Copyright © 2008 by R. Blade All Rights Reserved
rblade@sbcglobal.net
Caravaggio was the innovative painter (1571-1610) art historians call a genius. He painted the divine and saints as ordinary humans. He swaggered in the mean streets of Rome with sword and dagger ready for a fight.
Contents
Struggling Painter (1592-1595)
Catherine Puglisi, Caravaggio (1998)
Costantino Baroni, All the Paintings of Caravaggio (1962)
Francine Prose, Caravaggio Painter of Miracles (2005)
Giorgio Bonsanti, Caravaggio (1984)
Helen Langdon, Caravaggio a Life (1998)
John Gash, Caravaggio (2003)
John T. Spike, Caravaggio (2001)
Patrick Hunt, Caravaggio (2004)
Peter Robb, M: The Man who became Caravaggio (1998)
Perter Watson, The Caravaggio Conspiracy (1984)
Roger Packman (Hinks, RP), Michelangelo Merisi da
Caravaggio (1953)
Rosa Giorgi, Caravaggio: Master of light and dark – his life
and paintings (1999 Darling Kindersley)
Wikipedia.orgI hereby acknowledge my reliance on and appreciation of the above named books and Wikipedia.org for the source information for writing this book.
R. Blade
You may see a portrait of Caravaggio at Wikipedia.org>English>Caravaggio
Ottavio Leoni (1578-1630) drew a chalk portrait of the young man Caravaggio, probably in his mid-twenties, when he was a guest living in Cardinal del Monte’s Palazzo Madama.
Caravaggio’s portrait provides me with a dual portrayal of him. When I first looked at the portrait I saw the clenched full lips, thrust out chin, and defiant expression of a social misfit, an angry person looking for confrontation or a fight. Upon further reflection I saw the sensuous face of someone longing for the fulfillment of an irrepressible desire, someone wanting to be accepted, understood, and appreciated.
Caravaggio was short-to-medium heighted, well built, and muscular. He had a full head of black hair, bushy eyebrows, thick mustache, and a short thick chin beard complemented by dark skin and eyes.
Fictional Interview
The fictional interview in this book is between a modern American atheist HOST and the reconstituted Catholic painting genius Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) later in Rome called Caravaggio. The interview attempts to tell the story of Caravaggio’s turbulent life. Source information listed on the Acknowledgement page of this book was used to outline the interview. Selected biographical events of his life and selected paintings of his work were used to develop the interview.
Keep in mind this book provides readers with a fictional conversation with the painter Caravaggio. This book is not a biography of Caravaggio or history of his paintings or history of the paintings of his time. This book makes no attempt at technical analyses of his paintings or definitive inventory of them. It’s also beyond the scope of this book to construct a noted bibliography keyed to the information in the fictional interview. Moreover I’ve not viewed any of Caravaggio’s original paintings, or researched in Italian any records (public or private) about him, or read in Italian any of his biographies.
Michelangelo Merisi (Caravaggio)
Michelangelo Merisi grew up in Milan and Caravaggio in the Lombardy region of Italy. He usually was sloppily dressed in black tattered clothes and stockings. Occasionally he dressed as a gentleman and demanded those he encountered treat him as one. Caravaggio was arrogant, a bully, eccentric, sarcastic, had a volatile personality, and was sometimes a danger to himself and others. In painting he always thought himself to be correct. Yet with all this baggage, perhaps because of it, art historians declare he was a painting genius. Keep in mind that some of the events of his life are unknown especially how, when, and where he died.
Caravaggio’s Parents
In northern Italy Caravaggio is a small town about 27 miles east of Milan and 18 miles south of Bergamo. In Milan Fermo Merisi, originally from Caravaggio, was manager and architect of the palazzo (palace) of Francesco Sforza the Marchese di Caravaggio. In January 1571 Fermo Merisi 33 and Lucia Aratori 21 were married in their hometown of Caravaggio where they owned land. Among the witnesses was Francesco Sforza. After the marriage they returned to Milan and lived in an apartment near or in the palace. In Milan in September 1571 a boy was born to Fermo and Lucia on the Feast of Saint Michael’s day and in honor of that saint was named Michelangelo. Later when he lived in Rome he was called Caravaggio. To avoid confusion Michelangelo Merisi is hereinafter called Caravaggio.
Colonna Clan
The Colonnas were one of the noblest and most powerful families in Italy. In December 1571 Marcantonio Colonna admiral of the Holy League’s fleet of papal galleys defeated the fleet of the Ottoman Empire in the battle of Lepanto in the Ionian Sea. In that naval battle Catholics defeated Muslims ending Muslim supremacy in Europe. Marcantonio’s daughter Costanza married Francesco Sforza, the Marchese di Caravaggio. She was related to Carlo Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan ruled by Spain and occupied by Spanish soldiers. The prominent Colonna clan owned huge feudal estates throughout Italy, lived in palaces, and exercised its influence in politics and on the papacy.
The relationship of the Colonnas and Michelangelo was inextricable enmeshed from his birth to his mysterious death and posthumously after it. Michelangelo and Marcantonio Colonna had liberation in common. Marcantonio liberated Catholicism from Islam and Michelangelo, the future famous painter Caravaggio, liberated painting from the conventional idealism of Catholicism to the naturalism of the real world of humans.
Historic Precedents
For hundreds of years there was a constant struggle between emperors of the Holy Roman Empire and popes who ruled the Papal States of central Italy. Charles 1 King of Spain was also Charles 5 the Hapsburg Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. In the Sack of Rome (1527) the army of Charles 5 destroyed Roman homes, public buildings, churches, and some of its infrastructure. When ‘Duke Francesco Sforza’ died without an heir Spanish troops occupied the Sforza dukedom including Milan and Caravaggio (1535).
Martin Luther’s Reformation (1483-1546) debunked the infallibility of the pope. He declared man’s salvation was through faith alone. Popes avowed man’s salvation was achieved through Church authorized doctrine such as baptism and dogma such as the Immaculate Conception. Germany and its surrounding lands became mostly Protestant. Most of the lands west and south of Germany remained Catholic. France, Spain and popes continued to rule parts of Italy.
Copernicus (1473-1543) and Galilei Galileo (1564-1642) debunked the Catholic belief that the Sun orbited the Earth by proving that the Earth orbited the Sun. Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) a Dominican priest supported Galileo’s proof. The Church excommunicated Bruno and he became a fugitive priest. The Church hunted him down like an animal. When captured he was proclaimed a heretic and Pope Clement 8 ordered him roasted alive, burned to death at the stake. In that Satanic shameful Catholic event Clement’s hatred and misunderstanding of our universe was greater than his love of God and presumptive forgiveness of human’s foibles.
Caravaggio’s Italy
Because of historic precedents Caravaggio’s Italy was geographically and politically fragmented. For example there were the Papal States of central Italy, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Naples and Sicily) ruled by Spain, the Republic of Genoa and Republic of Venice, the dukedoms of Mantua and Tuscany, and other dukedoms and various territories ruled by Italian nobles. Milan and Caravaggio were ruled by Spain and occupied by its troops. France and Spain warred over prominence in ruling the papacy and Italy. Austria, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland shared the Italian alpine region. Caravaggio lived in this fragmentation of Italy.
At that time the pope was an absolute dictator who governed the Papal States and all Catholics. The hierarchy of cardinals, bishops, and priests supported a pope. The starving emigrant poor from Catholic Europe pilgrimaged to Rome to beg the pope for food and shelter more than the absolution of their souls. The Church and Romans were not pleased by the great influx of aliens. (Today America experiences tidal waves of Hispanic illegal aliens.)
Resurgent Rome (1550-1600)
After the Sack of Rome (1527) popes were determined to resurrect Rome the ‘Eternal City’ to its former power and renown. Popes did this by propagandizing devotional art in architecture, painting, and sculpture. They initiated the Roman resurgence by rebuilding, renovating, and decorating Catholic churches in order to counter Luther’s Reformation and thereby re-establish papal power. It was the beginning of baroque art expressed by elaborate and ostentatious designs, coloring, nudity, divinity, and death. In Rome it was a good time to be an architect, painter, or sculptor. Romans starved while popes spent money rebuilding churches. To survive some starving citizens turned to crime and prostitution.
Viewers of Paintings
Amateur art lovers are more interested in a painting’s subject matter rather than the methods used in creating a painting. Amateur viewers don’t know anything about mixing colors, tempera, wet-on-wet application, the use of a camera obscura, layout grids, or marks on canvas to position subject matter. Professional viewers understand all of the above. They’re interested in how paintings were created in matters of style, application techniques, and iconography (historic interpretation of objects in paintings). For example Cupid’s arrows represent love, broken items represent suffering or death, grapes represent wine or pleasure, and laurel leaves victory.
Viewing Color Prints
I never viewed any of Caravaggio’s original paintings. The interview includes my first impressions of selected color prints of his paintings. The problems in viewing color prints is the amount of light and time of exposure applied in photographing a painting and the amount of detail lost in the reproductive process. Moreover his paintings have dark surrounds and backgrounds that obscure details. It’s difficult to see details (if any) immersed in darkness. When I view Caravaggio’s color prints I think of darkness. Also my atheism and modernity probably unfairly bias my first impressions of his religious paintings.
In Italian chiaro means light and scuro dark. In painting chiaroscuro is the application of white paint/tints and black paint/shades to create contrast for artistic and dramatic portrayal. Caravaggio manipulated light, darkness, and coloring to produce the desired results. Viewers see many examples of chiaroscuro in his paintings. You may view prints of Caravaggio’s paintings in the books listed on the Acknowledgement page. Most of the books have color prints. Some color prints may also be viewed on the Internet by searching for Caravaggio.
Multiple Paintings of Same Subject Matter
There were occasions when patrons were dissatisfied with a Caravaggio painting and rejected it. To satisfy these patrons, and also as requested by new patrons, Caravaggio painted the same subject matter more than once creating multiple original paintings (versions) having different completion dates. The different versions have different owners and locations where exhibited and might have different titles and even different sizes depending on who measured and mounted them. Moreover some painters called Caravaggisti copied Caravaggio’s style creating more versions.
Caravaggio didn’t date or number his paintings and he putatively signed only 1 or 2. He was literate but it’s obvious he didn’t like to date or sign his paintings (he might have thought his style was his signature). In this book dates are only estimates of the ‘alleged approximate dates’ he finished his paintings.
Any given Caravaggio painting might have more than one title. Some titles describe the painting’s subject matter some titles do not. For convenience in identifying paintings I altered titles to describe subject matter. For example the paintings of Jesus refer to him as Christ, a surname appended after he died and was resurrected. I changed Christ to Jesus. The painting called Madonna and Child with Saint Anne is also called Madonna dei Palafrenieri, Madonna of Papal Grooms, and Grooms’ Madonna. The painting shows the Madonna and young boy Jesus stepping on the serpent that tricked Eve. I changed the title to Madonna and Serpent.
Caravaggio Maze
The previous information being understood, it is with great pleasure and some intrepidity that I welcome you to the Caravaggio Maze. The maze has many turns into many paths. At the beginning of each path an entrant encounters a Caravaggio painting posted with several signs – original, duplicate original, copy of duplicate original, print or duplicate of copy, paintings attributed to Caravaggio, painting destroyed, lost, or stolen. Here’s a bit of advice, don’t linger too long reading signs because the sign might change while reading it. The painting might be that of Caravaggio or a Caravaggisto, the painting’s size or owner might change or its location might change to an omnipresence such as Caracas, Florence, London, Malta, Naples, New York, Rome, Toledo, or Vienna. The longer you stare at a painting the more the signs change. Sometimes a painting will zoom in and out assuring you it’s a real Caravaggio. Behold though you are lost in the Valley of Ariel fear not. Each adventurer is given a black and white panic pod. If you are lost or panic just press the white button and you’ll be rescued. Unlike Dante’s stern warning of hell be mindful of my advisory ‘Have hope all ye who enter’. The successful adventurer will be given free a Caravaggio painting.
Glossary
The below definitions pertain to Italy and the Italian language.
chiaroscuro Chiaro means clear/light and scuro dark/obscure. In painting chiaroscuro is the application of white paint/tints (chiaro) and black paint/shades (scuro) to create contrast for artistic and dramatic portrayal.
camera oscuro Camera oscuro means dark chamber. It’s a device such as a closed box for receiving an image through an opening, passing the image through a lens (normally convex) onto a mirror positioned to project the image on a flat surface such as canvas (arrangement of lens and mirror depend on device). The advantage of a camera oscuro is that the image is shown in its mutually related color, perspective, and size. In English it’s called camera obscura.
Church Roman Catholic Church whose leader is a pope.
court tennis Court tennis was an inside game for players hitting a ball over a net. Today most countries replaced the inside game of court tennis with the outside game of lawn tennis.
ducat In Caravaggio’s time a common gold/silver coin. It’s reasonable to assume that its purchasing power was exponentially much greater than today’s American dollar.
felucca Medium size sailing ship servicing the coastal ports of the Mediterranean Sea.
Fra’ Short for Fratello – brother, monk, friar.
marchese Marquis, a nobleman above an earl/count and below a duke.
marchesa Wife of a marchese.
saint The Church selectively canonizes as
saints certain dead Catholic holy persons who performed miracles either
during their lives or in unusual cases after they died
(the Church can work administrative miracles).
scudo See ducat.
street people People in streets trying to survive by their wits including con men and con women, gypsies, female and male prostitutes, and gangsters.
In order to manage the interview the HOST has a notebook of selected events of Caravaggio’s life, a portfolio of selected color prints of his paintings, and knows a smattering of Italian.
Churches named are in Rome unless otherwise specified.
Caravaggio enters dressed in tattered black clothes splattered with paint and torn black stockings. A sword hangs from the left side of his waist and a dagger from the right side. Two large doormen stand near the entrance.
(1571-1592)HOST Welcome Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.
(The HOST stands up and offers to shake his hand but Caravaggio ignores him. Suspicious he surveills the room and its occupants.)
CARAVAGGIO Who are you and what do you want? Are you a policeman?
HOST No, no. I’m a writer.
CARAVAGGIO Are you one of those writers who knows nothing, witnesses nothing, and writes hearsay as truth?
HOST There are so many contradictions about your life that I’m interested in knowing more about Caravaggio the painting genius, eminent painter of Rome, Italy, Europe, and the prototype of modern painting.
CARAVAGGIO Who are those two men? Are they papal agents or Knights of Malta?
HOST No, no. They’re doormen who’ll prevent intruders from interrupting our conversation. Please calm yourself. Please sit down. (Caravaggio sits) Thank you.
CARAVAGGIO What am I doing here? What do you want? Why have you brought me here to this strange place? I know nothing of you or of this place.
HOST I’d like to know more about you and your family. For example Francesco Sforza was the Marchese di Caravaggio. Your father Fermo Merisi was manager and architect of Francesco Sforza’s palace in Milan. Is that true?
CARAVAGGIO He was the ‘maestro di casa’ (master of the house) of the marchese’s palazzo.
HOST The naval hero of Lepanto, Marcantomnio Colonna, had a daughter Costanza. She married the marchese becoming the Marchesa di Caravaggio. Your mother Lucia Aratori was from Caravaggio a small town about 20 miles east of Milan. On January 1571 Francesco Sforza was a witness to the wedding in Milan of your father and mother. Am I correct so far?
CARAVAGGIO Go on.
HOST That being so, I have a question about where you were born, Milan or Caravaggio?
CARAVAGGIO My mother and father lived in an apartment attached to the Marchese’s palazzo. My mother once told me she wanted to give birth in her hometown of Caravaggio where she and her family were from. They owned land and several large houses.
HOST So you were born in Caravaggio?
CARAVAGGIO I didn’t say that. I was born in Milan.
HOST In the palazzo?
CARAVAGGIO My mother told me I was born in the palazzo on the feast day of the Archangel Saint Michael 29September1571. I was named Mechelangelo in honor of the saint.
HOST I understand your brothers and sister were also born in Milan. Brother Giovan Battista was born 1572 and Giovan Pietro in 1573; your sister Caterina was born in 1574. Is that right?
CARAVAGGIO I don’t remember birthdays. We all were born in Milan but my family made frequent trips between Milan and Caravaggio. My mother liked us to spend summers in Caravaggio.
HOST As commoners your family enjoyed the high social status of serving the lords of the noble Sforza-Colonna families.
CARAVAGGIO True and growing up I had the feeling of nobility.
HOST In 1576 Milan was devastated by the black plague. The Archbishop of Milan Cardinal Borromeo, a relative of the marchcesa, ordered a census of all Catholics in Milan in order to record the thousands of deaths there.
CARAVAGGIO To escape the plague my mother took us to Caravaggio. Sometimes in late summer we’d all go mushrooming. My mother would tell us which ones to pick. Later my father joined us, as well as my uncle and grandfather. Unfortunately my father died the next year when I was only 6. My father died without a will so my mother became our guardian. Then my uncle and grandfather died. I had only one remaining uncle Ludovico Merisi. He was in a seminary studying to be a priest.
HOST So you grew up without the mentoring of an older family male. Did you miss your father?
CARAVAGGIO (points at HOST) What kind of man are you to ask me such a question? Of course I missed him! I was only 6.
HOST I meant to say were you insecure?
CARAVAGGIO I didn’t have a father, grandfather, or uncle except Ludovico who was away studying to be a priest.
HOST Growing up in Caravaggio you received a rudimentary education.
CARAVAGGIO The teachers suggested my mother develop my artistic talent.
HOST She did that when you became a teenager.
CARAVAGGIO There weren’t any good studios in Caravaggio so when I was 13 my mother apprenticed me to Simone Peterzano a famous Milanese painter. He accepted me because of our close ties to the Sforza-Colonna families. In the contract my mother stated I was to live in his house under his protection for four years and work in his studio.
HOST My notes reveal that Peterzano supported the conclusions of the Council of Trent ((Trentino 1545-1563) which countered the complaints of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. His studio produced religious paintings reaffirming the celebration of the Roman Catholic Latin Mass, the Tridentine Mass, named in honor of that council.
CARAVAGGIO At that time all devotional art had to be painted with religious reverence idealized by the Council of Trent and administered by popes.
HOST What did you do as apprentice?
CARAVAGGIO I was trained in anatomy, perspective, and drawing. Peterzano said I wasn’t a good draftsman because I didn’t like to draw; I liked to paint. He insisted that I learn how to draw because without drawing I wouldn’t know what to paint. Mostly I ground color pigments, mixed colors, stretched and primed canvases, and prepared glue for fixing colors to wet plaster for his frescoes.
HOST Were you impressed with Peterzano’s paintings?
CARAVAGGIO His studio produced religious paintings with conventional ornamentation and coloring. In his paintings Peterzano covered up any exposed body parts, especially of saints and the divine. He complied with the Catholic conventions of the utmost decency in paintings. All flesh tones were the same. Backgrounds were detailed even when there shouldn’t be any details. I didn’t want to paint like that. I wanted to follow nature and paint the natural way. I wanted to inject realism in my paintings not religious conventions.
HOST What does that mean?
CARAVAGGIO I wanted to paint using live models, paint them as real people, not in the conventional way borrowed from Renaissance painters or demanded by popes. I was interested in a different style of painting.
HOST One of Peterzano’s specialties was frescoes.
CARAVAGGIO I told him I wasn’t interested in fresoes. He told me that if I wasn’t interested in fresoes he wouldn’t waste his time trying to teach me how to paint them.
HOST Perhaps frescoes were a specialty not covered in your mother’s contract. Maybe he feared you would paint them better than he did.
CARAVAGGIO I know nothing of that.
HOST I understand you occasionally got away from Peterzano’s supervision to discover Milan’s dissolute nightlife. A turbulent city ruled by Spain whose brutal soldiers patrolled its bustling streets congested with priests and street people such as brawlers, thieves, and prostitutes.
CARAVAGGIO Prostitutes favored priests because they had money donated by the poor under threat of God’s punishment.
HOST What about your family back in Caravaggio?
CARAVAGGIO I made frequent trips there. My brother Battista was completing his novitiate in a Jesuit seminary and my uncle Ludovico had been ordained a priest and sent to Rome. But Giovan Pietro my youngest brother died in the last year of my apprenticeship.
HOST That was in 1588. Between the ages of 18-21 you lived in the peaceful town of Caravaggio. When you were 19 your mother died.
CARAVAGGIO When she died she bequeathed her inheritance to the three of us.
HOST You began selling parcels of land jointly owned with your brother Giovan Battista. Why did you begin selling your inheritance at such an early age? What did you do with the money?
CARAVAGGIO I wanted to open a studio.
HOST There’s no record of you ever opening a studio in Caravaggio or elsewhere.
CARAVAGGIO I spent the money on trips to Milan and Venice to study the great painters such as Giorgione, Titian, and others.
HOST It’s well known you squandered the money mostly in Milan. You became known as a profligate spender
CARAVAGGIO I was taken by its nightlife.
HOST You sold more land to spend more money and time in Milan. I have an interesting note that you learned swordsmanship in Milan, a city known throughout Europe for its expert swordsmen.
CARAVAGGIO In the streets Milanese gentlemen wore swords and daggers.
HOST Do you recall the story about how you met one of those expert swordsmen?
CARAVAGGIO One evening I was walking in an alley when two rough-looking men approached me. On the other side a bystander warned me to cross over to his side of the alley. I did so and noticed he had a sword hanging from his waist. He warned me never to walk alone in that alley. We drank some wine a nearby tavern; I told him I was a painter. He offered to teach me swordsmanship and provide me with food and lodging if I would paint his portrait. Notmally only the rich could afford to have their portraits painted.
HOST Is that how you learned to use a sword?
CARAVAGGIO Forced to protect myself in Milan I bought a sword and dagger like the ones he had. The sword was double-edged for slashing and also slender like a rapier for piercing. He taught me how to use the dagger for deflecting sword thrusts by opponents.
HOST It was reported by police in Milan you got into arguments, fisticuffs, and eventually sword fights. Is that true?
CARAVAGGIO Once I got into an argument with another man over the attention of a prostitute. In the heat of the moment I drew my sword and he departed yelling for the police.
HOST On one particular evening you were either witness to or participant in a brawl in which a Spanish policeman was killed.
CARAVAGGIO The police questioned me but I didn’t kill anyone nor could I identify the killer. The police complained I refused to cooperate because I was covering up my involvement. They declared me a hostile witness; they arrested and imprisoned me.
HOST Today we still maintain the right to remain not to testify against one’s self.
CARAVAGIO While in prison I sent word to my sister Caterina in Caravaggio to sell another parcel of jointly owned land because I needed money to bribe the captain. I offered him a goodly sum and he released me. I immediately departed Milan for Caravaggio.
HOST So there’s some truth to the story that whatever money remained from your inheritance was spent on Milan’s dissolute nightlife or trying to stay out of prison.
CARAVAGGIO Back in Caravaggio I lived in one of the family houses and did some painting. The next year I got word the Spanish police were on the hunt for me, asking questions about my whereabouts. I sold the last of my inheritance, land owned jointly with brother Battista and sister Caterina. Being the oldest son I would normally inherit the largest share of money.
