The second poem was rather more carefully constructed, in regular hendecasyllabic lines. Its attacks on Baglione were slightly less sexually graphic, at least until the last line:
Gian Coglione senza dubio dir si puole
quel ch[e] biasimar si mette altrui
ch[e] può cento anni esser mastro di lui.
Nella pittura intendo la mia prole
poi ch[e] pittor si vol chiamar colui
Ch[e] no[n] può star p[er] macinar con lui.
I color no[n] ha mastro nel numero
si sfaciatamente nominar si vole
si sa pur il proverbio ch[e] si dice
ch[e] chi lodar si vole si maledice
Io no[n] son uso lavarmi la bocca
ne meno di inalzar quel ch[e] no[n] merta
come fa l’idol suo ch[e] è cosa certa.
Se io metterme volessi a ragionar
delle [s … re] fatte da questui
no[n] bastarian interi un mese o dui.
Vieni un po’ qua tu ch’[e] vo’ biasimare
l’altrui pitture et sai pur ch[e] le tue
si stano in casa tua a’ chiodi ancora
vergogna[n]doti tu mostrarle fuora.
Infatti i’ vo’ l’impresa aba[n]donare
ch[e] sento ch[e] mi abonda tal materia
massime s’intrassi n[e] la catena
d’oro ch[e] al collo indegnamente porta
ch[e] credo certo [meglio] se io non erro
a piè gle ne staria una di ferro.
Di tutto quel che ha detto con passione
per certo gli è p[er] ché credo beuto
avesse certo come è suo doùto
altrime[n]te ei saria un becco fotuto.
Call him Johnny Bollock,
this man who sets about criticizing another man
who could be his master for a hundred years.
I mean in my beloved art of painting,
because he would like to call himself a painter
although he’s not even fit to grind colours for that other man.
Using colours isn’t as easy as one two three,
even if he shamelessly wants to pretend it’s like that.
Everyone knows the truth of the proverb:
Men like to attack those whom they should really be praising.
I’m not one for washing my mouth out,
nor for exalting someone who doesn’t merit it,
as he praises his false idol.
If I wanted to start describing
the pathetic things this man has done
a whole month wouldn’t be enough, nor even two.
Come here for a moment, you who like to criticize
the paintings of another,
even though you know that your own
are still in your house
because you’re ashamed to show them to anyone.
In fact I’m going to stop this humiliation in a minute
because I’ve just got too much material to work with
especially if I start on that necklace
of gold which you so undeservedly wear round your neck
because I believe, if I’m not mistaken, that you should
really have an iron one attached to your ankle.
As for all that [Johnny Bollock] has said with such passion,
well, it can only be because he’s drunk, in my opinion,
as he ought to be,
otherwise he’d just be a fucked-over cuckold.
There was a long and carnivalesque tradition of colourful insult in Rome, embodied by the battered ancient statue known as Pasquino, which stood at the corner of Palazzo Braschi to the western side of Piazza Navona. It had long been the custom to attach squibs, satires, scurrilous pieces of graffiti and other outbursts of defamatory rage to the wall next to the statue, under the cover of darkness. There was a collective noun for these libels: pasquinate, or ‘pasquinades’. Caravaggio, a familiar sight in the Piazza Navona, sword strapped to his side, may well have attached the verses attacking Baglione to the so-called ‘speaking statue’. In any case it must have been fairly obvious to anyone who knew about the trouble between the two men that Caravaggio was behind this poetry of scabrous ridicule.
