Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane (72 page)

Only in these words is the vivid ghost of a great painting preserved. Cochin was unaware of the painter’s identity, his flight from Rome, his escape from Malta, his restless peregrinations through Sicily – yet still, purely from the power of his work, he sensed the depth of Caravaggio’s unease. The painter had made Christ ‘look like a criminal escaping from his guards’. Just as he had done in his haunting Sicilian pictures, Caravaggio was putting his own memories and emotions at the heart of his work. Whatever he set out to paint – the death of a martyr, the infancy of Christ or his resurrection – he always ended up painting himself.

THE KNIGHT’S REVENGET

His work had never been bleaker or more emotionally naked. But in the autumn of 1609 Caravaggio had some grounds for optimism. Alof de Wignacourt seems to have been appeased, which lifted the threat of sudden rendition to Malta, and negotiations were reopened for the papal pardon that would allow him to return to Rome at last. Emboldened, perhaps, by the sense that his fortunes were about to change, Caravaggio fatally let down his guard. He paid an ill-advised visit to the Osteria del Cerriglio, a Neapolitan tavern frequented by artists and poets and much celebrated in the popular literature of the time.

The Cerriglio was located in a narrow alleyway behind the Neapolitan church of Santa Maria La Nova. There are a number of theories about the original meaning of its name, which may have derived
from the
cierro
, local slang for the long forelock worn by the cut-throats
who were often to be seen there; from the merry appearance (
cera
) of
those who had enjoyed its hospitality; from an oak forest (
cerrillo
) that had once stood nearby; from the
cerilleros
, the vagabonds and wastrels who caroused at the tavern; or simply from the name of its owner. It was famously a place where the wine flowed more freely than water, but a number of hitherto overlooked documents reveal that the Osteria del Cerriglio was also notorious as a brothel. Giulio Cesare Cortese, an exact contemporary of Caravaggio, wrote a mock-epic poem entitled
La conquista del Cerriglio
, in which the imaginary moment of the tavern’s foundation is marked by ‘huge orgies’.
118
Real orgies took place there too: another of the painter’s contemporaries, Giambattista Basile, called it ‘that place where the courtesans / wallowed / in front of disapproving passersby / stripping the gullible to the bone’,
119
while yet another poet of the period, Giovan Battista del Tufo, added the detail that ‘moreover, for gentlemen, / There is a door for entering secretly.’
120
The Cerriglio was especially popular among men seeking sex with other men, to judge by the insinuation in Basile’s description of it as a place ‘where Bacchus reigns and Venus is shunned’.
121

The nineteenth-century Neapolitan poet, playwright and historian Salvatore di Giacomo, whose work on the underworld of seventeenth-century Naples has been largely forgotten, unearthed several incriminating references to the tavern in the archives of the city. ‘The Cerriglio was not wholly frequented by well-mannered individuals, and the innkeeper would often turn a blind eye if not turn his back
altogether
,’ he wrote in his pioneering study of 1899,
Prostitution in Naples
.
122
Elsewhere, di Giacomo described just what ‘gentlemen’ such as Caravaggio might find when they walked though the brothel’s discreetly concealed door and entered its upper rooms: ‘These rooms nowadays would be called
higher chambers
. Since the end of the 16th century, by which time the Cerriglio was already famous, they had made up a separate quarter [of the tavern] . . . in one of these little rooms, in circa 1671, a slave was caught practising what are nowadays referred to as certain psychopathic sexual acts, which were thought of in less scientific terms in the seventeenth century and punishable with beheading.’
123
The only sexual act punishable by beheading was sodomy. The Cerriglio clearly catered for a wide range of sexual appetites.

Caravaggio’s problems arose when he tried to leave the tavern. He had been followed there by a group of armed men, who waited for him in the street outside as he took his pleasure within. As soon as he walked out of the door, they ambushed him. On 24 October 1609, a Roman newspaper included the following notice: ‘Word has been received from Naples that Caravaggio, the famous painter, has been murdered. Others say disfigured.’
124
The rumour of his death turned out to have been exaggerated. He had not been killed, but he had been severely injured.