HOST But isn’t it true that you agreed to take less money because you were anxious to depart for Rome?
CARAVAGGIO I heard there was work in Rome for painters and my uncle Ludovico was a parish priest there. Perhaps he could help me establish myself in Rome. With money from the sale of land, I first went to Genoa and from there took a felucca to Rome. It was safer to travel by ship than being robbed or killed by banditti (bandits) hiding along roads. I had the eerie feeling I was leaving my brother, sister, Caravaggio, and Lombardy never to return.
HOST While sailing to Rome you got into an argument with one of the ship’s crew. Is that true?
CARAVAGGIO One of the crew noticed my painting materials. He ridiculed me for wearing a sword because I wasn’t dressed like a gentleman. He joked that painters don’t fight with swords they use their brushes to stab each other with red paint. His comment provoked great laughter among crew and passengers. The next time he ridiculed me I drew my sword and challenged him to a duel. There were cries of ‘calmo, calmo’ (calm). After that he never bothered me. The felucca docked at the ancient port of Ostia about 15 miles from Rome.
(1592-1595)
HOST My notes have you arriving in Rome in the autumn of 1592. You were 21.
CARAVAGGIO I was surprised to find the streets of Rome littered with garbage, body waste, and starving children abandoned by their parents. In fact many Romans were starving. I spent the night with my uncle Ludovico, a poor parish priest. He provided me with food and lodging for several days then advised me to go to the Campo Marzio district of Rome where many paesani (villagers) from Caravaggio settled. He gave me the name of the paesano innkeeper Tarquino who offered me food and a small room for a few days until I found work.
HOST The rebuilding of Rome required architects, laborers, masons, and painters. At that time Rome had a population of about 110,000 and was the melting pot of European artists.
CARAVAGGIO We called foreigners immigranti (immigrants) and estranei (aliens).
HOST Your immigranti and estranei would be similar to millions of Hispanics who are invading and populating my country.
CARAVAGGO What country?
HOST America, it was named after one of your ascendant adventurers Amerigo Vespucci. The influx of alien workers greatly increased Rome’s social problems and reduced the authority of a confused papacy struggling to regain its power. France, Spain, and the Papal States were fighting over control of the papacy. There were 3 popes in 3 years – Gregory 14, Innocent 9, and the ascetic brutal Pope Clement 8. As head of the Church and owner of all the lands in Papal States he collected taxes apocryphally called donations.
CARAVAGGIO Clement 8 did nothing to help the starving and wretched poor of Rome and they resented him for that. Venereal disease was common. The pope tried to regain control of Rome by punishing sinners. He began his brutal campaign by issuing edicts against the most public sinners, the prostitutes of Rome. Brawlers, thieves, and con persons also worked its streets. To protect themselves men carried stilettos and prostitutes secreted hatpins or small knives whose tips were dipped in deadly poison.
HOST I understand prostitutes from all parts of Italy flocked to Rome to earn money for their families by catering to the sexual needs of the clergy and the influx of the men rebuilding Rome.
CARAVAGGIO Prostitution developed into a thriving business. Mothers became mezzane (pimps), putting their young daughters in the streets to earn money.
HOST Mothers were actually pimpimg their young daughters on the dangerous streets of Rome?
CARAVAGGIO Mothers made sure the men they chose could pay, mostly gentlemen and priests. Besides men having money would pay only for young good-looking prostitutes. When people are starving food is more important than morals or religion, especially when priests ate well and generously gulped local wine from solid gold chalices.
HOST I understand the pope’s edicts were ignored even by priests who were among the prostitute’s best customers.
CARAVAGGIO The pope’s arbitrary and punishing edicts outraged artists and workmen who flocked to Rome to rebuild churches. They declared they couldn’t work without whores, no whores no work. Eventually the pope relented restricting prostitutes to Rome’s dissolute Orataccio district. But the pope also issued edicts against sexuality in paintings. Thereafter the rebuilding of Rome continued.
HOST At that time you struggled along with the poor and starving.
CARAVAGGIO As an unknown and untried painter in Rome I couldn’t find work. Being homeless I became one of the street people trying to survive. I begged my uncle for help and he referred me to a beneficed priest, a Monsignore Pandolfo Pucci. He managed a section of a palazzo of a friend of the Colonnas.
HOST What would you have done without the noble Colonnas? By the way in America we call that kind of benefice a retirement pension.
CARAVAGGIO Pucci offered me a room in exchange for paintings to decorate his house. Accepting his offer I began the hackwork of painting devotional pieces.
HOST Pucci was known to be miserly.
CARAVAGGIO The miserly priest believed saints are religious artists and painters are secular artists. Both should do penance and suffer to achieve perfection. I became suspicious when for evening pranzo (dinner) I was given salad as a first course. Salad is normally eaten last. I was right - no pasta, no meat, and obviously no desert. He fed me only ‘insalata’ a salad of greens. I knicknamed the miserly priest ‘Monsignore Insalata’ (Monsignore Salad).
HOST Didn’t he also want you to do domestic chores?
CARAVAGGIO Painting without pay, starving, and expected to do domestic chores was too much.
HOST Is that why you got into an argument with him?
CARAVAGGIO Occasionally during the night I helped myself to some food and wine. The cook complained someone was raiding her pantry. He accused me of stealing and we argued. That night I heard a bolt locking my door. Pucci had locked me in my room. Next day I complained about being a prisoner. We argued. I emptied my chamber pot on the floor. With my dagger I sliced to pieces the devotional painting I was working on for him. He shouted at me to get out. For compensation due and not paid I took some paint and canvas for myself, gathered my meager belongings, and departed. Any other relationship would be an improvement.
HOST Did you return to your uncle?
CARAVAGGIO He couldn’t help me. I found my way back to the innkeeper Tarquino and told him about my desperate situation. To keep me off the streets he agreed to give me room and board until I found work provided I paint his portrait. I happily agreed.
HOST Was it there you produced for sale your first painting Boy Peeling Fruit?
CARAVAGGIO I was destitute and needed money.
HOST In the painting the boy looks like a girl, even his right hand looks like a girl’s hand. We know it’s a boy because there’s no cleavage in his open white blouse, which contrasted against the dark background, is an example of your chiaroscuro. It appears you used light as a spotlight to dramatize his open white blouse.
CARAVAGGIO Unfortunately no one bought it.
HOST Eventually you found work in the studio of the Sicilian artist Lorenzo Siciliano.
CARAVAGGIO He was often referred to as the Sicilian. While there I befriended another Sicilian, the young aspiring painter Mario Minniti from Siracusa. Customers called them ‘gli Siciliani’ (the Sicilians).
HOST I understand records of births didn’t exist or were hard to find so persons were known by where they were born, such as the Sicilians. By the way when did you change your name to Caravaggio?
CARAVAGGIO I never changed my name. Working for Siciliano I was called several different names – first Michel and then tauntingly Michelangelo after the other painter, and then Merisi, then the painter from Caravaggio, and finally Caravaggio. Most important I’m a true Italian ‘tutto sangue Italiano’ (all Italian blood).
HOST Why is that important?
CARAVAGGIO I’m not mixed with the immigrant blood of French, German, or Spanish.
HOST What did you do at the Siciliano studio?
CARAVAGGIO Siciliano hired me for the piecework of painting heads. I was paid a soldo (penny) for each head I painted and was able to paint 3 heads a day. I didn’t earn much and slept on straw in the studio loft but was able to buy food.
HOST Your heads were noticed and appreciated by Antiveduto Grammatica the Sienese portrait painter of cardinals and other famous men.
CARAVAGGIO He offered me a job finishing off the heads of his portraits. Bored with the journeyman routine of painting imaginary heads for a few pennies, I accepted Grammatica’s offer to finish off the heads of real persons.
HOST Do you remember any of the famous heads you painted?
CARAVAGGIO I remember finishing off the half-figure of Cardinal Boronio. But I still wasn’t satisfied with just painting heads because I wanted to paint live figures.
HOST In Rome the two brothers from Arpino, Bernardino and Giuseppe Cesari, were prominent painters with a large successful studio producing religious art approved by the pope.
CARAVAGGIO Giuseppe ran the studio and was one of Pope Clement 8’s favorite painters. When Giuseppe saw my painting of Boy Peeling Fruit he bought it, adding it to his inventory for sale. He said I had a talent for painting still life. He offered me a room in his house and a small salary in exchange for painting still life in his studio, so I accepted.
HOST It’s reported you were jealous of Giuseppe because he was only three years older than you but was already a famous painter owning one of Rome’s most successful studios.
CARAVAGGIO It was more hostility than jealousy. I developed hostility towards him because he demanded I only paint still life such as flowers, fruit, and leaves. I wanted to paint using live models but he didn’t provide any for me and I couldn’t afford them.
HOST At least you weren’t homeless.
CARAVAGGIO He kept me so poor my artist friends gave me occasional handouts of food and old clothes. Most of the time I was dressed like a beggar slobbed with paint. He excluded me from his painting projects because my style of painting was different. I painted from nature. I was a loner painting still life in a studio full of painters of conventional religious art.
HOST I understand Giuseppe complained you didn’t draw before painting and that drove him mad.
CARAVAGGIO He complained about my layout technique because I painted directly on canvas without preliminary drawing on it.
HOST Painters normally draw first before filling the drawings with paint. How were you able to paint without first drawing the subject matter? How’s that possible? I’m not a painter but how did you position your figures and props, and what about sizing and perspective?
CARAVAGGIO Giorgione sometimes painted directly on canvas without first drawing. Each painter should figure out his own technique.
HOST What was your technique?
CARAVAGGIO I used ends of brushes and compasses to score canvas for outlining subject matter then filled in the marks as I painted. I kept altering and refining the painting until I got what I wanted.
HOST That must have driven Giuseppe mad. Did your technique have anything to do with your Lombard roots?
CARAVAGGIO Milan and Caravagio are closer to Germany than to Rome, so Italy’s northern art is probably closer to German art than to the grand manner and tradition of Rome’s Renaissance art. In spite of our differences, it was there I perfected painting details as they appeared in the natural world – softness or shine of cloth, luster of buttons and metal, transparency of glass, and the use of different flesh tones. His studio also gave me the opportunity to meet other painters who approved of my work.
HOST Was it there you painted Boy with Basket of Fruit?
CARAVAGGIO One day in a gesture of compromise Giuseppe asked me to paint a half figure with still life. He said he’d get a model for me. I told him I already had a model in mind, Mario Minniti. Giuseppe agreed and I used Mario for the painting.
HOST In the painting Mario’s expression is one of yearning as he looks directly at viewers. Was he looking at you?
CARAVAGGIO Of course, I didn’t want him distracted and changing facial expressions while I was trying to paint him.
HOST What about the yearning?
CARAVAGGIO I don’t know anything about that. Maybe he was homesick, thinking of Siracusa his hometown. He was still an adolescent, a teenager.
HOST His face and hair could be that of a young woman and his thick neck extends to the deep dark clavicle voids of his shoulder.
CARAVAGGIO What do you mean deep dark clavicle voids? I paint what I see.
HOST The basket, fruit, and leaves are superbly rendered. The maturity of fruit and dried leaves are reminders of deterioration and old age. His bare shoulder is supposed to be a symbol of sexual desire. Did you intend that?
CARAVAGGIO My intent was to paint a young man with still life.
HOST Young girls are usually painted holding a basket of flowers or fruit. The fragility of flowers apparent in a virginal young girl.
CARAVAGGIO What, fragile females? You’ve never lived in Rome.
HOST Apropos of Roman women, you probably know that in ancient Rome senators ruled the people but their wives ruled them. Young wives swam naked in the Tiber to the applause of spectator poets along its banks. During divorce proceeding wives were granted the privilege of owning gold and sometimes granted large monetary settlements by male judges. Well, so much for that. Getting back to painting, did you paint another version of Mario with a vase of roses?
CARAVAGGIO Giuseppe liked Boy with Basket of Fruit and asked me to paint another like it.
HOST In the painting Boy with Vase of Roses the boy is another androgynous youth who looks like Mario. The youth has a bouffant hairdo like Mario but his shoulder is covered not exposed, and there’s a carafe with roses in the right corner. Some time after that you got kicked by a horse and wound up in a hospital. How did that happen?
CARAVAGGIO One day Giuseppe and I were walking in the street. We noticed a knight’s handsome chestnut horse and decided to have a closer look. Recalling Da Vinci’s drawings of horses, I decided to study the horse’s anatomy; it was a stallion. I got too close and it kicked me in my left leg, a violent kick that knocked me over. Giuseppe called me stupid for getting that close to the stallion and abandoned me. Writhing in pain on the ground it happened by good luck Lorenzo Siciliano, who had his strudio nearby, took me to the charitable Ospedale della Consolazione (Consolation Hospital) for the destitute.
HOST There were reports you were in the hospital because of a serious illness.
CARAVAGGIO While recuperating from the horse kick I developed headaches and digestive problems. When the Spanish prior of the hospital found out I was a painter, he collected donated materials for me and I produced several paintings for him.
HOST Was it there you met Monsignore Fantin Petrignani?
CARAVAGGIO Petrignani was a volunteer director of the hospital. When he saw my paintings for the prior he brought in some of his friends to view them. Their appreciative remarks encouraged me.
HOST Was it there you painted a mirror image of yourself? Why a self portrait?
CARAVAGGIO It gave me a chance to paint a live model, me. Other patients were too feeble to pose.
HOST Who was it that called the painting Sick Bacchus?
CARAVAGGIO One day I joked that the crown of vine leaves made me look like Bacchus.
HOST Bacchus preferred a crown of laurel leaves, not vine leaves. The painting shows your dark skin and dark eyes, muscular arm, and torso. It also portrays a look of dramatic yearning as in Boy with Basket of Fruit. Some viewers declared your expression is one of dreamy distraction or preoccupation with something not in the painting. Your facial coloring is weird with tints of verdigris, reminds me of a mask. In fact the painting has nothing to do with Bacchus the jovial god of wine.
CARAVAGGIO I was still recuperating when I painted it but I never used verdigris for mixing skin color.
HOST There are two peaches on what looks like a slab or tabletop. Art critics have called obscene the peach at the right because of its fleshy folds and deep-set style.
CARAVAGGIO Art critics? I’m the only critic of my art. What’s obscene about my peaches? I painted them as I saw them.
HOST When you were released from the hospital did you return to the Cesari studio?
CARAVAGGIO The prior gave me some money, partly out of the goodness of his heart and also for the paintings I did for him. I rolled up Sick Bacchus and took it with me. At the Cesari studio I told Giuseppe it was time for me to move on. He asked to see the painting I had rolled up. I showed him Sick Bacchus hoping he’d buy it. Instead he claimed it rightly belonged to him because he hadn’t fired me and considered me still working for him. I complained that while hospitalized he hadn’t paid me anything.
HOST Giuseppe had your paintings Boy Peeling Fruit, Boy with Basket of Fruit, and Sick Bacchus.
CARAVAGGIO We got into a heated argument and almost came to blows. My artist friends urged me to leave the paintings with him and recover them later. I collected my sword and personal items from his house and departed never again to work for him.
HOST You worked for Pucci, Siciliano, Grammatica, and 8 months for the Cesari brothers, longer than any of the others. What happened after that?
CARAVAGGIO When I quit the Cesari studio I was again homeless. I couldn’t find a room with adequate lighting and I was forced to move several times because landlords kept evicting me.
HOST Why?
CARAVAGGIO They complained the noxious odors of my oils and thinners made their families sick.
HOST Noxious odors as in poisonous gases?
CARAVAGGIO I don’t know anything about gases.
HOST Gasses such as those spewed by Mount Vesuvius.
CARAVAGGIO I was in Rome not Naples. I like the smell of oils and thinners; I’m a painter.
HOST Homeless again you were rescued by Monsignore Fantin Petrignani.
CARAVAGGIO When I was in the hospital he was impressed by my paintings. He offered me a room in his palazzo. It was in a poor part of Rome, crowded with gypsies and Jews. He had a big heart, a very generous man. He bought painting materials for me and even invited me to dine with him.
HOST Working for yourself and on your own, you produced several paintings but no sales. In one of those paintings, Boy Bitten by Lizard, you painted another androgynous youth. The boy could pass for a young woman with a white rose in the right side of her bouffant coiffure, full sensuous lips, and bare left shoulder symbolizing sexuality. On the Italian stage boys and girls were often cross-dressed, did you insert that dramatic convention in your paintings?
CARAVAGGIO I don’t like stage plays, don’t know anything about them.
HOST The titillative middle finger of the boy’s right hand was presumedly bitten by the lizard. His open mouth and furrowed brow portray the surprise and pain of the bite by the unseen lizard in the dark foreground.
CARAVAGGIO What do you mean unseen lizard? I painted a lizard.
HOST In my color print the dark lizard cannot be seen; it’s obscured in the dark foreground.
CARAVAGGIO What do you mean color print? Who copied my painting?
HOST My color prints are reproductions of your paintings.
CARAVAGGIO Who copied my painting?
HOST Color prints are made by a camera, a modern device for copying images developed from the crude camera obscura of your time.
CARAVAGGIO Camera oscuro? Let me see the prints. (HOST shows him several color prints.) I don’t understand how these were made; they’re exact miniature copies of my paintings and are on smooth paper not canvas.
HOST What you need to know is that today images of anything can be copied and reproduced. You’re probably aware that a camera obscura mimicks our squinting eyes in which human lenses focus objects through small openings. Getting back to your painting the femine gesture of the boy’s left hand reminds me of the hand gestures of today’s homosexual youths. Also he’s lighted from the left but light through the beautifully rendered carafe with pink rose comes from the right.
CARAVAGGIO Light on the carafe is from a small window.
HOST Later tht year you painted the second version of Boy Bitten by Lizard, a slightly smaller painting. The rendering of the carafe is superbly painted.
CARAVAGGIO I painted the second version with slightly different coloring to reveal the boy’s pained expression from being bitten and stronger light cast upon the carafe.
HOST After painting single figures of androgynous youths you began painting street scenes with several mature figures, such as in Cardsharps and Gypsy Fortuneteller. In each painting you portray the actions of street people.
CARAVAGGIO They made a living by using their wits.
HOST In my country we call it ‘street smarts’. In Cardsharps the card player and his cheating accomplice are swindling a naïve well-dressed young gentleman.
CARAVAGGIO Having lived on the streets I easily spotted a gypsy dressed in her colorful costume. I asked her to pose for me but of course she demanded money.
HOST In your painting Gypsy Fortuneteller the gypsy is telling the fortune of a naive well-dressed young gentleman while stealthily removing a ring from his finger. In my color print I don’t see a ring.
CARAVAGGIO Use your imagination. Look at her right hand. Why do you think her fingers are bent like that? She’s removing his ring.
HOST You couldn’t sell Gypsy Fortuneteller and finally had to sell it to recover the cost of the paint and canvas.
CARAVAGGIO I needed the money.
HOST At that time many good painters were in Rome working to re-establish the prominence of the Church. Among them was Frederico Zuccaro a favorite of Pope Clement 8. A generation older than you Zuccaro founded the painter’s guild of Saint Luke’s Academy. In America we call a guild a union.
CARAVAGGIO In order to promote my career I attended Saint Luke’s Academy devotionals on Sunday afternoons. My partner was an older painter named Prospero Orsi. Together we commemorated the 40 hours of Jesus’ entombment. He asked me to help him paint some posters for the Festival of Saint Luke.
HOST He’s the one who guided you on the road to success.
CARAVAGGIO He liked to help young struggling painters and asked to see my paintings. Until then I only exhibited my paintings in the streets but didn’t sell any. I showed him my Gypsy Fortuneteller and Cardsharps. Orsi was impressed and recommended I make arrangements with Maestro Valentino (Costantino Scarpa) an art dealer. Valentino agreed to exhibit the two paintings and asked me if I had any more. I told him about my paintings in the Cesari studio. He knew Giuseppe and said he would have a hard time selling my paintings because they were of a totally different style, not his usual devotional religious art.
HOST Valentino introduced you to your most influential patron of all, the art loving Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte a wealthy and influential member of the Curia Romana.
CARAVAGGIO del Monte was also from northern Italy. An intellectual he supported young musicians, painters, and singers. He appreciated the naturalism in my paintings of Cardsharps and Gypsy Fortuneteller. In fact Valentino sold him Cardsharps.
HOST That painting became so popular other painters often copied it. They were called Caravaggisti because they copied your style. del Monte was so pleased with Cardsharps that in the autumn of 1595 he offered you a room in his Palazzo Madama (Madam Palace).
(1595-1600)(1600-1606)HOST You went from being homeless to a small room in Petrignani’s house to a room in a palace, reaffirming the old maxim it’s ‘who you know’.
CARAVAGGIO I quickly moved into the palazzo. I was given a large room on the second floor, a small income, and servant.
HOST All the necessities of aristocratic privilege.
CARAVAGGIO The second floor was entirely devoted to artists, musicians, writers, and servants. del Monte’s art collection astounded me. He had hundreds of paintings, dozens of marble sculptures, bronzes, musical instruments, rare gems, and many other valuable items worth a fortune.
HOST I understand that in the hundreds of paintings there were only a few paintings of women.
CARAVAGGIO I didn’t view his entire collection.
HOST LIving there you were advised to study marble sculptures for ideas in how to paint live figures.
CARAVAGGIO I paint living models. I don’t copy the marble statues of sculptors.
HOST Speaking of sculpture it’s the least forgiving of artistic mistakes because it’s a subtractive proccess. Once marble is removed it can’t be replaced and the mistake is conspicuous. All other arts whether music, painting, or writing are additive processes enabling an artist to make changes thereby covering up mistakes.
CARAVAGGIO As a member of del Monte’s household he invited me to dine with him and his literary and artistic friends. Among his frequent guests were noblemen such as Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani, Ottavio Costa, and the Mattei brothers. They were art lovers interested in promoting the careers of young painters. Giustiniani and Costa were from Genoa and in Rome established themselves as bankers.
HOST Pardon me for what I’m about to say but it was common knowledge that your clothes were soiled and tattered. You were known to wear the same black clothes until they dropped off leaving exposed parts of your undergarments and body. Surely he wouldn’t have invited you to dine with him and his guests dressed like a beggar.
CARAVAGGIO He had his tailor dress me in gentlemen’s black velvet clothing with appropriate white ruff collar, black stockings, and full black leather boots. Good clothing is like a good painting. It pleases the maker, the exhibitor, and the viewer. Thereafter I bought only gentlemens’ black velvet clothing.
HOST Why black, it’s funereal.
CARAVAGGIO I like dark colors especially black, it’s scuro; it helps to black out irrelevant details.
HOST But you still wore new clothes until they became old, worn, disintegrated, and fell off piece by piece.
CARAVAGGIO I bought expensive clothing and had to get my money’s worth. I couldn’t keep buying and replacing expensive clothes merely because they were worn and tattered.
