50. See Charles Dempsey, ‘ “Et nos cedamus amori”: Observations on the Farnese Gallery’, Art Bulletin, vol. 50, no. 4 (Dec. 1968), pp. 363–74.
51. See Helen Langdon, The Lives of Caravaggio, pp. 45–6.
52. See Karel van Mander, Het Schilderboek (Haarlem, 1604), cited in Beverly Louise Brown, ‘The Black Wings of Envy: Competition, Rivalry and Paragone’, in The Genius of Rome, Royal Academy exhibition catalogue, p. 251.
53. See Gianni Papi’s essay ‘Cecco del Caravaggio’, in Come dipingeva il Caravaggio: atti della giornata di studio, Mina Gregori (ed.) (Milan, 1996).
54. This transcription was made from the original MSS of Symonds’s travel journal by John Gash, who published it in the Burlington Magazine, vol. 140, no. 1,138 (Jan. 1998), pp. 41–2.
55. See Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, vol. 2, p. 418.
56. See Maryvelma Smith O’Neil’s entertainingly revisionist study, Giovanni Baglione: Artistic Reputation in Baroque Rome (Cambridge, 2002), p. 17. I am indebted to her lucid account of the libels and their consequences, although not convinced by her suggestion that Baglione was an injured innocent in the affair.
57. These transcriptions of the poems are taken from Anthony Colantuono, ‘Caravaggio’s Literary Culture’, in Caravaggio, Realism Rebellion, Reception, Genevieve Warwick (ed.) (Newark, 2006), p. 58.
58. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s verse play The Cenci was inspired by these events.
59. See Maryvelma Smith O’Neil, Giovanni Baglione: Artistic Reputation in Baroque Rome, p. 13.
60. The libel trial documents were first published in full in G. A. Dell’Acqua and M. Cinotti, Il Caravaggio e il sue grandi opere da S. Luigi dei Francesi (Milan, 1971), pp. 153–7. The translation offered here is by Don Var Green and can be found in full in Maryvelma Smith O’Neil, Giovanni Baglione: Artistic Reputation in Baroque Rome, pp. 337–62. I have made a couple of slight alterations, to match my own translation of the two poems at the centre of the case, and in one or two instances have preserved the original Italian usages.
61. The document is printed in full in Maryvelma Smith O’Neil, Giovanni Baglione: Artistic Reputation in Baroque Rome, pp. 357–8.
62. See Sandro Corradini, Materiali per un processo, document 26.
63. See Maryvelma Smith O’Neil, Giovanni Baglione: Artistic Reputation in Baroque Rome, pp. 358–62.
64. Salini added the detail about the punch in the chest in a slightly later piece of testimony; I have inserted it here for the sake of clarity.
65. The document is reprinted in full in Maurizio Marini, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio ‘pictor praestantissimus’ (second edition, Rome 1979), p. 472.
66. See Tullio Lazzari, Ascoli in prospettiva (Ascoli, 1722), p. 40.
67. The document is dated 6 June 1605. It is quoted, and photographically reproduced, in Maurizio Marini, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio ‘pictor praestantissimus’, p. 53.
68. See Sandro Corradini, Materiali per un processo, document 57. The translation is from Catherine Puglisi, Caravaggio, p. 420.
69. Nowadays many people have books they do not read, but books were so expensive in Caravaggio’s time that ownership of a volume can be taken as an indication of familiarity with its contents.
70. See Helen Langdon, Caravaggio: A Life, p. 279.
71. See Walter Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, p. 280.
72. Ibid., p. 260.
73. Ibid., p. 249.
74. The translation is from ibid., p. 281; the fullest transcription of these documents is in G. A. Dell’Acqua and M. Cinotti, Il Caravaggio e il sue grandi opere da S. Luigi dei Francesi, p. 158.
75. G. A. Dell’Acqua and M. Cinotti, Il Caravaggio e il sue grandi opere da S. Luigi dei Francesi, p. 158.
76. See Walter Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, p. 281.
77. These officials were drawn from the lay population and elected to their posts by the noble families of the city. Hence they reflected the factionalism and competing dynastic ambitions that existed at the highest level of Roman society. During the so-called Vacant See, the interregnum between one pope’s death and another’s election – but only at that time – the caporioni were allowed to act as judges in the districts under their control. Trouble often ensued during these periods. See Laurie Nussdorfer, ‘The Politics of Space in Early Modern Rome’, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, vol. 42 (1997), pp. 161–86.
