Caravaggio
A Passionate Life
Desmond Seward
Copyright © 2013, Desmond Seward
This edition first published in 2013 by:
Thistle Publishing
36 Great Smith Street
London
SW1P 3BU
For Hervé and Chantal Hoppenot
PREFACE
On a hot July afternoon in 1610, while the enervating sirocco blew and most sensible people were in bed behind closed shutters, an unkempt little man was boarding a felucca from the beach below a great lady’s palace on the Chiaia at Naples. Thin and sickly, he was in his late thirties. Coarse features and uneasy brown eyes glared from a sallow face, even uglier than usual because of barely healed sword cuts, fringed by long, uncombed hair and a short, untrimmed beard. His black clothes were the latest Spanish fashion, but they looked as if he had slept in them, while on a gold chain around his neck he wore the enameled cross of a Knight of Malta. He seemed to be in constant pain. Every now and then his scowl turned into a sneer as he burst out with some jibe at the sailors.
Anyone watching must have wondered why he was not embarking on one of his order’s galleys, the fastest ships in the Mediterranean. A tiny felucca was the cheapest form of transport available, with two stumpy masts and four oars, without an awning for shelter from sun, wind, or rain.
He cursed the crew as they took his scanty baggage on board. They did what he wanted, not because of his threats but because he obviously had plenty of money and was paying for his passage in gold. The teenaged boy carrying his sword in its velvet scabbard handed it to him over the gunwale. With a three-foot blade, a rapier was too long for such a short man to wear at his side, though he plainly knew how to use it. He also wore a large dagger, which he never took off, not even in bed.
While his bags were being stowed, together with some odd rolls of canvas, he kept glancing up nervously, scanning the deserted beach. Here clearly was someone who felt that pursuing enemies were closing in.
His felucca was bound for Rome, though en route she would put in at obscure havens. Whatever the weather, she would hug the coast, her crew camping ashore each night. They dared not put out into the open sea for fear of pirates. A distant white sail on the horizon could all too easily be a Barbary corsair, meaning death or slavery.
For years, the passenger had been on the run, after killing a man in a duel. A few months before, he had been imprisoned, in a dungeon called the “Birdcage,” for half killing another man, and only recently the latter’s hired assassins had barely failed to murder him. They were still hoping for a second chance, lurking outside the old lady’s palace on the Chiaia, where he had been hiding.
Despite the dangers and discomforts of the voyage ahead, he was feverishly impatient to set sail, and not merely because of his enemies. He wanted to reach Rome as fast as possible, since he had every reason to think that great things awaited him there. He did not know that he would be dead within little more than a week. He called himself “Fra’ Michelangelo da Caravaggio.”
Born in 1571, Caravaggio is one of the best known of all the great painters. Each year his pictures find new admirers from among an amazingly wide cross section of humanity. Many lavishly illustrated books on him have been published, and his paintings have become increasingly familiar, in particular The Lute Player, Rest on the Flight into Egypt, Judith and Holofernes, The Supper at Emmaus, and The Beheading of St. John.
This is a book about Caravaggio the man, rather than Caravaggio the painter. Although man and painter are inseparable, too many studies by art historians have left important questions about him unanswered. They do not investigate his world and how it shaped him; nor do they stress sufficiently the inner conflict he suffered, or the sheer drama of his life. He soared from obscurity to international acclaim, and then, after his fatal duel, became an outlaw who eventually died friendless on a beach in the ironical knowledge that he was about to receive a full pardon. This biography is meant for the general reader, not the specialist. It does not attempt to analyze his paintings, nor to question attributions. It uses his pictures to peer into his mind.
Some years ago, an extremely successful film, Amadeus, contrasted Mozart’s music with his dingy private life. There could be no greater contrast than that between Caravaggio’s painting and his private life. On canvas he was a spiritual genius whose profound religious statements touch the hearts of unbelievers as well as believers. Yet, in Bernard Berenson’s words, he was “quick-tempered and bad-tempered, intolerant, devious, jealous, spiteful, quarrelsome, a street-brawler, a homicide, and perhaps a homosexual. He was endowed with innumerable gifts, but with none for decent living.” Even during his lifetime, Caravaggio’s long-suffering protector, Cardinal del Monte, credited him with “a wildly capricious brain.” Another patron thought that his brain was “twisted.” More than one prince of the Church was ready to overlook his sins for the sake of his genius, but they could not save him from himself.
