Renaissance Murders

by Michael Hone

  It was for the bodies of these women that Caravaggio and Tomassoni may have had their dispute, and Caravaggio aiming at the lad’s groin may have been in jealousy, as the girls certainly filled him in on the boy’s dimensions and sexual prowess. It’s not impossible, too, that Caravaggio lusted for the lad who preferred his girls, girls who would literally maim each other, attempting on more than one occasion sfregio, the cutting and disfiguring of an opponent’s face, instantly ending her sexual appeal.

  Carrying a sword in Rome could be punished by death. Dueling was not only punishable by death, the punishment was often truly carried out as a desperate means of stopping this most-favored form of rendering justice. So, in testimony given before the authorities, the witnesses to the feud between the sweet-boy/pimp and the acclaimed artist/jealous-avenger claimed that there had certainly not been a duel, that the lads were exchanging words when one of them--not specified--refused to honor a wager of 10 scudi at the end of a tennis match. The words led to the mysterious apparitions of weapons (weapons they had certainly not been carrying, they swore to the authorities), and an accidental blow from which Ranuccio was wounded in the upper thigh. Caravaggio’s sword had been seized by a friend of Ranuccio who hit Caravaggio over the head with it, knocking him cold. Ranuccio’s brothers were captains in the guards, known for their brawling, their swaggering dominance over every back alley in Rome, their drinking, their swordplay and their predilection for humping their brother’s whores. Horny stuff, in an era where power made everything right. Caravaggio, too, had his boys, Onorio Longhi, arrested time and again for every possible misdemeanor (although, following Caravaggio’s death, Longhi would straighten himself out enough to become an architect of churches, followed by his son, another architect). Minniti may have been there, Caravaggio’s long-time bedmate, who would also turn out straight in the sense that he would eventually marry, twice, father children, and mount a workshop that would flood Sicily with works of art, some of which were of true artistic value.

  Now on the run, Caravaggio left Rome with all that was precious to him, his clothes and painting materials, his money and Cecco. He went to the Palazzo Colonna where he begged Constanza Colonna, whom we met at the beginning of our story, for help, help immediately offered as he and Cecco were packed off to the Colonna estate in the Alban Hills. There he painted David with the Head of Goliath.

  David with the Head of Goliath. Caravaggio as a young boy (although it may be Ceccio) and as he had become, an old man, dead, with one dull, sightless eye, a glint of still-existing life in the other, his mouth ajar in an eternally silenced scream, painted in the year of his death, 1610.

  He then went to Naples, an immense city of 100,000, a city as decrepit then as it is today, home to criminals, crime and rackets, to the poor and scarcely educated, among whom labored 10,000 slaves. Yet the city thrived thanks to its sleepless citizens, scholars in trade, professors of import and export. As with Milan, Naples too was under Spanish rule, and as in ancient Rome, the nobility--meaning the Spanish and the wealthy--circulated through the streets in covered litters.

  He resided with the Colonna in Naples but as his reputation had preceded him, he did not need their help in securing what became a flood of commands. As in Rome, what could the rich do with their wealth, once their stomachs and loins were assuaged, other than tend to their palaces and gardens and interiors? But then word filtered through to Naples, from Rome, that Caravaggio had hired assassins to do away with his enemies, and whatever the truth of the matter, the uproar forced him to flee again, this time to Malta where thanks to the paintings he did for several Knights of Malta he gained near godlike admiration and was even knighted.

  Also called the Hospitallers and the Knights of Saint John, the Knights of Malta began around year 1000 as an organization devoted to the poor and sick pilgrims who wished to visit the Holy Land. Attacks from Islamic forces gradually changed it into a military order recognized by the popes of Rome and dedicated to the physical protection of pilgrims. With the fall of Jerusalem in 1187 the Knights fell back on Rhodes. After the seizure of Constantinople the Ottomans turned their attention to Rhodes. In 1522 Suleiman the Magnificent put 100,000 men on the island to combat against 7,000 defenders. At the end of six months, the Knights were permitted to retreat to Sicily. In 1530 the King of Spain, Charles I, gave the Knights Malta. Suleiman sent an army against them. The defense of the fortifications on the island depended on around 8,700 soldiers, against the Muslims’ 40,000. Half the Knights lost their lives but even the wounded fought in battle after battle against the attackers. The Turks made a final effort but the Knights and soldiers, working night and day, repaired the breaches in the fortification walls. Dispirited, sick and running out of ammunition, the Ottomans gave up.

