissioned for St Peter’s – rich men and prelates, some of them his patrons and admirers. They greeted him with embarrassment, as though he were a troublesome relative arriving drunk
for a funeral.

Del Monte intercepted him. Someone was addressing the others. Caravaggio went onto his toes to see who it was. ‘What the fuck is Baglione doing here?’ he said.

The cardinal put a scented finger to Caravaggio’s mouth.

‘He’s talking down my work again, isn’t he?’

‘Michele . . .’

The men averted their eyes.
They know my work and they’ve told me they love it
, he thought.
What’re they doing here with Baglione?

His rival went up a step to the altar, so that he was directly in front of the painting. At the height of his head, Lena’s foot crushed the snake.

‘Gentlemen, what are we to make of this ugly Madonna?’ Baglione saw Caravaggio and flinched.

Del Monte laid a hand on Caravaggio’s sleeve, holding tight.

‘She’s not ugly.’ Caravaggio’s voice echoed through the basilica. ‘Hers is the most beautiful face in all art.’

Baglione drummed on the canvas with his knuckles. ‘She’s a dirty little peasant woman. Her features are fine for a whore from the Evil Garden, but they lack the dignity of the
Madonna.’

‘Even Christ wouldn’t be worthy of a mother as perfect as her,’ Caravaggio shouted. ‘Whoever wants to see a Virgin more beautiful must go to heaven.’

Del Monte put his hand to his forehead. He blew out a long, resigned breath and turned his sad, grey eyes on Caravaggio. The men of the Fabbrica murmured in indignation.
What’re they
going to do with my painting?
Caravaggio turned about him, pleading and apologetic and outraged.

‘You’re here to destroy painting.’ Baglione declaimed like a man who had learned his lines well. ‘You rob art of all its dignity and you drag it through the filth of
Rome’s lowest quarters. Look at St Anne, the mother of the Virgin. You portray her as an old crone, a repulsive slattern – in our holiest church. It is an insult to the tomb of St
Peter, to the skull of St Andrew, and to all the other sacred relics.’

‘Call yourself an artist?’ Caravaggio yelled. ‘You’re not fit to grind my pigments.’

‘And Our Lord himself, naked. Naked. What a disgusting sewer your imagination is, Merisi, that it should conjure such a disrespectful image of Our Saviour.’

Warm perfumes wafted from the rich men’s clothing. From his own body, Caravaggio detected a miasma of sweat and dirt and rage. What had he brought into their church anyway? Was it the love
he believed he had painted? Or had he truly perpetrated the outrage of which Baglione accused him? There was no tranquillity in his head, no way for him to think through what he had created. His
brain spun and desperation pulsed through all his limbs. The silence of the wealthy connoisseurs shocked him. Couldn’t they see what he had intended?

‘This painting isn’t from my imagination,’ he said. ‘Only from my eyes. I saw this woman walking with her nephew’s feet resting on her own feet. A game, you see?
They were laughing. They were full of love. Don’t you think the Virgin loved her son?’

Del Monte spoke in a reassuring tone, measured for the benefit of the men around him. ‘This composition, Maestro Caravaggio, implies a physical element to the Virgin’s
love.’

‘Between mother and son.’

‘Of course, but this isn’t just a mother and son. This is the Virgin and Our Lord.’

‘It’s the same thing.’

Cardinal Ascanio Colonna, the head of the Fabbrica, lifted a hand for quiet.
My Marchesa’s brother
, Caravaggio thought.
He’ll back me. I’m a Colonna man.

‘As a senior member of the Sacred Office of the Inquisition,’ Ascanio said, ‘I’m charged with the maintenance of the Index of Prohibited Books, the list of immoral works
whose theological errors corrupt the faithful. Works subject to destruction wherever they’re found. You may count yourself lucky, Maestro Caravaggio, that the Holy Father never commissioned
such an index of paintings.’

Caravaggio reached out, as if to hold del Monte’s hand, but he withdrew his arm and tensed it against his thigh.
I’m alone.
He looked up at his painting.
Lena, just watch
Lena
.
She won’t forsake you the way these men have done.

Baglione sauntered past Caravaggio. He tried to look grave, but the ragged triangle of beard beneath his bottom lip twitched with triumph. The patrons watched Baglione with impatience.
They’re unimpressed with him
.
But I went too far
, Caravaggio thought.
I made it impossible for them to defend me and I gave my enemy the chance to disgrace me.
He had
been so busy reacting to meaningless slights against his honour in the inns and on the tennis courts that he had forgotten to guard the only thing that really mattered: his art. He turned to his
Madonna. Lena’s face was patient and compassionate.

Cardinal Ascanio moved towards the door. Baglione and most of the Fabbrica went with him. Del Monte remained.

Caravaggio spread his arms wide over his canvas and laid his hands on the skirts of the Madonna and St Anne, as though clutching at their legs for support.

The door of the church slammed shut.

‘It’s my fault. I admit that I saw this coming a long time ago,’ del Monte said. ‘I should’ve warned you.’

Caravaggio pushed the heels of his hand hard against his eyes. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Your private commissions for me are one thing. You’re granted all the freedom I may give your genius.’ Del Monte raised his arms as though in supplication. ‘But your
public commissions have become more and more daring. Since
St Matthew
, you’ve needled the artists of the old style, like Baglione, until they’ve come to hate you. You threaten
everything they’ve ever worked for.’