78. All this testimony is in Sandro Corradini, Materiali per un processo, document 41.
79. Ibid., document 47.
80. See Walter Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, p. 282.
81. The term ‘house-scorning’ was coined by Elizabeth S. Cohen. The discussion that follows is heavily indebted to her pioneering work in the field of seventeenth-century social history, especially the essay ‘Honour and Gender in the Streets of Early Modern Rome’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 22, no. 4 (Spring 1992), pp. 597–625.
82. Louis Richeome, The Pilgrime of Loreto, facsimile of the 1629 edition, English Recusant Literature 1558–1640, vol. 285, D. M. Rogers (ed.) (London, 1976), p. 33.
83. Thousands of pilgrims visited Loreto every year and their experience was carefully orchestrated. The pilgrimage diaries of the Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini, founded by Filippo Neri and supported by the patrons who paid for Caravaggio’s Madonna of Loreto, the Cavalletti family, contain much information about the structure of a visit to Loreto. They strongly suggest that the painter wanted his picture to evoke an actual pilgrimage.
84. The placement of Caravaggio’s works within the geography of Rome has received relatively scant consideration. Pamela Jones’s essay, ‘The Place of Poverty in Seicento Rome’, included in Altarpieces and Their Viewers, contains a penetrating analysis of the significance of the geographical locations of some of Caravaggio’s works.
85. See Helen Langdon, The Lives of Caravaggio, p. 90.
86. Ibid., p. 46.
87. See Walter Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, p. 284.
88. See G. A. Dell’Acqua and M. Cinotti, Il Caravaggio e il sue grandi opere da S. Luigi dei Francesi, p. 158.
89. It was left out of later editions.
90. See Jacob Hess, ‘Nuovo Contributo alla vita del Caravaggio’, Bolletino d’Arte, anno 26, ser. 3 (July 1932), pp. 42–4.
91. Rome’s criminal archives include a report written by the constable who arrested her. See Sandro Corradini, Materiali per un processo, document 38.
92. If this is so (which is certainly possible), he would have been using the phrase in the same straightforward sense as the one-eyed Bolognese corporal, possibly called Paulo Aldato, who appears to say something similar in a later criminal action involving Caravaggio. Aldato (if that was his name) is reported as saying that he wanted to visit ‘una sua puttana’ – one of his prostitutes – on a street nearby. There is no implication that Aldato was a pimp. See Sandro Corradini, Materiali per un processo, document 101.
93. He would later claim that he had tried to challenge Pasqualone to a fair and open fight, but probably only to put his own actions in a better light.
94. See Sandro Corradini, Materiali per un processo, documents 48–52, 54.
95. Giuliana Marcolini, ‘Cesare d’Este, Caravaggio, e Annibale Carracci: una duca, due pittori e una committenza “a mal termine” ’, in Sovrane passioni: studi sul collezionismo estense, Jadranka Bentini (ed.) (Milan, 1998), pp. 23–4. Ruggieri’s letter reporting Caravaggio’s riposte was dated 2 Mar. 1605.
96. Had it not been for the discovery of Masetti’s correspondence, the details of Caravaggio’s trip to Genoa would have remained unknown. See Sandro Corradini, Materiali per un processo, document 53.
97. Ibid., document 55.
98. Ibid., document 56.
99. See Walter Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, p. 285.
100. Ibid.
101. See Sandro Corradini, Materiali per un processo, document 58.
102. Ibid., document 59. Thi
s is a slightly free translation; Masetti uses the phrase ‘un’ altra questione’, meaning ‘another question’.
103. Ibid., document 67.
104. Ibid., document 68.
105. Ibid., document 71.
106. Carracci did eventually deliver his own picture for the duke, thought to be identical to the painter’s The Birth of the Virgin now in the Louvre.
107. See Helen Langdon, The Lives of Caravaggio, pp. 73–4.
108. See Luigi Spezzaferro, ‘La pala dei Palafrenieri’, Colloquio (1974), which reprints the documents from the archive of the confraternity associated with the commission.
109. Ibid.; the translation is given in John T. Spike, Caravaggio, where the painting appears as entry no. 48. The same is true for the two documents that follow. For a reproduction of this document in Caravaggio’s handwriting, see illustration no. 65.
110. See Helen Langdon, The Lives of Caravaggio, p. 90.
111. See Gabriele Paleotti, ‘Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane’, in Trattati d’arte del Cinquecento fra Manierismo a Controriforma, vol. 2, P. Barocchi and P. Barocchi (eds.) (Bari, 1961), p. 370.