HOST In America we had hippies who wore the same stinking clothes until they dropped off. They never bathed or even washed their hands. You could smell them coming towards you. Perhaps like animals they used their stinking odor to attract the opposite sex and mark their shacking-up hovels and lofts. It was common knowledge you also ignored daily washing. Did you ever take a bath?
CARAVAGGiO Don’t you know about Rome’s public baths? Ever heard of the Caracalla Baths?
HOST I have a note here that at a public bath you got into an argument with a fellow artist. Is that true?
CARAVAGGIO I bet him that I could throw the medicine ball farther than he. He insisted on throwing first. When I threw the ball it rolled past his mark, so I asked for my winning bet. He argued that the rule is the distance where the ball lands not where it rolls and stops. We argued and shouted obscenities at each other. When I threatened to beat him with my fists attendants intervened. He cheated me; I never got my winning bet. Outside the baths I waited for him with my ready dagger but he was nowhere to be seen.
HOST Well let’s get back to del Monte. What were his dinners like?
CARAVAGGIO During the sumptuous pranzi (dinners) we were catered to by servants and entertained by singers and musicians. del Monte quipped that the power of music is like the power of love.
HOST Spiritual love or physical love? Priests were known for saying Mass and frequenting prostitutes.
CARAVAGGIO I’ve never experienced spiritual love.
HOST Let’s talk about your painting, the reason del Monte invited you into his palatial household.
CARAVAGGIO Himself a musician del Monte requested that I paint for him a group of young musicians in concert. It was my first commission. Until then I hadn’t received any commissions, my paintings were of my own choosing. When I told him I had the model Mario Minniti, he invited him to his palace giving him a small room next to mine.
HOST In the painting called Musicians a group of adolescent boys, favored by you and del Monte, are gathered in concert but not playing music. It appears the leftmost musician’s face is the same as in Boy Peeling Fruit.
CARAVAGGIO And I had Mario model for the lutenist in the center of the painting.
HOST By the way how old was Mario at that time?
CARAVAGGIO About 16 or 17.
HOST There’s a look of fondness and yearning in the limpid glaze in his eyes, the lutenist’s eyes. At first I thought he was looking at the bare-shouldered violinist in front of him who’s studying sheet music. We see only the violinist’s bare shoulder and back not his face. On closer viewing the lutenist appears to be looking fondly beyond the violinist to someone or something else.
CARAVAGGIO I didn’t want two faces in the center peering out at viewers.
HOST But you inserted your face between the lutenist and bare-shouldered violinist.
CARAVAGGIO Three musicians weren’t enough and I didn’t want to begin again on a larger canvas so I inserted myself as a horn player, a cornetist.
HOST I don’t see a horn in my color print and certainly not a cornet.
CARAVAGGIO Look at the crook in my fingers; they’re pressing down on the valves of the horn.
HOST The long shadow at extrme right must be the bell of the unseen horn. It looks more like the long slender bell of a bass clarinet.
CARAVAGGIO I arranged the musicians in a tight composition, especially the combination of lutenist and bare-shouldered violinist opposite him.
HOST The two appear to be pressed one against the other. What’s the purpose of the red drapery across the lutenist’s abdomen? Did you intend to detour the viewer’s gaze from the lutenist’s crotch? (no response). Except for Sick Bacchus all your early paintings were of young androgynous males. There appears to be scribbling in the lower left corner. Did you sign the painting?
CARAVAGGIO Perhaps but I never signed paintings unless requested to do so by the patron.
HOST At that time Rome was the European center of music but your painting emphasizes the androgynous lutenist more than music.
CARAVAGGIO del Monte requestred the musicians be young males preparing for a concert.
HOST Preparing for a concert or palying in a concert?
CARAVAGGIO If playing music I would have had to direct their gazes towards their instruments rather than towards viewers.
HOST Some of your critics called it a homoerotic painting disguised as preparation for a concert. For many years there was a rumor that del Monte favored boys over girls. The painting was linked to del Monte’s love of male youth and by projection the allegation of his possible but unproved homosexuality.
CARAVAGGIO I heard the rumor about del Monte’s alleged preference for boys. It was none of my business. He was my first patron. I consider him a faithful and generous friend. I know nothing of his sexual involvements if any. Besides consentual sex is only sex, nothing more.
HOST It was reported that you too were fond of gazing at young boys. Were you sexually attracted to them?
CARAVAGGIO I studied them as buds eventually blooming into adults. I’m fond of young men because I look at them as I look at an empty canvas envisioning the final result.
HOST Up to that time all your paintings were of secular subject matters. Then you got your first commission from Ottavio Costa for the religious painting Francis in Ecstasy. In the painting, out of the darkness of divine intervention, Francis lies supine on the ground in a trance of spiritual ecstasy while an angel lovingly cradles his head. You continued your portrayals of androgyny by painting the angel with a womn’s face and a man’s body. Some critics say that Francis cradled lovingly by the male angel with bare shoulder symbolizes homosexual love.
CARAVAGGIO Critics say what pleases them.
HOST Francis’ hands aren’t stigmatized so I must assume that God or the angel stigmatized his heart. There’s a mini lightning bolt on his breast so I assume that’s the stigma of his ecstasy. His right eye is partially open and his lazy left eye is closed. Is that moonlight falling on the angel’s white gown and bare shoulder? There’s supposed to a witness at left in the dark background but I don’t see one in my color print. Did your dark melancholic mood gloom out the witness with dark paint?
CARAVAGGIO Look closer; he’s there, I painted him.
HOST I still don’t see one. Are those streaks of light in the dark background? Perhaps moonlight on the Ganges?
CARAVAGGIO What? What are you saying?
HOST Angels are spiritual beings but are painted male or female. How can anyone manifest or paint a body from a spirit?
CARAVAGGIO The Church declares God’s omnipotence can at will manifest angelic spirits to a males or females and they’re what painters portray.
HOST Is that a blooming flower on the ground near Francis?
CARAVAGGIO It’s a symbol of his rebirth in ecstasy.
HOST One of del Monte’s good friends was his neighbor Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani whose palazzo was near del Monte’s. Giustiniani was a true nobleman, an aesthete whose interests ranged from architecture, music, painting, to writing. He was not only an art lover and distinguished Roman lawyer but also a Conservator of Rome.
CARAVAGGIO He liked the Musicians painting so much, especially the lutenist, he requested I paint for him a youth playing a lute.
HOST In that painting Lute Player you painted another of your androgynes.
CARAVAGGIO Giustiniani provided a live model for me, a castrato singer.
HOST That model, the lutenist, looks like a girl with a bow dangling from her hair. Her face and slender hands are those of a girl. She, I mean he, is looking lovingly and submissively at someone. The castrato singer’s expression is one of unrequited or lost love. His submissive look and sensually parted pink lips present an object for homosexual ravishment.
CARAVAGGIO Of course! He’s a castrato.
HOST He wears a white blouse with open front set aginst a dark background. Left of the lutenist are small fragile flowers in a barely visible carafe with window light reflected from the carafe’s left side. Props include musical instruments and fruit on a marble slab. By the way is that an eggplant or squash you painted in between the two pears?
CARAVAGGIO Eggplant which I liked sliced, floured, dipped first in beaten egg then in bread crumbs, and fried in garlic flavored olive oil. It may be eaten with red or white wine.
HOST That painting must have been a tour de force for you, a castrato singer surrounded by still life props. In my time we had a bad singer called John Lennon. He was part of group of deficient musicians called The Beatles. He sometimes tried to mimick a castrato singer with his high raspy alto voice. In spite of their musical inadequacy and Lennon’s bad ape of castrato singing, they beetled themselves into the heads of a musically ignorant populace. Great music cannot be made with three guitars and a set of drums whose sounds are artificially reproduced by amplification.
CARAVAGGIO del Monte was anxious to acquire a still life and commissioned me to paint leaves and fruit in a basket.
HOST That painting, Still Life in a Basket, is my favorite because it’s superbly painted with a bright background. I don’t have to squint to see what you painted in the dark.
CARAVAGGIO Of all my paintings of figures your favorite painting is a small still life?
HOST There’s not a brushstroke of darkness in it. I can see the basket and what’s in it - fruit, leaves, and the realistic woven basket against a pleasing warm yellow background. It’s your only and best painting of strictly still life.
CARAVAGGIO Show me the painting. (HOST shows him.) Oh, that one. You chose my smallest painting. Don’t you like large paintings?
HOST It’s not the size; it’s the colors. What colors did you mix to get the warm yellow background?
CARAVAGGIO I touched the blade of my palette knife in burnt umber and mixed it with yellow ocher.
HOST The wormed apples and dried vine leaves are normal for most viewers but art critics view them as iconographic reminders of death as in ‘memento mori’. The painting was later acquired by Cardinal Frederico Boromeo.
CARAVAGGIO You’re the only person who chose that still life over any of my figure paintings.
HOST The lost still life painting Carafe with Flowers is attributed to you. Do you remember painting it?
CARAVAGGIO Several of my paintings portrayed carafes with flowers.
HOST What about the painting Fruits and Flowers in Two Carafes also attributed to you?
CARAVAGGIO I don’t recall ever painting that one.
HOST There’s an interesting story about your encounter with your brother Battista an ordained priest. He happened to be in a group of priests visiting Cardinal del Monte in his palace. When your brother recognized you and began walking towards you calling your name, you walked away from him. Why did you ignore your brother? He called to you and you continued to walk away from him as if he had the plague.
CARAVAGGIO Battista was an ordinary priest with low social and clerical status in Rome. If it were known I was his brother it might detract from my recently improved social and professional positions.
HOST Pardon me but I’ve seldom heard of such rudeness and arrogance. Are you aware that del Monte later referred to you as slightly matto (carzy) for having denied your brother, your own flesh and blood?
CARAVAGGIO Battista cheated me when I sold the last of our jointly owned parcels of land. Even though I was the older son, entitled to the larger share, I didn’t get the larger share of money.
HOST But didn’t you offer to take less because you needed cash and were in a hurry to go to Rome? I understand he paid your share out of his own account to satisfy your pressing needs for cash and you agreed.
CARAVAGGIO I once heard an old man say that Satan tries to regain his stature in heaven by converting deceivers to priests and whores to nuns.
HOST The next year 1597 you painted a Medusa for del Monte, an unusual painting of oil on canvas mounted over a convex wood oval similar to a shield. Medusa is one of three monster Gorgon sisters having snakes writhing from their heads and whose stare truned observers to stone. The myth describes Medusa as the mortal she-monster who was slain by Perseus. Of the three sisters, she was the only mortal.
CARAVAGGIO del Monte wanted a Medusa similar to the one da Vinci painted. It’s your first portrayal of a decapited head. In the painting Medusa’s decapited head could be female or male, another androgynous example. Her skin is normal, not what I would expect to be the wrinkled pockmocked and supurating eruptions of a terrible she-monster. Snakes twist sinuously from her head but her eyes that turned foolish adventurers to stone are normal human eyes. They’re fixed on something below her. What’s she staring at?
CARAVAGGIO Her headless body.
HOST Some critics declare Medusa’s face is your mirrored clean-shaven face to avoid paying a model.
CARAVAGGIO It’s the face of a whore I encountered in the street.
HOST Her open gaping mouth looks like the entrance to a cave or tunnel but you painted teeth making her mouth a human opening. Most unnatural are the streaks of blood spurting out from her decapitated head. It looks like she’s wearing a red scarf or cravat. Normally blood flows out under heart pressure not from abnormally high pressure.
CARAVAGGIO Sir, you lack imagination. Look here, I’m a swordsman. I know how blood flows. I painted a monster not a human.
HOST About that time you got another commission from del Monte for the fresco painting of Jupiter, Neptune, and Orcus (PLuto).
CARAVAGGIO He asked me to paint a fresco in the vaulted ceiling of his summerhouse, his Casino. I didn’t like painting frescoes but I couldn’t refuse hs request because of all his help in furthering my career.
HOST It’s your only fresco.
CARAVAGGIO Peterzano never taught me how to paint on wet plaster, so I learned as I painted. I don’t like working on wet plaster because water based paint bleeds as the plaster absorbs it unless the paint is mixed with the proper amount of glue. I need to have complete control of my painting. I don’t like wet plaster or any other medium competing with me. Also there aren’t any live models on a ceiling and I don’t like the awkward positions for painting on ceilings.
HOST In the fresco Jupiter is atop the world he controls. Neptune has dismounted form his sea horse. Orcus with genitals in full view is astride the realistically painted three-headed dog Cerberus and Neptune’s trident emerges from his crotch. Did you paint his emerging trident to attract attention to his crotch or perhaps as an ebullient symbol to companion Orcus’ genitals?
CARAVAGGIO I portrayed Neptune that way to entice viewer’s imaginations, as I have yours.
HOST After your ceiling fresco you returned to easel painting with Bacchus. In the painting Bacchus you painted the mythical god of wine and joviality. You again used your favorite model Mario. Your critics declared you used a camera obscura to project Mario’s image.
CARAVAGGIO I used it only for sizing.
HOST The painting shows off your talent in full bloom. You painted a live model augumented with still life. Bacchus is another of your androgynes with a woman’s face on a man’s body. The face appears heavily cosmeticked with full ruby lips under a bouffant hairdo adorned with vines. His eyebrows are plucked in the fashion of our modern women and our urban metrosexual men and cross-dressers. His body is wonderfully rendered in velvety skin tones that end with reddish sunburnt hands. By the way your marvelous rendering of skin tones was linked to the rumor that you used pieces of flesh from your swordfights and ground them together with pigments.
CARAVAGGIO Nonsense, skin doesn’t dissolve in oil. It must be first dried and pulverized. When it is it turns dark making it unsuitable for skin tone.
HOST So the rumor was true.
CARAVAGGIO No, I never used pieces of skin for painting skin tone. Good painters try anything to improve their paintings.
HOST In front of Bacchus are a carafe of red wine with a spot of reflected light and a basket of fruit with leaves. His outstretched left arm ends with an exquisite glass of dark wine, presumably red wine. His right hand fingers a black bow, normally a girl’s accessory.
CARAVAGGIO He’s inviting the viewer to join him.
HOST But he looks bored, his invitation perfunctory, not the gesture I would expect from jovial Bacchus. By the way some critics deplored your homoerotic apple at the bottom of the piles of fruit. Moreover Bacchus looks like a well-fed Madama Butterfly.
CARAVAGGIO What, who’s that?
HOST Just a whimsical observation. About that time you befriended the architect Onorio Longhi. He too was from Milan and like you was hot-tempered, a gambler, and an excellent swordsman. It was common knowledge that armed with your sword and dagger Longhi and you frequented Rome’s dissolute districts. Why did you two swagger in the streets teeming with brawlers, swindlers, and prostitutes.
CARAVAGGIO Painting steadily for weeks and months I needed to get out for some diversion. Occasionally we would go out into the dissolute Orataccio district looking for action such as gambling, chasing whores, playing and betting on court tennis.
HOST In the streets you were seen slovenly dressed in your black rags with your servant boy following you carrying your sword. You seemed to have transferred your intensity of painting into the streets. Were Longhi and you ready to argue or fight with anyone who happened to cross your path? You got involved in confrontations that developed into fights with fists, daggers, and even swords.
CARAVAGGIO I told you I needed some diversion from painting.
HOST One night in mid-July 1597 a young boy was mauled in the Orataccio district. It was reported to police that someone who looked like you tried to hit him with the hilt of his sword. The boy paried the thrusts with his cloak which fell to the ground as he ran away.
CARAVAGGIO That night Longi and I came upon a black cloak on the ground. Picking it up I recognized its closure pin as belonging to the local barber so I returned the cloak to the barber.
HOST I have a summary of the police report (reads):
‘We detained the boy and when asked to describe the man who assaulted him the boy hesitated so we assumed it was someone he knew. We then questioned the barber who told us a man wearing tattered black clothes returned the black cloak of his young apprentice. We asked the barber if he knew the man who returned the cloak. The barber explained that he once trimmed the man’s hair and had dressed a wound the man received in a sword fight. The barber described the man as being of average height, muscular, black hair, black eyes with bushy eyebrows, and most unusual he wore a sword’.
The police surmised that if the man returned the cloak and was wore a sword he must have had social standing. I must ask you, did you assault the boy?
CARAVAGGIO I recognized the barber’s closure pin and returned the cloak to the barber. I had no idea the boy was his apprentice. Sometimes trying to do a good deed turns out badly.
HOST Later that month there was another strange incident of a mugging you witnessed. The victim described the witness as being of average height, well built, black hair and eyes with bushy eyebrows, and most unusual he carried a sword. At that time the police were aware of your presence in the streets of Rome. From the victim’s description they decided you were the witness and questioned you. You weren’t charged with the crime or subpoenaed to testify but it was the first police record of your swaggering presence in the streets of Rome. The report referred to you as Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.
CARAVAGGIO I told the police I was allowed to carry a sword because I lived in Cardinal del Monte’s palace and by long accepted custom my sword would be used to protect him. They dropped any further inquiry of the assault.
HOST In Rome 1597 age 26 you were becoming known because you got several commissions having religious themes. You painted John Baptist with Lamb and Cross. In the painting John is a seminude young man with voluminous read drapery covering his loins. He doesn’t look like a holy person.
CARAVAGGIO I painted him as a young shepherd in the wild. What need had he of a saintly Christian robe?
HOST You painted also Walk to Emmaus. In the painting Peter and his brother Andrew accompany Jesus on the walk. Jesus is beardless and has a woman’s face with woman’s slender gesturing hands. Peter is holding something in his right hand. What is it?
CARAVAGGIO He was a fisherman; he’s obviously holding a fish.
HOST If he’s holding a fish I can’t clearly see it; it’s hardly visible in the dark.
CARAVAGGIO I purposely surrounded the fish’s eye with white to give it prominence.
HOST I see only what looks like a small oval white target with a bull’s eye. You continued with the quasi-religious painting Penitent Magdalen.
CARAVAGGIO Looking for a young model to pose for Magdalen, I encountered in a street a woman with a petite auburn-haired girl about 14 or 15. They came from Siena and lived with relatives in Rome. Mother and daughter intended to serve the clergy and burgeoning male population of resurgent Rome. The young girl Anna Bianchini was a prostitute and her mother her mezzana (procuress). She was careful to offer Anna only to gentlemen who could afford to pay her asking price for a young girl. The younger the prostitute the higher the price.
HOST Why did you choose such a young model?
CARAVAGGIO Her mother was too old and not good looking. I hired Anna because her mother consented to her modeling for money.
HOST Is there any difference between a prostitute and a common street whore?
CARAVAGGIO A prostitute is normally better looking, has some education, and is more socially acceptable than a common street whore. The clergy preferred prostitutes because they were more discrete than whores. In Rome whores sometimes fought each other for customers. Some of them were tough as men. They normally pulled each other’s hair but sometimes tore off clothing and occasionally even used a knife. Prostitutes seldom had to resort to fighting for customers.
HOST In America we have common street whores, whores in houses of ill-repute run by a madam, and desperate wives who discreetly engage in whoring. Their whoring sometimes takes place in their own homes while children are in school and hubbies are at work. Topping the whoring ladder are the sophisticated professional escort ladies. Now what about Penitent Magdalen?
CARAVAGGIO Forsaking her vain life as prostitute she vowed to follow Christ. She washed his feet with her tears, dried them with her long hair, then anointed his feet with oil.
HOST In the painting you have her sitting in a chair drying her hair while she’s dozing. You painted Magdalen with brunette hair even though she had long blonde tresses which is why she was so much in demand. On the floor are symbols of her trade including a jar of oil.
CARAVAGGIO An item of her trade.
HOST And obviously used to annoint Jesus’ feet. But I don’t see anything penitent about your Magdalen.
CARAVAGGIO I painted a tear dropping down the side of her nose?
HOST I don’t see it in my color print.
CARAVAGGIO Look closely. It’s a single teardrop, not a torrential flow of tears.
HOST Her damask dress with lace trim and the translucency of the carafe and its contents are superbly painted.
CARAVAGGIO I used Anna also for the Madonna holding the infant Christ in Rest on Flight into Egypt.
HOST In that painting the seminude angel is the prominent figure, not the Madonna. Some say the angel is male or perhaps another of your androgynous beings. I view the angel as female. Look at her shapely hairless legs, buttocks wrapped in drapery, slender arms and hands, her auburn hair piled on top of her head. Who’s right?
CARAVAGGIO Anna did double duty as angel and Madonna.
HOST She wears a ribbon-like white wrap around her abdomen leaving her breasts and crotch exposed. Black prop wings sprout from her right shoulder. Why not flesh colored wings from each shoulder?
CARAVAGGIO Isn’t it obvious? Wings would have covered Joseph.
HOST She seductively stands directly in front of Joseph wrapped in voluminous folds of maroon drapery. He holds sheet music for her while she plays the violin. Old and apathetic his eyes look into her eyes, rather than at her young body. But the ass’s large eyes gaze with bestiality directly at her ebullient breasts. To the angel’s right is the dozing Madonna lovingly cradling the sleeping infant Jesus. Some priests severely criticized you for using the whore Anna as the Madonna.
CARAVAGGIO They recognized her because she was their favorite prostitute.
HOST If a bare shoulder symbolizes sexual yearning a seminude angel must symbolize sexual ecstasy.
CARAVAGGIO Interpretation of symbols depends on the viewer.
HOST Other priests declared it’s your most peaceful painting and accepted it. The serene scene of the Madonna cradling Jesus persuaded some critics to opine your yearning for your mother’s embrace.
Caravaggio Nonsense, the Madonna’s tired after the long trip.
HOST There’s supposed to be corn above the Madonna but I don’t see it in my color print. By the way you normally didn’t paint background detail but is that light in the upper right corner.
CARAVAGGIO It’s light reflected on a pond.
HOST A pond in Egypt?
CARAVAGGIO No, on their flight into Egypt.
HOST Is it daytime or nighttime?
CARAVAGGIO They’re resting after having traveled all day. It’s twilight.
HOST You lighted the angel’s back which casts a shadow on Joseph, so how’s she able to the read music in the dark?
CARAVAGGIO Do you have any more complaints? You’re too practical to appreciate the nuances of art.
HOST Peeking out from your scuro I noticed oak leaves, perhaps symbolizing the Mamre Oak from which were hewn timbers of Jesus’ cross, the Holy Cross. After Anna you used as model another prostitute Fillide Melandroni. She and her family also came from Siena to be with relatives in Rome. At that time Fillide was about 14.
CARAVAGGIO Her mother, her mezzana (procuress), separated Fillide from other prostitutes by dressing her in expensive clothes and jewelry. She was frequently seen visiting the palazzi of Rome’s cardinals and other gentlemen who could afford her charms.
HOST Her favorite customer and constant lover was the papal lawyer Giulio Strozzi.
CARAVAGGIO When she was about 16 or17 he commissioned me to paint her portrait.
HOST In the painting, called Fillide Portrait, she holds jasmine flowers close to her breast symbolizing the physical love she knew very well.
