Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane (53 page)

This girl was being courted by a young man who was a notary by profession and who had asked the mother for her daughter’s hand in marriage. However, he had always received a negative answer because this simple and naive woman was unwilling to give her daughter to a notary since, as she said, all notaries are surely bound for damnation. The young man was indignant at this refusal, but he nevertheless did not lose track of his beloved. Thus he found out that she frequently went to the house of Caravaggio and remained there for long periods of time posing for him.

Full of jealousy and totally enraged, he contrived to meet the mother one day and said to her, ‘My good woman, you’re so scrupulous and such a good guardian, and here your lovely daughter, whom you refused to let me marry, goes to this miserable painter so that he can do anything he likes with her. Really, you have made a wise choice and one which is worthy of your class, refusing to let her marry a man like me so that you can make her the concubine of this scoundrel. Now you can just keep her and I hope it will do you a lot of good.’ Then turning his back, he left her confused and completely upset.

It seemed to this lady that she had inadvertently done the wrong thing by taking her daughter to Michelangelo, even though she had done so in perfectly good faith, and it also seemed that this notary had good reason, at least from his point of view, for treating her so badly. She went immediately to Caravaggio in tears and complained about what had happened on his account. He smiled bitterly at this accusation and asked her who it was that had so unjustly mistreated her. From her description he easily recognized him as a person whom he frequently met in the street. He consoled the lady with gentle words and sent her home.

He was upset by this incident and, being by nature irritable and violent, the next morning he put a hatchet under his coat and went out to look for this young man. This being Wednesday, market day, he carried the affair right into Piazza Navona, just when a fair was being held there. It took place in front of the church of S. Giacomo degli Spagnoli, near the Triton Fountain. He went up to the notary and gave him such a terrific blow on the head with the hatchet that he fell to the ground unconscious and covered with his own blood. And Michelangelo said, ‘Now learn to behave yourself if you don’t know how.’ After this misdeed he took refuge at San Luigi dei Francesi and remained there for a long time. Fortunately for Caravaggio, the notary did not die from the blow, even though he was unconscious and for a long time remained ill. It was some years before they settled their feud and the indemnity.
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In several striking respects, Passeri’s account is impressively close to the witness statements given in the immediate aftermath of the attack. Passeri gets Pasqualone’s profession right, correctly specifies the place where the attack occurred, describes it as a surprise assault on an unarmed man. So even though his ‘poor but honest’ female characters sound like the heroines of a fairy story, Passeri’s assertion that the young lady at the centre of the dispute was Caravaggio’s model is worth taking seriously.

Passeri’s description of the two women as virtuous creatures from the world of fable also marks the one serious fault-line between his account and the original witness statements. Although brief, Pasqualone’s description of the mysterious Lena suggests that she was actually a prostitute. Two very precise phrases in his testimony may shed light not only on this specific incident, but also on the whole vexed question of Caravaggio’s nocturnal existence – the other life that he pursued, so vigorously, in the shadows of the city.

Pasqualone’s exact words in Italian when first describing the girl were ‘
una donna chiamata Lena che sta in piedi a Piazza Navona
’ – literally, ‘a woman called Lena who stays on her feet in the Piazza Navona’. This way of describing a woman who can always be found standing in a certain place carries an insinuation; the phrase is still current Italian slang for a streetwalker, a whore. There was in fact a known prostitute called Lena Antognetti working in the area at around this time, who was arrested in Piazza Catinara, the present-day Piazza Cairoli, opposite the church of San Carlo ai Catinari, on the night of 1 November 1604.
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She was apparently on her way home but was stopped for being out after curfew.

The young notary’s second remark about Lena is even more intriguing. He baldly says ‘
e donna di Michelangelo
’, which literally means ‘she is Caravaggio’s woman’, but implies a particular form of possession. Pasqualone pointedly does
not
describe Lena as ‘
la donna di Michelangelo
’ but as ‘
donna di Michelangelo
’: not ‘
the
woman of Caravaggio’ but simply ‘woman of Caravaggio’, a phrase that objectifies her and carries the suggestion that she is one of several such women. Pasqualone might simply have been saying that Lena was one of several prostitutes frequented by Caravaggio,
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but it is also possible that he meant to imply that she was one of several prostitutes
controlled
by Caravaggio – and that the painter, therefore, was a part-time pimp.

