Caravaggio: A Passionate Life (19 page)

XXXIV

“The Neapolitan Shrug,” 1609

E
ven today, there are few pleasanter places to approach from the sea than Naples, passing between Capri and Ischia. Perhaps the beautiful prospect raised Caravaggio’s spirits for a moment, but when he landed reality would soon catch up with him. Meanwhile, it seems that he went to stay at the Marchesa di Caravaggio’s palace on the Riviera di Chiaia.

It was fear for his life that had brought him back to Naples. He was running from an implacable pursuer who, he must have known, was planning either to kill him or arrange for his death. Probably very few people were aware of the artist’s arrival in the city, and he would have been perfectly safe so long as he stayed inside the marchesa’s palace. Unfortunately, he was unable to resist the lure of the fleshpots. The famous tavern Osteria del Ciriglio beckoned irresistibly, with its delicious food and wine, uproarious good company, and “free-living ladies.” He must have known that the place was very dangerous, and that he would almost certainly be seen there by any enemy who was searching for him, but he took the risk.

Murders occurred in Naples every day, frequently committed by the upper classes. There seems to have been a positive mania for feuding and dueling among the haughty, hot-tempered, revengeful nobility of the southern
kingdom, and Knights of Malta were often all too prominent in countless bloodthirsty confrontations in the city’s narrow, dimly lit streets. At the same time, assassination was a highly efficient business, a murder being very easily and cheaply arranged, the famous “Neapolitan Shrug.” Its extremely sinister practitioners had a terrifying reputation throughout Europe, which was obviously well deserved; an English secret agent credited them with poisoning their victims by envenoming the scent of flowers, strangling them with a fragment of fine linen thrust down their throats, piercing their windpipes with a needle point, or pouring mercury into their mouths as they slept. Generally, however, the sword or the knife was used. It is clear that there was never any difficulty in finding such men.

Caravaggio was about to fall victim to a relentless vendetta on the part of the Knight of Justice he had wounded so badly on Malta. There would be a deliberate, well-organized attempt to murder him. Probably the unknown knight was not personally involved in the actual attack. Since he had already been worsted in combat by Caravaggio, he can have had no wish to face him again at the point of a sword, and in any case he regarded him as a social inferior. It is therefore more than likely that he hired professional
bravi
to do the killing for him.

On 24 October 1609, an
avviso
sent to Urbino reported, “We learn from Naples that the celebrated painter Caravaggio has been killed, though others say only wounded.” Bellori goes into more detail, recording how “he was stopped one day in the doorway of the Osteria del Ciriglio and surrounded by armed men, who attacked him and wounded him in the face.” Baglione tells the same story, adding that the sword cuts on his face were so deep that he was almost unrecognizable. He was very lucky to escape with his life, being no doubt mistakenly left for dead.

He must have been dangerously ill for a long time. According to Bellori, he had not recovered from his wounds by the following July. Too weak to move, he could not leave where he was hiding, presumably in the marchesa’s
palace. During his convalescence, there was no mention of him in the Neapolitan police records, or in the Roman
avvisi
, which regularly reported gossip from Naples. He was in no condition for brawling. However, a single document shows that at some moment before May 1610 he had started painting again and was ready to accept commissions.

His last paintings are obsessively gloomy. He does not seem to have used models, perhaps because of his need to remain in hiding. It is unlikely that he could have produced all the pictures attributed to him during this second stay in Naples, although he may have sold some he had brought with him from Sicily, or even Malta. Perhaps he thought the Neapolitan nobles could afford to pay more than the Sicilian nobles. That his paintings were carried around may explain why so many have been mistaken for copies; rolling up the canvases made the paint flake, so that they had to be retouched.

Bellori writes of at least one picture painted during this second stay in Naples: “And hoping to placate the Grand Master, he sent him as a gift a half-figure of Herodias with the head of St. John in a basin.” Perhaps it was accompanied by a plea for Fra’ Alof to call off the unknown knight. Sir Denis Mahon believes that this painting was begun by Caravaggio immediately after his arrival in Naples but had to be put aside after the attempted murder at the Osteria del Ciriglio. Caravaggio never stopped hoping for a pardon from the Religion, continuing to call himself a Knight of Malta until the day he died.