112. See Roberto Longhi, Opere complete (Florence, 1968), vol. 4, p. 58.
113. The date of The Death of the Virgin is disputed, but there are compelling reasons to place its completion close to the very end of Caravaggio’s Roman period, i.e. around May 1606. Before the discovery of the contract for the painting, of 14 June 1601, the work was dated 1606 by most art historians on purely stylistic grounds. There seems little reason to reverse that view simply because of the discovery of the contract. It was common for paintings to be delivered late, sometimes years late (witness the travails of poor Fabio Masetti). The picture is certainly much closer in its facture, palette and mood to Caravaggio’s later, post-Roman works than it is to such paintings of 1601–2 as The Supper at Emmaus. In my opinion, it was finished directly after the Madonna of the Palafrenieri, since it is painted in the looser, freer style of that picture’s right half – the half containing St Anne – which directly prefigures the style of the artist’s last years. As a compromise solution some experts have chosen to date the painting to 1604, but this seems perverse, bearing in mind both the picture’s appearance and the existing documentary evidence. The first detailed reference to the picture occurs in a letter by Giulio Mancini, dated 14 Oct. 1606, in a context strongly suggestive of the picture having been finished just a matter of months earlier. Another reference to it from around the same time occurs in the correspondence of an agent working for the Duke of Mantua, who noted that the painters of Rome were complaining that they had not yet been able to see the painting. If it really had been finished as early as 1604, it would seem strange indeed that Caravaggio’s friends and rivals had still not seen it all of two years later. In addition, in his biography of the painter Mancini explicitly connects its rejection with ‘the trouble’ that ruined Caravaggio’s life, i.e., the killing of Ranuccio Tomassoni. It would therefore seem logical to assume that it was the very last picture the artist painted before his flight from Rome.
114. Saints should never be given the recognizable features of ‘persons of ill repute’, Paleotti had written. Gabriele Paleotti, ‘Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane’, p. 360. I am obliged to Opher Mansour for pointing out both these references to me.
115. See Giulio Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, vol. 1, pp. 120, 132; see also Walter Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, p. 195.
116. See Michele Maccherini, ‘Caravaggio nel carteggio familiare di Giulio Mancini’ in Prospettiva, vol. 86 (1997), pp. 71–92.
117. See Sandro Corradini, Materiali per un processo, document 78. It is not clear what type of document this is; perhaps a journal.
118. See Helen Langdon, The Lives of Caravaggio, pp. 29–31.
119. Ibid., p. 52.
120. Ibid., p. 76.
121. See Peter Burke, ‘Rome as Center of Information and Communication for the Catholic World 1550–1650’, in From Rome to Eternity: Catholicism and the Arts in Italy, c. 1550–1650, Pamela M. Jones and Thomas Worcester (eds.) (Leiden, Boston and Cologne, 2002), p. 259.
122. See Sandro Corradini, Materiali per un processo, document 81.
123. The tennis courts were all destroyed in a fire during the eighteenth century. The site is now occupied by an underground car park. I am grateful to Maurizio Marini for showing me its exact whereabouts.
124. See Sandro Corradini, Materiali per un processo, document 85; the translation given here is from Walter Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, p. 286.
125. Ibid., document 82.
126. His report on the man’s injuries can still be consulted in the ‘Barbitonsores’ section of the Roman State Archives. This document confirms that Caravaggio’s ally in the fight had indeed been badly wounded. See ibid., document 80.
127. Ibid., document 83.
128. Ibid., document 84.
129. Ibid.document 95: ‘initi duelli cum Michelangelo de Caravaggio … ac pro presenti duello’.
130. For the document discussed below, see ibid., document 101.
131. Ibid., documents 163, 164.
132. Ibid., document 145.
133. Ibid., document 111.
134. I am grateful to Sandro Corradini for talking me through this series of archival documents, which remain unpublished. For another precis of their contents, see Helen Langdon, Caravaggio: A Life, p. 313.
135. See Sandro Corradini, Materiali per un processo, document 109. Pontoni, who was a lawyer, also appears in document 17, testifying in the case of Fillide’s knife attack on Prudenza Zacchia.