  Six years later, on nearly the day of Caravaggio’s birth, Marcantonio Colonna, Costanza’s father, led the forces that destroyed the Ottoman fleet for good, in a naval engagement known as the Battle of Lepanto.

  Most sources believe that becoming a Knight had been a wish Caravaggio had often expressed, and it played in well with the extremes of his character, from a painter nearly as acclaimed as Michelangelo, to a killer on the run, to a monk in the service of Malta. He would renounce the princely life he had led with del Monte, eating and drinking and fucking the best that life had to offer, pushing his way through the alleys of Rome, dagger at easy reach, spending the wild sums his paintings now procured. He would exchange instant justice at the end of his sword in favor of vows of poverty, obedience and chastity. He, Michelangelo da Caravaggio, would trade the good life for the life of a saint. He had convinced himself that this was the right path, just as he and the people about him had convinced themselves throughout all their lives of the existence of good and bad, that a soul left purgatory the instant a coin hit a priest’s alms bowl, and that absolution came through confession. Like sex, after the first act of faith one was no longer virgin.

  The promise of a painting or two opened all the doors to knighthood for Caravaggio. But the Grand Master, Wignacourt, needed the consent of the pope himself, a pope who, for the moment, hesitated to absolve Caravaggio of the killing of Tomassoni, but who planned, too, to squeeze, like a lemon, the last chef d’oeuvre from the rustic artist. Wignacourt was intelligent, modest, always ready to accept advice, generous and, when he had the information he needed, decisive. He had rule over 1,800 monks (Knights), half on Malta itself, and was ever ready to protect his subjects from the Moors who would capture and sale them as slaves. He even set up a fund to ransom those captured before he took power. To say the least, he was lionized.

  In Wignacourt’s request to Pope Paul he didn’t mention Caravaggio’s name as the recipient of the knighthood, but he did mention that the man in question had been accused of murder, and as all of Italy had had little to gossip about other than the Ranuccio’s killing, there was no doubt in the pope’s mind as to the recipient’s identity.

  While waiting for word from Paul which, unusual for him, would be sent back on the very next ship to Malta, Caravaggio did several portraits of Wignacourt, one of which showed him in the presence of one of his many pages. Every historian since that time has added two and two, making Wignacourt the king of pederasts, but naturally no one will ever know. The pages were lads chosen from the ranks of poor nobles, and it is said that Wignacourt paid for their education from is own pocket.

  Caravaggio was meek in the presence of Wignacourt, whose unassertive manner nonetheless hid a fist of iron, and that even the Tasmanian devil would have watched his step before the Grand Master. Wignacourt was a military leader of extremely long experience, and not for a moment would a mere painter like Caravaggio pose the slightest problem. Whether Caravaggio just played at being meek in order to be accepted as a monk and to mollify the other Knights, aristocrats for whom Caravaggio and his plebeian blood counted for nothing, is unknown. But Caravaggio had arrived in Rome with literally not a scudo in his pocket; had allied himself with riff-raff like Longhi who adore
d assaulting merchants who showed him inadequate respect; had most probably set himself up as a part-time pimp; and had wounded several men, killing one--all of which meant that he had the potential of a streetwise hard-core killer, and no matter how much Wignacourt thought himself capable of controlling the situation, he may have let a wolf in among sheep.

  Caravaggio had come to Malta on one of the red-and-gold Maltese ships captained by none other than Fabrizio Sforza Colonna, one of Constanza’s sons, now Captain-General of the Knights of Malta’s fleet. The boats were crowded--up to 500 men--and filthy, rowed by oarsmen in the absence of wind. The heat was intolerable, disease flourished, and the rowers were cadenced by drums and the blows of whips.