When Caravaggio took refuge in Genoa in 1605, after attacking Pasqualone, he had declined to paint a fresco for Marcantonio Doria, the son of a former Doge. On 11 May 1609, Lanfranco Massa, the Doria family’s agent at Naples, wrote a letter to Prince Marcantonio, saying that soon he would be able to send a painting by Caravaggio to Genoa. This was the
Martyrdom of St. Ursula
. Massa explained that he was having to wait because the artist had applied the varnish so thickly; Massa had left the picture to dry in the sun, with disastrous consequences—it had had to be revarnished.
(In the same letter, Massa refers to Caravaggio as Marcantonio’s “friend,” implying that they had met fairly frequently, no doubt in Rome.) The painting finally left Naples for Genoa on May 17.

It was probably commissioned by Marcantonio Doria for the convent of his beloved stepdaughter, Sister Orsola. The story of the gruesome martyrdom that it depicts comes from
The Golden Legend
, which tells how the virgin Ursula was murdered by a king of the Huns for refusing to marry him, and how he shot her with an arrow. The king is a gnome-like figure in a Baroque cuirass, grimly clutching an oriental bow, while an impassive Ursula gazes with strange calm at the arrow in her bosom that has killed her.

Cruelty of a different sort is in
The Tooth-Drawer
, a rare exception from Caravaggio’s usual religious themes. A 1637 inventory of paintings at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence lists such a picture, while in his
Microcosmo della Pittura
, published twenty years after the inventory, Francesco Scannelli relates how he saw in the grand duke of Tuscany’s apartments “a painting of half-length figures with [Caravaggio’s] accustomed naturalism.” Scannelli adds that it was in very bad condition.
The Tooth-Drawer’s
authenticity has been accepted only in recent years, and not by everybody. Dating from the artist’s second stay at Naples, it is notable for the grotesque spectators’ fascinated enjoyment of the patient’s agony.

The
Denial of St. Peter
also dates from this second Neapolitan period, inspired by the Gospel of St. Mark: “Now when Peter was in the court below, there cometh one of the maidservants of the high priest. And when she had seen Peter warming himself, looking on him, she saith: ‘Thou also wast with Jesus of Nazareth.’ But he denied, saying: ‘I neither know nor understand what thou sayest.’ ” An uneasy St. Peter and the suspicious maidservant have their faces illuminated by the firelight behind them, heightening the chiaroscuro, while a bystander’s face remains wholly in shadow.

Another
David and Goliath
shows a handsome young David holding up an agonized head, which, however, wears a curiously reflective expression.
Once again, it is a self-portrait. David holds a broad-bladed “sword-rapier” of the type that may have slashed Caravaggio’s face at the Osteria del Ciriglio. The picture has also been attributed to his second Neapolitan period. A tent flap at the top left-hand corner indicates that the scene is not the moment immediately after David killed Goliath, but another, described in the Book of Kings: “And when David was returned after the Philistine was slain, Abner took him in before Saul with the head of the Philistine in his hand.” No one can be unmoved by this painting.

Some think that this interpretation of
David and Goliath
is meant to convey the artist’s foreboding of imminent death, since Goliath appears to see something we cannot. Both faces are self-portraits, Goliath being the middle-aged, sinful Caravaggio, while David is Caravaggio restored to his youthful innocence. The most likely meaning is that the painter is showing the pure, intelligent soul freed from the battered, sinful body, released from suffering and grief, redeemed by Christ. This is probably how most contemporaries familiar with alchemy would have read it. The picture was acquired by Cardinal Borghese, who remained one of Caravaggio’s greatest admirers.

