There were about eighteen hundred knights, of whom less than half lived on Malta. They were monks as well as knights, vowing to be poor in spirit, chaste, and obedient, confessing and taking Communion frequently, especially before going into battle, and reciting daily the Little Office of Our Lady. Death in combat against the infidel, whether boarding a Barbary corsair or raiding a Turkish seaport, was regarded as martyrdom.
The sea “caravans” of the knights brought them rich rewards. Entering their houses in Valletta, Caravaggio would have found Oriental rugs, chests of rare eastern woods, Chinese porcelain, and massive services of silver plate. However, many brethren left the island after they had sailed on enough caravans to qualify them for promotion, each returning to an often palatial commandery on the European mainland, to spend the rest of his life running its estates and sending its revenues out to Malta.
Besides the knights’ crusading vocation, there was that of the Hospitaller, of caring for “Our Lords the Sick.” The Sacred Infirmary held over 350 beds, employed several teams of doctors, and was better equipped than any contemporary hospital in Europe. But although the brethren visited it on certain specified days, it was almost impossible for them to live both callings. Even so, a few knights nursed at the infirmary on a regular basis, at least one specializing in the care of sick galley slaves. Brethren of this sort led a monastic existence, living permanently in a retreat house at Valletta, the Camerata.
During the 1590s, the Abbé de Brantôme observed of the then grand master, “he is revered almost as a king, and everyone defers to him as if he really was one, addressing him with the utmost humility and always with the head bared.” In the year Caravaggio came to Malta, the Holy Roman Emperor created Fra’ Alof and his successors Princes of Malta and Gozo. However, another of his titles was “Guardian of the Poor of Jesus Christ,” and at his installation a silken cord and scrip (or pilgrim’s satchel) was fastened around his waist in token of his duty to help them. First and foremost, the grand master was a spiritual superior.
Whether they concentrated on their crusader or on their Hospitaller vocations, the brethren were in the last analysis monks as well as knights, and when Caravaggio joined them he must have known very well that he was entering a religious order.
XXVI
The Novice, 1607–1608
The first mention of Caravaggio on Malta is during an investigation by the Inquisition into the rumored bigamy of an unnamed Greek artist. On 14 July 1607, Caravaggio had been a guest in a knight’s house at Valletta when the Greek was present. He was questioned by Paolo Cassar, an official of the “General Inquisitor for Heretical Depravity.” “I don’t know anything about what your most reverend lordship is asking me, except that there was a Greek painter staying at Fra’ Giacomo Marchese’s residence and that he arrived here on the galleys a fortnight ago,” Caravaggio told him. “I’m aware of nothing that ought to be reported to the Holy Office about this knight, or about anyone else, and I don’t know where the painter came from.”
A novice, he was technically in convento, living as if he were in a monastery. Most of the seven Langues into which the order was divided had their own fortress-like auberge, in Caravaggio’s case the Auberge of Italy. It housed the novices and younger knights, who slept in cubicles and dined in its refectory. Because of his age, he was probably allowed to lodge with a knight in Valletta, but he would have had to dine at the auberge, besides attending church services and lectures with the other novices; led by a senior knight, they said the Little Office together daily and recited the Rosary, visiting the infirmary once a week to nurse “Our Lords the Sick.” They also received instruction in seamanship, gunnery, and fencing. Presumably Caravaggio was excused from these, though not classes on the statutes, customs, and traditions of the “Religion,” the brethren’s name for their order.
The Master of the Novices, their spiritual adviser, was Don Giovanni Bertolotti, a chaplain of the order. A distinguished theologian from Bologna, as the grand master’s confessor he had great influence. During his term of office, the Oratory of St. John was built onto the conventual church, specifically for the novices’ use. In addition, Caravaggio must have had the guidance of a senior knight from the Langue of Italy. Probably this was Fra’ Antonio Martelli. In 1966 a portrait of a Knight of Malta at the Pitti Palace in Florence was identified as Caravaggio’s work. At first the sitter was thought to be Wignancourt, but recent research has established that it is Fra’ Antonio. A Florentine born in 1534, he had fought so bravely during the Great Siege that Grand Master de la Vallette rewarded him with a rich commandery. He received rapid promotion when Wignancourt became grand master, appointed prior of Messina, one of the Langue of Italy’s key posts. Caravaggio’s portrait shows a battered if well-preserved old noble with a cropped head and a faded red beard. Despite his scraggy neck, the weathered, sunburned face is alarmingly formidable, with a tight mouth and very shrewd eyes.
