Caravaggio: A Passionate Life (18 page)

XXXII

Messina, 1609

O
n the Straits of Messina, with their lethal currents, the city at which Caravaggio landed has been obliterated by earthquakes. In his time, it was a gleaming white port, set beneath snowcapped mountains and defended by three massive castles. These fortresses were so strong that the inhabitants never bothered to shut the city gates, “in derision of the Turks.” Running in a semicircle around a sickle-shaped harbor, Messina must have looked magnificent from the sea as he sailed in on board his felucca.

Rich from trade and silk-weaving, with many banking houses, it was governed by a
Stratego
, appointed by the viceroy, together with a senate elected by less than a thousand citizens. Arrogant patricians of ancient family, proud of their city’s semi-independent status, they insisted that Messina was the true capital of Sicily, not Palermo, and the viceroy had to spend half the year here. “The city is garnished with beautiful buildings, both publike and private. Venus, Neptune, Castor and Pollux had here their Temples; whose ruines are now the foundations of Christian Churches,” noted George Sandys in 1611. “Throughout the City there are fountaines of fresh water,” while “there standeth an high Lanterne, which by light in the night directeth such ships as are to enter these perilous streightes.”

There was, of course, a dark side. “The Sicilians,” says Sandys, “are a people greedy of honour, yet given to ease and delights; talkative, meddlesome, dissentious, jealous and revengefull.” Messina was dangerous, even by the standards of the age. Sandys tells of constant housebreaking and robbery, “while in their private revenges, no night doth pass without a murder.” Men were frequently kidnapped in the streets and held to ransom.

As a Sicilian, Francesco Susinno was irritated by the way the Messinese at once preferred Caravaggio to their own obscure painters. He adds, “Caravaggio’s newly acquired fame and the natural friendliness of the Messinese, who are always ready to like strangers, together with the man’s sheer quality, all combined to such an extent that they wanted him to stay and gave him commissions.”

At Messina there was a wealthy Genoese from the vast network of Genoese banking families that reached as far south as Sicily. There is some speculation, but no firm evidence, that Giovanni Battista de Lazzari had links with Caravaggio’s Genoese patrons at Rome. In December, he commissioned a
Raising of Lazarus
that Caravaggio delivered the following June.

“When certain rich gentlemen of the Lazzari family were building a chapel near the high altar of the church of the Crociferi fathers, they decided to commission a large picture from this artist, agreeing on a price of a thousand scudi,” Susinno tells us. “The painter proposed the
Raising of Lazarus
, in allusion to their family name. The said gentlemen were delighted, giving him every facility … his picture begins by showing on the left-hand side the Savior, with the Apostles, turning round and summoning the dead if once very much alive Lazarus, whose spirit has long since left him, while in the middle two workmen are lifting a large stone. Lazarus’s corpse is held up by another workman and seems to be on the verge of waking. Close to Lazarus’s head are his two sisters, watching him about to wake as if they were stunned. Michelangelo has given the sisters’ faces the most wonderful beauty.”

Susinno was, however, shocked by what he had heard about the methods
used by “this madman of a painter.” To give Lazarus exactly the right air of realism, he had a decomposing corpse dug up and given to some workmen to hold for him while he painted it. Unable to bear the horrible smell, they dropped it. He immediately drew his dagger, threatening to stab them, so that they had to pick it up again. Bellori says mysteriously that someone in the picture is placing his hand over his nose, to ward off the stench coming from the corpse. Either Bellori had not seen the painting for himself or else the man holding his nose has somehow disappeared from view over the years.

Susinno tells us there was an earlier picture, which Caravaggio destroyed. The Lazzari family had given him permission to paint just as he pleased, allowing him to work in secret. When the first painting was exhibited, it caused general astonishment, and several Messinese art lovers made critical remarks. Caravaggio exploded with rage. “Impulsive as ever, Michelangelo pulled out the dagger he always wore at his side, giving a magnificent picture so many angry blows that it was quickly ripped to pieces. After venting his rage on the wretched painting, he felt much better and soothed the horrified gentlemen, telling them not to worry because he would soon produce another, more suited to their taste.”