CARAVAGGIO Later Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani bought the painting.
HOST For Ottavio Costa the banker from Genoa, you painted Judith Beheading Holofernes. In the Biblical story the Assyrian general Holofernes was an enemy of Hebrews. One evening after a battle the beautiful rich Jewess widow Judith and her nurse sneak into his tent. Judith seduces Holofernes and gets him drunk. When he passes out she beheads him and takes his severed head back to her people who triumph over the Assyrians. Why did Costa reject the painting?
CARAVAGGIO He complained I painted Judith as a seductress with exposed breasts suggesting she had just risen from Holofernes’ bed. Costa complained Judith was a heroine not a prostitute, so I painted a more traditional version for him.
HOST What happened to the first painting?
CARAVAGGIO I don’t know.
HOST In the second traditional version Judith wears a gossamer blouse with barley visible nipples. My notes refer to Fillide Melandroni as the model but in the painting, except for the full lips, Judith looks like Anna with her auburn hair and facial features (shows him the color print). Who was the model?
CARAVAGGIO It could have been either Anna or Fillide, maybe neither. I used different female models, sometimes wives of my friends.
HOST In the painting Judith uses Holofernes’ slender Arabian sword to decapitate him. Beheading somone requires a determined effort, much strength, and large heavy sword to cut through and sever neck bones. Calmly and indifferently she nonchalantly slashes his neck as if beheading was a daily household chore. But she looks perplexed at doing God’s work in behalf of Jews.
CARAVAGGIO I painted her as a heroine not an experienced executioner. Keep in mind patrons decide what to paint but I decide how to paint it.
HOST It was your second painting of decapitation with blood spurting out in in straight lines as in your Medusa. You painted Holofernes pulling out ligneous streams of blood as if they were his guts, thereby quickening his death rather than trying to prevent it.
CARAVAGGIO He was in a state of shock, panicked by the sight of his blood.
HOST After that you returned to the streets. One night in May you were arrested for carrying a sword without a license. Witnesses told police you started a brawl. What happened?
CARAVAGGIO I was walking the streets when two men kept staring and pointing to me, laughing. When I approached them they mocked me asking "You’re a beggar pretending to be a gentleman carrying a sword". When I responded that I was indeed a gentleman living in del Monte’s palazzo they laughed even more. When I drew my sword they ran shouting for the police. I caught one of them and beat him with my fists then slapped him on thigh with the flat my sword. A crowd gathered around us and when the police arrived they questioned me about why I had a sword and two sharp compasses folded and sheathed at my waist. Not satisfied with my answers they arrested me because I didn’t have my license with me and threw me in the Tor di Nona prison. When they found out I was living in del Monte’s palace they released me.
HOST Why were you carrying compasses?
CARAVAGGIO I use compasses for measuring, proportioning, and perspective.
HOST Yes in painting but why were you carrying compasses in the street.
CARAVAGGIO I used them as daggers in case I needed them for close in-fighting, mano a mano.
HOST What was it about you that made you so belligerent? Why did you swagger around Rome like a gladiator looking for battle?
CARAVAGGIO I live the way nature made me. A man lives by what he’s made of.
HOST Now onto another matter you did witness. The sensational Cenci murder trial and subsequent executions of mother and daughter took place in September 1598. I believe that trial influenced your paintings of execution and martyrdom. I have a summary of that tragedy (reads):
‘The Cenci family lived in the Roman suburbs. Count Francesco Cenci was a papal treasurer who amassed a huge fortune estimated at half million scudi. Harsh and arrogant he sexually abused his beautiful teenage daughter Beatrice. When Beatrice wanted to marry, the miserly Francesco sequestered mother and daughter in a remote mountain castle to avoid paying her dowry. Incidentally the castle was owned by Duke Marzio Colonna, cousin of the Marchesa di Caravaggio.
One evening Francesco was murdered while asleep. The family maintained he fell to his death from a second floor balcony. When the family moved to Rome the lawyer and notary Mariano Pasqualone investigated Francesco’s death. Satisfied with the family’s answers he released them from further investigation. But Pope Clement 8 anxious to confiscate Francesco’s huge fortune for the papacy initiated an inquisition into his death. When the family gave the same answers the pope had them brutally and habitually tortured until they falsely confessed. He ordered them executed.
The condemned mother and daughter were beheaded in the presence of a large and noisy sympathetic crowd. The beautiful young Beatrice glaring at her executioner and refusing assistance knelt and placed her head in the block. Many wept to think that the persecuting ignoble pope exercised his Satanic prerogatives and sexual frustrations by murdering fellow Catholics especially such a beautiful young woman. Sweeping through the crowd were heard the whispering undertones of Saint Beatrice. That day after the executions the hypocritical pope celebrated a Low Mass for the repose of their souls.’
What were you thinking about when you witnessed the executions of mother and daughter?
CARAAGGIO I recalled da Vinci’s instruction to painters – ‘observe the facial features of the dying so you can reproduce them in your paintings’.
HOST After the Cenci executions del Monte commissioned you to paint Catherine of Alexandria, one of his favorite female saints.
CARAVAGGIO I used Fillide again dressed in one of her expensive dresses.
HOST I have a background note about Catherine of Alexandria. She was nobly born, a beautiful 18 year old virgin, and well educated. In Alexandria the Roman emperor Maxentius was persecuting Christians. Catherine had converted his wife to Christianity and unsuccessfully tried to convert him. In the painting you lighted her beautiful oval face, sensuous lips, shoulders, and arms.
CARAVAGGIO I dramatized her sensuality.
HOST Her beauty aroused Maxentius’ sexual desire but she rejected him. He imprisoned her and ordered her tortured on the ‘breaking wheel’ studded with iron spikes. Anyone subjected to that wheel had bones broken by the spiked wheel and consequently died. Through her faith in God she miraculously disabled it by her touch. In the painting Catherine emerges from the dark background of torment but looks very calm and self-assured. She appears to be kneeling on a red damask pillow but if so the length from her waist to her knees is much too long. If she’s standing her legs are much too short like those of a dwarf. Left of her is the spiked torture wheel she disabled. Palm fronds lay across the damask red pillow.
CARAVAGGIO Palm symbolizes inner victory through Christ and the heavenly peace that follows martyrdom.
HOST Typically the Roman short flat bladed sword would have been used to behead her. In the painting she appears to be sensually stoking a rapier used for impaling not beheading.
CARAVAGGIO The rapier symbolizes Maxentius’ planned lustful intrusion into her virginal body.
HOST You even painted the crooked third finger of her left hand.
CARAVAGGIO She was born with that crooked finger.
HOST But her right hand also appears to have a crooked finger.
CARAVAGGIO I painted her right hand exactly as she held it.
HOST You painted David with Head of Goliath, the first of three such paintings. In the painting the youthful David is bending over the slain Philistine giant Goliath and using a rope ties a bunch of his hair. Why is he doing that?
CARAVAGGIO He plans to display Goliath’s head to Israelites by suspending it from a tree branch.
HOST It’s commonly believed that Goliath’s decapitated head with its forehead wound is your own likeness.
CARAVAGGIO Not true, although I did receive a forehead wound in a swordfight.
HOST Ottavio Costa commissioned you to paint Martha Reproving Magdalen. I understand the first version was lost so I’m looking at a color print of the second version.
CARAVAGGIO I used Anna for Martha and Fillide for Magdalen.
HOST In the painting Martha is plainly dressed and by her hand gestures and open mouth is reproving her sister Mary because she preferred prostitution over the duties of a housewife. Mary is elegantly dressed and shows some cleavage a reminder of her vanity and past promiscuous life. Her large right arm is wrapped in deep folds of red drapery and her hand holds a jasmine, symbol of sexuality. Her left arm is resting on an oval mirror and her crooked finger points to a reflected square of light. Why did you paint a square of light reflected in the mirror?
CARAVAGGIO The mirror serves a double purpose. It reflects the vanity of her life as a prostitute and also the divine light coming from above. Its power converted Mary from prostitute to follower of Christ.
HOST The use of mirrors reminds me of our modern ‘funhouse of mirrors’ that purposefully distort images of lookers from what one is to what one isn’t. In this painting Fillides’ crooked finger is in her left hand. Which hand really had had the crooked finger?
CARAVAGGIO Do you expect me to remember that?
HOST I understand that Anna and Fillide were frequently seen in the company of painters.
CARAVAGGIO Anna and Fillide were teenage friends who preferrred cardinals, priests, and painters. Occasionally they engaged in quarrels with other prostitutues because of their preference for rich patrons. Fillide carried a knife and knew how to used it. Several painters thought their close association involved more than friendhip and wanted them to pose as embraced lesbian lovers but they refused.
HOST I have a note that papal lawyer Giulio Strozzi, Fillide’s constant lover, wanted to marry her. His family declared she was a bad influence, embarrassed her in public, and forced her to depart Rome.
CARAVAGGIO In her will she gifted Strozzi the protrait I painted of her. The same corrupt and hypocritical Church that enjoyed her body denied her a Christian burial because she was a prostitute.
HOST The papacy was baptized with corruption and hypocrisy from the beginning. Constantine the Great should have been the 13th and most influential apostle because he was banker of the papcy and of the early Christian church. He plundered the treasuries of Rome’s provinces to gift the Lateran Palace, the papal residence, and build churches such as Saint John Lateran, Saint Peter’s, and many others in Italy and abroad. Lacking Constantin’es great financial contributions, one wonders if Christianity would have survived. When the pagan Constantine was on his deathbed he was baptized by the schismatic Christian Bishop Eusebius. The corrupt papacy refused to accept his baptism because of the schismatic Eusebius. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you! That kind of hypocrisy still exists today. For a considerable donation a Catholic bishop will annual without cause a church conducted Catholic marriage even if there are children. Bishops also enable with impunity homosexual priests to rape and abuse virginal boys.
HOST You painted a second version of Lute Player using another androgynous youth. In your second version you continued to paint male youths with girlish features. The lute player looks like a girl, perhaps a castrato or transgendered male.
CARAVAGGIO What do you mean transgendered?
HOST Let’s settle on androgynous youth. In the version the lutenist is not accompanied by the feminity of flowers and adornment of fruit but is painted with the same dark background.
HOST The year 1600 was most notable for your Mathew paintings for the Contarelli Chapel. The decoration of that chapel in la Chiesa di Santo Luigi dei Francesi (Saint Louis French Church) was long overdue and became an urgent issue. Rome had a large French population and Santo Luigi was their national church in Rome.
CARAVAGGIO In his will Matteo (Matthew) Contarelli provided descriptions of paintings for the intended two sidewall panels of Mathew his patron saint. Priests insisted the panels be painted for the 1600 Papal Jubilee because pilgrims from all over Europe, especially from France, would be visiting the church. Priests wanted Giuseppe Cesari to do the paintings but he was too busy exclusively painting for the pope. I wasn’t getting church commissions because I didn’t paint frescoes but the Mathew paintings were to be oil on canvas. By the way each panel was about 11x11 feet, larger than any of my previous paintings.
HOST del Monte proved to be your best patron when he persuaded the Pope Clement 8 to commission you for the Matthew paintings. He supported his request by reminding the pope that Matthew was the first Jew to alienate himself from Judaism and convert to Christianism.
CARAVAGGIO The pope, who disliked me, agreed and I was awarded the contract for painting Matthew’s Calling for the left sidewall panel and Matthew’s Martyrdom for the right sidewall panel. Priests insisted that I sign the contract and I did. The paintings were to be completed in one year in time for next year’s Papal Jubilee for the payment of 400 scudi. I submitted preliminary drawings in accordance with provisions in the contract.
HOST But I thought you never made drawings.
CARAVAGGIO The drawings were on vellum, not on canvas. They were approved and I began painting Matthew’s Martyrdom on the right sidewall panel.
HOST My notes indicate you ran into the problem of sizing. You hadn’t attempted any paintings larger than 2-4 feet in width and height.
CARAVAGGIO The Martyrdom was to be an expansive painting. I wasn’t satisfied with the sizing of its figures so I stopped painting it and began painting the less expansive Calling using full life-sized figures.
HOST In the painting Matthew’s Calling the tax collector Levi (Mathew) is seated at a table counting tax money. He’s in the center surrounded by four colorfully dressed figures, especially the young boy with feathered hat.
CARAVAGGIO At first sight priests complained money on the table gave the impression that Matthew and his companions might be drinking and gambling.
HOST At right emerging from the darkness are Jesus and assumptively Peter. They’re simply dressed in the usual Christian robes and are barefoot. Priests complained that Matthew and his companions are lighted while Jesus is in the dark, not easily visible. There’s a large window in the upper right whose dim light reveals Jesus’ hand and extended index finger pointing to Matthew calling him to apostleship. As usual there’s much darkness in the painting even with the background window. Priests further complained that Jesus should have been singled out with divine light from above as he fingers Mathew for apostleship.
CARAVAGGIO Priests wanted the act to be reminiscent of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel painting of God"s index finger pointing to Adam. While they hesitated to accept Matthew’s Calling I returned to the aborted Matthew’s Martyrdom. I completely painted over the first version and began a new painting with full life-sized figures.
HOST One legend has it that Matthew was martyred after rebuking the Ethiopian king because the king lusted after his niece who was a nun and therefore bride of Jesus. The angry king ordered Matthew killed. The painting was rejected because the priests declared it portrayed an assassination or execution more than the suffering of a saint being martyred.
CARAVAGGIO They wanted me to enlarge the figure of Matthew and emphasize the suffering of his martyrdom. I had to paint a third version.
HOST In the third version an elderly Matthew is shown lying supine on the steps of a temple, presumably after having been assaulted by the executioner. Mathew is begging for his life as the seminude executioner sword in hand stands over him ready to deliver the deathblow. Hovering over the stricken Matthew an angel riding on a billowy cloud hands Mathew a palm frond, the emblem of Christian victory through martyrdom. You inserted yourself in the darkness of the left background.
CARAVAGGIO I needed another witness to the execution.
HOST The partially lighted figures offer relief from the background’s funereal darkness. A fast worker you completed both paintings, Calling and Martyrdom, in time for the Papal Jubilee. But when the paintings were installed for public view an outraged clergy rejected them.
CARAVAGGIO Priests complained I eschewed religious conventions for naturalism. They complained my paintings were too realistic and the dramatic portrayal of Matthew lacked devotional respect. While crediting my creativity, they complained about the lack of artistic religious convention declared by the pope.
HOST They also complained that your rival Giuseppe Cesari, Cavaliere d’Arpino, should have painted the Matthews as originally planned. Priests as well as the painter Federico Zuccaro criticized you for the lack of religious convention. Moreover priests protested you didn’t even paint a halo around Matthew’s head.
CARAVAGGIO I despaired over their rejections of both Matthew paintings. It was an attack on my artistic ability. I didn’t paint by the numbers or by decision of the Curia Romana or by committee meeting of minds. Mary, Christ, and saints were humans and some saints had been sinners. I follow nature. I paint what nature shows me.
HOST Is that your philosophy of painting.
CARAVAGGIO Philosophy is for others such as professors and clerics. I’m a painter. I follow nature because it made me the way I am. I don’t follow rules for painting because I follow my natural instincts. Any good painter makes his own rules as he paints. I paint what I see not what convention tells me. After all, convention is merely what other painters paint or what critics think about.
HOST Your critics declared you painted what nature showed you because you lacked interpretive imagination. They further declared you didn’t draw before painting and that’s the reason you painted dark backgrounds, to eliminate having to draw and paint details.
CARAVAGGIO Why bother drawing? I knew what and where on the canvas I wanted to paint. I visualized the finished painting and refined it as I painted.
HOST Once you began painting you were anxious to finish it. It’s claimed you worked intensely and quickly on a painting until finished. Did you suffer from what we call ‘anxiety neurosis’?
CARAVAGGIO I don’t know what that means.
HOST Your anxieties made you paint quickly to finish as soon as possible thereby getting rid of your contractual obligation and be free again to do something else. You wanted to be in total control of your actions.
CARAVAGGIO Of course in order to get paid.
HOST Some painters criticized you for your unnatural dedication to painting naked or partially naked male bodies especially those of young boys.
CARAVAGGIO Painting comes from what the painter has in his mind. The complaining painters were jealous because they couldn’t reproduce my flesh tones and style.
HOST Others complained your paintings reflected your headstrong bravado, your intolerance, your penchant for arguing and sword fighting.
CARAVAGGIO (approaches the HOST in a threatening manner) Did you bring me here to insult me? Non sono ipocrita; non sono dilettante; sono professionista. (I’m not a hypocrite, not a dilettante; I’m a professional.)
HOST (fearful) No, no. I’m merely trying to learn more about you.
CARAVAGGIO Why? You can see me in my paintings.
HOST About your paintings why did you use the surname Christ instead of Jesus?
CARAVAGGIO I was commissioned to paint Christ. Are you now a host specializing ‘in cognome’.
HOST No, I don’t specialize in last names but it was Jesus who was arrested, flagellated, crowned with thorns, crucified and entombed.
CARAVAGGIO (points his finger at the HOST) Do you know more than cardinals and popes? Why are you questioning me like a policeman?
HOST Sorry, let’s continue. Your two Mathew sidewall paintings were eventually accepted; they enveloped Giuseppes’ altarpiece and completed the decoration of the Contarelli Chapel. 1600 was an Earth shattering year for Catholics. On quite another matter was the problem of heresy. The Church demanded that Catholics believe the Sun orbited the Earth. Copernicus and Galileo proved the Earth orbited the Sun. The Church defrocked one of its own Dominican priests Giordano Bruno. He not only questioned Catholic precepts but agreed with Galileo that the Earth orbited the Sun. When asked to recant Bruno did not. Pope Clement 8 ordered the heretic priest Bruno be roasted alive; he was burned to death 17 February 1600 in the Campo dei Fiori (field of flowers). Can anything be more savagely hypocritical than that? Even animals are killed before roasting.
CARAVAGGIO I met Bruno while we were incarcerated in the Tor di Nona prison.
HOST Who punishes popes when they commit murder in the name of the Church?
CARAVAGGIO Popes are not punished. Their death sentences are considered heroic acts of the Church Militant. From that moment on I feared the power of popes.
HOST After Clement 8 incinerated Bruno he performed an act of penance by inviting beggars into his palace.
CARAVAGGIO In imitation of Christ he washed and kissed the beggar’s feet. He begged them to dine with him and acting as their subordinate served them a sumptuous meal in true sybaritic fashion. Having done his penance in feeding the hungry poor he dismissed and exiled them back to the mean streets of Rome.
HOST Following his hypocritical act of charity the killer pope wasn’t very charitable to you.
CARAVAGGIO He chose Cesari, Baglione, and Roncalli to decorate Saint Peter’s Basilica. He bypassed me because my paintings didn’t conform to his idea of conventional religious paintings.
HOST You were a rebel with cause to naturalize Catholic devotional painting. Giuseppe Cesari remained one of the pope’s favorite painters. After incinerating Bruno, and perhaps to show his charitable nature, the pope elevated Giuseppe to papal knighthood becoming Cavaliere d’Arpino (Knight of Arpino his hometown). The pope also elevated to knighthood your rivals Giovanni Baglione and Cristofano Roncalli.
CARAVAGGIO Papal Knights had certain privileges including profitable commissions for decorating churches. I hoped that I too would become a knight. That said and having worked on painting for months without interruption, I put down my brushes and with Longhi went out into the streets for some diversion.
HOST You and Longhi often cruised the streets of Rome’s dissolute neighborhoods. Were you two looking for trouble?
CARAVAGGIO We looked for whores, perhaps to place a wager or two or play a game of tennis.
HOST You cruised the streets of Rome’s dissolute neighborhoods followed by your servant boy holding your sword. On one of those outings Longhi got into a heated argument with the painter Marco Tullio.
CARAVAGGIO I withdrew from the argument because I felt weak having recently recovered from the same illness I had before, headaches and digestive problems.
HOST What happened to Longhi?
CARAVAGGIO He continued to argue with Tullio who unsheathed his dagger and threatened Longhi. Longhi drew his dagger and they closed in on each other. I separated them before they wounded each other. When the police arrived they questioned me. I told them I was not involved because I was recovering from an illness and had my servant boy carry my sword. Longhi supported me as being the intercessor, not the antagonist. Longhi said it was Tullio who first drew his dagger and threatened him.
HOST If you were recovering from an illness and felt too weak to use a sword why were you out in the streets?
CARAVAGGIO It was a habit of mine. In the streets you never know when confronted to defend your honor. Besides having a servant boy carry your sword is a symbol of social status.
HOST About your recurring illness, for at least 20 years since your apprenticeship days with Peterzano in Milan you worked with poisonous pigments. Today we know that what was called ‘painters colic’ is now referred to as lead poisoning from mixing materials containing lead. Painters suffer from anger, digestive prolems, irritability, headaches, and hyperactivity. You were known to be disagreeable, a hyperactive painter, and irritable. Perhaps your hostile disposition was due to lead poisoning.
CARAVAGGIO I don’t know anything about lead poisoning. It was part of my job to use white lead for mixing colors but I never liked mixing cinnabar red and verdigris because of the smell. I didn’t like mixing blue pigments and seldom used blue because I believe blues are poisonous. I seldom used blue because there’s enough blue in the sky and in the sea.
HOST It’s also possible lead poisoning was the cause of your bizarre and irrational behavior.
CARAVAGGIO (defensively) What do you mean bizarrre and irrational?
HOST There was the incident of ignoring your brother’s salutation while visiting del Monte. Being hyperactive, painting feverishly for weeks or months, you’d then cruise the mean streets of dissolute districts. You put your life and that of others in jeopardy.
CARAVAGGIO I needed some diversion from painting.
HOST Yes, from the hyperactivity I was talking about. You were looking for diversion from prolonged almost manic dedication to a painting.
CARAVAGGIO What do you mean manic? Are you saying I was matto? decrepito? (He threatens HOST him with closed fist. The two doormen approach but then retire.)
HOST No, no merely trying to establish facts.
CARAVAGGIO Facts, what are facts? Facts depend on who’s doing the facting. Some witnesses lie and you were not witness to anything about me.
HOST After the Tullio encounter you had the opportunity to use your sword. One day in November the young apprentice painter Girolama Spampa was walking home from the Academy of Saint Luke where he attended a lecture by its founder the painter Zuccaro. He stopped at a shop and with his back towards you, you assaulted him striking both his shoulders with the hilt of your sword. Why would you do such a thing to an innocent youth? When the shopkeeper approached you fled but he recognized you.
CARAVAGGIO He wasn’t innocent. He accompanied Zuccaro when he criticized my Matthew paintings in the Contarelli chapel. He insulted me several days before when I was in the streets. He stared at me as if I was a freak, giving me the evil eye.
HOST You probably wore soiled and tattered clothes. Wasn’t there some truth to his sarcasm?
CARAVAGGIO He laughed at me and called me a ‘briccone da strada’ (street scoundrel) who pretended to be a gentleman by carrying a sword. That’s why I swatted him with the hilt of my sword, thereby teaching him a lesson.