The timing of his attack was unwise. During the early years of the seventeenth century there was a fierce crackdown on libel in Rome, in direct response to the widespread unrest that had followed a notorious trial and public execution. In the summer of 1599 a beautiful young noblewoman called Beatrice Cenci had been sentenced to death for murdering her tyrannical and incestuous father.58 Her mother, Lucrezia, and her two brothers, Giacomo and Olimpio, had also been convicted as accomplices to the crime. Appeals for clemency were turned down by the pope, and on 11 September of the same year the execution had taken place on a temporary scaffold erected on the Ponte Sant’Angelo. Lucrezia and Beatrice were publicly beheaded, while Giacomo had his flesh torn piece by piece from his body with red-hot pincers. Olimpio was spared because he was still a minor. But he was forced to watch the suffering of the others and roused with cold water on the many occasions when he fainted. A vast crowd was present, including perhaps Caravaggio: artists were encouraged to witness executions so that they might imagine the pains of the Christian martyrs all the more sharply. The sympathies of the people were firmly with the Cenci. It was widely believed that the execution was no more than a judicial murder, designed to enrich Clement VIII and other members of the Aldobrandini family. The pope did not care for justice, it was said. He was just looking for an excuse to sequester the Cenci’s estates. There was rioting and seven died in the crush.
The notoriously tough Governor of Rome, Ferrante Taverna, had personally supervised the extraction of Beatrice Cenci’s confession. In the immediate aftermath of her trial and execution, he clamped down brutally on the circulation of seditious rumours. At the end of 1599 he issued a decree, Contro detrattori della fama, & honor’ d’altri in lettre d’avisi, versi, prose, o altrimenti, ‘to curb the audacity of those … who use their pernicious tongues, in writing newsletters to various parts, filling their papers with lies and calumnies’. Tough penalties would be imposed on anyone who ‘defamed, and detracted from honour and reputation … under the guise of cleverly written poems, and witty epigrams, or libellous prose, & pasquinades’.59 A man found guilty of the most serious form of libel could expect a sentence of from seven years to life rowing in the papal galleys. Many of those convicted requested beheading instead.
Within a matter of months of Caravaggio’s poems starting to circulate, Baglione and Tommaso Salini – Mao, as he was known – decided to take the case to court on a charge of criminal libel. They prepared their evidence with care. Salini cultivated the acquaintance of a painter who was close to Caravaggio, Filippo Trisegni. In a show of friendship, he lent Trisegni various studio props, including a helmet, and promised to teach him how to paint cast shadows. Eventually Salini managed to wheedle a copy of the first poem out of Trisegni. He then persuaded him to write the second one out for him in longhand. Armed with Exhibit A and Exhibit B in the case for the prosecution, Baglione and Salini struck back at their enemies. On 28 August, Baglione lodged a complaint with the Governor of Rome about some libelli famosi, or ‘famous libels’. The accused were Onorio Longhi, Caravaggio, Orazio Gentileschi and the hapless Filippo Trisegni. Baglione produced his manuscripts of the offending poems, incriminatingly written out in the hand of Caravaggio’s known friend Trisegni, as he addressed his deposition to Judge Alfonso Tomassino, judicial representative of Governor Taverna:
You should know that I am a painter by profession and have been practising this profession here in Rome for a good many years. Now it happens that I have gone and painted a picture of the resurrection of Our Lord for the Father General of the Company of Jesus, which is in a chapel of the church of Gesù. When they found out about the said picture, which was this past Easter, the said accused were envious because they intended, I mean, the said Michelangelo intended to do it h
imself. So this Michelangelo out of envy, as I said, and the said Onorio Longhi and Orazio, his friends and followers, have gone round speaking ill of me and reproaching my work. And, in particular, they have done some verses that dishonour and insult me. They gave these round and circulated them among many different people, these being the ones I’m showing you, which I had from the painter Messer Tommaso Salini. He told me he got them from Filippo Trisegni, also a painter, and that a part of the said verses were written by Filippo in his presence, being those that begin ‘John Baggage’ and end ‘your painting deserves only vituperation’ and that the others are those on this quarter page that begin ‘Johnny Bollock’ and end ‘otherwise he’d just be a fucked-over cuckold’. So I take action against the above-named and any others that have assisted, or in whatever way were aware of and found guilty of this fact, asking that action be taken against them as justice requires, since the above-named accused have always persecuted, emulated, and envied me seeing that my works are held in higher esteem than theirs.60
Immediately afterwards Mao Salini made his own deposition, fleshing out Baglione’s account of events with more detail. Salini particularly relished telling the story of how he had trapped Filippo Trisegni into helping him obtain copies of the incriminating poems:
I was taking a stroll around with the said Filippo asking him what painters were saying about the picture that the said Giovanni had done for the church of Gesù. He told me that Michelangelo of Caravaggio, Onorio Longhi, and Orazio Gentileschi, all three painters, had put together some verses against the said Giovanni, and against me since I am his friend, concerning the said painting. And so, a few days later, the said Filippo with fine words gave me a paper with several verses written against the said Giovanni, which were on a quarter-page. Then he told me that the said Orazio had written them together with Ottavio Padovano [a nickname for Ottavio Leoni], likewise a painter, and that Ludovico Bresciano, also a painter, was going around distributing them to numerous painters. In particular, he had given them to one Mario, in like manner a painter, who lives in Via del Corso.