We do not know how often Fra’ Ippolito Malaspina came over from Naples, but he was on Malta in February 1608. Possibly it was then that Caravaggio painted, or at least finished, the St. Jerome. Although some think St. Jerome’s face may be the grand master’s, it is almost certainly the prior’s, since the artist has added the Malaspina arms at the bottom right-hand corner, a thornbush in flower. Recently restored, the picture now hangs in the Oratory of St. John. Cleaning has brought back the dazzling light in which Caravaggio clothed the saint, the light of divine inspiration.
If there was never any chance of Caravaggio going to sea to fight the Turks, apparently he sympathized with his brethren’s crusader ideals. Sandrart claims that he “generously equipped a carrack,” though the enormous sum required would clearly have been beyond his resources. It is more likely that he contributed to the fund that the grand master was amassing to build a big, new square-rigged warship, a carrack, for the religion’s navy.
Malta was far from being a “dreary isle,” as Howard Hibbard calls it. Before the knights’ arrival, it had resembled a miniature Sicily even if most of the population spoke Maltese. Its cities looked like Sicilian or Italian cities, particularly the new capital at Valletta, while the order’s international membership made it “an epitome of all Europe.” The seamen and merchants, Italians, Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, who swarmed in its ports, added to the cosmopolitan air. Although stony and largely treeless, the landscape was not unpleasing. Admittedly the sweltering summers were trying, an unpleasant sirocco blowing in August. “They here stir early and late, in regard of the immoderate heat, and sleep at the noonday,” reports Sandys. Throughout the winter there were gales and high seas. But, accustomed to Rome and Naples, Caravaggio can have found little difficulty in coping with the climate.
Valletta, where Caravaggio spent most of his time, was a handsome city of yellow limestone, a grid of smart streets behind massive fortifications. Although the Auberge of Italy, now the General Post Office, was bombed during the Second World War, he would still recognize its sculpted facade and great Baroque entrance, its spacious courtyard around a well surmounted by a high arch; next door stood the Italian Langue’s own church, dedicated to St. Catherine of Italy. As a novice, he had to be in St. John’s church, just round the corner from the Auberge, almost every day. No other buildings, not even the Contarelli Chapel, have such close associations with him.
When not at sea, the life of a knight was comfortable, even luxurious, with Turkish or North African slaves to wait on him. The cuisine was world-famous, first-class cooks being brought from Europe, while fine wines were imported, together with snow from Mount Etna to cool them. Social amusements consisted of a never-ending round of receptions and card parties in richly furnished apartments or shady gardens. There were concerts and sometimes plays at the Auberges. There were also temptations. Sandys writes of “the number of allowed curtizans (for the most part Grecians) who sit playing in their doors on instruments; and with the art of their eyes inveigle those continent by vow.” There do not seem to have been many mo
dels among them, judging from the lack of young women in Caravaggio’s painting while he was on the island. In any case, he himself was preparing to become continent by vow.
Apart from going to sea on a “caravan,” the most dangerous thing a knight could do was to quarrel with one of his brethren. Confined on their little island, they were prone to fall out and settle disputes in the manner of their class, by dueling, although fatalities were rare. The statutory penalty for fighting a duel was “Loss of the Habit,” expulsion from the order, but usually lesser punishments were imposed if nobody had been killed or badly wounded. Yet for over a year there is no record of Caravaggio quarreling. He was well aware that as a novice he was on probation. It is also likely that he went in awe of those three grim old men, the grand master and the priors of Messina and Naples.