Another work, ascribed to the same period, although it may have been produced in Sicily, is an
Annunciation
. One of Caravaggio’s most mysterious and saddest paintings, it was his last altarpiece, commissiond by Duke Henry II of Lorraine for the high altar of the cathedral at Nancy. Inspired by the Gospel of St. Luke, it shows a strapping, winged angel hovering over a submissive, abject Virgin, as he brings his wonderful message to her: “And Mary said: ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it done to me according to thy word.’ ” What is striking is the Virgin’s haunted desolation, her look of utter dejection at the prospect of giving birth to the Messiah. The desolation may well reflect Caravaggio’s own wretchedness. If the
Annunciation
was painted in Naples, and not in Sicily, then the bed and the chair at the right of Mary’s chamber could be those of the artist’s sickroom.

During 1609—1610, his normal gloom must have been intensified by terrifying memories of the attempt to kill him, the constant pain of slowly
healing wounds, and the frustrations of an invalid’s life. His brooding, melancholy temperament made him peculiarly ill-equipped to bear such miseries. Yet, when examined objectively, his future still seemed glowing.

As early as 1606, there had been rumors in Rome of a pardon. In May 1607, and again in August the same year, the Duke of Modena’s Roman agent reported that efforts were being made to secure one. During the first months of 1610, Cardinal Ferdinando Gonzaga, who now owned the
Death of the Virgin
, begged Pope Paul to forgive the artist. Vain and weak, Gonzaga was scarcely a papal favorite, but almost certainly he was warmly supported by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, who wanted his favorite painter back in Rome. For Caravaggio, a pardon meant not only returning to Rome but a guarantee that he would be feted as the greatest artist of the age. He could command an enormous income, and powerful friends in the College of Cardinals might even persuade the pope to restore the habit to “Fra’ Michelangelo.”

Meanwhile, he appears to have gone on working despite his poor health. Although the one surviving picture that can be dated with absolute certainty to this Neapolitan period is the
Martyrdom of St. Ursula
, the fact that he was able to paint it shows that he was regaining his strength. Probably he seldom left the marchesa’s palace, let alone dared to visit the Ciriglio. He seems, however, to have gone to the Lombard community’s church of Sant’ Anna dei Lombardi, painting two pictures for the Fenarolli Chapel. One was a
St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata
, the other a
Resurrection of Christ
, considered by some to be excessively naturalistic because, instead of depicting Christ in glory, the artist showed him with one foot still inside the grave. Both were destroyed by an earthquake in 1793.

Naples was the ideal place to wait for news of his pardon, since it was so close to the Papal States and a mail coach regularly brought letters from Rome. Nevertheless, by midsummer 1610 Caravaggio had become desperately anxious to get out of the city. He may have heard from friends that
the unknown knight had learned he was still alive and in Naples and was planning another attempt to murder him.

Some historians suggest that Caravaggio left Naples on a boat bound for Genoa. But of his principal Genoese friends, the Giustiniani brothers and Ottavio Costa lived in Rome, while he could easily do business with Prince Doria without visiting Genoa. Rome had far more to offer him. Baglione and Bellori both say his destination was Rome. The only difference between their accounts is that Baglione thought Cardinal Gonzaga was still negotiating with Rome for the pardon, while Bellori thought he had already obtained it. There is also evidence that the cardinal secretary knew Caravaggio was on his way to Rome, bringing pictures with him, though he did not know how many or what they were. Obviously, these were intended for Borghese and Gonzaga, perhaps even for the pope himself. It looks as if Scipione Borghese had received a letter, either from the marchesa or from the artist, before Caravaggio left Naples.

According to Bellori, Caravaggio, “despite suffering agonizing pain, went on board a felucca as soon as possible with his few possessions, and set off for Rome.” This was early in July. Probably he fancied that, from his hostess’s window, he could see his enemy’s
bravi
lurking outside. A recently discovered report from the nuncio in Naples, Bishop Deodato Gentile, sent to Borghese at the end of July, says that he left “from the house of the Signora Marchesa di Caravaggio di Caravaggio, who lives on the Chiaia.” The felucca would have anchored just off the seafront, immediately below her palace, so that he could go aboard and embark without attracting too much attention.