Then – I don’t know how many days later – the said Filippo came to my house one day towards evening to see a painting. After showing it to him, I begged him to tell me a little about the sonnet that he had given me a while back. That was before he gave me the said verses that I mentioned above. Then he told me that he had already given it to me once, and when I said that I had misplaced it he finally wrote the sonnet out for me there in my house on half a page, which if I don’t remember badly begins ‘John Baggage’, telling me that the said Michelangelo and Onorio had written it, and that he had received it from a catamite [bardassa] of Onorio and Michelangelo called Giovanni Battista who lives behind the Banchi.
What’s more, he told me that the said Michelangelo, knowing that this Filippo had been handed the said sonnets, had warned him to be careful that these sonnets didn’t fall into the hands of the said Giovanni or in my hands because trouble would be caused, and that certain young men had done them at his home for their pleasure, telling me also that a certain Bartolomeo, servant of the said Michelangelo, was going around distributing these sonnets to whoever wanted one, and that he had also written others.
What Salini so carefully described was exactly what the new libel law had been brought in to eradicate: a systematic attempt to blacken a man’s reputation. The cast of villains was impressive. First there was the naive accomplice, Trisegni, with his ‘fine words’, taking a malicious pleasure in the whole affair while unwittingly playing the part of a patsy. Then there was the network by which the slanders were distributed. It included the Lombard artist called Ludovico from Brescia and his friend Mario – possibly Caravaggio’s old friend from Sicily, Mario Minniti – who took the poems from one artist’s studio to the next. An alleged catamite and a servant of doubtful morals were also involved. Finally, at the centre of the conspiracy, were Caravaggio and his shady friends. They wrote the poems at Caravaggio’s home, which at this time was the Palazzo Mattei, and they did so out of pure malice, ‘for their pleasure’. After Salini’s testimony, the judge had little choice but to prosecute.
Less than two weeks later, the black-cloaked sbirri swooped. On 11 September 1603 they took Filippo Trisegni while he was having lunch at home in the Via della Croce. Caravaggio was seized in the Piazza Navona the same day. Less than twenty-four hours later, they arrested Orazio Gentileschi at his quarters in Via Paolina. They also searched Gentileschi’s rooms and removed certain letters and sonnets, to be used as evidence. The only defendant to escape arrest was Onorio Longhi. He had left town, presumably after a tip-off.
The accused were kept apart, in order to prevent them getting their respective stories straight before the trial. Gentileschi was held at the crumbling Corte Savella. Caravaggio and Trisegni were kept in solitary confinement at the Tor di Nona. Their dark, single cells were on the first floor. Nearby was another prison known as the galeotta, so called because it housed convicts who had already been condemned to row in the papal galleys. It was a vivid reminder of the fate awaiting Caravaggio and his associates if Giovanni Baglione had his way.
Filippo Trisegni was the first of the accused to give evidence. He began by pretending that he barely knew Mao Salini: ‘I know a painter called Tommaso but I don’t know his surname. He lives near me on Via della Croce. I usually call him Mao and I believe he’s from Rome.’ But there was an immediate surprise in store for him. Salini had provided the court with a note written to him by Trisegni, requesting the loan of an iron helmet. The judge produced the note, which surely implied that Trisegni and his neighbour were closer than he had just said. He had written the note, had he not? Wrongfooted, Trisegni backtracked hurriedly. He could not deny that the note was in his handwriting. On reflection, he added, ‘the said Tommaso is a very good friend of mine, who lent me chalks and anything else I needed.’