HOST The shopkeeper reported you to the police. You were arrested for your unprovoked attack. In Rome it was your first police record as perpetrator of a crime by intimidating a citizen without probable cause. Today we would call you a Mafia thug.
CARAVAGGIO I had cause and the police must have believed me because they ended their investigation of me.
HOST Later you got into an argument with Flavio Canonico a former police sergeant.
CARAVAGGIO He demanded to know why a commoner like me was carrying a sword. I told him it was none of his business. When he insisted on questioning me I pounded him with my fists. When he drew his sword I drew mine striking his sword-holding hand. It opened a deep gash and he ran to the nearest barber to get his bloody hand dressed.
HOST He had you arrested which added another antisocial incident to your police record.
CARAVAGGIO The wound left a ugly jagged scar on his hand. He sued me and to avoid a lengthy trial I offered to pay him an out-of-court settlement. He agreed.
HOST In Rome you were well known to painters and to the police. Not humbled by the expensive settlement with Canonico, you then assaulted Tommaso Salini a close friend of your painter rival Giovanni Baglione. What happened with Salini?
CARAVAGGIO I encountered Salini in the street and he began complaining about my painting style. I told him that he and his friend Baglione were bad painters.
HOST Did you despise other painters who weren’t as innovative as you?
CARAVAGGIO I don’t like painters who blindly follow convention, who don’t think for themselves. We got into an argument and I struck him with the flat of my sword.
HOST You were again arrested.
CARAVAGGIO I apologized for my remarks and action and we settled the matter peacefully.
HOST You’re lucky he didn’t sue you. The pope’s treasurer Monsignore Tiberio Cerasi, a friend of del Monte, decided to decorate the Cerasi Chapel in the Santa Maria del Popolo Church (Saint Mary Peoples’ Church). He became a rich man manipulating in his behalf donations to the Church.
CARAVAGGIO At that time there was keen competition between two religious-political factions for commissioning painters to decorate churches. The Medici-French faction supported by del Monte and the Spanish faction supported by Pope Clement 8. The pope was favorably disposed to the Spanish Inqusition. del Monte wanted me to do the painting but the pope’s faction won out because Frederico Zuccari, Cristofano Roncalli, and Annibale Carracci were awarded the most prestigious contracts for fresco altarpieces. Normally Fresco paintings are much larger than canvas paintings.
HOST Did the pope’s faction give a reason for denying you commissions?
(1606-1610)CARAVAGGIO They complained my paintings lacked reverence for the historic representation of Catholicism - too much naturalism, not enough divinity. They declared that my figures were too human and that other painters rendered their figures using religious icons. Besides they knew that I didn’t like painting frescoes. However Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani pleased with my Matthew paintings persuaded Tiberio Cerasi to select me to paint the two less prominent sidewall niches. The two paintings Pauls’ Conversion and Peter’s Crucifixion were to be completed in 8 months for the payment of 400 scudi.
HOST There was a clause in your contract that called you ‘Rome’s famous painter’.
CARAVAGGIO Vincenzo Giustiniani suggested it because he was impressed by my Matthew paintings. The two sidewall niches for the Paul and Peter paintings were about 6x8 feet, smaller than the Matthew sidewall panels.
HOST You first painted Paul’s Conversion.
CARAVAGGIO As requested by Tiberio Cerasi I painted it on a cypress wood panel.
HOST In the Biblical story the ardent Jew Saul (Paul) persecuted Christians. While traveling on horseback on the road to Damascus, Saul was struck by God’s divine lightning that blinded him and thereafter converted to Christianity. In the bottom foreground of the painting the seminude stricken Paul lies supine on the ground. At the top right corner are what looks like a young boy angel restraining what might be Jesus trying to help the stricken Paul.
CARAVAGGIO I used Cecco for the angel.
HOST In the center Paul’s groom is trying to pacify the horse startled by the lightning. He appears to be using his shield and spear to protect Paul from the intrusion of Jesus and the angel. The angel is restraining Jesus from rescuing the stricken Paul. Is the angel more powerful than the Son of God?
CARAVAGGIO Not even the Son of God can interfere with the Father’s work. The clergy accepted the painting but Tiberio Cerasi rejected it because Paul was seminude and in the upper right corner Christ was not distinguished by divine light.
HOST Mixed in with all that is the central feature and prominent rump of Paul’s horse. What is the racoon doing in the lower left corner? It only adds to the confusion.
CARAVAGGIO Not confusing at all because Cardinal Giacomo Sannessio quickly bought the rejected painting for his private collection.
HOST You painted on canvas a second version of Paul’s Conversion. In that painting Paul is lying supine on the ground fully clothed with an amputated right leg.
CARAVAGGIO What? It’s not amputated. Can’t you envision that his right leg is bent at the knee?
HOST God’s converting light effectively covers the grounded Paul but the prominent horse takes up most of the painting. In the background the barely visible groom is trying to pacify the startled horse by holding its bridle.
CARAVAGGIO I worked quickly and finished it in November but became the target of a combined attack by artists and clergy. They condemned me because rather than portraying the lightning bolt of God’s omnipotence, I devoted the horse’s hindquarters to most of the painting.
HOST In fact you didn’t even include Jesus in that painting.
CARAVAGGIO When questioned about the horse I dismissed their complaints quipping they were paying too much attention to the horse’s ass.
HOST While artist and clergy admired your talent for painting the clergy called you Antichrist because you failed to insert Jesus in the painting. After all the complaining your painting was accepted. In another painting, Peter’s Crucifixion, three persecutors are raising the upside-down Peter affixed to timbers of the cross. Why did you paint Peter upside-down?
CARAVAGGIO He demanded it because he declared he wasn’t worthy to be crucified like Christ.
HOST The painting is very confusing. Peter is affixed to and being raised on a typical Latin cross, one upright timber with a horizontal piece near its top. Peter’s left hand appears to be spiked to the upright timber rather than the horizontal piece. Instead of expressing pain at the spike driven through his left hand, Peter looks quizzically at it and his fingers appear to be caressing the spike. Most surprising, there’s no blood flowing from that hand.
CARAVAGGIO God heard Peter’s confession in which he declared that he wasn’t worthy to die as had Christ, so God stopped the flow of Peter’s blood.
HOST Do you really believe that?
CARAVAGGIO It’s not what I believed; it’s what the clergy believed and wanted.
HOST But the clergy rejected the painting because Peter’s facial features lack any sign of anguish or suffering and you inserted a prominent human rump in the lower left foreground. It shows the large covered buttocks of a persecutor acting as fulcrum for raising the cross to secure the top of the upright timber in the ground and Peter’s head at ground level. But for all the complaints Ciriaco Mattei was convinced of your genius.
CARAVAGGIO He persuaded his brothers Cardinal Girolamo and Asdrubale that you should live in their Palazzo Mattei while you painted for them. I expressed my desire to move there because it was bigger than del Monte’s palazzo. Cardinal Girolamo met with del Monte to get his approval for my transfer to Palazzo Mattei. del Monte agreed but maintained that I was still to be in his service. Actually I serviced both cardinals and retained rooms in both palazzi for several years. In the Mattei palace I was given a large room, salary, and servant boy.
HOST About your servant boys, what else did they do besides carry your sword?
CARAVAGGIO Empty my chamber pot, run errands, beg for food from the palace kitchen, pose for paintings.
HOST You painted their portraits? I never saw any prints of them.
CARAVAGGIO Portraits? I never painted their portraits. I said they posed for me, for an angel’s face or face in a crowd.
HOST Having settled in the Mattei palace, you painted Supper at Emmaus for Ciriaco Mattei.
CARAVAGGIO He paid me 150 scudi for the painting.
HOST Supper at Emmaus is a painting with live models and still life. In the painting Jesus is having supper with two of his disciples Peter and Andrew in the presence of the innkeeper. Jesus’ beardless face is not as feminely oval as in Walk to Emmaus but his long curly tresses compliment his womanly face. The table is set with still life of fruit, bread, and what looks like a roasted bird of some kind with long bony legs. Why did Ciriaco reject the painting?
CARAVAGGIO He declared it wasn’t painted with traditional devotional respect because Christ has no beard and the innkeeper is wearing a Yarmulke (Jew’s cap) a sign of disrespect for Christ’s presence. The painting was quickly sold to one of my admirers and future patron Cardinal Scipione Borghese.
HOST In 1602 you painted for Vincenzo Giustiniani the homoerotic Cupid Victorious, your last strictly secular painting. Your rival Baglione painted Heavenly Love so Giustiniani wanted you to paint earthy love. In the painting you included many props relating to Gisutiniani’s interests including a violin for music, a square for architecture, and supporting his nobility a soldier’s armor. You always painted from live models, so how did you persuade such a young boy to pose nude?
CARAVAGGIO The young boy was the aspiring painter Francesco (Cecco) Boneri. I offered to pay him for posing nude and he agreed.
HOST In America it’s rare to see a full frontal painting of a nude boy. Nude boys are never seen in public.
CARAVAGGIO Nude boys, starving or not, are commonly seen especially bathing at the shore.
HOST You painted Cupid with his legs parted to reveal his growing genitals sans pubes so I’m guessing he was prepubescent. With a mischievous grin he flaunts himself with ‘hello c’mon sexuality’ probably resulting from his many conquests. In America he’d be today’s dream boy for pederastic priests of the Catholic churches. He’s well fed with a rather flabby abdomen and thighs.
CARAVAGGIO What you call flabby I call normal and disappears as young boys grow older.
HOST Cupid’s right arm is extended and his right hand holds love’s penetrating arrows. But where’s his left arm?
CARAVAGGIO Isn’t it obvious? It’s behind him.
HOST Why, what ‘s he doing with his left hand?
CARAVAGGIO Use your common sense if you have any and before you ask, his right leg is bent backward at the knee. By the way Giustiniani was so pleased with my Cupid he installed it in the favorite niche of his palazzo. The painting brought me several new patrons who requested I paint slightly different versions of Cupid for them. I was making money and not paying fines.
HOST We now transit from physical love to spiritual experience. You got a commission for 150 scudi to paint the altarpiece Matthew and Angel for the Contarelli Chapel. But didn’t Giuseppe Cesari paint the altarpiece severl years ago?
CARAVAGGIO He painted frescoes for the vaulted ceiling, not an altarpiece.
HOST In your altarpiece priests protested that Matthew was dressed like a beggar and his dirty bare feet were too prominent, sticking out as if to humiliate viewers. They further complained his legs were crossed like those of a woman and questioned the sexuality of the seminude angel. To me the angel’s oval face and body look like those of a young woman. Her bare leg is visible up to her thigh and her belly button is clearly visible through her gossamer gown.
CARAVAGGIO Priests believed I inserted sexuality in too many of my paintings, even when painting angels. They thought the painting vulgar because the angel is too close to Matthew and might be interpreted as seduction. Some priests are hypocrites. They sleep with prostitutes and then complain when I paint an angel who looks like a woman.
HOST They further complained the angel was moving Matthew’s hand actually writing the gospel for him. They protested you didn’t distinguish Mathew’s holiness with a halo. Because of all their complaints they rejected the altarpiece.
CARAVAGGIO It was quickly bought by Marchese Vincenzo Guistiniani. He called you the most innovative painter in Rome and helped get you into the prestigious Academy of Saint Luke, even though Federico Zuccaro its founder opposed you.
HOST Because priests rejected your first version you painted a second more conservative version. In that version Matthew’s legs are covered, he kneels on a stool, and has a halo. The angel is a male enveloped in swirling white drapery. He’s instructing Matthew on what to write but is not writing the gospel for him. A fast painter you finished the second version a few months later.
CARAVAGGIO I’m not a procrastinating painter. I finish my paintings on time. The Church was pleased with my second version and paid me 150 scudi.
HOST As usual you had your critics. Federico Zuccaro was not pleased with the painting and went public with his criticism. He demeaned your paintings for lacking devotional respect and conformity to the pope’s recommendations for religious art.
CARAVAGGIO He brought several of his artist friends with him to view my painting. I thought it strange he also had a lantern. He told his friends that I painted dark backgrounds because I wasn’t competent to paint details. He lit the lamp and held it closer to the painting remarking "See not even my lamp reveals any details. The reason he completes paintings quickly is that he neglects to paint background details".
HOST I understand you attacked him.
CARAVAGGIO Enraged at his behavior and criticism I grabbed him, beat him, and threw him to the floor. The lighted lamp started a fire quickly extinguished. del Monte intervened separating us. He was astonished that I would attack someone in church, the house of God the Father. He ordered me to leave. Upon exiting I challenged Zuccaro to a duel.
HOST You fought a duel over his criticism?
CARAVAGGIO He called me a madman and ignored my challenge.
HOST Did you and del Monte remain friends after that?
CARAVAGGIO Of course but when the pope was informed of the incident, he declared I should no longer be a guest in del Monte’s palace.
HOST Did you thank del Monte for all his help? Without him you might have never been recognized in Rome.
CARAVAGGIO I have my faults but I’m not ungrateful. I departed from del Monte’s household but we remained friends. I retained his patronage and occasionally visited him.
HOST Your fame spread throughout Italy and Europe. Many aspiring painters traveled to Rome to study your paintings and copy your style. There’s an interesting story about your encounter with one of those painters, a Caravaggisto. You and he got into an argument. Can you elaborate on that encounter?
CARAVAGGIO One day I was strolling in the street several blocks from del Monte’s palace and noticed a crowd near la Chiesa di San Luigi dei Francesi. A painter was displaying one of his religious paintings. Someone in the crowd asked "Are you the famous painter Caravaggio"? I shouted "He’s a copycat painter with no skill of his own". Mocking me he pointed to me and called me a beggar in tattered clothes.
HOST Who was he?
CARAVAGGIO An imposter from the Lombardy region, I detected his northern dialect. I swore at him and approaching drew my sword shouting "I am Caravaggio!" With entreaties of "Pace, calma" (peace, calm) several in the crowd cried out for me to sheath my sword
HOST Then what?
CARAVAGGIO The neighborhood police intervened and identified me.
HOST Who better than the police to identify you.
CARAVAGGIO Thereupon the imposter took his painting, folded his easel, and departed.
HOST Young painters called you a rebel whose cause was to brush aside conventional painting and humanize it. Some Caravaggisti decalred you influenced painters as did Michelangelo a generation ago. Even established painters copied your style.
CARAVAGGIO Including my rival painters Giovanni Baglione and Tommaso Salini.
HOST You never openly praised your own paintings but you sarcastically demeaned the work of other painters. Some declared you had the deadly sin of outrageous pride. Was that due to your great talent?
CARAVAGGIO All painters have talent, but few are innovative.
HOST Are you contrasting your genius to their talent?
CARAVAGGIO Compared to other painters I know what I paint. I also know what they paint and have no need of braggadocio.
HOST Was it because you were original and others conventional?
CARAVAGGIO Truth in painting is in the viewing. I paint what nature shows me. A painter might mimic nature but never surpass it. Nature is greater than any pope who tells painters what to paint. The pope has his vestments and edicts; I have my brushes and sword.
HOST But you weren’t the only famous painter in Rome.
CARAVAGGIO I was the only painter who painted like Michelangelo Merisi. I was enraged at Caravaggisti who declared my style was their own style.
HOST You worked alone, intensely, and quickly. You never established a studio of painters and never hired other painters to help you.
CARAVAGGIO I would have had to train them, which would have taken up too much of my time. If other painters have the ability they can develop their own styles. Besides I paint what I want faster than repeatedly explaining to other painters how to paint. I did have young helpers do what I did as apprentice to Peterzano - stretch canvas, size it, grind pigments, etc.
HOST There were rumors about your relationship with your young helpers.
CARAVAGGIO They were helpers who sometimes posed and I paid them.
HOST You continued your religious paintings with another John, this time John Baptist Embracing Ram’s Head.
CARAVAGGIO Ciriaco Mattei commissioned me to paint it for a gift to his son Giovanni Battista. Ciriaco paid me 85 sccudi.
HOST You used again as model the young boy Cecco. In the homoerotic painting John is a nude adolescent boy sitting on a fur pelt. He has a sanguine and solicitous grin as he embraces the ram’s head.
CARAVAGGIO He’s a young shepherd boy with one of his flock.
HOST You painted John without his usual saintly reed cross or or other saintly prop. The painting must have shocked viewers expecting the conventional ornamentation of holiness. It appears to me you portrayed John as a sexual adventurer. His portrayal is totally alien to sainthood. The ram is not the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) of the Mass, as in your previous John. A naked and fetching John embracing the battering head of a ram might be seen as sexually symbolic.
CARAVAGGIO Nonsense, Mattei was a stern Catholic nobleman.
HOST Did he insist on John embracing the ram? What is young John doing in the wilderness anyway?
CARAVAGGIO I painted him as a shepherd boy in the wilderness of Judea.
HOST Perhaps locusts and honey gave him that sanguine look. It appears to me that he’s leaning on a disproportionate large stump of his left arm and his left foot is unusually long for his age.
CARAVAGGIO What, are you now a shoemaker? One’s feet need not be perfectly matched.
HOST By the way Cecco was the model for your only two paintings of full frontal boy nudity, Cupid Victorious and this John painting. His genitals appear to be rather smallish for the size of his body. On another subject you were occasionally heard calling Cecco ‘carissimo’ (dearest).
CARAVAGGIO Sometimes it’s difficult to find the right model. Painters spend long periods with their models and sometimes establish close relationships with them. Cecco was eager to work with me because he wanted to be a painter and learn from me.
HOST Perhaps this is a good time to bring up the subject of sexuality. Many of your paintings are brushed with homoeroticism portraying male nudes, seminude males, and muscular males.
CARAVAGGIO The challenge in painting nudes is not to engage in imaginary beings as did Michelagelo but to paint what you see. I painted nudes with the same attention to nature’s details as for still life.
HOST But there aren’t any known paintings by you of nude or seminude females.
CARAVAGGIO Painters of nude women paint the women of their erotic dreams.
HOST Doesn’t the opposite apply to painters of nude males? The clergy believed that paintings of nudes and seminude males should be hung in private rooms and shown only to one’s spouse and intimate friends, especially for naked or partially naked young males.
CARAVAGGIO Nonsense! In that case most of my paintings of males would be locked in private rooms. Leonardo took his young male models with him wherever he traveled.
HOST He was known to have favored male body parts over female body parts. Some of your contemporaries believed that you liked the company of boys more than female prostitutes. Several of your contemporaries declared you had sex with your young male models. (no response) Did you love any of them?
CARAVAGGIO Love is not part of nature so I never loved anyone. Even brutal rapists impregnate women who then birth infants, not from love but from nature. Nature always triumphs over love.
HOST Love maintains us otherwise humans would persih.
CARAVAGGIO We perish in spite of love, as in the black plague. Nature is more powerful than either love or God.
HOST We reproduce because of love.
CARAVAGGIO No, we reproduce because of nature. Humans added love to nature just like painters add brush strokes to improve paintings. We reproduce simply because of nature. Love is merely an orgasm in an intaglio in the seraglio.
HOST What?
CARAVAGGIO A scherzo (joke).
HOST You’re probably aware that in the early Church priests had their favorite ‘carissimi’ service them at the altar. When Rome objected, those early priests declared young boys represented Jesus’ disciples. If priests weren’t permitted their carissimi they threatened to leave the Church and form their own Christian schismatic sect. Desperate for unity among early Christian sects Rome relented and called the carissimi altar boys. Today pedophilic priests engage in abusive sex with young innocent and virginal altar boys.
CARAVAGGIO It’s nature again, greater than love, greater than God.
HOST Later that year the Mattie brothers engaged you to paint Jesus Betrayed. In the painting Jesus looks spiritless, like a loser stoically resigned to his arrest and predestined crucifixion.
CARAVAGGIO I painted Christ with his hands folded silently praying to be with his Father.
HOST Scrambling out of the darkness of betrayal are revealed heads and body parts of Roman soldiers. To signal the moment for Jesus’ arrest Judas is shown kissing him. You inserted yourself as the rightmost figure holding the lantern to throw light on Jesus. Apropos of the betrayal it was called a dark and brooding painting.
CARAVAGGIO I was paid 125 scudi for it.
HOST In 1603 you were 32. Girolamo Vettrice awarded you the prestigious commission for Jesus Entombed for the altarpiece of the Vittrice Chapel in the Santa Maria Church in Vallicella.
CARAVAGGIO The church was called also la Chiesa Nova because at the time it was the most recent basilica in Rome.
HOST Emerging from the interring black background are the body of Jesus, two men, and three women. Is the hooded woman Mary?
CARAVAGGIO She’s distinguished by her blue hooded garment.
HOST A very dark blue hardly distinguishable from the black background. You used blue even though you thought it was poisonous?
CARAVAGGIO It was the Madonna’s favorite color.
HOST The middle woman with head bowed looks liike the prostitute Anna. The rightmost woman’s arms are flung up towards heaven as if to beg the Father for divine intercession to revive his Son. She’s reminiscent of today’s Pentecostal Holly Rollers.
CARAVAGGIO What do you mean Pentecostal Holly Rollers? I didn’t paint the Holy Spirit descending upon Christ or the Apostles.
HOST In America Holly Rollers are a Pentecostal Christian sect. They engage in acting out, showy displays during religious services. In your painting there are two men lowering Jesus’ corpse onto the stone slab. The full figure with his arms around Jesus’ legs is assumed to be that of Nicodemus, whose awkward position and oversize head must have put additional strain on his aching back. To his left is the head of another man who is helping to lower Jesus’ corpse onto the stone slab. Left of him is a hand floating in the darkness. It looks like the slender hand of a woman mourner without a body.
CARAVAGGIO Painters often critical of my work, as you are, praised the painting. Even my rival Baglione thought it one of my best paintings.
HOST It’s one of your most copied paintings. By the way, you didn’t paint Jesus’ wound in his left side. In your painting Thomas’ Incredulity you painted a deep and prominent wound into which Thomas stuck his finger to dispel his incredulity. In that painting, after his presumptive resurrection the deep wound didn’t heal even for the Son of God.
CARAVAGGIO After I finished the Entombment Maffeo Barberini commissioned me to paint Abraham and Sacrifice of Isaac, my second painting on the subject.
HOST In the painting, to prove his faith in God, Abraham typifies a mindless godiac as he prepares to slice open his son Isaac’s throat sacrificing him to God. In the painting Abraham with knife in his right hand holds steady Isaac’s head as he screams for mercy and struggles to free himself. Convinced of Abraham’s faith God sends one of his angels to order Abraham to free Isaac and sacrifice instead the nearby attendant ram.
CARAVAGGIO I used Cecco for Isaac and the angel.
HOST It’s one of the few paintings with landscape detail in the background, another is Rest on Flight to Egypt.
CARAVAGGIO Barberini was from Tuscany so I painted a Tuscan background to remind him of his birthplace.
HOST The ram reminds me of the rumor that a shaggy black dog followed you home. Is there any truth to that?