The Raising of Lazarus
confirmed the people of Messina’s good opinion of Caravaggio. They could see that he was indeed “working well.” Accordingly, the Messinese senate paid him a thousand scudi to paint an
Adoration of the Shepherds
for the city’s Capuchin church, Santa Maria degli Angeli. Although the church vanished long ago, the picture has survived and is still at Messina, in the Museo Nazionale. Susinno thought it his best painting. “This great work of art alone would make him remembered for centuries to come.” He relates how “various princes” tried to get possession of it but were prevented by the Capuchin Fathers appealing to the Senate. “I can truthfully say that this work is unique and Caravaggio’s most masterly painting,” he wrote. Beautiful though it is, not everyone would agree with him. Certainly, the delicate young Virgin’s contentment is most moving, as is the faith on the strong, simple faces of St. Joseph and the shepherds. The donkey
is charming too. Yet there is a brooding anticipation of the Crucifixion, almost a sense of approaching death.

If Susinno praised Caravaggio’s painting during his stay at Messina, he was horrified by his behavior. Referring to the artist’s destruction of the first version of the
Raising of Lazarus
, Susinno comments, “This barbarous and bestial deed resulted from a jealous, intolerant nature. For the same reason, he became enraged whenever he heard Messinese artists being praised.” It is only fair to Caravaggio to remember that all of them were undeniably mediocre. Susinno was particularly upset by Caravaggio’s contempt for one of his own favorites, Catalano l’Antico, now totally forgotten outside Sicily. He records resentfully how Caravaggio, “in his usual sarcastic way,” compared a picture by Filippo Paladino with some by Catalano in the basilica of Santa Maria di Gesù, observing scornfully, “This one’s a real painting, the others are only a pack of cards.”

Among Caravaggio’s private commissions in Messina were two large half pictures of St. Jerome for a local nobleman, Count Adonnino. In August 1609, Niccolo di Giacomo recorded that he had ordered four scenes of the Passion of Our Lord from Caravaggio, that the artist had already delivered a
Christ Carrying the Cross
, and that he was expecting to receive the other three by the end of the month. “One could recall several more fine works, which I omit for the sake of brevity,” says Susinno, referring to Caravaggio’s Messinese period. All these pictures must have perished in the various natural disasters that later overwhelmed the city.

In the note recording his commission of the four scenes from the Passion, Niccolo di Giacomo refers to Caravaggio’s disturbed mind, his “twisted brain.” Plainly, he made an odd impression on the Messinese. In addition, he acquired a reputation for debauchery, or at least high living. “Since our painter had become so famous, he earned a great deal of money, which he wasted on gallantries and places of ill fame,” Susinno records primly. He then tells a sad little tale. “One day, going into the church of the Madonna del Pilero with certain gentlemen, one of them came up very politely to offer
him holy water. When asked why he did so, the gentleman answered that it absolved venial sins. ‘No need of it for me, then,’ replied Caravaggio, ‘since all mine are mortal.’ ”

Caravaggio must have been a spectator in June when the image of the
Madonna della Lettera
was borne through the streets. She took her name from the famous letter she had sent to “all the Messinese,” dated 3 June A.D. 42 and authenticated by the Jesuits as a copy of a genuine letter; the original had been destroyed “out of malice,” presumably by someone from Palermo. Normally it was enshrined in the high altar of the duomo, though occasionally it was borrowed for casting out especially stubborn devils or for helping a distinguished lady through a difficult pregnancy.

