Caravaggio: A Passionate Life (14 page)

Despite its gaiety, life at Naples had sinister undertones. When roused, the mob could be one of the most savage in Europe. There was also a slave market, dealing mainly in North Africans or Turks, though Christians, too, might become slaves. Down by the seafront, Fynes Moryson saw “a stone upon which many play away their liberty at dice, the King’s officers lending them money, which, when they have lost and cannot repay, they are drawne into the gallies, for the Spaniards have slaves of both sexes.” Girls were sold into prostitution by starving parents, boys for emasculation as
castrato
singers. Those who could afford it mummified their relatives when they died and visited them in the catacombs on feast days.

It was an even more dangerous city than Rome. “The Neapolitane carrieth the bloodiest mind and is the most secret fleering murdrer,” warns Thomas Nashe, “whereupon it is growen to a common proverbe, Ile give him the Neapolitane shrug, when one intends to play the villaine, and make no boast of it.” Great nobles maintained a much larger number of
bravi
in their palaces, and the surrounding countryside held more
banditti
than the entire Papal States. While duels of the kind in which Ranuccio Tommasoni had died were comparatively rare in Rome, they took place almost every day in Naples.

Popular religion was fervent and dramatic. After the viceroy, the most important person in Naples was the archbishop, who presided over the liquefaction of the blood of San Gennaro, a fourth-century martyr. The congealed blood, contained in two vials, turned to liquid three times a year, and the well-being of Naples depended upon it doing so as quickly as possible. In Caravaggio’s day, when the vials of blood were held up at the cathedral by the archbishop, many of the crowd fell into a panic-stricken frenzy, howling and shrieking if the liquefaction were delayed for even a few minutes.

XXIII

The Neapolitan Altarpieces

C
aravaggio’s fame preceded him. When he arrived, instead of being greeted as a murderer on the run, he was lionized. Later, Bernardo de Dominicis, a seventeenth-century historian of Neapolitan artists, heard how “Caravaggio came to Naples where he was received with great acclaim by both painters and lovers of painting.”

All we know about his earliest Neapolitan commission, signed in October 1606, is from the document itself. The patron was Nicholas Radolovich, a merchant from Bari. The commission, an altarpiece, was to show the Virgin and Child with choirs of angels above, St. Dominic embracing St. Francis in the center below, and St. Vitus on the left and St. Nicholas on the right, St. Nicholas being the patron saint of Bari. Like other lost Caravaggios, the painting may still survive unrecognized in the dusty corridor of an obscure religious house, or in a crumbling palace in the Mezzogiorno.

Caravaggio painted three more altarpieces. For the first,
The Seven Works of Mercy
, he charged the confraternity of the Pio Monte della Misericordia twice what he had charged Radolovich. Clearly, he had soon realized how much he was appreciated at Naples. Working with his usual speed, he delivered it by January 1607, when he was paid the final instalment of the four
hundred ducats stipulated. Bellori gives us a good description: “The head of an old man is seen, pushed through the bars of a prison window, sucking the milk from a lady who bends down to offer him her naked breast. Among the other figures are the feet and legs of a dead man, who is being taken off for burial; a torch held by someone carrying the body casts its light so as to shine over a priest in a white surplice, to brighten up all the colors and breathe life into the picture.”

The young woman and the old man, who represent the Christian mercies of feeding the hungry and visiting prisoners, were inspired by the ancient story of Pero contriving to feed her father, Cimon, when Valerius Maximus tried to starve him to death. Also in the picture are Samson drinking from the jawbone of an ass, St. Martin dividing his cloak, and a host greeting Christ, who is dressed as a pilgrim. Two angels fly above, while the Madonna and Child look down upon the scene. The Virgin has a face not unlike that of the
Madonna di Loreto
. Tense and worried, it may be the face of Lena from the Piazza Navona, who inspired such passion in Caravaggio and could have followed him to Naples.

St. Martin’s sword belt and scabbard, painted in some detail, are of considerable value for historians of the rapier. The artist lost none of his interest in swords, even though it is likely that he still felt remorse at killing Tommasoni. There is no record of his falling foul of the Neapolitan authorities, no police report of nocturnal brawls. Chastened by having been hunted for his life, he was on his best behavior.

Another altarpiece,
The Madonna of the Rosary
, seems to have been rejected. It was on sale in Naples in the autumn of 1607, together with a new version of
Judith and Holofernes
. Some believe that in the
Madonna
the donor kneeling at the side, a bald-headed old gentleman in a ruff, is Don Marzio Colonna, Caravaggio’s shadowy and slightly sinister host in the Sabine Hills. Because Dominican friars dominate this triumphant painting, there is reason to think that it was painted during the early months of 1607, a time of expectation for the friars.