136. Ibid., document 151.
137. See Romolo Caggese (ed.), Statuti della reppublica fiorentina. Volume 2: Statuto del podestà del anno 1325 (Florence, 1921); and Volumen statutorem civitatis Maceratae, facsimile reprint of the 1553 edition, Arnaldo Forni (ed.) ([n.p., n.d.]). I am indebted to Elizabeth S. Cohen and Thomas S. Cohen for allowing me to read their essay ‘Sfregio: Facial Mutilation as Expressive Act’ when it was still in draft form. It was that essay that called my attention to the legal penalties cited in the statute books noted above.
PART FIVE: THE ALBAN HILLS, NAPLES, MALTA, SICILY, NAPLES, PORTO ERCOLE, 1606–10
1. See Helen Langdon, The Lives of Caravaggio, pp.31, 76.
2. A picture in a private Roman collection has been put forward several times as a candidate, but it is so clumsy and sentimental that it cannot possibly have been painted by Caravaggio.
3. No documents relating to this work survive. It has been romantically placed at the end of Caravaggio’s life – in the quatercentenary exhibition in Rome in 2010 it was once more dated to 1610 – but it was not among the pictures listed as being on the boat with him when he travelled to Rome for the last time in July of that year, and it is besides painted in a style quite different from that of Caravaggio’s last-documented picture, The Martyrdom of St Ursula, now in the boardroom of the Banco di Napoli. Given that the style of the David with the Head of Goliath is so close to that of The Seven Acts of Mercy of 1606–7 in Naples – compare, for example, the handling of light in striated drapery in both pictures – and given that it indeed entered the Borghese collection (it can still be seen in the Villa Borghese in Rome), I believe that Caravaggio painted it expressly for Scipione Borghese to try to secure a pardon for his crimes. The identification of the severed head of Goliath as a self-portrait has been universally accepted, on the basis of visual comparison with Ottavio Leoni’s portrait of Caravaggio in the Uffizi, and with other known self-portraits that occur within Caravaggio’s œuvre.
4. Mancini is the source for this information: See Helen Langdon, The Lives of Caravaggio, p. 31.
5. It was only in 1613 that he ordered a frame to be made for it, according to a Borghese palace inventory: see the CD-ROM catalogue entry on the painting in John T. Spike, Caravaggio.
6. Sandro Corradini, Materiali per un processo, document 106, 23 Sept. 1606.
7. See George Sandys, A Relation of a Journey (London, 1615), pp. 253–4.
8. Cited by Jeanne Chenault Porter in ‘Reflections of the Golden Age: The Visitor’s Account of Naples’, in Parthenope’s Splendor: Art of the Golden Age in Naples, published as Papers in Art History from the Pennsylvania State University, vol. 7, Jeanne Chenault Porter and Susan Scott Munshower (eds.) (Pennsylvania, 1993), p. 11.
9. See Giuseppe Galasso, ‘Society in Naples in the Seicento’, in Painting in Naples 1606–1705: From Caravaggio to Giordano, catalogue to the exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, Clovis Whitfield and Jane Martineau (eds.) (London 1982), p. 28.
10. It is probable that the open-weave Neapolitan canvases on which Caravaggio would paint some of his greatest pictures were of English origin: see Clovis Whitfield, ‘Seicento Naples’, in Painting in Naples 1606–1705, p. 19.
11. Benedetto Croce, History of the Kingdom of Naples, Frances Frenaye (trs.), H. Stuart Hughes (ed.) (Chicago, 1970), p. 116. Croce’s text was first published as Storia del regno di Napoli (Bari, 1925).
12. Quoted in ibid., p. 120.
13. Quoted in Giuseppe Galasso, ‘Society in Naples in the Seicento’, in Painting in Naples 1606–1705, p. 25.
14. See ibid., passim.
15. See ibid., p. 25.
16. See Helen Langdon, The Lives of Caravaggio, pp. 76–7.
17. For the details and documents concerning this commission, see Vincenzo Pacelli, ‘New Documents concerning Caravaggio in Naples’, Burlington Magazine, vol. 119, no. 897 (Dec. 1977), pp. 819–29; and Vincenzo Pacelli, Caravaggio: Le sette opere di misericordia (Salerno, 1984), p. 102.
18. The quote is taken from the manuscript of C. De Lellis, Aggiunta alla Napoli sacra del d’Engenio 1654–89, cited in Vincenzo Pacelli, Caravaggio: Le sette opere di misericordia, p. 12.
19. See Ferdinando Bologna, ‘Caravaggio: The Final Years’, in Caravaggio: The Final Years, exhibition catalogue, the National Gallery (London, 2005), p. 22.
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