CARAVAGGIO I kept him because it was black and shaggy just like my clothes. I found out it could do tricks so I kept it and fed it table scraps. One day in the street I had it perform. The people applauded but a man mocked me by shouting that I looked just like the dog. Was the dog my son? The crowd laughed. I beat him with my fists and with my sword’s hilt struck him in the head. He had me arrested and I had to pay a fine.
HOST What about the dog?
CARAVAGIO Gone, it probably followed someone else home.
HOST The keen competition among painters for commissions sometimes ended in lawsuits. Your rival painter Giovanni Baglione, a copier of your style, was awarded the commission for painting The Resurrection for the Jesuit Church la Chiesa di Gesù (Church of Jesus). He bragged that he was chosen over you, supposedly the most famous painter in Rome. When the painting was installed anonymous verses defaming him and degrading the painting were circulated throughout Rome. In September 1603 Giovanni Baglione charged you with libel for writing and distributing defamatory verses about him.
CARAVAGGIO Baglione declared I was jealous of him because he won the commission for painting of The Resurrection. From that time on Baglione became my enemy.
HOST I have a copy of the stolen court transcript in which you were not only described as the greatest painter in Rome but also as the most feared and notorious. When the police searched Longhi’s house they found a copy of some of the verses. The court inferred you must have either written them, given them to him, or knew about them.
CARAVAGGIO I testified it was the first time I heard of such verses.
HOST The star witness for Baglione was Tommaso Salini you previously assaulted. He testified you kept the young male prostitute Battista whom you slept with and shared with your friend Longhi.
CARAVAGGIO I never kept him or any other bardassa.
HOST Salini named Battista as an accomplice because he got one set of verses from you and other sets from Longhi. Battista gave the verses to Trisegni who distributed them. Moreover Trisegni admitted giving copies of the verses to Salini. If Battista didn’t get the verses from you or Onorio Longhi where did he get them?
CARAVAGGIO That was up to the court to decide. Look, I’m a painter; I paint. I’m not a writer; I do not write verses of any kind whether in Italian or Latin. In fact I do not like to write anything, not verses and not even my name.
HOST During the trial Baglione accused you of being arrogant and sarcastic, always criticizing and demeaning him and other painters.
CARAVAGGIO I know many good painters in Rome such as Zuccaro, Roncalli, Carracci, and Tempesta but Baglione and Salini are not among them. In particular Baglione’s painting of The Resurrection is a bad painting, clumsily executed. I dismissed the painting because it looked awkward and unnatural; it didn’t follow nature. On different visits I took several of my painter friends to view it and they agreed.
HOST If it was a bad painting why did you keep going back to view it with friends?
CARAVAGGIO I sought the opinions of other artists to support my criticism.
HOST That might be true but while the court didn’t find you guilty of libel it found you guilty of having defamed Baglione. The court found you and Onorio Longhi guilty of writing the verses and Orazio Gentileschi and Filipo Trisegni guilty of distributing them. The court incarcerated you again in the inhuman and barbarous Tor di Nona prison. The same prison Pope Clement 8 imprisoned Giordano Bruno before he had him burned to death. But your high and powerful art-loving friends in Rome rescued you.
CARAVAGGIO del Monte together with the Medici and French factions persuaded the pope to intervene on my behalf. I was released two weeks later but confined to house arrest and couldn’t walk the streets at night without permission from the police.
HOST In our court system we still have parole. Meantime Longhi and Gentileschi fled Rome fearing arrest and imprisonment. Your brief imprisonment turned to your advantage. Because of your newly acquired notoriety you were offered many commissions and the opportunity to get rich. The same thing happens in America to celebrities who get into trouble; they become more famous. Why didn’t you accept the commissions, hire painters, and for once in your life make enough money to live comfortably?
CARAVAGGIO I didn’t want to deal with training painters. I don’t like wasting my time teaching. I don’t want to teach.
HOST Because of your notoriety you were also disadvantaged. Fearing the loss of his reputation and political influence, Cardinal Girolama Mattei asked you to leave his palace. You were again homeless.
CARAVAGGIO No longer living in the Palazzo Mattei, I rented a small house from Prudenzia Bruni. She owned two adjacent houses on a narrow street, the Vicolo San Biagio (Saint Blasé Lane). I rented the house next to hers, a two-story small house with a loggia overlooking the vegetable garden. I moved in with Cecco and my meager possessions. It was near the Cesari studio where I once worked.
HOST That made it handy for Cecco to pose for you. One Sunday after Mass there was a confrontation btween Longhi and Baglione. Do you know anything about that?
CARAVAGGIO Longhi saw Baglione and Salini in church and glared at them. After Mass he waited outside and accused Salini of being a liar. He threw stones at Salini and Baglione. They shouted obscenities at each other. Upon unsheathing their daggers several witnesses intervened declaring they should be ashamed of themselves fighting near the steps of the church, especially after mass. The confrontation ended without assaulting each other.
HOST Later that year you painted Still Life with Fruit on a Stone Ledge. In the painting are fruits, leaves, and vegetables surrounded by your pro forma darkness.
CARAVAGGIO Why do you keep mentioning my darkness? I keep telling you I use scuro for background and dramatic affect.
HOST Fruits and vegetables flourish in the sun. Please, once in a while a little sunshine. The Italian plums are superbly painted but the peaches, I’ve never eaten peaches with such deep crevices. Your critics complained they look like human buttocks. On another matter either you or a contemporary of yours, a Caravaggisto, painted similar still life such as Still Life with Fruits, and Flowers, and Vegetables, and Still Life with Game Birds. Did you paint them?
CARAVAGGIO I don’t remember those paintings.
HOST The Caravaggisto was called Master of Hartford and was credited with those paintings. Did you know him?
CARAVAGGIO Never heard of him.
HOST Speaking of unknown paintings you painted many portraits including Pope Paul 5. Do you recall how many portraits you painted?
CARAVAGGIO I didn’t keep a record of my paintings. Why do you ask?
HOST Many of those portraits are no longer available. No knows where who owns them or where they are, probably lost.
CARAVAGGIO Owners frequently pass their portraits to their beneficiaries and who knows what they do with them.
HOST In 1604 you were 33. There was a report that you, Baglione, and Roncalli competed to paint an altarpiece for the Franciscan Order of the Church of Santa Maria di Costantinopoli in Tolentino. It’s believed the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great built the ancient famous church.
CARAVAGGIO I departed Tolentino because I wasn’t intrested in the altarpiece. Besides I was negotiating with the Cavaletti family for a more prestigious altarpiece.
HOST If that’s true, why were you resentful at not being chosen. The same report states that you hired a scoundrel to stab Roncalli in his painting hand for having won the contract.
CARAVAGGIO Where did you get that report?
HOST I have it in my notes.
CARAVAGGIO Your notes and that report are mere scribbling. If I’d wanted to punish Roncalli I’d have done it myself.
HOST Did it have anything to do with the fact that the pope elevated him to knighthood and not you?
CARAVAGGIO I forgot all about that.
HOST East of Rome is the Sacred Shrine of Loreto housing the Madonna holding the infant Jesus. It’s also called the Santa Casa (Holy House) visited by pilgrims from all over Italy.
CARAVAGGIO Pilgrims worshipped there begging for miracles of last resort. The rich offered the Madonna gold, silver, and precious jewels. The poor offered whatever they could, any object of value. Pilgrims whose offerings and prayers manifested the apparition of the Madonna had their prayers answered.
HOST Back in Rome the family of Ermete Cavaletti offered you 500 scudi to paint the altarpiece Madonna of Loreto for the Cavaletti Chapel in the Church of Santo Agostino.
CARAVAGGIO I used Maddelena Antognetti (Lena) to model for the Madonna. Lena was a young teenage brunette prostitute favored by cardinals and lawyers. She lived with her mother and sister; both sisters prostituted themselves to support the family.
HOST In the painting the Madonna is tall and thin just like one of today’s supermodels. But peeking out from under her gown her right foot is in an impossible position.
CARAVAGGIO It’s her left foot; I painted her with her legs crossed.
HOST Why did you do that? It’s confusing.
CARAVAGGIO Why not?
HOST Viewers complained that the Madonna looks like one of the local inhabitants holding one of her own children, not the infant Jesus.
CARAVAGGIO What did they expect? The Madonna was a local woman before she miraculously birthed Christ. The infant Lena’s holding is her son by her favorite lover. I did paint a fine line halo around her head to distinguish her holiness from Lena’s vocation.
HOST You painted the Madonna holding her too large infant Jesus, who’s reaching out with his hand as if to bless the beggars. Is is possible for an infant to bless beggars or anyone?
CARAVAGGIO Keep in mind that even in infancy Christ is the Son of God.
HOST You painted two beggars, a man and woman shabbily dressed and dirty. The man has muddy feet and dirty soles. Beside him the woman’s wears a dirty towel wrapped around her head. When the altarpiece was installed in the Cavaletti Chapel priests ciriticzed it because of your disrespectful portrayal of poor pilgrims. Moreover you didn’t include in the altarpiece the details of the Sacred Shrine of Loreto.
CARAVAGGIO I was hired to paint the Madonna of Loreto, not the shrine. The local poor called the painting the Pilgrim’s Madonna, not the Shrine’s Madonna. Pilgrims are shabbily dressed because most of them are poor and they worshipped the Madonna and infant Christ not the shrine itself.
HOST Later you painted your third John, John Baptist with Reed Cross.
CARAVAGGIO I painted it for Ottavio Costa.
HOST In the painting John is a young seminude man with a fur pelt across his crotch. He carries a reed staff with a short horizontal piece at top symbolizing a cross but the right part of the cross is in the dark, not visible in my color print. John is shown brooding, perhaps preoccupied, and somewhat penitent. Wrapped in your favorite voluminous red drapery he’s gazing and scowling at something on the ground. But why did you paint a stump for his left leg, it appears to be amputated at the knee?
CARAVAGGIO Are you blind? I painted his left leg in shadow; look at it.
HOST If you did it’s not clear in my color print. When you finished the painting you got into trouble again, this time with a waiter.
CARAVAGGIO Having spent more than 6 months painting I needed some diversion. I went to del Monte’s tailor and bought a gentleman’s black velvet garb with white ruff collar and black leather boots. As gentleman with my sword hanging from my waist I went out for a stroll in the streets of Rome. Alone and determined to stay out of trouble. I went into a fashionable restaurant renowned for its artichokes and surly waiters.
HOST Your good intentions, sincere as they were, got you into an argument over artichokes.
CARAVAGGIO The waiter deposited a split bowl of hot steaming artichokes on my table. I asked him which ones were cooked in garlic and olive oil and which in butter? With a scornful look he criticized me snarling something about tasting them. He turned his back on me and departed.
HOST That’s what surly waiters do.
CARAVAGGIO You don’t understand. I was dressed as a gentleman. The waiter hadn’t transferred some of the hot artichokes onto my dinner plate to cool so I could taste them. That’s what good waiters are supposed to do for a gentleman; he embarrassed me. Furious at his snub I summoned him. He ignored me. I summoned him again and again he ignored me. I kept summoning him until he attended me at which time I threw the bowl of steaming artichokes at him. Crying out in pain he screamed that I was ‘un’ uomo selvatico’.
HOST A wild man.
CARAVAGGIO He called the management to have me arrested. I stood up and brandishing my sword threatened to run him through.
HOST Then what happened?
CARAVAGGIO The weeping waiter complained the hot artichokes burned him and the shattered bowl cut his face. I ripped off the tablecloth, handed it to him, and told him to wipe the blood from his face. The management calmed the waiter and led him off like a stray lamb. When the police arrived I described what happened.
HOST Did you pay for the artichokes?
CARAVAGGIO Pay for the insult? No never!
HOST You had a sword. Did the police ask you for your license?
CARAVAGGIO No, I was dressed as a gentleman. But I had to pay a fine for disturbing the peace.
HOST Speaking of tablecloths is it true that in your rooms you used old paintings as table cloths?
CARAVAGGIO Occasionally I did so.
HOST What about crumbs or wine drips that fell on the panting?
CARAVAGGIO Simply brushed or wiped them off but sometimes they gave me an idea so I used the idea in a painting.
HOST Later in October of that year you had another outburst of temper. You damaged some property.
CARAVAGGIO I had gotten drunk, picked up some heavy stones and threw them at the house of a prostitute.
HOST Why would a grown man do such a thing; that’s what young boys or thugs do.
CARAVAGGIO I was drunk and didn’t like the color of the house.
HOST What?
CARAVAGGIO I was arrested for disturbing the peace and being a public nuisance. I found myself back in the Tor di Nona prison. Several days later when I sobered up I was ordered by the court to pay a fine, pay for damages to the house, and released.
HOST In November the very next month you were back in the streets confronted by a policeman.
CARAVAGGIO He kept staring at me, giving me the evil eye. I cursed him and threatened to use my sword on him. When he asked me for my license to carry a sword I picked up stones and threw them at him.
HOST Instead of cooperating you insulted him then assaulted him with stones. That’s what children do. Why would you do such a childish thing?
CARAVAGGIO He had no right asking me for my license. I was dressed as a gentleman and gentlemen carry swords. Because I no longer lived in Mattei’s palazzo he arrested me.
HOST Once again you found yourself back in the inhumane Tor di Nona prison.
CARAVAGGIO Worse than that I had to bribe the guard for my release.
HOST Just think of all the money you could have had if you didn’t have to pay all those fines and settlements. In 1605 you painted for Vincenzo Giustiniani your second version of Jesus Crowned with Thorns. Then you were offered a commission to paint the Holy Trinity for the Confraternity of Santissima Trinita in Mexico but never painted it.
CARAVAGGIO The Confraternity concluded that I’d probably paint the Holy Family as commoners, so it was awarded to my rival Caveliere d’Arpino. Besides it was only for 40 scudi and I was too busy on other paintings.
HOST The pope had given the Church of Santa Maria della Scala to the Spanish Order of Saint Teresa Discalced Carmelites. You were commissioned by the rich Roman lawyer Laerzio Cherubini to paint the altarpiece Virgin Mary’s Death for the church.
CARAVAGGIO I was fortunate that Vincenzo Giustiniani had recommended me. The contract was for 280 scudi with the advance of 50 scudi. I needed the money to finish paying off my fines for destroying property and for insulting Canonico.
HOST There was a strange clause in the contract. Do you remember it?
CARAVAGGIO Upon completion of the painting its value was to be determined by Giustiniani, a fair man and one of my ardent patrons.
HOST The church was in Trastevere the poorest section of Rome but it properly accommodated Saint Teresa’s barefoot nuns. I read an article that you sent some street people to retrieve a drowned woman from the Tiber as model for the dead Virgin Mary.
CARAVAGGIO The dead woman’s face was so grotesque that I painted Lena’s face as that of the dead Virgin. I also painted Lena as the woman with her head bowed down weeping next to the dead Virgin.
HOST In the painting the dead Virgin is laid out on a raised platform of some kind rather than the reverential sepulchral marble slab. There aren’t any angels hovering above her, no halo or nimbus to show devotional reverence, not even any palm around her. Priests and their barefoot nuns rejected your realism because her right hand is resting on her swollen belly as if made pregnant by a human.
CARAVAGGIO Priests complained the mother of Christ cannot be portrayed as an earthly woman, a commoner. They further complained that Frederico Zuccaro painted the dead Virgin in the conventional manner, with her hands folded resting peacefully on her breast.
CARAVAGGIO She wasn’t the Virgin Mary when she died.
HOST Some protested you painted the Mother of God without the devotional majesty due her.
CARAVAGGIO She was the common young Virgin who happened to be chosen as the mother of Christ not mother of God. When she died she was a dead mother.
HOST But that’s what they complained about, the absence of conventional religious reverence due the Virgin Mary mother of Jesus. You also ignored the precepts of the Mass for the Dead: ‘Eternal rest grant unto them O lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them’. The dead Virgin was not bathed in divine light. There’s no light in your painting, only dark funereal melancholy. Weren’t their complaints justified?
CARAVAGGIO Death is funereal, makes people sad, they grieve.
HOST They also complained she was poorly dressed, had bare legs, and the soles of her feet were dirty.
CARAVAGGIO The painting was for the barefoot Carmelite nuns who soles were always dirty.
HOST Speaking of feet there are two feet on the ground below her legs. Whose feet are they, the mourner with his face covered or the tall white bearded man standing in back of him?
CARAVAGGIO Let me see. (Shows him the color print.) They’re obviously the feet of the white bearded apostle. How can they be the feet of anyone else? All the male mourners are apostles.
HOST Priests thought that you blasphemed the Virgin Mary because you painted the face of your whore model Lena as that of the Virgin. You made the Virgin look like a dirty whore from the Orataccio red-light district.
CARAVAGGIO The clergy recognized Lena’s face because they frequently asked for her services. She was their favorite prostitute.
HOST There’s a large bowl at the bottom center. What’s that for?
CARAVAGGIO Don’t you know anything? It’s for washing her body with tears, preparing her body for burial.
HOST Cherubini also criticized the painting. It was condemned for its dark melancholy and brooding spirit. To relieve the darkness of death they suggested the painting be framed with large bright gilded borders. Needless to say the painting was rejected.
CARAVAGGIO Several days after the altarpiece was installed it was declared sacrilegious and removed because it portrayed a real death rather than the death of the Blessed Virgin Mary about to transit from Earth to heaven. They suggested I paint a second version showing mourners not with heads bowed but looking up towards heaven anticipating her passage. I told them that would be a different painting called the Assumption of the Virgin. Carracci already painted the Virgin’s Assumption for the Cerasi Chapel. I told them I paint reality, not what is imagined through faith. Also the commission was for Virgin Mary Dead not Virgin Mary Dying or Ascending or Transiting.
HOST As I understand their suggestion, they reasoned that the Virgin, the Holy Mother of the Son of God, should have been enveloped by a divine aura to oppose the Protestant Reformation’s version which treated her death as natural.
CARAVAGGIO Protestants approved my painting because I painted the dead Virgin Mary as an ordinary human being.
HOST It appears to me there was some truth in the clergy’s conclusion that you were anti-Catholic if not Antichrist.
CARAVAGGIO Painters praised it as one of my best. Even my rival painters praised it.
HOST They praised your skill as a painter and your natural rendition of Virgin Mary’s Death without all the trappings of conventional Catholic art demanded by the pope’s edicts. They referred to you as a master of chiaroscuro but I find your paintings mostly scuro (dark). Other critics declared you used chiaroscuro to excess.
CARAVAGGIO Many good painters including da Vinci used chiaroscuro.
HOST Some priests appreciated your craft but others, such as Cardinal Ottavio Paravicino, declared your paintings were embroiled between the ‘sacred and profane’. He declared you were Antichrist, not close to God, and in fact your dark spirit was divorced from God.
CARAVAGGIO I repeat, I paint what nature shows me.
HOST The two paintings, Madonna of Loreto and Virgin Mary’s Death were criticized because they were too natural and lifelike, disrespecting the usual convention of devotional Catholic art. Many of your paintings are morose and even macabre especially paintings portraying burials, decapitations, and martyrdom.
CARAVAGGIO Of course, what do you expect? In life dying and death are the darkness at the end of life’s tunnel, not the expected light of heaven.
HOST What happened to the painting?
CARAVAGGIO When Giustiniani valued it, it was quickly snatched up by Vincenzo Gonzaga for his private collection. He was the Duke of Mantua and brother of Cardinal Ferdinando Gonzaga.
HOST In 1605 when the brutal Pope Clement 8 died the new pope Paul 5 was installed. You then got a new rich patron of the arts, the pleasure loving Cardinal Scipione Borghese nephew of Pope Paul 5.
CARAVAGGIO The pope lavished his power and wealth on his nephew Scipione who joined your most ardent patrons including del Monte, Vincenzo Giustiniani, Ciriaco Mattei, and Ottavio Costa. In fact Giustiniani owned more of my paintings than any other patron.
HOST In the spring you surprised the police when you sued a supposed friend of yours Alessandro Ricci for stealing some of your personal possessions including a small rug. On that occasion you were the complainant not the defendant.
CARAVAGGIO My suit was dismissed because the police couldn’t find the rug in Ricci’s rooms.
HOST In May you were no longer living in Mattei’s palace and didn’t have his protection. you were again arrested for carrying a sword and exposed dagger without a license.
CARAVAGGIO I told the police I had Mattei’s permission to carry them. They didn’t believe me and I had to pay a fine.
HOST Massimo Massimi commissioned you to paint Ecce Homo. You actually signed the contract, only one of two you ever signed.
CARAVAGGIO Massimi insisted I sign it.
HOST Did you have trouble signing your name? Instead of writing Michelangelo Merisi you signed it using three different but partially similar names. Why?
CAAVAGGIO I’m not a writer; I hate to write my name when it’s obvious my style is my name.
HOST If you found it hard to write a single version of your name, how were you able to write all those libelous verses against Baglione?
CARAVAGGIO I told the court I didn’t write those verses and now I’m telling you.
HOST It reminds me of the rustic man Shakespeare who could barely write his name but is credited with writing in English the greatest of all dramas. The name Shakespeare is the pseudonym of the real writer Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. He lived in England about the same time you lived in Italy.
CARAVAGGIO Never heard of either of them.
HOST Your painting Ecce Homo portrays Jesus in the presence of Pontius Pilate who points to him as if to proclaim ‘Behold the Man who is Jesus’. Pilate doesn’t find fault in Jesus but still condemns him to be crucified for the political expediency of retaining peace with Jews. Jesus’ hands hold a reed pole and his wrists are tied with rope. You portray Jesus with the downcast submissiveness of a passive-dependent who knows he’s predestined for arrest, punishment, and crucifixion.
CARAVAGGIO Christ lived for that.
HOST Unknown to you Massimi also commissioned two other painters to paint Ecce Homo – Cigoli his nephew and Passignano.
CARAVAGGIO I knew nothing of that.
HOST Of the three paintings he chose his nephew Cigolo’s painting. Caravaggio the most famous painter in Italy suffered another humiliating rejection.
CARAVAGGIO An old Roman maxim declares there’s no accounting for one’s taste.
HOST That year 1605 you were 34 in the prime of life. The Roman summer census listed you and Cecco as residents living in Vicolo San Biagio (Saint Blasé Lane). Cecco was listed as your helper. It was also the year of your serial encounters, arrests, and imprisonments.
HOST In July you were again accused of writing abusive verses, this time against a mother and her daughter.
Caravaggio I saw each of them separately or together walking the streets like prostitutes. I tried to get the daughter to model for me but her mother refused.
HOST Women are allowed to walk the streets and refuse offers of questionable work.
CARAVAGGIO What do you mean questionable, I pay models.
HOST You had the abusive verses set to music and were seen and heard outside their house serenading them as prostitutes. When they told you to leave, you threw stones at their house and tried to kick in the front door. What’s wrong with you? Why did you do that?
CARAVAGGIO They were prostitutes acting like Maddona and child.