It was not an auspicious beginning. But Trisegni managed to recover his composure when questions were asked – as he must have known they would be – about certain scurrilous verses. His responses were teasing and ambiguous, clearly intended to deflect attention away from himself, as well as from Caravaggio and the other suspects. He implied that a mysterious man called Gregorio Rotolanti had commissioned the verses from a yet more mysterious and unnamed man, a student of physics or logic – Trisegni was not sure which. Here is the main body of his testimony:
I heard some insulting poems about the said Tommaso told by Gregorio Rotolanti, and since Tommaso is my friend I pretended to like them and begged the said Gregorio to give me a copy. And so I went to his home and he let me copy some verses but I don’t remember exactly what they said. The wife of the said Tommaso was mentioned in it and he was called Mao and it said ‘Your pictures are woman’s work’ or something similar and I think they were on a quarter-page. After I copied them I went to see the said Tommaso and told him that he ought to be aware that while he was going around speaking badly of other people’s paintings people were speaking badly of him too. Then I told him I wanted to show him something that had been written against him and so I showed him that poem. I gave it to him and [Mao] pressed me to tell him who had given it to me and who had written it, but I never wanted to tell him because I didn’t want to cause trouble.
Yet he pressed me and named a lot of people and especially Michelangelo of Caravaggio, Bartolomeo, who was Michelangelo’s servant, and Orazio Gentileschi, a man from Parma called Ludovico Parmigianino, another called Francesco Scarpellino, and he asked me if the person could be one of them. I said to him ‘It could be any one of them – it might be one of them but I don’t want to tell you his name.’ I had been waiting for him to teach me how to do figures in cast shadows and then I would have told him. But he never taught me, and so I didn’t tell him.
But he did beg me to tell him if I heard anything else about him. And so I spoke to the said Rotolanti, who said that he had another poem against the said Tommaso. Then on the following day we met on Via d
ella Croce and went into the apothecary, where he let me copy some more verses that I think began with, ‘Johnny Bollock’. It was in a nice style and well written. But I don’t know much about verse and out of several verses I made one. Rotolanti didn’t want to give me the original because he said he wanted to learn it by heart. I asked him who had written them and he answered that a young man had written it, a student of logic or maybe physics, a valent’huomo, who was really good at it and would write a sonnet or two for a woman for me if I so desired. He told me he was a graduate and wrote exquisite verse. So I returned to see Tommaso about fifteen or twenty days after the first visit and showed him this other poem and left it with him. It was on a quarter-page filled with small handwriting from one side to the other. He told me that he had lost the first one and asked me if I would be kind enough to give him a copy. Since I had learned almost all of it by heart I made him a copy there at his home the way I remembered it.
Trisegni’s testimony directly contradicted Salini’s deposition to the court. The man whom he claimed had given him the verses, Gregorio Rotolanti, now became a key witness. But he was never called to testify. Perhaps he had gone into hiding, like Onorio Longhi. Or maybe Trisegni had simply invented Rotolanti and his story about the student of physics or logic with a talent for versification.
Gentileschi was next to be questioned by the court. The main purpose was to identify the handwriting of the various documents that the sbirri had confiscated at his home. These included a letter to which some playful verses were attached, as well as four sonnets written on a single piece of paper. After having admitted that ‘I know how to write but not very correctly’, Gentileschi denied that any of the verses produced in evidence were written in his hand. He said that the eight lines of verse attached to the letter were written by a friend of his called Lodovico. As for the four sonnets, ‘I say that about six to eight days ago one Giovanni Maggi, an engraver and painter that lives in Vicolo dei Bergamaschi, gave them to me. He dabbles in these things but I don’t really know if it’s his handwriting. But it could be his handwriting.’
Caravaggio Page 32