  Wignacourt loved Malta and had been literally there to see the spectacular capital, Valletta, an immensely fortified town, rise from the island’s cliffs and throne over the deep harbor. Although he died at age 71, before the city’s completion, he wished to beautify it with churches and Caravaggio’s art. Caravaggio came through with his most outstanding creation, the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, the only painting he signed with his name, F Michelangelo, the F for Fra’ as he had succeeded in being made a monk. His signature was in blood--how seemingly typical of this man who had personally known and personally been responsible for so much suffering--blood from the throat of the saint, his head pressed solidly against the ground by his assassin, while the assassin’s other hand hides the blood-stained knife behind his back. He stares down at his victim, set on the sight of the gushing blood, hypnotized even, as if thinking, ‘’I, the living, have ended this life. I am God. I am misery. And the sight of your suffering has engorged my penis with the blood of the living, and I shall insert it into the living, and my orgasm will confirm my being alive!’’ John the Baptist was the Knights’ protector, then as he is today.

  Beheading of St. John

  And then, when things were going perfectly, Caravaggio, in Malta, threw a wrench in the works. Everything had been going so well! He was adored by the Grand Master, adulated by the Knights, even worshipped by the Maltese. True, he couldn’t stride the streets armed to the teeth, accompanied by his faithful dogs, like Onorio Langhi, as when he had lived in Rome, pushing citizens out of the way, eating and drinking without paying, and fucking alongside his buddies, when not fucking his buddies. He just had to wait it out, a few weeks longer, perhaps even just a few days, until a red-and-gold Maltese boat brought word from Paul that his hand was needed in Rome to paint pictures, and that all was pardoned and forgiven. After all, who was Ranuccio Tomassoni, other than a boy who had wished to live out his life?

  But he screwed up--the least that can be said. Again, not only are details lacking, but we don’t even see the big picture. Some said he butt-fucked one of Wignacourt’s pages--the Grand Master’s own personal reserve (this according to some sources certain of Wignacourt preference for boys--but far from all sources). Others say he killed someone in a duel, this on an island where there were hundreds of testosterone-engorged men and boys, and where men may have had the title of monk but were first and foremost men. Any pretext for a duel is conceivable, from making a pass at a man’s whore to looking at a man, as I’ve written, a nanosecond too long. One major source believes that what he did so deeply offended Wignacourt that he set out to destroy the artist. Another major source believes he offended an important personage (through an insult? by physically injuring him?) who got him locked in jail and, when he escaped, set the wheels in motion that finally led to his death at age 38. In this version not only was Wignacourt not against him, Wignacourt did everything necessary to ensure his escape.

  Then again, perhaps his problem had had a totally other origin. Perhaps he had been treated disrespectfully by one of the many sons of the Knights. Caravaggio was now a Knight himself, but he knew that he would never be accepted as such by the island’s nobles. And yet he was a dear friend of the Grand Master, Wignacourt. He was the pet of popes. His painting was hailed as the best in existence--new, awesomely naturalistic, and the wish of everyone with money and/or power was to possess one, from Wignacourt to Pope Paul, from Cardinal Scipione Borghese to the Colonna. How dare anyone stand in his way, and especially not these young Maltese pups, aristocracy flotsam compared to the man of talent that was Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. In this case any one of a million slights might have made him reach for his sword and wound some young seigneur, landing him in prison. Caravaggio was the son of a palazzo steward, he was not noble and nobly born. He in no way earned his knighthood, felt many of the Knights and their knightly sons. Caravaggio would never admit the fact that he lacked nobility, but the truth haunted his innermost being. Just a word, just one, in some tavern by a drunken princeling, would have triggered the hatred in his heart that had metastasized through years of ass licking, beginning with those who had taken him in after the death of his father, to the workshops where he had cleaned the toilets and, most probably, been forced to accept what awaited him every night at the hands of the master and the bigger boys. Doffing his cap when del Monte took a drink, bending to the will of Pope Paul and the nobles because he somehow lacked the inner fire and determination of a Michelangelo Buonarroti to resist, nor did he have the immense intelligence of a da Vinci to guide him through the world’s shark-filled waters. In blind rage he had struck out, because he in no way had the gifts of a Cyrano de Bergerac: to turn insult into rhetorical vengeance.