HOST You were charged with sexual harassment, arrested, and incarcerated again in the Tor di Nona prison. Two years ago you were accused of writing abusive verses against your rival painter Baglione; you were sued and imprisoned. I guess you didn’t learn your lesson. Your verses certainly didn’t discriminate because of sex.
CARAVAGGIO My friends bailed me out of prison. Later the court directed me to pay fines for disturbing the peace and for damage to the house.
HOST That July you also got into big trouble over your young model Lena. Her devoted lover was the lawyer and notary Mariano Pasqualone, the one who investigated the Cenci patricide. Was Lena your girlfriend as well as model?
CARAVAGGIO She was one of my models.
HOST I mean were you intimate with her?
CARAVAGGIO When you work with someone every day you get to be close to each other.
HOST In August that supposed intimacy got you into an argument with Pasqualone her lover. He wanted to marry her and was jealous over her modeling for you and your rumored relationship.
CARAVAGGIO What? Everybody knew she was a prostitute and her mother was her mezzana (procuress).
HOST I understand he told her mother that you were doing unnatural things to her, having unnatural sex, ruining her for future normal family life as wife and mother.
CARAVAGGIO Her mother, a simple woman from Siena and much distressed, came crying to me about what I was doing to her daughter. Pasqualone spread the rumor that I was a dissolute painter, a devil who preyed upon young boys and girls like Lena. I asked the mother who told her those lies and she named Pasqualone. I knew about him. We all knew there were too many lawyers in Rome butting into the private lives of people.
HOST Lawyering was traditional in Rome. Ancient Roman lawyers, especially Cicero, were famous for their oratory in exercising Rome’s Corpus Juris.
CARAVAGGIO Outraged I planned revenge. I told her mother that I’d take care of him and that he would not bother her anymore. Several days later I happened to encounter him in the marketplace. I came up behind him and delivered a blow to his head with the hilt of my sword.
HOST You delivered a blow? Witnesses reported you split open his head and that his neck and back were covered with blood. That a cowardly thing to do.
CARAVAGGIO He lied about me and didn’t deserve a warning. He ran into the nearest barbershop to get his head wound dressed.
HOST Today we would call you a Mafia thug or assassin.
CARAVAGGIO Assassino! (Assassin! He draws his dagger and approaches the HOST. The two doormen restrain him.)
HOST Calmo, calmo. It was just a mindless remark. I apologize. (Caravaggio returns to his seat.) What happened after that?
CARAVAGGIO He filed a complaint against me. The police arrested me and locked me up in the Tor di Nona prison.
HOST I must ask you this. Wasn’t there a time in your life when you got tired of arguing, fighting, getting arrested and thrown into prison? If Pasqualone died of his wound you could have been tried for murder and hanged.
CARAVAGGIO Fortunately del Monte and his friends bailed me out. To avoid arrest I fled from the court’s jurisdiction to the Dukedom of Genoa.
HOST The birthplace of Ottavio Costa and Vincenzo Giustiniani. Did they arrange your escape?
CARAVAGGIO At that time Costanza Colonna Marchesa di Caravaggio was in Rome taking care of business. She arranged for me to stay at the palazzo of her niece the Princess of Genoa.
HOST When you didn’t appear for the hearing, the court held you in contempt and issued a warrant for your rearrest.
CARAVAGGIO During my three weeks there Prince Marcantonio Doria wanted me to paint a fresco for him. He offered me the enormous sum of 6,000 scudi but I had to refuse.
HOST What? You refused the biggest offer ever made? Your decision was incomprehensible.
CARAVAGGIO I don’t like painting frescoes. Meantime I got word that Cardinal Borghese intervened on my behalf and assured me of a peaceful return to Rome. After a month in Genoa I returned to Rome. I negotiated a settlement with Pasqualone and he dropped all charges against me. It was a costly settlement that nearly bankrupted me.
HOST All the more reason you should have painted the fresco in Genoa. You could have paid off Pasqualone and lived as a rich man at least for a while.
CARAVAGGIO I didn’t realize that settling with Pasqualone would cost me as much as it did.
HOST In Rome again you immediately got into trouble with your landlady Prudenzia Bruni. You owed her six months back rent.
CARAVAGGIO But I was away in Genoa.
HOST She got a court order to recover from you 80 scudi back rent.
CARAVAGGIO I didn’t have the money because of the big settlement with Pasqualone. I was nearly destitute. Unable to pay she obtained a warrant to confiscate my clothes, furniture, my painting materials, and paintings.
HOST The warrant included the damage you did to a ceiling in her house. Why did you damage her ceiling?
CARAVAGGIO I needed more light for my paintings, so I made a big hole in her ceiling and roof.
HOST You actually broke through her ceiling and roof for more light?
CARAVAGGIO Good painters know how to use light. Only pure transparent light shows true colors. Light passing from the sun into a room may become infected with extraneous colors that change the colors of a painting.
HOST What about rain?
CARAVAGGIO I climbed on the roof and covered the hole.
HOST Angered at her court order you threw stones at her window. When she came out to see who was throwing stones, you threw stones at her hitting her leg.
CARAVAGGIO Enraged I threw stones at her window breaking the window parchment, shutter, and Venetian blind. She had me arrested and I was charged with menacing her, destroying her property, and disturbing the peace. When her neighbors were asked to testify against me they said they saw and heard nothing.
HOST We also have a code of silence in America especially among blacks, immigrants, and Sicilians. The court found you guilty of disturbing the peace and destroying property. It ordered you to pay a fine. You were spending all your hard-earned money settling lawsuits and paying fines. Didn’t you realize your poverty was due to your anger, getting into trouble, paying fines and making settlements with those you assaulted or damaged?
CARAVAGGIO Evicted from her house I found myself homeless for the first time since I arrived in Rome 13 years ago. (1592)
HOST Did you live in the streets again?
CARAVAGGIO My friends helped me with temporary shelter and food. I picked mushrooms in wooded areas like parks.
HOST Some mushrooms are poisonous.
CARAVAGGIO I knew which ones to pick. Growing up in Caravaggio my mother taught me which mushrooms to pick.
HOST Obviously mushrooms didn’t kill you but exotic spores might have damaged your brain as did lead.
CARAVAGGIO I have no knowledge of that.
HOST One night in October a policeman encountered you in a street. Seriously wounded you were bleeding profusely.
CARAVAGGIO When the policeman encountered me I was on my to my friend Andrea Ruffetti’s house to have my wounds dressed. The next day the policeman arrested me. In court the policeman testified he thought I was wounded in an illegal sword fight with an unknown brawler. I told the court that during the night I got up to urinate, tripped over my rug, and fell on my sword.
HOST An improbable story. If you tripped over your rug, what were you doing in the street?
CARAVAGGIO I just told you, on my way to my friend’s house to get my wounds dressed. The court rejected my story concluding that I was drunk, got into a sword fight, and was seriously wounded. The court fined me the enormous sum 500 scudi.
HOST It was reported you got a large fine because the police knew of your reputation for getting into trouble. They were trying to send you a message to mange your anger, stop your rage, and stop fighting like a maniac.
CARAVAGGIO (Stands brandishing his sword at the HOST) You call me ‘un maniaco’! (a maniac). I am Michelanelo Merisi da Caravaggio and I defend my honor in Rome and elsewhere.
HOST What was the source of your anger? It erupted like a volcano. (no response) Even with all your misfortunes, you had three more encounters that year, two with artists and one with a cavaliere on horseback. You were out-of-control. You next got into trouble with the artist Guido Reni.
CARAVAGGIO My rival Giuseppe Cesari, now Cavaliere d’Arpino, persuaded the Bolognese painter Guido Reni to come to Rome to give me competiton. Reni studied my paintings in order to copy my style.
HOST When Saint Peter’s Basilica was to be decorated, Guido Reni and Domenico Passignano were among the painters who were awarded commissions.
CARAVAGGIO I was bypassed because I did not comply with the pope’s edicts. When decorating churches cardinals chose painters from their hometowns. I was a better painter than any of them, yet wasn’t offered a commission. When I encountered Reni in the street I challenged him to a duel.
HOST Your jealousy turned to anger and revenge? Why would you threaten Reni’s life and yours over a commission?
CARAVAGGIO Reni declined my challenge. To avoid confrontation and possible harm to himself, Reni instead copied Giuseppe’s style of classical religious painting.
HOST What about Passignano?
CARAVAGGIO When I heard he also got a commission I strapped on my sword and entered Saint Peter’s Basilsica.
HOST No one with a sword was allowed to enter a church, an act strictly forbidden, especially in Saint Peter’s.
CARAVAGGIO When I found the studio tent in which Passignano was working I slashed it to pieces with my sword. Unfortunately he was not inside.
HOST Unfortunately? You could have killed or maimed him, an innocent painter just doing his job.
CARAVAGGIO A job I should have had.
HOST After that outburst of temper painters, clergy, and others in Rome took sides for and against you. They were fearful of your volcanic temper and sword. Many called you irascible, an incorrigible mad man. Even your good friends such as Mario Minniti feared your wilding episodes. You then had an encounter with your old employer Giuseppe Cesari now the Papal Knight Cavaliere d’Arpino.
CARAVAGGIO I was walking in an alley when a knight mounted on his horse forced me to step aside to allow him to pass. I recognized Cavaliere d’Arpino. Enraged that he forced me aside, thereby paying homage to his new status as knight, I drew my sword and challenged him to a duel. In passing he refused my challenge. He mocked me declaring that as Papal Knight he wouldn’t debase himself by dueling me because of my inferior rank. Spurring his horse he trotted away. Humiliated I ran after him brandishing my sword and shouting obscenities at him. I was the most famous painter in Rome and he dismissed me as a common laborer.
HOST Because of your uncontrolled anger you were arrested about a dozen times between the 7 years 1598-1605. For most of those arrests you were imprisoned, on various charges including brawling, assault, sword fighting, insulting policemen, and destroying property. You were making good money but had to spend most of it paying fines and settling lawsuits. None of your arrests were for extorting or stealing money or even schemes for making money. You were arrested because you couldn’t control your temper, your eruptive anger.
CARAVAGGIO I was more interested in my honor than in money. My Rome was not the tolerant ancient Rome.
HOST About your anger, what was bugging you?
CARAVAGGIO What? Are you accusing me of being a bugger?
HOST Sorry, I chose the wrong word. But even your faithful and generous patron del Monte remarked that you were a ‘disturbed man’. Some contemporaries refererred to you as ‘salvatico’ an incorrigible wild man.
CARAVAGGIO I’m a man who defends his integrity and honor.
HOST After that encounter Ottavio Costa commissioned you to paint John Baptist with Staff and Bowl. In the painting, your fourth John, he is again a seminude figure and again wrapped in your signature voluminous red drapery. He’s gazing at something to his left that’s not in the painting. Above the staff and bowl is what looks like the trunk of a gnarled oak, not clearly visible in the dark.
CARAVAGGIO I finished it quickly to begin the important altarpiece Madonna and Serpent.
HOST Pope Paul 5 observed that Constantine the Great’s ancient basilica was crumbling and had to be destroyed. Constantine the Great, the 13th apostle, was benefactor, banker, and founder of organized papal Christianism.
CARAVAGGIO The old altar of that basilica, the altar of the Palafrenieri, was saved and moved to Saint Peter’s Basilica.
HOST What or who are the Palafrenieri.
CARAVAGGIO They are Papal Grooms, gentlemen attendants for papal ceremonies. del Monte and Giustiniani recommended that I paint the new altarpiece Madonna and Serpent. Cardinal Ascanio Colonna, brother of Costanza Colonna and Protector of the Confraternity of Santa Anna dei Palafrenieri, also suggested I paint it. The two were instrumental in awarding me that prestigious commission of 200 scudi for the new altarpiece.
HOST At last you were commissioned for a painting in Saint Peter’s.
CARAVAGGIO The old pope Clement 8 despised me because I ignored his edicts for painters. The new pope Paul 5 was uncle to Cardinal Scipione Borghese one of my ardent art patrons. He recommended me even though I was recuperating from my wounds at the house of my friend Andrea Ruffetti. I began preliminary sketches on vellum at Ruffetti’s house.
HOST The altarpiece is one of your biggest paintings about 8x10 feet. Out of the darkness of the fall of man it shows the Madonna, infant Jesus, and Anne her mother. The Madonna’s head and neck appear to be awkwardly portrayed hovering over large breasts popping out form her gown. Also the uncircumcised naked Jesus looks too tall.
CARAVAGGIO I used Lena as model for the Madonna. She used her two-year old son as model for the infant, the result of her affair with one of her favorite lovers.
HOST Why did you paint Jesus uncircumcised.
CARAVAGGIO Long ago the papacy proclaimed the Son of God cannot be altered or reduced.
HOST They’re stepping on the evil serpent that tricked Eve but there appears to be a second serpent emerging from the darkness or possibly from under Anne’s gown. Are they stepping on one or two serpents?
CARAVAGGIO (impatiently) What’s wrong with you? I painted Madonna and Serpent, not serpents. Only one serpent tricked Eve.
HOST Anne emerges from the darkness of the painting. She appears as a giantess dressed in a dark gown. Your too tall Anne has the dark skin of a mulatto. She’s a giantess towering over her daughter thereby detracting from her daughter’s significance as mother of the Son of God. You painted the Madonna, toddler Jesus, and her mother Anne as ordinary humans absent the appropriate reverent raiment due them.
CARAVAGGIO But I did paint fine line halos around their heads to distinguish them from ordinary humans.
HOST Apparently that wasn’t enough. The Palafrenieri rejected your Madonna because they recognized her as a local prostitute.
CARAVAGGIO Of course, they were among her best customers.
HOST Insulted by your irreverence the altarpiece was never officially installed.
CARAVAGGIO Indignant I raved at their censorship. It remained on the altar of the Palafrenieri in Saint Peter’s until transferred to the Confraternita di Santa Anna Church where priests also rejected it for the same reasons.
HOST You liked to paint nude males whether adolescent or mature but why did you paint Jesus a naked toddler?
CARAVAGGIO Why wrap a toddler in clothes like an adult?
HOST You always painted John Baptist nude or seminuide.
CARAVAGGIO I painted him in the wilderness, not in Rome.
HOST Critics declared that unlike Giorgione you painted the divine as humans, without divine light from above or the usual sophistication of coloring. Dark backgrounds favor Satan and detracts from divinity.
CARAVAGGIO I didn’t use artistic tricks of coloring or artificial ornamentation.
HOST Are you declaring Giorgione used artistic tricks to sell his paintings?
CARAVAGGIO I’m telling you what I did.
HOST Many famous painters had one or more of their paintings rejected. Between the years 1601-1606 you unfortunately had at least six paintings rejected because they were considered vulgar, too much humanity not enough divinity.
CARAVAGGIO My rejected paintings were quickly sold to art lovers, my admirers and patrons.
HOST You received payment for the altarpiece and even signed the receipt, only one of several times you signed anything.
CARAVAGGIO When Cardinal Scipione Borghese heard about the rejected altarpiece he offered 100 scudi and bought it for his own private collection.
HOST I read that the Palafrenieri were happy to get rid of it.
(1610)HOST In 1606 you were 35 and in a swordfight in May you unfortunately killed a man.
CARAVAGGIO I’d been painting for months so before I began another painting I decided to gather my friends and go into the streets for some diversion.
HOST It was a decision most momentous and tragic. We now come to the Sunday evening in May that turned you into an assassin and fugitive. You and your gang of friends Onorio Longhi, soldier friend Troppa Petronio, and Mario Minniti cruised the streets of Rome’s ‘campi di tennis’ (tennis courts). You went from one tennis court to another looking to play a game or wager on one. You encountered Ranuccio Tomassoni and his gang including his soldier brother Giovan Francesco and his two brothers-in-law. The police knew of both gangs for their brawling, gambling, and arguing over whores. There was bad blood between gangs because you lost a bet to Tomassoni and hadn’t paid him.
CARAVAGGIO When I encountered Tomassoni in the ‘campi di tennis’ I challenged him to a game of court tennis, double or nothing. The game was tied when he hit a foul ball called fair; it happened to be his winning point. I protested but he insisted he won. My friends and I ridiculed the bad call and so did most of the spectators but he and his friends cheered. I refused to pay off and we argued. I hit him with my racket and he struck me with his racket. We were ejected from the court.
HOST I understand you continued to argue in the street over your model Fillide.
CARAVAGGIO Tomassoni accused me of trying to come between him and Fillide, his girlfriend at that ime, so I could have her for myself. I retorted that he sometimes pimped for her and we also argued over that. We exchanged obscenities. The argument became a fistfight and then a swordfight, Tomassoni’s gang against my gang. I dueled with Tomassoni. The two soldiers fought each other and Longhi fought with one of Tomassoni’s brothers-in-law. There were serious wounds on each side. Nearby Mario Minniti wisely separated himself from the swordfight.
HOST According to my notes witnesses told police that you thrust your sword into Tomassoni’s groin and he fell mortally wounded.
CARAVAGGIO I was defending my honor. I had no intention of killing him. It was an accidental killing and I was also wounded.
HOST Accidental? Sword fighting kills people.
CARAVAGGIO When Tomassoni fell bleeding we all ran away. He died that night. Doctors said he bled to death from a severed artery and separated genitals. Unable to escape, his wounded brother-in-law was questioned by police and he told them what happened. The police questioned me. Because I admitted nothing they confined me to house arrest under penalty of imprisonment and a huge fine.
HOST The next month you and your friends were found guilty of sword fighting. In Rome Tomassoni’s family was supported by the Farnese Spanish faction; you were supported by the del Monte French faction. The Tomassoni family had above average social standing and several newspapers called you a murderer. Murder was a capital offense punishable by hanging.
CARAVAGGIO del Monte advised me to go south to the hill country, about 30 miles southwest of Rome, where the Colonnas had their summer palazzi to escape the heat of Rome and Naples.
HOST Fearing arrest, imprisonment, and possible hanging you and your entire gang fled Rome. A few minutes of sword fighting made you a criminal and fugitive painter. Longhi fled to Milan and volunteered to fight for France against Spain, which still occupied Milan. Minniti and his wife fled to Siracusa his hometown in Sicily.
CARAVAGGIO del Monte advised me to find Duke Marzio Colonna’s fortress palazzo in Zagarolo. He was the cousin of Marchesa Costanza Colonna. del Monte also mentioned the hill towns Palestrina and Paliano. We quickly gathered our personal things and fled south.
HOST We, who are we?
CARAVAGGIO I took Cecco with me. In Zagarolo the duke gave me refuge and I began the long recovery from my wounds. To avoid capture I moved around sojourning in the Colonna palazzi. In Paliano Filipo Colonna gave us refuge. He was the marchesa’s nephew and Duke of Paliano. It was there I fully recovered from my wounds and was able to keep busy painting. Before the Tomassoni fight I received a contrat from Ottavio Costa to paint a second and more traditional version of Supper at Emmaus.
HOST In Paliano you spent the summer on two paintings, your second version of Supper at Emmaus and Magdalen in Ecstasy. In Supper at Emmaus Jesus looks more like the thin traditional Jesus with beard. Your odd lighting reveals that out of the darkness Jesus is having supper with two of his disciples. They’re seated at a table not set as lavishly as in the first painting. Standing are the innkeeper still wearing a Yarmulke and probably his wife whose head is also covered. Their torsos are partially lighted and they appear to be floating in air.
CARAVAGGIO Not true, their bodies are obscured by the table and disciple seated at right. When finished I sent the painting to Rome hoping Ottavio Costa would buy it.
HOST You also painted Magdalen in Ecstasy. Who was the model?
CARAVAGGIO I painted Lena from memory.
HOST In the painting Magdalen is reclining on a couch. Her full sensual lips envelop her open mouth that reveals the tips of her top front teeth. Her partially closed eyes reveal she’s in a state of neurotic seizure of religious ecstasy because her open blouse doesn’t reveal cleavage. She might be listening to choirs of angels singing the Magnificat hymn in praise of the Virgin Mary.
CARAVAGGIO I’ve never experienced religious ecstasy and know nothing of that hymn.
HOST Her composure is amenable to sexual or religious ecstasy. Do you think pedophile priests experience both?
CARAVAGGIO It’s possible. Ecstasy is part of nature.
HOST Scattered on the floor are her discarded worldly goods, items of the vanity of her former promiscuous life. Is there any truth to the story that a cartoonist from Calabria sketched Magdalen catching flies with her open mouth?
CARAVAGGIO Calabria is known for its intense hot sunny days and hot spicy food which attracts flies. In the blistering noonday sun Calabrese need to keep their mouths shut to avoid breathing in flies. If that cartoonist were in Naples, I’d teach him how to catch a blow from the hilt of my sword.
HOST It’s written you painted more than one copy of Magdalen and that Caravaggisti painted many copies, even more copies than Cardsharps.
CARAVAGGIO Do you have any of those copies?
HOST No, I have only a color print of your Magdalen. That summer news reached Paliano that a Papal Tribunal charged you with murder and in absentia condemned you to death. Because the murder occurred in Rome where the pope ruled, anyone capturing you there or in papal territory had the right to capture you for reward or to kill you.
CARAVAGGIO But I also got good news. Ottavio Costa bought my Supper at Emmaus and sent me much needed money.
HOST It appears that each move south to a Colonna palace moved you closer to Naples.
CARAVAGGIO It was in Paliano that Filipo Colonna received a letter from the marchesa inviting me to Naples. She was at the Carafa family’s Cellamare palace on the Riviera Chiaia while negotiating with the Spanish Viceroy to buy a feudal estate. The marchesa suggested I’d be safer in Naples beyond the jurisdiction of the pope.
HOST It was common knowledge that Filipo was very friendly with cardinals and the pope.
CARAVAGGIO To avoid the embarrassment of harboring a fugitive Filipo agreed with his aunt and advised me to go to Naples. He was kind enough to give me part of his armed guard to protect me while traveling over the treacherous mountain roads harboring banditti waiting to rob and if encounters demanded kill travelers. I took the Magdalen painting with me to Naples.
HOST I need to check my notes to refresh my memory. To protect Christians from the Turks, Spain ruled Naples and Sicily, sometimes called the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. In Naples a viceroy represented the King of Spain and ruled Naples and Sicily. Is that right?
CARAVAGGIO Spain was careful not to call its Italian territory the Kingdom of Naples because popes were fearful its boundary might intrude upon the papal territory around Rome.
HOST At that time the Spanish Viceroy was Count de Benevente. I understand that Naples with about 250,000 population was much larger than Rome, second only to Paris among European cities.
CARAVAGGIO Naples had more banditti, lazzaroni (unemployed males), and prostitutes than Rome. But most depressing, scattered in the streets, were the sight and stench of dead Neapolitans who died from starvation.
HOST More starvation than in Rome?
CARAVAGGIO Much more because the Spanish viceroy ordered his soldiers to confiscate most of the grain grown on local farms. No grain, no bread. Neapolitans spoke a dialect mixed with Italian, Spanish, French, and occasonally Greek. I got along with Neapolitans by bastardizing my northern dialect.