Pasqualone’s remarks offer an explanation for much of Caravaggio’s seemingly random nocturnal escapades and unpredictable behaviour. His life becomes no less violent, but more logical. Caravaggio certainly used whores as models. He painted Fillide Melandroni and, quite possibly, Fillide’s friend Anna Bianchini. He painted Lena the streetwalker, and according to Giulio Mancini, who knew Caravaggio well, at least one other prostitute modelled for him in Rome. Perhaps he and his friends just happened to know a lot of whores and courtesans – after all, such women tended to move in the same circles and live in the same places as painters, sculptors and architects. But it is conceivable that there was more to it than that. Caravaggio needed women to model for him, so rather than be at the mercy of pimps for a reliable supply of girls, why not secure his own small team of whores? He would get free use of female models, which was by no means otherwise easy to arrange. He would not be beholden to anybody, which always made him uneasy. He would earn a bit of extra money on the side, and there would have been some free sex. For their part, the prostitutes would get their own livelihood, and a formidable protector.

Caravaggio used his contacts in high places to ensure that he could carry a sword and a dagger with impunity wherever he went. If he could not always actually produce a licence, he could usually count on Cardinal del Monte, or his majordomo, to get him out of trouble. Maybe one of the reasons Caravaggio went about armed the whole time was that when he was out on the street, he was also out on duty, looking out for ‘his’ women.

Many of the known incidents involving him lend at least circumstantial support to the hypothesis. What kind of argument over a whore could have led to a sudden, brutal assault of the kind perpetrated by Caravaggio on Pasqualone? The romantic answer is that both men were in love with the girl. But if that were so, a duel would have been the solution. It would have been a matter of honour, whereas Caravaggio treated his victim with a calculated show of contempt.
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If, on the other hand, Lena was one of Caravaggio’s prostitutes, the shameful attack from behind becomes easier to explain. Pasqualone was perhaps a client who had not paid, or had mistreated the girl in some way, so Caravaggio took his revenge publicly, sending out a clear message to anyone who might be watching.

Seen in this light, many of the smaller or more puzzling details to emerge from the painter’s criminal record suddenly come into sharper focus. He is often seen out and about, carrying a sword, in the small hours of the morning. He attacks the house of two women, who have annoyed him in some way that seems to relate to sex. On the evening of the stone-throwing, he stops in the street to chat with Menicuccia, a whore whom he clearly knows well. All of this is consistent with the behaviour of a pimp.

The enmity between Caravaggio and Ranuccio Tomassoni, soon to reach its climax, may have been in some way territorial: certainly Tomassoni was a pimp himself. Caravaggio painted one of Tomassoni’s girls, Fillide Melandroni, and, having got her to model for him, perhaps he also tried to persuade her to work for him.

THE CASE OF THE DAMAGED CEILING

At the end of July 1605, concurrently accused of the assault on Pasqualone and the
deturpatio
of Laura and Isabella della Vecchia, Caravaggio skipped bail and fled to the coastal city of Genoa. He probably took letters of introduction with him from some of his patrons and protectors in Rome. Ottavio Costa and Vincenzo Giustiniani, both enthusiastic collectors of Caravaggio’s work, had strong links with the city, as above all did the Colonna family, his protectors since boyhood. The Marchesa Costanza Colonna was living in Rome, at the Palazzo Colonna, between 1600 and 1605. The Colonna family had intermarried with one of the great Genoese families, the Doria. As soon as Caravaggio got to Genoa, he sought out one of the marchesa’s relations, Prince Marcantonio Doria, who, although it came to nothing, offered him a prestigious commission.

Caravaggio spent the best part of a month away. On three separate occasions between 3 and 19 August, a Roman court notary reported his failure to attend hearings in the case brought by Laura della Vecchia. Repeated summonses were addressed to him and he was eventually fined for contempt.
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Meanwhile, his movements were being carefully tracked by Fabio Masetti, an agent in Rome working for Cesare d’Este, Duke of Modena.