Malta gave Caravaggio a new country and a new identity. The island was a sovereign state and, as Malta Gerosolomitana, heir of the old crusader states in Palestine. What it lacked in size, it made up for in prestige; for an Italian, there was no more honorable profession than that of a “Jerusalem Knight” (or Cavaliere Gerosolomitano). And membership conferred nobility on those without blue blood, which cannot have displeased a painter of ill-defined social standing. No doubt he enjoyed the company too. If men of the sword, the knights were by no means Philistines. Many were younger sons of immensely wealthy families, who had grown up in palaces, surrounded by beautiful possessions. This was especially true of the Italian Langue, more than a few of whose members would have known great painting when they saw it. They had genuine respect for so magnificent an artist, while he himself must have been deeply flattered by their acceptance and at the prospect of joining them. Above all, he enjoyed the warm approval of the grand master, Fra’ Alof. The time that Caravaggio spent on Malta may well have been the happiest of his entire life.
XXVII
The Grand Master
One of the knights’ ablest and most likable rulers, Caravaggio’s grand master, Fra’ Alof de Wignancourt, had been born in Artois in 1547. Although he did not come out to Malta until 1566, a year after the Great Siege, he had served under the legendary Grand Master de la Vallette, who made him Captain of Valletta with special responsibility for guarding the order’s new capital while it was being built. After completing his caravans at sea, he had gone home to run a commandery in the dangerous France of the Wars of Religion, returning to Malta as Hospitaller in 1597.
As soon as Fra’ Alof was elected grand master in 1601, it became clear that an innovator was in charge. He put real vigor into the knights’ crusade against the infidel, their galleys raiding Greece, Turkey, Syria, and North Africa, bringing back impressive booty together with quantities of slaves. Anxious to enhance the pomp and grandeur of his office, he established a corps of twelve pages, aspirant novices, to wait on him. In 1611 George Sandys noted, “For albeit a Frier (as the rest of the Knights), yet is he an absolute Soveraigne, and is bravely attended on by a number of gallant yong Gentlemen.” He chose them from the poorer nobility, paying for their education himself.
Wignancourt took good care of his Maltese subjects, much better than any shown by his predecessors. Formerly, whole families of country people had been dragged off to the Moorish slave markets by Barbary corsairs, on one occasion the neighboring island of Gozo’s entire population, so he built small forts where they could take shelter from raiders, besides setting up a bank for ransoming captives. The Maltese, who idolized him, thought he was a wizard, which probably means that, like del Monte, he took an active interest in alchemy.
For all his fire-eating appearance in Caravaggio’s famous portrait at the Louvre, Fra’ Alof was a pleasant, modest man, genuinely benevolent, and gifted with exceptional tact. Despite his firm leadership and his innovations, he was never autocratic or overbearing, never attempted to rule as an absolute monarch, “Very easy to do business with, always open to suggestions before taking a decision, always ready to listen to the opinions of the experts on both civil and military matters,” writes the historian dall’ Pozzo, who had obviously spoken to elderly knights who remembered his reign. “He chose extremely well qualified officers and counselors, ruling with their advice and taking careful account of their views…. Among his principal advisers was the Bailiff of Naples, Fra’ Ippolito Malaspina.”
Every grand master made the painful discovery that he had extremely difficult subjects to govern. The main disturbance during Caravaggio’s time on Malta came from the Langue of Germany. In 1607 uproar broke out among the German knights when they learned that Fra’ Alof had given permission for the Comte de Brie, a bastard son of the Duke of Lorraine, to join the German Langue. There was a long and noisy dispute. At one point the enraged Germans pulled down the arms of the grand master and the Religion from their accustomed place over the main gateway of the Langue of Germany. Eventually, Fra’ Alof was forced to give in, arranging for the count to be admitted into the much less demanding Langue of Italy, where he became a novice with Caravaggio. The Italians were nearly always prepared to accept a papal dispensation for inadequate proofs of nobility, and the grand master must have asked Scipione Borghese to provide one for Brie.
The Comte de Brie’s story shows Wignancourt’s ability to compromise and his diplomatic finesse at using Rome. It also underlines the extraordinary emphasis placed by the Religion on the value of impeccably noble birth, and in the very uneasy position in which painters of obscure origin might find themselves if they became Knights of Malta. Brie should have been a warning to Caravaggio.