Their archenemy was the Jesuit General Claudio Acquaviva, the same man who had declined to commission Caravaggio to paint the Resurrection at the Gesù. The Dominicans accused the Jesuits of watering down Catholicism, of stressing the human at the expense of the divine, and of doing so in every area from sexuality to theology. What angered them most was the Jesuit emphasis on free will instead of grace. A series of acrimonious debates on the subject had recently taken place in Rome.

Pope Clement VIII had distrusted Acquaviva, because he was building a worldwide organization, directed from his headquarters at the Gesù. The pope suspected the Society of Jesus of trying to become a church within the Church. He had taken a keen personal interest in the debates on free will versus grace, which might well have ended in general agreement on the need to suppress, or at least drastically curb, the Jesuits. But Clement died before he could give his verdict. Pope Paul V ordered further debates. Soon it began to look as if he, too, were about to condemn the Jesuits.

The Dominicans maintained the Augustinian view that a man was saved more by his faith than his good works, an idea that, the Jesuits claimed, verged on Protestantism. If Caravaggio inclined to the Dominican view, as seems likely from his portrayal of grace as blinding light in
The Conversion of St. Paul
, it provides a rare insight into his mind. This was certainly a comforting doctrine for a man who, despite deep Christian faith, was always prone to spectacular sins.

Throughout the spring and summer of 1607, the Dominicans were confident they would win the dispute and crush the Jesuits. However, at the last moment, the Jesuits managed to ingratiate themselves with Pope Paul, by providing highly effective support during a quarrel that suddenly broke out between the papacy and Venice. Most unexpectedly, in August Paul adjourned the debates indefinitely. There is a very strong possibility, therefore, that the
Madonna of the Rosary
was prematurely commissioned by an enthusiastic supporter of the Dominicans to celebrate their forthcoming victory over the Jesuits. The legend depicted in the painting shows the Virgin
presenting St. Dominic with a rosary in a vision, after which he gives rosaries to all his friars. It was an ideal theme for proclaiming the order’s triumph, the underlying message being that salvation is best found through Dominican guidance.

An altarpiece was also ordered by Tommaso and Lorenzo dei Franchis, members of an influential Neapolitan family related to the viceroy. They wanted the picture for their new chapel in the church of San Domenico Maggiore. This was the
Flagellation of Christ
, apparently completed and delivered by May 1607, for which Caravaggio was paid 290 ducats. The three figures around the column—Christ and the two men scourging him—have a curious rhythm that has been fancifully called “balletic,” and likened to a ritual dance of death. It is among Caravaggio’s most savage compositions, a scene of agony and horror. However, the impression that remains with one is not so much of the artist’s unhealthy pleasure in cruelty as of his genuine compassion for the suffering Lord.

Caravaggio did not restrict himself to altarpieces during his comparatively short stay in Naples. A
Crucifixion of St. Andrew
was commissioned by the Spanish viceroy himself. Once again, Caravaggio was finding patrons among the highest in the land.

According to
The Golden Legend
, the apostle Andrew angered the Roman proconsul Aegeus by converting his wife, Maximilla, to Christianity. When, after a savage cross-examination, Andrew refused to sacrifice to the idols, he was crucified. For two days he hung on the cross, preaching. When the crowd saw that he was still alive on the third day, they threatened to kill the proconsul if he did not take him down. Alarmed, Aegeus hastened to do as they said. The apostle, however, refused to be taken down, beseeching God to let him stay on the cross. After he had prayed, “a dazzling light came down from Heaven and enveloped him for the space of half an hour, hiding him from sight, and when the light vanished, he breathed forth his soul.” As for the miserable proconsul,
The Golden Legend
tells us that on the way home he was “seized by a demon” and died in the street.

It must have been the heavenly light, the light of glory, so well suited to the chiaroscuro, that inspired Caravaggio. It illumines not only the dying St. Andrew but the amazed faces of those gazing up at him—Aegeus in an elegant armor and plumed headgear, a rapt old woman with a goiter, a gaping peasant in a broad-brimmed hat—and the bare back of the executioner, who is vainly trying to take the apostle down from the cross with trembling hands.

When the viceroy left Naples in 1610, he took the
Crucifixion of St. Andrew
home with him to Spain, where it disappeared. It was rediscovered in Madrid less than thirty years ago.