To some extent, his violent streak can be attributed to the Italy into which he was born at the end of the Renaissance. It was a country that shocked foreigners, inspiring such plays as The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi. Some historians argue that Jacobean England’s view of Italy was distorted by Protestant prejudice, but it was not so far from the truth; murders as terrible as anything in Webster’s tragedies took place. Although it was illegal to carry arms without a license, most Italian gentlemen wore a rapier and a dagger, partly for protection against the robbers swarming in the streets but also for fighting duels. Caravaggio fought in at least two duels, probably more. What makes this so puzzling is his obvious sensitivity and compassion.
If he was one of the most wonderful painters who have ever lived, he was also one of the most mysterious. Did he really visit Venice when he was a young man? Was he forced to leave his native city of Milan, and never return, because of a murder? Was he a homosexual? And who was the enemy who waged a relentless vendetta against him?
One of the reasons Caravaggio is so fascinating is that he put so much of his troubled personality into his paintings. In pictures he produced during times of great stress, one can often detect his wretchedness and exhaustion. What we know of his short existence was filled with tragedy. His childhood in Milan was darkened by the bubonic plague that killed his father, his early manhood in Rome by poverty and discouragement. His few years of prosperity and fame were ruined by an uncontrollable temper, ending in his banishment as a murderer. And the pattern was to be repeated. Many of his last days were spent in fear and foreboding.
Modern research has added enormously to our information, yet we can often only say what we don’t know about Caravaggio. No one familiar with his story can deny that his behavior was so full of contradictions that it sometimes defies analysis. Few if any really great artists have had a police record like his. He was obsessed with beheading, and he painted at least a dozen severed heads, including his own. I have done my modest best to understand what went on inside it.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
While writing this book I always kept in mind Alessandro Manzoni’s helpful comment in The Betrothed on an obscure seventeenth-century official’s behavior during the riots of Milan: “What else he did, we cannot tell, as he was quite alone and history can only guess. Luckily, it is quite used to doing so.” If, in the absence of firm evidence, speculation about Caravaggio is sometimes inescapable, I have at least tried to avoid invention.
Among the many people who have helped me with advice or encouragement, I would particularly like to thank Canon John Azzopardi, Curator of the Cathedral Museum, Medina; Carol Bado; Professor Mario Bouhagiar of the University of Malta; Professor A. S. Ci
echanowiecki; Anne Freedgood, my editor in New York, without whom this book would never have been written; Anna Somers-Cocks; Susan Mountgarret; and Fr. Marius Zerafa, Director of Museums, Valletta. I am also grateful to Sir Stephen and Lady Egerton for their hospitality in Rome in 1992, which enabled me to visit the exhibition Caravaggio: Come nascono i Capolavori, at the Palazzo Ruspoli; and to Peter and Margaret McCann for lending me their farmhouse on Gozo as a base for research on Malta.
Among others who have helped me, with much patience and kindness, are the staffs of the British Library, the National Fine Arts Library (London), the London Library, the Library of the National Gallery (London), and the National Library of Malta.