Within days of the publication of the newspaper report, Caravaggio’s old friend and biographer, Giulio Mancini, put out his own antennae. Mancini did not yet know the full truth, but what he did know filled him with anxiety. He wrote to his brother Deifebo in Siena: ‘It’s said that Michelangelo da Caravaggio has been assaulted by 4 in Napoli and the witnesses say he has been given a facial scar. If so it would be a sin and is [the next word, which begins with a
d
but is illegible, could be ‘disturbing’ or ‘a disgrace’] to everybody. Let God make it not so.’
125

Mancini wrote that Caravaggio had been
sfregiato
, cut on the face, which in the honour code of the day was an injury inflicted to avenge an insult to reputation.
126
The same word had been used by the writer of the Roman news report. It lends both brief accounts of the assault a grim specificity, and explains the other detail gleaned by Mancini: that Caravaggio had been attacked by a group of four men. This was no drunken fracas but a premeditated act, a vendetta attack ruthlessly executed: three men to hold him down, one man to cut the marks of shame into his face.

Years later, the painter’s biographers gave their own terse versions of what had happened. They were unanimous on two points. It was a coldblooded attack – a hit – and it was perpetrated by a man or a group of men from Malta.

Baglione’s report of the assault at the Cerriglio follows seamlessly from his account of Caravaggio’s incarceration on Malta and his subsequent escape. It is clear that Baglione believed the two episodes were linked as surely as cause and effect:

In Malta, Caravaggio had a dispute with a Knight of Justice and in some way affronted him. For this he was thrown into prison. But he escaped at night by means of a rope ladder and fled to the island of Sicily. In Palermo he executed several works, but because he was still being pursued by his enemy he had to return to Naples. There his enemy finally caught up with him and he was so severely slashed in the face that he was almost unrecognisable.
127

Bellori, writing considerably later than Baglione, thought the cause of the assault lay elsewhere. In his account it was not the revenge attack of an insulted Knight of Justice, but a mission carried out by implication on the orders of Alof de Wignacourt:

[Caravaggio] felt that it was no longer safe to remain in Sicily and so he left the island and sailed back to Naples, intending to remain there until he received news of his pardon so that he could return to Rome. At the same time seeking to regain the favour of the Grand Master of Malta, he sent him as a gift a half-length figure of Herodias with the head of St John the Baptist in a basin. These attentions availed him nothing, for stopping one day in the doorway of the Osteria del Cerriglio he found himself surrounded by several armed men who manhandled him and slashed his face.
128

Francesco Susinno, writing still later, but from a position considerably closer to the events on Malta and Sicily, leaned towards Baglione’s version of events: ‘‘The fugitive arrived in Palermo, and in that city also left excellent works of art. From there he moved again to Naples, chased there by his angered antagonist, and was badly wounded on the face.’
129

To these counterposed explanations of the attack may be added one other possibility: that its origins lay not in Malta but in Rome, and that it was carried out either by or on behalf of the aggrieved relations of the late Ranuccio Tomassoni. There is no suggestion that this was the case in any of the early biographies, nor in any contemporary source. In fact there is no hard evidence of any kind to support the hypothesis. But the theory has been advocated by at least one influential scholar of Caravaggio’s life and work in recent years.
130

A great deal of archival research has been done on Caravaggio over the past half-century. Many new discoveries have been made, and it is striking how in almost every case the historical facts have tended to confirm the accounts of one or other of Caravaggio’s early biographers. Baglione has generally proved to be more accurate than Bellori, which is not surprising: he was part of Caravaggio’s own circle, and although the two men were enemies they took more than a passing interest in each other’s activities. Baglione knew who Caravaggio’s friends and allies were in Rome, and understood the complicated and violent codes of honour by which he lived and died, whereas Bellori was simply baffled by them. A fairly straightforward process of elimination establishes Baglione’s account of the assault in the Osteria del Cerriglio as the most credible explanation of the whole dark business.