  Graham-Dixon informs us that recent research indicates that Caravaggio and several others were involved in an attack on a friar, Giovanni Roero. Like Caravaggio, his fellow assailants had criminal backgrounds, not abnormal for a brotherhood based on militancy; two had prepared for knighthood at the same time as Caravaggio. Roero had been shot. Nothing more has come to light.

  The prison he entered was Fort Sant’Angelo, his home for the coming weeks. His cell was chiseled from the rock in the form of a beehive, like the Mycenaean tomb of Agamemnon, eleven feet deep and capped with an iron grille. Prisoners were lowered and raised by rope. While Caravaggio languished behind bars, Wignacourt was unveiling his monumental (10 feet high by 15 feet long) The Beheading of St. John in a ceremony that alas fell flat due to the musicians, wanting more pay, who refused to play for the choir. The prison of Sant’Angelo was a place that was inescapable, unless accomplices had been given the necessary orders by Wignacourt. Or perhaps the head of the Maltese fleet, Constanza’s son Fabrizio Sforza Colonna--who had brought Caravaggio to Malta--had decided on his own, or under orders from Wignacourt, to take him to the nearest port outside Malta, Syracuse.

  Caravaggio spent a year on Sicily. He came upon his old bar-hoping, whore-frequenting, street-brawling pal and lover, Mario Minniti, who had calmed himself enough to establish his own well-considered workshop, earning the patronage of the island’s Who’s Who. Caravaggio went from one city to another, some say in near panic, but the exact nature of the threat is unknown. The Knights were all over the island, their ships in every major harbor. Had Wignacourt wished him ill, Caravaggio would have been easily recaptured or killed. But to make certain the Fates were on his side, Caravaggio nonetheless sent Wignacourt a peace offering in the form of a painting. We don’t know who was tracking him down. We’ll never know.

  From Syracuse he went (fled according to one source) to Messina. As the island was too dangerous to be covered on foot, he sailed. Even common farmers, historians claim, would rob, ransom or murder a traveler without hesitation or scruple. Sicilians were vindictive and quarrelsome; the women built like summa wrestlers, the men as skinny as twigs. Caravaggio is thought to have sailed in winter, the time that boats were most likely to be shipwrecked, proof of what he considered an urgency.

  Messina was fortified to such an extent that the inhabitants were said to have scoffed at the threat of a Turkish invasion. It was described as wondrously beautiful … until a succession of earthquakes leveled it.

  As usual (and especially in times of troubles), Caravaggio worked. He was known on the island
as he was everywhere else, and commissions piled up. From 200 scudi per painting he had gone to 400, a thousand, and now 2,000 was considered a bargain. Caravaggio spent a good part of it on earthy delights, we learn, perhaps making up for Malta where the young aristocrats were too proud and arrogant to give themselves sexually to a mere painter, and where, anyway, such relations were severely punished. He supposedly made up for lost time now in Messina. Besides visiting the taverns and back streets known for their vice, he was denounced for his too assiduous interest in the lads bathing nude in the port, and indeed had hired several to pose and otherwise entertain him. He was forced to leave quickly when right-thinking citizens rose up in force against him.

  He went to Palermo where he embarked for Naples by way of glorious Capri and Ischia. Back on familiar ground, he didn’t lose time in returning to the Osteria del Ciriglio, a tavern in a back alley of Naples frequented by both the dregs of society and the upper-class slumming for sex, a place known for its orgies, possessing a secret door for men who preferred boys, a door Caravaggio took as he certainly took the lad or lads within. But after one of these visits, on his way out, he was waylaid by a group of men who beat him up and then badly scarred his face, a fate reserved for whores. No one knows who these men were. Had they been sent by Roero he would have been murdered. Had Wignacourt been responsible he would have been punished in exactly this way as Wignacourt would have wanted revenge, not his death. Some put blame on the family and friends of Ranuccio Tomassoni, but the Tomassoni family was stationed in Rome and logistically it would have been difficult for them to organize an attack in Naples.