CONTENTS
COPYRIGHT
PREFACE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS
i: Milan, 1571
ii: Carlo Borromeo and the Plague, 1576–1578
iii: Apprenticeship, 1584–1588
iv: The Counter-Reformation
v: The Flight from Milan, 1592
vi: Rome, 1592
vii: The Rulers of Rome, 1592
viii: The Hack Painter, 1592–1596
ix: Cardinal del Monte, 1596
x: Palazzo Madama, 1596–1600
xi: Homosexual or Heterosexual? 1596–1600
xii: “Nature the only subject fit for his brush,” 1596
xiii: The Year of Murders, 1599
xiv: The First Severed Heads, 1599
xv: The Contarelli Chapel, 1599–1600
xvi: The New Patrons, 1600–1602
xvii: The Swordsman, 1600–1606
xviii: “Wonderful Things at Rome,” 1603
xix: The First Baroque Pope, 1605
xx: The Killing of Ranuccio Jommasoni, May 1606
xxi: Outlaw in the Roman Hills, Summer 1606
xxii: Interlude at Naples, 1606–1607
xxiii: The Neapolitan Altarpieces
xxiv: The Prior of Naples
xxv: The Knights of Malta, July 1607
xxvi: The Novice, 1607–1608
xxvii: The Grand Master
xxviii: “Fra’ Michelangelo,” July 1608
xxix: The Unknown Knight, September 1608
xxx: A Dungeon Called the “Birdcage,” September 1608
xxxi: Syracuse, 1608–1609
xxxii: Messina, 1609
xxxiii: Palermo, 1609
xxxiv: “The Neapolitan Shrug,” 1609
xxxv: “Puerto Hercules,” July 1610
EPILOGUE
APPENDIX: WHERE TO SEE CARAVAGGIO’S PICTURES
SOURCES
ILLUSTRATIONS
Text photographs: Ottavio Leoni, Portrait of Caravaggio; Caravaggio: Basket of Fruit; David with the Head of Goliath; Conversion of St. Paul.
Illustrations:
Youth with a Basket of Fruit SCALA/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.
St. Francis in Ecstasy NIMATALLAH/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.
St. Catherine
Rest on the Flight into Egypt SCALA/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.
Judith and Holofernes NIMATALLAH/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.
Martyrdom of St. Matthew ALINARI/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.
Basket of Fruit SCALA/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.
Conversion of St. Paul SCALA/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.
The Madonna di Loreto SCALA/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.
Supper at Emmaus NIMATALLAH/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.
Portrait of a Knight of Malta
Alof de Wignancourt, Grand Master of the Order of Malta ERICH LESSING/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.
St. Jerome SCALA/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.
Beheading of St. John ERICH LESSING/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.
Raising of Lazarus
David with the Head of Goliath SCALA/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.
“…like the hero of a modern play,
except that he happened to paint very well.”
KENNETH CLARK, CIVILISATION
I
Milan, 1571
About 1596, shortly after Caravaggio went to live in Cardinal del Monte’s household in Rome, his brother Giovan Battista, soon to become a friar, called on the cardinal and explained who he was, adding that Caravaggio might not wish to see him. It was clear that he loved his brother, so del Monte told him to come back in three days’ time. Summoning Caravaggio, the cardinal asked if he had any relatives. He answered that he had none. Del Monte then questioned men from Caravaggio’s part of Italy. They confirmed that he had a younger brother. When Giovan Battista returned, the cardinal sent for Caravaggio, who insisted that Giovan Battista was not his brother.
“I’ve come from very far away to see you, and, having seen you, I’ve done what I set out to do,” Giovan Battista told him. “I’ve no need for you to help me or help my children, because I won’t have any. As for your own children, if God answers my prayers to see you married with a family, I hope he blesses you in them, as I shall ask his Divine Majesty at my Masses, and as your sister will in her prayers.” But Caravaggio refused even to say good-bye.
This story comes from Considerations on Painting by Giulio Mancini (1558—1630), a dilettante physician from Sienna who, although he never met Caravaggio, knew at least one of his sitters. He tells the story as an example of Caravaggio’s oddity. Yet Caravaggio’s refusal to acknowledge Giovan Battista may have been due to doubts about his paternity. The marriage of his father’s employer, Francesco Sforza, Marchese di Caravaggio, to Princess Costanza Colonna had gone badly at first, and Caravaggio’s parents could have spoken about their quarrels in front of him, although they were over by the time he was born. It is not entirely impossible that he imagined he was an illegitimate Sforza.