The grand master was in frequent contact with the cardinal nephew, through the Religion’s ambassador at Rome. He needed his support constantly in dealing with such problems as the Inquisitor, who saw himself as unofficial papal nuncio to Malta. Knights in trouble for some offense often appealed through him to the pope against the order’s sentence, so that his meddling was an endless source of vexation. Fra’ Alof had every reason to keep on good terms with Borghese, whose weakness for Caravaggio made Wignancourt no doubt still more inclined to like the artist.
Even so, Fra’ Alof’s primary motive was to use Caravaggio in the service of the Religion. He had seen Valletta rise from the ground and now he wanted to make it as beautiful as possible. Probably while he was still in the novitiate, Caravaggio produced not less than three portraits of Fra’ Alof. The first, now at the Louvre and the only one to survive, shows him in a splendid, gold-inlaid ceremonial armor, grasping an admiral’s baton. The second portrait has disappeared, although there is a clumsy copy at Rabat; it depicted Fra’ Alof as hospitaller instead of crusader, wearing his choir mantle and seated at a desk on which there were a crucifix and a book of hours. The third, a head and shoulders, is known only from a French engraving of 1609. Was the grand master aware that Caravaggio had painted the pope, and is that perhaps why he sat for him so many times?
During the sittings, Fra’ Alof had plenty of opportunity to speak with the artist, and obviously he could see no reason to change his mind about admitting him to the Religion. After only a few months, the grand master decided that his protégé definitely possessed a vocation to become a Knight of Malta. On 29 December 1607, he wrote two letters, one to the order’s amabassador at Rome, Fra’ Francesco Lomellini, and the other to its former ambassador, Fra’ Giacomo Bosio, asking them to obtain a papal dispensation to enter the Religion for someone who had committed a murder. No letter to the omnipotent Cardinal Borghese survives, but it would have been unthinkable not to seek his help.
On 7 February 1608, the grand master formally petitioned the pope for a dispensation, “on this occasion only, to clothe and adorn with a Magistral Knight’s habit two persons of whom he has a very high opinion and whom he is nominating, although one of them has committed a homicide during a street brawl.” There must have been a good deal of discreet lobbying before Fra’ Alof presented the petition. Again, it is likely that the cardinal secretary played a key role behind the scenes. No names are mentioned in the petition, but it i
s inconceivable that Rome remained unaware of the murderer’s identity. The grand master was far too shrewd to risk trying to deceive the Curia, let alone Pope Paul.
Rome was notoriously slow at answering petitions, yet somebody, presumably Borghese, made sure that the pontiff answered at once. On February 15, he sent a papal “brief” to Malta, granting Wignancourt’s request, while warning that it was a special case that must not be seen as creating a precedent.
In July, Fra’ Alof issued a magistral bull, commanding that “the honorable Michelangelo of Caracca in Lombardy, in the vernacular called ‘Caravaggio,’ ” should be admitted into the Order of Malta as a Knight of Magistral Obedience, because of “his burning zeal for the Religion … and his great desire to be clothed with the habit.”
XXVIII
“Fra’ Michelangelo,” July 1608
The great monument to Michelangelo da Caravaggio’s dream of becoming a Knight of Malta is still to be seen in the procathedral at Valletta, formerly the order’s conventual church. It is the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, the most magnificent of all his paintings. It is peculiarly personal in that it enshrines his devoted allegiance to the Religion.
John the Baptist was the knights’ protector in the holy land, on Rhodes and on Malta, as he remains today. On more than one occasion his sudden appearance in the sky, accompanied by the Virgin, announced triumph over apparently hopeless odds. The Vittoria Mass on 8 September (the Feast of the Virgin’s Nativity) was one of the greatest days in the order’s calendar. Everyone on Malta believed the Turks had abandoned the Great Siege on that day in 1565, leaving the knights victorious, because they had seen the Baptist and the Virgin in the clouds, coming to the brethren’s rescue. The “Victory” Mass has been said ever since. In Caravaggio’s time the Religion marched through Valletta, the prior bearing the icon of Our Lady of Philermo—its most cherished relic—while during Mass the grand master brandished the sword presented to Vallette by King Philip II, and from the city walls cannon fired salute after salute.
Caravaggio: A Passionate Life Page 13