XXXV

“Puerto Hercules,” July 1610

P
orto Ercole was close to the northern border of the Papal States, not far from Civitavecchia. Today a seaside resort, in the seventeenth century it was a Spanish garrison town, one of the
presidie
, a string of enclaves on the Tuscan coast from which Spain monitored shipping between France and Naples. Its only other activities were fishing and the grain trade. The Spaniards called the little port
Puerto Hercules
. Probably Caravaggio had never even heard of it before now.

The skipper of his felucca must have intended to sail slowly along the coast in the usual way, landing every evening to spend the night within reach of a fort. But, almost as soon as they had left Naples, a storm came up. People on shore thought the felucca might have run for shelter to the island of Procida, off the direct sea route, though only two miles out from Naples, which explains why a rumor later circulated that Caravaggio had died on the island. In reality, the gale blew the tiny ship northward and past Ostia, the landing place for Rome. At last the skipper managed to put in to Palo, still in papal territory, a fishing hamlet guarded by a fort with a small garrison.

Unfortunately, the Spanish captain at the fort had just been warned to be on the lookout for a well-known bandit. Seeing a pugnacious little man in
shabby finery, armed with rapier and dagger, his face scarred by sword cuts, the captain at once assumed that Caravaggio was the
banditto
. “When he landed on the beach, he was arrested in error and imprisoned for two days,” says Baglione. Bellori confirms that the soldiers in the fort had been waiting for “another gentleman,” obviously the bandit. The mistake gives some idea of the impression Caravaggio made on anyone meeting him for the first time. The nuncio adds that he had to pay the captain a large sum of money before he would let him go. Baglione and Bellori both thought that the arrest occurred at Porto Ercole. Only since the discovery of the nuncio’s report has it been known that it took place at Palo. On the whole, however, they seem to be reasonably accurate, while the nuncio supplies vital details.

When Caravaggio was released, his felucca was nowhere to be seen, which sent him into a frenzy. His possessions were still on board, including his paintings. He ran along the beach like a lunatic, searching for the boat, until told that she had been blown even farther north. Learning she was at Porto Ercole, he hurried after her. Since most of his money had been stolen from him by the captain, he could not afford to hire another felucca and was forced to travel a hundred kilometers overland from Palo, possibly on foot, despite the risk of being murdered by peasants or
banditti
. He may have had enough funds left to hire a horse or a mule, but in the heat of the July sun, even if he rode, it would have been a grueling journey.

Already faint from painful, unhealed wounds, further weakened by his ordeal at sea and his imprisonment, and worn out by his trek from Palo, Caravaggio was exhausted and half crazy by the time he arrived at Porto Ercole. He rushed off to look for the felucca and his pictures, but soon collapsed. Baglione tells us that “he reached a place on the seashore where he was put to bed with a deadly fever, and after a few days he died miserably, with no one to care for him.” The “place” [
luogo
] sounds like a boathouse or a shed for nets. Mancini, too, says, “he died in want, and without treatment.” Caravaggio’s death was 18 July 1610. He was thirty-eight years old.

In 1995 Professor Maurizio Marini discovered a document in the archives
of the local diocese that shed fresh light on the painter’s death and burial. He died from drinking polluted water, contracting some lethal form of enteric fever. He did not die alone as Baglione and Mancini thought, but was nursed by the Confraternity of Santa Cruz. Its members, officers of the Spanish garrison at Porto Ercole, saw that dying wayfarers received medicine and the Sacraments, took inventories of their goods, and, when possible, sent their bodies home for reburial. They owned the little chapel of St. Sebastian near the sea, next to Fort Filippo, which had a small garden with two palm trees. They interred him here, between the palm trees. Despite the fact that it was a pauper’s burial, it is unlikely that the confraternity robbed his corpse. The chapel is still standing, no longer a place of worship, and although his grave has not yet been found, Caravaggio must lie nearby, rapier and dagger by his side, wearing his cross and wrapped in a knight’s choir mantle, the shroud of every Knight of Malta.