Fantasies apart, he was the son of Fermo di Bernardino Merisi of Caravaggio. Two early sources say Fermo was a mason, Bellori apparently copying Baglione. But Baglione was a bitter enemy of Caravaggio, against whom he once brought a libel action, and his account, written after Caravaggio was safely dead, is often malicious. Mancini, the most reliable of the early sources, informs us that Fermo was “master of the household and architect to the Marchese di Caravaggio,” while documentary evidence shows that he was a small landowner on the fringe of the lesser gentry.
Fermo appears to have been on very friendly terms with the marchese, who was a witness at his wedding to Lucia Aratori on 14 January 1571, in the church of Santi Petri e Paolo at Caravaggio. No birth certificate has ever been found, but it is now generally agreed that he was born in either Caravaggio or Milan at the end of September, a few days before the great victory over the Turks at Lepanto. He may well have descended from a family of architects. A Giulio Merisi had been an architect in Rome, where he is said to have built the Palazzo Capodiferro Spada for Cardinal Capodiferro. Fermo, an architect himself, named his son after another architect. Ironically, in the Milanese dialect “Michelangelo” could easily be confused with “Michelaccio,” a roving ne’er-do-well from Lombard folklore.
Just over forty kilometers east of Milan, the tiny town of Caravaggio was close to the Venetian border. Fermo owned a house at the Folceria Gate, with a little estate outside the walls. The town’s only distinguished son was Pollidoro da Caravaggio, a pupil of Titian, murdered in 1543, who may have been a Knight of Malta.
The surrounding countryside, the plain of Lombardy, was very fertile, irrigated by innumerable canals. In 1608 the English tourist Tom Coryate, viewing it from the roof of the Duomo at Milan, called the plain “the garden of Italy,” marveling at its orchards, vineyards, and pastures. When Henry James undertook the same interminable climb to the Duomo’s roof in 1872, it looked very similar—“level Lombardy sleeping in its rich transalpine light and resembling, with its white-walled dwellings and the spires on its horizon, a vast green sea dotted with ships.”
The Duchy of Milan’s social structure was more feudal than that of Florence or Venice. Its great nobles lived with pomp and ceremony, and no name could have been more illustrious than that of Francesco Sforza, Marchese di Caravaggio, the main branch of whose family had ruled Milan until re
cently. Whether at the marchese’s palace in Milan or at his villa near Caravaggio, Fermo ranked after his master in an enormous household. In 1658, while in retirement, a Francesco Liberati, who had served two cardinals and a Roman duke in the same capacity, published his experience of a lifetime in a book entitled Il Perfetto Maestro di Casa—“The Perfect Master of the Household”—which gives us an idea of Fermo’s duties and social standing.
He must have had more than thirty senior household officers to help him look after the marchese, among them a cupbearer, a seneschal of the dining hall, a steward in charge of the household expenses, a collector of provisions, a storekeeper, and a quartermaster, who organized accommodations. There were also a chaplain, a doctor, and the gentlemen waiting on the marchese at table and in his bedchamber. Then there were the underservants—butlers, cooks, huntsmen, coachmen, grooms, porters, valets, and footmen. Fermo was responsible for running this vast establishment and engaging and dismissing its members. He paid their wages and bought the food and wine to feed them. Far from being a humble mason, he was the right-hand man of a great Milanese magnate.
We know very little about Francesco Sforza, the marchese himself, but his wife, Donna Costanza Colonna, was a strong and colorful personality, the daughter of Prince Marcantonio Colonna, Duke of Paliano, the heroic captain-general of the papal galleys at Lepanto. Married in 1567, when she was only twelve, she did not at first get on with her husband. She complained to her father, threatening, “If I’m not set free from my lord’s house, I’ll kill myself, and I don’t care if I lose my soul as well as my life.” Prince Marcantonio asked the archbishop of Milan, Carlo Borromeo, to intervene, and after moving her to a convent, the archbishop succeeded in reconciling the young couple, and Costanza bore Francesco six children. When her husband died in 1583, she ran the family, now known as “Sforza Colonna,” together with its estates, and rescued Fermo’s son on more than one occasion, giving him a refuge during the last months of his life.
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