He was here too for the greatest day in the city’s calendar, the feast of the Virgin Mary’s Assumption into Heaven on 15 August, when the Madonna was again borne through Messina, with even more splendor. Magistrates and patricians marched up and down the streets in her honor, followed by the garrison, to the music of drums and fifes, and then by priests and friars bearing relics. Finally came the
Madonna della Lettera
on an immense tower on wheels. As high as a house with several stories, the tower was dragged along by ropes pulled by hundreds of men; on one story were musicians, on the second a choir, and on the third “a tribe of singing patriarchs.” At the summit a young girl held a beautiful child, who represented the Virgin’s soul. The huge car was cheered by the crowds as it trundled past, cannon firing salutes. When it arrived at the cathedral, it was greeted by two statues of the city’s legendary founders, Madre and Griffone.

Caravaggio might have continued at Messina for much longer. He was making all the money he needed, and it was a delightful little city. Before it was obliterated by a final earthquake, Augustus Hare wrote of “the exquisite glints of blue sea with white sails skimming across it, and a background of roseate Italian mountains, which may be seen down every steep street.”

Since Caravaggio remained for several months, he was obviously not
worried about being seized by the Knights. Yet the city was the Religion’s headquarters in Sicily and main transit depot for supplies from Europe. His old friend the prior of Messina, Fra’ Antonio Martelli, was here throughout his visit, having arrived in April 1608 and staying until September 1609. Fra’ Giacomo Marchese, at whose house he had been a guest when he first went to Malta, was also there during 1609. Bellori writes mysteriously that while Caravaggio was on Sicily, “fear hunted him from place to place,” but it cannot have been fear of the Order of Malta that made him leave Messina hurriedly at an unknown date, since he hoped that the Religion would eventually forgive him. When the
Raising of Lazarus
arrived at the church where it was to hang, the note recording its delivery described Caravaggio as “Knight of Jerusalem,” as he still called himself.

According to Susinno, the artist left the city in 1609 because of a ridiculous incident in which he again lost his temper and used violence. “On feast days he would sometimes wander off in the company of a certain schoolmaster called Don Carlo Pepe, who often took his pupils to the arsenal to amuse them. Galleys were built there in those days … Michele went to watch the movements of the boys while they were playing, so as to find ideas for the figures [in his paintings]. But the schoolmaster began to worry about his motives and asked him just what he thought he was doing. The question so disgusted the painter that, to make quite certain that he did not lose his name for being a complete lunatic, he gave the man a wound in the head.”

Clearly, Don Carlo had started to suspect that Caravaggio had sexual designs on his pupils. It is no less plain from Caravaggio’s furious reaction that he was outraged by the insinuation, especially from a schoolmaster; in seventeenth-century Italy schoolmasters had a very unpleasant reputation for pederasty. Even so, it was no excuse for stabbing poor Don Carlo, and, in consequence, the artist had to leave Messina in a hurry.

An informed guess for the date of Caravaggio’s hasty departure from the city would be in late summer rather than in early autumn. The feast day on which the unfortunate quarrel with Don Pepe took place is most
likely to have been the Virgin’s Assumption on 15 August, while Messina’s very flourishing and well-attended trade fair would obviously have provided a fugitive artist with an excellent opportunity for escaping. Ships arrived from all over the Mediterranean; some years later, a visitor to the fair counted not less than sixty galleys in the harbor, which would, of course, have been accompanied by many more lesser craft, such as feluccas. They gave him an unusually good chance of leaving Messina discreetly, though for a few days he may have had to hide on board. The Messinese authorities did not have the manpower to search several hundred vessels.

If Caravaggio wanted to stay in Sicily, which seems not improbable in the absence of a pardon from Rome, the logical place for him to take refuge next was Palermo, Messina’s rival. Sailing very soon after the end of the the Messinese fair, he would have arrived there just before or during the last week of August 1609.

XXXIII

Palermo, 1609

F
rustratingly, there is even less detailed information about Caravaggio’s visit to Palermo than there is about his time at Messina. We know for certain that he had left Sicily altogether by early October 1609. Bellori and Susinno both say he went to Palermo and painted pictures there. Until thirty years ago, one of these might still be seen in the Palermitan church for which he had been asked to paint it. Yet although the artist’s stay was obviously very short, with his painter’s eye it must have been quite long enough for him to realize why Palermo deserved the affectionate name of
La Felice
.