Recently, it has been unconvincingly suggested that the traditional account of Caravaggio’s death was an official fabrication by the knights and the local authorities to conceal his murder, which, supposedly, had taken place in a dungeon at Civitavecchia in papal territory with the connivance of the Catholic Church. It is alleged that the Knights of Malta had never forgiven him for the mysterious crime he had committed at Valletta in 1608, whose details they suppressed for reasons unknown. Yet not only had their grand master helped the painter to escape from Malta, but, had they wanted to, the knights could easily have arranged for him to be murdered while he was in Sicily. It seems unlikely that they would have risked infuriating Cardinal Borghese by killing one of his favorite artists, whose pardon he had only just obtained from the pope with great difficulty. And there is no known record of the Religion murdering anybody in such a way throughout its entire history.

Certainly, no one could have been more taken aback by the unexpected news of Caravaggio’s death than Scipione Borghese, who was aghast at the loss of his eagerly awaited paintings. He immediately sent orders for the nuncio at Naples to find out exactly what had happened, in particular what
had happened to his pictures. In the report, dated 29 July, the obsequious Bishop Gentile was careful to refer to the artist as
il povero Caravaggio
. He knew very well that he was writing about a favorite. He describes Caravaggio’s last journey in detail, mentioning the mistaken rumor that he had died on Procida. Then he deals with the paintings. “The felucca, when it got back, brought his belongings to the house of the Signora Marchesa di Caravaggio,” he states. “I at once went to look for the pictures, but found they were no longer there, except for three, two of St. John and one of the Magdalene, and these are at the Signora Marchesa’s house.” In fact, the three were the only pictures that had been on board the felucca. Borghese was determined to get possession of them.

From a copy of a document prepared by officials of the viceroy of Naples, which was destroyed during the Second World War, it seems that the inventory of Caravaggio’s effects drawn up by the Confraternity of Santa Cruz was sent to the Religion at Valletta. The Knights of Malta, however, refusing to acknowledge him as a member of their order, declined to accept even the pictures. The viceroy then ordered that all of Caravaggio’s possessions be sent to the Viceregal Palace, “especially the painting of St. John the Baptist.” But Cardinal Borghese prevailed.
St. John the Baptist in the Wilderness
is still in his collection at the Villa Borghese.

On July 28, the duke of Urbino’s agent in Rome sent his employer an
avviso
reporting, “News has arrived of the death of Michel Angelo Caravaggio, the celebrated artist, most excellent as a colorist and in imitating nature, after his illness at Porto Ercole.” On August 1, another
avviso
informed its readers that “Michel Angelo da Caravaggio, the famous painter, has died at Porto Ercole when traveling from Naples to Rome, thanks to the mercy of His Holiness in canceling a warrant for murder.”

Bellori relates how everyone in Rome had been waiting for Caravaggio to return, telling us, with perhaps a little exaggeration, that the news of his death “caused universal sorrow.” But Sandrart was undoubtedly echoing the Giustiniani brothers and their circle when he wrote, “His passing was
mourned by all the leading noblemen in Rome, because one day he might have done so much more for art.” Years later, his rakish old friend, the Cavaliere Marino, whose portrait he had once painted, published some affectionate verses in his memory, “In morte di Michelangelo da Caravaggio”:

The Cavaliere claimed that Caravaggio had not merely painted, he had created.

An unforgiving Baglione wrote with relish that Caravaggio “died badly, just as he had lived.” It is only fair to remember that more than a few artists of the Baroque age possessed difficult temperaments, were no less violent, and had even stormier careers, yet in the end they generally settled down. An increasingly held view in seventeenth-century Italy was that most, if perhaps not all, artists and creative writers were slightly mad. Pope Paul V is credited with observing, “Everything is permitted to painters and poets: we have to put up with these great men because the superabundance of spirits that makes them great is the same that leads to such strange behavior.”

Although Caravaggio’s earliest paintings had secular themes, he was primarily a religious artist. Essentially he was a man who, when painting, became a mystic. His deepest affliction was not his violent temper but a devouring melancholy. Yet despite his misfortunes and his early death, he should not be seen as a tragic figure. Nor would he have seen himself as one. The last version of
David and Goliath
was inspired by his conviction that, ultimately, he would triumph over sin and death, escaping from the unhappy man he had become. Caravaggio’s portrait of his own severed head, grasped by his redeemed self, was a declaration of hope.