‘I don’t care about them.’

‘But you need other artists on your side. Cardinal Ascanio knows nothing about art – any more than he understands the works he consigns to his Index of Prohibited Books. He takes his
lead from well-known artists and collectors. I’ve spoken up for you, but all the major artists in Rome are against you.’

‘Not all. Most of them steal my style – even Baglione.’

‘Wouldn’t they like their more talented rival removed from the scene? They won’t defend you. They produce work that has elements of your style, but without the provocative
ideas.’ He came close to Caravaggio. ‘Our friend Signor Giustiniani keeps your
Love Victorious
behind a curtain in the last room of his gallery. When he unveils it, his guests
are shocked, delighted – even titillated. Do you think that’s what the Fabbrica wants people to feel here as the Holy Father says mass before them? This Madonna is too forceful for the
Church. You must show more respect.’

‘For what? For art as Baglione sees it?’

‘I’m sorry to tell you, but yes. For art.’

‘Art is a whore who’s being treated like a boring, old housewife,’ Caravaggio said. ‘Her husband always does it to her the same way. It’s time someone threw her
against a wall and gave her —’

Del Monte shouted, ‘Michele, remember where you are.’

‘— the hard fucking she deserves.’

Del Monte looked up at the Madonna. ‘Of course, you’re the one to do this.’

‘Yes, I’m the one,’ Caravaggio said. ‘I’ve had some experience of whores.’

Del Monte stroked his moustache. His anger had been momentary. Now he was solicitous. ‘If Art is such a lady, do you think this treatment will be pleasing to her?’

‘That’s the point. I don’t care what this strumpet called Art likes or dislikes. I’m ready to pay for it, so I’ll take my pleasure as I wish. Even if she goes
around telling people I have no delicacy or finesse. A whore treated like a lady is unbearable.’

Del Monte blew out a low whistle. ‘Believe it or not, your strange soul holds the key to other people’s spirits. The followers of the heretic Luther want people to hear God speaking
directly to them. The Roman Church believes people ought to experience God only in its basilicas. There, they must witness Him in your paintings. Your soul must experience God, so you can show Him
to us.’

‘I thought my soul was important so that I could complete commissions for Cardinal Scipione.’

‘That just keeps you out of jail. Perhaps one day it’ll save your head from being separated from your shoulders.’ The cardinal examined the Madonna. ‘She’s
magnificent, Michele. You’ve mistaken the boundaries of art within the Church. But you’ve done something perfect, nonetheless. Unfortunately, that isn’t the point.’

‘What
is
the point? Do they want me to change it?’ The cardinal gazed at the Madonna and her naked child. ‘The Fabbrica has already decided. The painting is to be
removed. Not fit for St Peter’s. I’m to find a buyer for it.’

Caravaggio dropped to the step below his canvas. He put his hands in his hair, squeezing his temples with frustration.

‘In the meantime,’ del Monte said, ‘this art of yours will be out on the street. Like the other whores.’

The rejection of another of his paintings sent Caravaggio back to the Evil Garden and the fierce, depraved life that skulked there by night – the Tavern of the Moor, the
Tavern of the Wolf, the Taverns of the Tower and of the Turk, the brothels around the crumbling Mausoleum of Augustus. Onorio glowed with a gleeful spite, exhilarated to have his friend back.
Caravaggio, bitter and raucous and unrestrained, complained about the Fabbrica and the cardinals and the Pope, until even Onorio put a hand over his mouth for fear of the Inquisition.

Damn Baglione
, he thought.
And del Monte, who was supposed to shelter me. And Cardinal-Nephew Scipione, what kind of a protector is he? And Costanza . . . No, she isn’t asking
too much. But let the rest of them be damned.

Every night his jaw hurt from the tension shivering through it. He was constantly flushed and fuming with alcohol. Del Monte and Scipione seemed to flit before his eyes going from table to table
at the inn, tossing money to Baglione who skipped across the canvas of
The Madonna of the Serpent
, dancing a villanelle with Lena.

Whenever Caravaggio stopped by the little house on the Via dei Greci, he found Lena impatient with his stumbling arrivals late at night, his rants about the Fabbrica, his drunken attempts to
take her. He would awake on the bedboard at the back of the room, his hungover brain clawing to escape his skull, Domenico giggling and tickling his feet. Lena would stare at him, sour and
frustrated, from the kitchen table and he would drop back on the bolster and wonder how much further he had pushed her away that night.

At the end of May, the Vatican put on a gala for the first anniversary of Pope Paul’s coronation. In the afternoon, a boat race on the Tiber ended at the bank with a brawl between the
crews. An oarsman took a swing at someone and was stabbed to death. By evening the streets were filled with people who had been celebrating the whole day. They were drunk and petulant. Every laugh
sounded unhinged, on the edge of a snarl.

Caravaggio and Onorio left the Tavern of the Tower and crossed the Evil Garden to the tennis courts. In the street beside the Palace of Florence, a game was underway. A cord strung across the
street marked the centre of the court. A dozen yards either side of it, a chalk line on the cobbles set the back of the playing area. The walls of the street were lined with spectators, wagering on
the outcome. The game concluded as Caravaggio and Onorio arrived.