Masetti was keeping a close watch on Caravaggio in the summer of 1605 because he was trying to get a picture out of him. Earlier in the year Cesare d’Este had conceived the idea of staging another pictorial competition between Caravaggio and Annibale Carracci. This rematch of the Cerasi Chapel contest of 1601 was to have been staged for a ‘Chapel of the Madonna’ in the newly renovated ducal castle in Modena. The idea was that each artist should paint a scene from the life of the Virgin. Carracci was to paint the altarpiece, Caravaggio a single canvas for one of the side walls. But there were problems from the outset. Carracci was crippled by depression, and Caravaggio had good reason to dislike the terms of the commission: his picture was to be considerably smaller than his rival’s, and in March 1605 another of the duke’s agents in Rome, Attilio Ruggieri, reported that Caravaggio was trying to wriggle out of the assignment altogether, truculently remarking that the duke would be better off hiring a miniaturist to paint such small figures.
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Caravaggio’s fee was to be just 50 or 60 scudi, compared to the 200 offered to Carracci.

In the end he had stuck with it, and by the summer responsibility for handling the commission had passed from Attilio Ruggieri to Masetti, whose letters from Rome to Modena are a paper trail of mounting frustration. On 17 August, Masetti told the duke that it was impossible to force a painting out of the depressive Carracci, saying that there was nothing for it but to accommodate the painter’s strange ‘humour’. Meanwhile, he added, ‘Caravaggio is in contempt of court, and is to be found in Genoa.’
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On 20 August, Masetti reported that Carracci continued to be utterly intractable, but that efforts were being made to secure Caravaggio’s return to Rome: ‘a settlement is now being negotiated for Caravaggio; as soon as it’s concluded, I’ll be on his back.’
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Perhaps del Monte was still busy on Caravaggio’s behalf – Galeazzo Roccasecca had hinted as much in his testimony for Pasqualone at the end of July.

Masetti’s next letter, of 24 August, shows that the Este agent was now trying to put pressure on Caravaggio through del Monte:

When I heard that Caravaggio had appeared in Rome in hope of a settlement, I petitioned Cardinal del Monte to command him to despatch Your Highness’s painting, which he promised me would be ready quickly, though one can’t rely on [Caravaggio]. It is said that he is funny in the head [‘
e uno cervello stravantissimo
’; literally, ‘he is a very extravagant brain’] and also that Prince Doria sought to have him paint a loggia for him [in Genoa] and wanted to give him 6,000 scudi for it, but that he didn’t want to accept, though he had almost promised. It occurred to me to sound out whether, under these circumstances of his non-attendance [in Rome], he would be happy to move there [to Modena], where he could have given every satisfaction to Your Highness. But seeing that he is so unstable I have done no more.
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Caravaggio’s refusal of a prince’s ransom for the small task of decorating a loggia struck Masetti as typically capricious. But the painter had never learned to work in fresco, so he could not have accepted the commission even if he had wanted to. Besides, he had business to attend to in Rome. Apart from anything else, he needed to arrange some more modelling sessions with Lena and finish off the overdue
Madonna of Loreto
.

Caravaggio was indeed back in Rome a week or so before the end of the month. On 26 August he signed a judicial peace with Mariano Pasqualone. Damages had probably been paid, although the legal conventions governing such documents made it sound like a gentleman’s agreement: ‘the above-named parties, exhorted and persuaded by mutual friends, determined to make peace as befits good Christians . . .’
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In exchange for a pardon from the Governor of Rome, Caravaggio put his name to the declaration:

I, Michelangelo Merisi, having been insulted by Messer Mariano, clerk of the Vicar’s Court, as he would not wear a sword in the daytime, resolved to strike him wherever I should meet him. One night, having come upon him accompanied by another man and having perfectly recognized his face, I struck him. I am very sorry for what I did, and if I had not done it yet, I would not do it. I beg him for his forgiveness and peace, and I regard the said Messer Mariano with a sword in his hand as a man fit to stand his ground against me or anybody else. I, Michelangelo Merisi, do affirm all the above.
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