It lay at the edge of the Conca d’Oro, the “Golden Shell,” a vast and staggeringly fertile garden of olive groves, vineyards, and orangeries beside the Mediterranean, on a wide bay bounded by a great mountain to the north and a wooded headland to the south. Its situation surpassed even that of Naples. By all accounts, it was among the most beautiful and exotic cities in seventeenth-century Europe. Its bizarre architecture, an amazing blend of Byzantine, Romanesque, Arab, and African, was now being joined by Baroque, while the vegetation was almost Egyptian, with palm trees, cotton trees, locust trees, sugar cane, and cacti.

Palermo was not only the crowning place of the kings of the Two Sicilies,
but the island’s historic capital and administrative center. The viceroy’s palace was here, and the Sicilian parliament met in the city every three years. This was a period when Sicilian nobles were deserting their castles and moving into Palermo. In consequence, there was plenty of money circulating in the city, so that a famous artist like Caravaggio had every prospect of quickly finding valuable commissions.

Almost as soon as he arrived, he produced a large
Nativity
for the church of the Oratorian Compagnia di San Lorenzo. He must have worked with amazing speed, or completed an already almost finished canvas that he brought with him in response to a specific invitation. Once again, there is a distinctly somber atmosphere in what is a traditionally joyful scene, as if in sad contemplation of the coming sorrows of Christ’s Passion. One suspects that it reflects the painter’s own melancholy.

At the very end of September, or possibly the very beginning of October 1609, Caravaggio left Sicily for good. Bellori claims that, after painting the
Nativity
, Caravaggio did not feel safe about staying there any longer. But he appears to have exaggerated the artist’s fears in saying that he had hurried panic-stricken through the island. Even so, it does look as though he received news at Palermo that terrified him.

Susinno tells us that Caravaggio “went back to Naples again, pursued by his injured antagonist.” Apparently, by “injured antagonist,” Susinno did not mean the unlucky schoolmaster whom the artist had assaulted at Messina but the unknown Knight of Justice with whom he had quarreled so disastrously on Malta. Presumably, the latter had by now recovered from the wounds inflicted during the duel and was reliably reported to be planning a revenge. One historian has suggested, as a reason for leaving, that “Palermo must have been less pleasant to visit than Messina: Spanish control was more evident, and life was dominated by the Inquisition.” Spanish control would be no less in evidence at Caravaggio’s next port of call, Naples, while there is not the slightest hint that he had reason at any stage of his career to fear investigation by the Inquisition, which dealt purely with deviations from
Catholic doctrine and was not interested in mere moral lapses such as dueling or murder. What little information we have indicates that he fled from Sicily in fear for his life.

Caravaggio must have had to return to Messina from Palermo, since it was the invariable point of embarcation for the crossing from Sicily to the mainland. If he made the crossing on board a merchant ship, he would have gone through the choppy waters of the Straits of Messina, then northward out to sea. Convoys of large, well-armed merchantmen were equipped to deal with any corsairs they might encounter. After four days, they would put in at Ischia, reaching Naples the next day. But because Caravaggio was on the run, he presumably wanted to travel as unobtrusively as possible, so it is much more likely that he hired a felucca. If the crew noticed their passenger’s queer bundles of rolled-up canvas, they could not possibly have guessed that they were valuable.

Since a felucca was too small to risk meeting a corsair, she had to sail by a different route after leaving the Straits of Messina, always keeping as close to the coast as possible. This was far slower than the direct route taken by the big ships, but it was much safer. It is unlikely to have been a comfortable voyage. Being at the end of September at earliest, stormy weather had probably begun to set in, so that it must have been well over a week before Caravaggio’s felucca reached Naples, perhaps even as long as a fortnight. During the last twelve months, the artist had made four sea voyages. Like Odysseus, he had passed between Scylla and Carybdis on more than one occasion. The symbolism may seem oddly fitting for someone whose life was quite so stormy. But, unlike for Odysseus, there was to be no happy ending for Caravaggio.