The modern suggestion that Ranuccio Tomassoni’s relations were the aggressors lacks merit on the grounds of chronology, geography and logic. The attack in the Cerriglio took place more than three years after Caravaggio had murdered Tomassoni. Even if it is assumed that the Tomassoni clan was still bent on revenge, which in this case would have been a dish served very cold indeed, it is unlikely that they would have attempted an attack on the painter in distant Naples: far better to wait until his heralded return to Rome, where they could watch his movements and plan their strike with a greater certainty of success. The most powerful argument against their involvement is the nature of the wounding Caravaggio suffered. He had been cut in the face. In the language of vendetta, the
sfregio
was punishment for an insult to honour and reputation. But the painter had murdered Tomassoni, not merely insulted him. An eye for an eye: if the Tomassoni had been behind the assault in Naples, Caravaggio would have been killed, not disfigured.

Bellori’s suggestion that Alof de Wignacourt ordered the attack is equally illogical. Caravaggio had not personally insulted Wignacourt, nor had he attacked his reputation. True, he had defied the Grand Master’s authority. But the appropriate punishment for that was extradition back to Malta. The facial wounding of an errant knight at a house of ill repute was not something Wignacourt would have sanctioned. His involvement seems even less likely, given that at the time of the attack Caravaggio was living in the household of the mother of Wignacourt’s admiral of the fleet. The Grand Master was ruthless but he was also intensely pragmatic. If he had wanted satisfaction from Caravaggio, he would have taken it in the form of pictures.

Baglione’s account, to which the Sicilian biographer Susinno subsequently gave his imprimatur, is the only one entirely consistent with the known facts of the case. It has the cold logic of vendetta, stressing the symmetry between insult given and punishment received, even in the author’s choice of words. Baglione says Caravaggio had ‘affronted’ the Knight of Justice on Malta, a usage that etymologically conjoins insult with the notion of a metaphorical loss of face (
affronto
, the word used by Baglione, has the same root as
fronte
, Italian for ‘forehead’). In revenge, Caravaggio’s enemy literalized that same insult, slashing him in the face.

That enemy was, we now know, Giovanni Rodomonte Roero, the Conte della Vezza. We also know that he left Malta shortly after Caravaggio’s escape from the island.
131
That too is consistent with Baglione’s assertion that the painter was slowly but surely tracked by his enemy, who followed him to Sicily from Malta and finally caught up with him at the Osteria del Cerriglio. Since the facts to have emerged from the Maltese archive tally so exactly with the arc of Baglione’s narrative, it is only logical to believe that the rest of his account is also correct. He asked the right questions of the right people, and he established the truth: it was indeed a vendetta, begun in Malta and finished in Naples.

Whatever the painter had said or done to him on the night of the fracas in Malta, Roero had been left with a burning sense of grievance. Maltese Knights of Justice were not known for their propensity to forgive and forget. The Conte della Vezza was evidently proud and mercilessly persistent. He had a team of accomplices. This was the man who hunted Caravaggio down, who stood over him as he struggled, who cut his face.

After exacting his bloody revenge, Roero vanished from historical view. That too seems to have been part of his plan. He may have been helped by friends within the Maltese judiciary. Shortly after the revenge attack, all details of Caravaggio’s crime on Malta were carefully painted out of the archive there by an unknown hand.
132
In this way, the artist’s name was obliterated from the great book of crimes and punishments. So too was the name of his victim and assailant. Having got his revenge, Roero meticulously covered his traces. Even Baglione, who plainly knew so much, never discovered the name of Caravaggio’s assailant.

TWO LAST PAINTINGS

Caravaggio seems never to have fully recovered from the attack at the Osteria del Cerriglio. Crippled and perhaps partially blinded by his injuries, he went into the limbo of a long convalescence. On Christmas Day 1609, two months after the assault, Mancini’s correspondence with his brother Deifebo communicated a solitary scrap of inconclusive rumour: ‘It’s said that Caravaggio is near here, well looked after, also that he wants to return to Rome soon, and that he has powerful help.’
133
Negotiations for a papal pardon may have been progressing, but in truth Caravaggio was nowhere near Rome. Mancini had been misinformed. The painter was in Naples, presumably at the Colonna Palace at Chiaia, fighting for his life. He would remain there for at least six months.