HOST In my country northerners sometimes have a slight problem with certain southerners speaking with local drawling idioms. For example in the north cattle are fed in the ‘feed barn’. In the south cattle are fade in the ‘fade barn’.
CARAVAGGIO In Naples the marchesa was friendly with the Spanish Viceroy, Fra’ Ippolito Malaspina Prior of the Knights of Malta in Naples, and of course she was close to her cousin Ascanio Costanza Cardinal Protector of Naples.
HOST It was fortunate for you that the Costanzas were politically powerful throughout Italy and especially in Naples. Obviously it was much safer in Naples than in Rome. You had the good fortune of knowing powerful aristocrats who protected and nurtured you.
CARAVAGGIO The Marchesa was helpful in getting me several painting commissions from her friends. Nicolò Radolovich commissioned me to paint an altarpiece showing the Madonna and infant surrounded by angels above her and saints around her. I requested and received from Radolovich an advance payment of 200 ducats.
HOST That was a greater amount than you got for some of your finished paintings. Why did he reject the altarpiece?
CARAVAGGIO I didn’t paint enough flying angels hovering over the Madonna and not enough divine light spotlighting her.
HOST What happened to the altarpiece?
CARAVAGGIO I don’t know.
HOST Did he demand you paint a second version?
CARAVAGGIO Yes but I had already spent all the money and he refused to advance me more.
HOST While you were in Naples, Baglione in Rome complained to police he was attacked by two men after attending Mass. He believed you sent them to kill him in what we call a hit job.
CARAVAGGIO Nonsense! I was in Naples painting for the locals.
HOST Neapolitans were appreciative of having a great painter in their presence. The Congregation of Pio Monte della Misericordia in Naples gave you a commission for a large altarpiece, the Seven Acts of Mercy. Each act is one of compassion – feeding the hungry, slaking one’s thirst, clothing the naked, sheltering pilgrims, nursing the sick, visiting prisoners, burying the dead. It’s a very busy painting featuring a dozen or so figures aganst your ever-present dark background. Feet and hands are scattered throughout and at bottom center a leg and someone’s foot emerge from the dark. At mid-right is an old man who looks like he squeezed his head through prison bars to feed at the full breast of a young woman.
CARAVAGGIO She’s his daughter feeding her hungry old father.
HOST At top center the Madonna and child witness the below multiple merciful acts. They appear to have been transported on the backs of two male angels whose wings envelop them. The Madonna’s face looks like that of your Roman model Lena. Did she follow you to Naples?
CARAVAGGIO She’s not Lena; she’s a prostitute I picked up walking the street.
HOST You again used a prostitute for the Madonna?
CARAVAGGIO I had to find a different face for the Madonna.
HOST Unlike the Romans who would have rejected it, Neapolitans happily accepted the altarpiece.
CARAVAGGIO Neapolitans were socially and religiously more liberal than Romans. I worked feverishly on it in order to be in a position to escape if found by bounty hunters. I believe I finished it in January 1607 and was paid 400 ducats.
HOST Thereafter you accepted a commission from Cesare d’Este, Duke of Modena for an altarpiece for his chapel. Through his agent Fabio Masetti you requested a down payment and he paid you. For the next two years you kept requesting more and more money down payments and Masetti continued to pay hoping you’d finish the painting. You spent the money but never delivered the altarpiece.
CARAVAGGIO In desperate need of money I finished instead several smaller paintings.
HOST Did you ever return the down payments?
CARAVAGGIO I spent the money. Meanwhile I got a commission for a larger altarpiece.
HOST Was it for Madonna of the Rosary?
CARAVAGGIO Saint Dominic dreamed that the Madonna gave him a necklace of roses. Dominicans later converted the necklace to a set of ‘rosary beads’ for praying ‘Hail Mary’ to the Madonna.
HOST The painting is busied with worshippers in a free-for-all competition for sets of rosary beads. The central figure is the Madonna who appears to be seated with the infant Jesus hanging onto to the Madonna’s neck. His legs are between her knees. Is he standing on a support of some kind?
CARAVAGGIO It’s obvious he’s holding onto her neck.
HOST He must have been a super-strong infant to support himself with only one arm around her neck. The infant looks directly at the beggars probably wondering why they’re there. He appears to be rubbing his tummy from drinking too much of this mother’s milk.
CARAVAGGIO Be careful. I don’t tolerate insulting remarks about my paintings.
HOST The Madonna is instructing Saint Dominic in the distribution of sets of rosary beads to begging worshippers. She looks bored as the infant Jesus wonders what’s going on. Large folds of your ubiquitous red drapery hover above them. At the mid-right border are two men but only one arm. Whose arm is it?
CARAVAGGIO I warn you that you’ll pay dearly if continue to mock me.
HOST I question you merely for information and have no intention of mocking you. By the way who posed for the round-faced Madonna?
CARAVAGGIO I hired a Neapolitan whore who was unfortunately recognized by locals. They complained to the Dominican friars who rejected the altarpiece. I tried to sell it but couldn’t find a buyer. I delivered it to a Neapolitan art dealer hoping he could sell it.
HOST Why didn’t you send it to the duke, Cesare d’Este, who gave you multiple down payments for an altarpiece?
CARAVAGGIO It wasn’t what the duke ordered.
HOST You also put out for sale your second version of Judith Beheading Holofernes. You painted also your second version of David with Head of Goliath using oil on wood. In the painting a handsome mature David with bare shoulder and breast, holds his sword over his right shoulder while his extended left arm holds out the decapitated head of Goliath for all Jews to see.
CARAVAGGIO You probably noticed that Goliath’s severed head is not a copy of my head. I hired a model; male models were cheaper in Naples.
HOST Although you were a fugitive in Naples it didn’t stop you from producing a great many paintings. You painted two versions of Jesus Whipped. In each version the homeless preaching rabbi Jesus has the thick muscular torso of an athlete or gladiator. Today he’d be considered a body builder. In the first and larger version there’s a whipper at each side and Jesus’ left breast looks like that of a woman. The three figures are the same models in each version. For Count de Benevente, Spanish Viceroy of Naples you painted Andrew Crucified.
CARAVAGGIO At that time I believe I painted also Peter’s Denial.
HOST A fugitive under sentence of death, you continued to create many paintings whereas most men enduring such emotional stress would be productively impotent. I recall that our President Richard Nixon under criminal indictment could not perform his duties and had to resign.
CARAVAGGIO He hadn’t the personal integrity to defend his honor.
HOST When the damsel Salome danced for Herod he was so appreciative he offered her the reward of anything she wanted. Her mother Herodias told her to ask for the head of John Baptist on a tray. The Salome you painted looks a litle older than a damsel.
CARAVAGGIO I used a young whore as Salome.
HOST In the painting’s brooding darkness of decapitation, Salome looks away from the severed head of John as if to separate herself from the beheading. For all to see the executioner holds upright the still dripping severed head of John over a tray. He’s one of the whippers shown in Jesus Whipped. In the dark there’s a grieving old woman beside Salome.
CARAVAGGIO In the meantime I got word about the confiscation of my paintings from the Cavaliere d’Arpino. Recall that when I recovered from the horse kick I had to leave my paintings Boy Peeling Fruit, Boy with Basket of Fruit, and Sick Bacchus with Giuseppe Cesari.
HOST You departed his studio about 14 yeaars ago. Did Rome give a reason for the recent confiscation?
CARAVAGGIO When Pope Clement 8 made Giuseppe Cesari the Cavaliere d’Arpino, the pope expected him to pay papal taxes euphemistically called donations. Cavaliere d’Arpino failed to pay his taxes, that is to make the expected donations. It happened that the cavaliere collected harquebuses which were unlawful. Compensating for unpaid taxes, Pope Paul 5 confiscated his harquebuses and paintings. He gave the paintings to his nephew Cardinal Scipione.
CARAVAGGIO One of my most ardent patrons.
HOST About that time was another unusal event. The marchesa was visited by the Maltese Knight envoy of Alof de Wignacourt, Grand Master of the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem headquartered in Valletta, Malta.
CARAVAGGIO The marchesa full of pro forma breeding graciously received the envoy.
HOST The knights were a prestigious military-religious order with roots going back to the beginning of the Crusades (1099). They maintained hospitals for Christian civilians, crusaders, and Knights wounded in battle fighting the Muslim Turks. Later they were also called Knights Hospitalers. At that time Maltese Knights represented Europe’s nobility and had a pope’s approval and blessing. Not even a pope would venture to arrest one of his honored Knights of Malta.
CARAVAGGIO The Maltese, Sicilians, and Neapolitans appreciated the Knights because they protected them from raids by Turks and pirates. Most nobles in Malta spoke Italian and ruled the civilian population of about 50,000.
HOST When Knights completed their tours of duty or resigned they normally returned to their birthplaces and sent to Malta part of their noble revenues. That’s why a knight had to be a noble. Only nobles earned enough revenue to support the Knights of Malta.
CARAVAGGIO Wignacourt’s envoy told the marchesa about the decoration of the Cathedral of Saint John in Valletta. Aware of my presence in Naples the envoy requested that I be allowed to help decorate the cathedral. The marchesa agreeing with the request suggested I go to Malta. Her son Fabrizio was already a Knight of Malta and could help me in my new venture. I confided to the marchesa my secret desire to become a Knight as had Giuseppe Cesari and other painters.
HOST Speaking of her son Farbizio I have several notes about him. You and he have something in common. In Italy he had been accused of killing a man in a duel and during the investigation fled to Malta. Being nobly born he joined the Knights of Malta. An inquisition recommended a papl pardon but recommended Fabrizio remain in Malta for several more years to expiate the sin of his crime. Later Fabrizio was made Commander of Galleys of the Maltese Navy. The galleys protected Malta and coastal cities and towns of southern Italy and Sicily from raids by Barbary pirates and Turks. In sacking coastal cities and towns pirates and Turks captured men for slave markets and women for prostitution.
CARAVAGGIO I hoped Fabrizio’s influence could help me become a Knight of Malta. Knighthood would privilege me to visit Rome and as Fra’ Michelangelo Merisi perhaps restore my honor and good name.
HOST But only persons of documented noble birth could become Knights. You were a commoner determined to be a noble.
CARAVAGGIO I was determined to be a Knight as had Cesari and other painters made knights by proclamation of the pope.
HOST They were Papal Knights, not the prestigious Knights of Malta whose founders fought in the Crusades to defend Christianity.
CARAVAGGIO Soon after the envoy’s visit, galleys of the Maltese navy arrived in Bay of Naples. Galleys in colorful splendor were scattered over the bay. Visible were the glorious long and narrow galleys with rows of oars, their hulls painted red and gold and their sails colorfully striped. We could see hundreds of marines, soldier-sailor Knights, and below rows of slave oarsmen. Commander Fabrizio visited his mother for a few days while the galleys were being provisioned for the sail to Genoa. She suggested I go along on Fabrizio’s galley to accept Alof’s offer and because of my interest in becoming a Knight. On Fabrizio’s galley I was welcomed by Fra’ Ippolito Malaspina prior of the Knights in Naples. We spent several days in Genoa and after the festivities returned to Valetta, Malta after spending about 10 months in Naples. I was welcomed by Grand Master Alof Wignacourt who assigned me to a convent room. I was given meals and a small salary in return for my help in decorating the cathedral.
HOST You were a fugitive yet were welcomed by Wignacourt? From notes I have, I can assure you that Wignacourt was a seasoned soldier and experienced leader who knew how to handle men. Was he aware that you were a fugitive under penalty of death?
CARAVAGGIO I didn’t know if he knew. Whether he knew, he was the one who requested my services to decorate a cathedral.
HOST By the way the art dealer in Naples sold your two paintings Madonna of the Rosary and Judith Beheading Holofernes to the painter Louis Finson who took them back to the Netherlands. In Valletta your fame spread throughout the city where an unnamed artist sketched your portrait. It’s a chalk portrait that portrays you as a man with the agonized troubled look of a worried fugitive waiting for either a pardon or death. Do you remember that artist?
CARAVAGGIO I don’t recall posing for anyone. Perhaps he sketched it from memory.
HOST In February 1608 Wignacourt had his secretary write a letter to Pope Paul 5. The letter requested the pope’s dispensation from the prerequisite of ‘documented proof of nobility’ in order to receive an unnamed famous painter and worthy soul into the Order of Saint John Knights of Jerusalem. He must have known you were a fugitive because he didn’t mention your name. Of course the pope, Cardinal Borghese, and others knew you were that famous painter and worthy soul.
CARAVAGGIO Later I was given the good news that the pope granted me the requested dispensation.
HOST Even though you were a commoner you were accepted as a noble novice for knighthood.
CARAVAGGIO Having engaged in penitential acts for my sins I completed a year’s novitiate. I took my vows of chastity and obedience to Catholic doctrine and dogma.
HOST What’s the difference?
CARAVAGGIO Doctrine is Church authorized precepts such as baptism; doctrine might be challenged or revised. Dogma is Church authorized revelation from God, like the Incarnation of Blessed Virgin Mary; dogma cannot be challenged or revised.
HOST I’m surprised you know that.
CARAVAGGIO Long ago in Caravaggio I learned it in catechism class and had to repeat it when I took my vows. In July 1608 Wignacourt bestowed upon me the honor of Knight of Obedience in the Order of Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem. Having been ordained a Knight of Obedience, I became Brother Caravaggio in traditional monk’s habit, the black choir mantle.
HOST What would your wild Roman brawlers and friends think of Brother Caravaggio in monk’s habit?
CARAVAGGIO At the end of the year Wignacourt asked me to paint a portrait of him with his page. I happily agreed.
HOST Some critics declared the painitng should not have included an innocent young boy next to a soldier wearing armor and ready to kill.
CARAVAGGIO Wignacourt insisted on the armor and page.
HOST You painted Alof in his shining armor with the determined look of authority on his face. He holds the baton, the symbol of absolute authority. Alof had a large wart on his nose. You didn’t paint the wart but you painted a small tear on the nose of Penitent Magdalen.
CARAVAGGIO I’m not a fool.
HOST His page wears the Maltese Cross a symbol of privilege. After painting Wignacourt and page you took on your largest painting of all, John Baptist Beheaded.
CARAVAGGIO Saint John Baptist is the Knights’ patron saint. In appreciation of my knighthood I painted the altarpiece John Baptist Beheaded for Saint John’s Cathedral in Valletta.
HOST What does in appreciation mean? Did you get paid?
CARAVAGGIO You know among our many problems about painting is the problem of language. I told you I painted it to show Alof my ‘appreciation and gratitude’ for knighthood.
HOST In the painting darkness totally surrounds the figures of women, jailer, executioner, and John being held supine on the killing ground of Herod’s prison. The executioner having severed John’s head discarded his sword on the ground. He holds a dagger in his hand ready to butcher John’s neck bones to sever his head from his neck. It’s a gruesome sight.
CARAVAGGIO Martyrdom is a gruesome business.
HOST Out of the foredooming darkness of martyrdom you painted figures in the left center foreground. Balancing those figures are the darkly painted heads of two jailers in the right background. They witness the execution from the opening in the prison wall. Is one of those faces yours?
CARAVAGGIO You’re asking me irrelevant questions about facts I can’t recall.
HOST The painting portrays the ultimate sacrifice of their patron saint, John Baptist.
CARAVAGGIO Martyrdom assures eternal rest in heaven. That’s something I don’t expect.
HOST That painting of John is your biggest about 12x17 feet. Where did you get a canvas that big?
CARAVAGGIO Your question reveals you don’t know much about painting. There aren’t looms that big. Canvas has to be pieced together, the seams smoothed out, and the whole covered with several prime coats.
HOST It’s the only painting on which you signed your full name.
CARAVAGGIO Wignacourt insisted that I sign it that way.
HOST You signed just below the blood flowing from John’s butchered neck. Today after all the years of exibition your signature is barely visible. Did you sign your full name?
CARAVAGGIO Do you expect me to remember how I signed my name?
HOST Your signature is barely visible in my color print. It’s F Michel or F Michel Angelo or something like that. Did the F represent ‘fra’ for brother. or ‘fare’ as the maker of the painting?
CARAVAGGIO Does it matter? F can be for ‘Fra’ or for ‘fare’ as the maker of the painting? It’s probably the reason I used the F.
HOST Why didn’t you sign all your paintings?
CARAVAGGIO I told you my style is my signature. Any painter who looks at any of my paintings knows I’m the painter.
HOST As Brother Caravaggio you became a new man, a gentleman, an accomplished and skillful man, the equal of any man.
CARAVAGGIO ‘Un valentuomo’ (skillfull man), I was the equal of any man and perhaps surpassed Cavaliere d’Arpino. Recall he was my employer who became a knight, the knight on horseback who treated me as a servant when he forced me to step aside to allow him to pass.
HOST In appreciation of your large altarpice Wignacourt bestowed on you the honored 8-point Maltese white cross of privilege to front your black habit. He also gifted you with the added honor of a heavy gold chain to be worn as a necklace. Additionally he gave you two boy slaves to service you as befits a nobleman.
CARAAGGIO I was the equal of any Maltese Knight and certainly above Cavaliere d’Arpino.
HOST For brother knight Fra Francesco dell’Antella you painted Cupid Sleeping, a very odd painting. In the painting Cupid is a puzzling figure. He has the face of what looks like a very young boy on an old body. You had a habit of painting quirks of sexual identity such as androgyny, Jesus as a woman, and John Baptist as sexual adventurer. In Cupid Sleeping you painted a quirk of aging; you painted a senescent toddler.
CARAVAGGIO Being a Knight Fra dell’Antella took vows of obedience and chastity. I painted Cupid Sleeping because he put aside his bow and arrows of physical love in favor of spiritual love. Cupid’s aging body reveals that transition.
HOST Are those streaks of white floating in the stark dark background the edges of Cupid’s wings?
CARAVAGGIO Do you expect me to remember every brushstroke? Cupid has wings even when sleeping.
HOST The Cupid you painted is much too young to know anything about love, physical or spiritual. Was it your last secular painting.
CARAVAGGIO I don’t remember; I’m not an auttuario (record keeper).
HOST At this point we encounter your fifth painting of John, John Baptist Drinking at the Spring.
CARAVAGGIO I believe that’s the one I painted for a private collector in Valletta.
HOST In the painting John is portrayed drinking water at a spring flowing from rock in an arched waterfall. Some critics declared the panting validates Paravicino’s opinion that your paintings waver between the sacred and profane.
CARAVAGGIO What are you saying? There’s nothing sacred or profane about John drinking from a spring.
HOST Critics declared John should have been drinking from a virgin spring bubbling up from rock or the ground, not from an arched waterfall.
CARAVAGGIO What’s the difference?
HOST Critics declared that John’s drinking might be interpreted as if he’s engaged in the homosexual act of urophilia.
CARAVAGGIO What are you talking about? I don’t understand what you’re saying. My contract called for John to be drinking at a spring and that’s what I painted.
HOST All the painting, cooperation, and peace was too good to last long. Only two months after you were made Knight of Obedience you got into an argument with a noble Knight of Justice, the highest ranking of Knights. To be a Knight of Justice one had to provide documented proof of 200 years noble ancestry. You were a famous painter but a commoner. There’s no record of the details of that encounter. No one knows what happened between you two. Do you recall the incident?
CARAVAGGIO Of course. I encountered him on a narrow stone walkway. He expected me to step aside to allow him to pass.
HOST That sounds like your encounter with Cavaliere d’Arpino eight years ago when he asked you to step aside to allow him to pass.
CARAVAGGIO He called me an ill-mannered Knight without noble pro forma breeding. We got into a heated argument. Here’s what I remember of that encounter:
NOBLE KNIGHT Painter, don’t you know enough to step aside to allow a Knight of Justice to pass?
CARAVAGGIO I’m also a Knight.
NOBLE KNIGHT A Knight in name only made possisble because of your Italian art patrons in Rome. I’m the senior officer of Knights of Justice. Don’t you recognize my German noble Coat of Arms? It goes back to the Crusades but what does a commoner know about Coats of Arms.
CARAVAGGIO I was born in the Palazzo of Francesco Sforza Colonna, one the most noble and powerful families in Italy.
NOBLE KNIGHT You’re a painter of common ancestry.
CARAVAGGIO I’m called the most famous painter in Italy.
NOBLE KNIGHT Nobles don’t do manual labor. Your father did manual labor for the Sforzas. You’re fortunate to have known your mother and father. You’re a pathetic commoner pretending to be a noble. You’re like a Muslim wanting to be a Jew. We defeated the Muslims at Lepanto.
CARAVAGGIO (Enraged I drew my sword and shouted.) On guard!
NOBLE KNIGHT You damned fool! You don’t even know our most basic laws. A Knight cannot draw a sword on another Knight. I wouldn’t debase myself by duelling with one of inferior rank such as you.
CARAVAGGIO With a dismissive hand gesture he turned his back on me and walked away. I ran after him, grabbed his shoulder, and turned him around. I shouted there’s no coward so low as a noble coward. I pressed the point of my sword into his belly at which time he drew his sword and we dueled. I wounded him, left him bleeding on the ground, and walked away.
HOST Did you leave him for dead?
CARAVAGGIO No, I wounded him enough to teach him a lesson.
HOST What was his name?
CARAVAGGIO I don’t know.
HOST Then what happened?
CARAVAGGIO During the night there was a knock on my door. I was arrested and imprisoned.
HOST I understand that Knights were subject to their own laws and convened their own tribunals to try such cases. Normally a Knight would not be imprisoned without a hearing.
CARAVAGGIO I was incarcerated without a hearing, thrown into a dungeon pit cut into solid rock in the fortress prison of Castel Saint’ Angelo.
HOST That fortress prison happened to be on the penninsula of Vittoriosa. It was an impenetrable prison from which no one had ever escaped.
CARAVAGGIO The dungeon hole was just large enough for a man to be lowered into it, about 10 feet deep. Its top was covered by an iron grate.
HOST It must have been even worse than the inhumane Tor di Nona prison in Rome.
Caravaggio In the summer heat of the day I sweltered; during the cold damp nights I shivered. I felt the darkness of all my paintings closing in on me, never again to see the outside. Contrasted with that stinking dungeon the Tor di Nona prison in Rome was tolerably habitable.
HOST The question is whether you were imprisoned because of your attack of the noble Knight or whether Malta found out you murdered Tomassoni. Also, now this is a question most delicate. It was alleged that you sodomized a page and that was why you were thrown into a dungeon.
CARAVAGGIO I never sodomized anyone and certainly not a page.
HOST Sodomizing a page was strictly forbidden, a heinous crime severely punished.
CARAVAGGIO I wasn’t charged with sodomy or anything else. I was never charged with anything at all and never told why I was imprisoned.
HOST Wasn’t it obvious? You assaulted a noble Knight of Justice.
CARAVAGGIO That being the case I should have been given a hearing before a tribunal of fellow Knights.
HOST One night in October 1608 you escaped from an inescapable fortress prison. How was it possible for you to escape from a guarded hole in rock? What happened?
CARAVAGGIO Late one night shivering in the cold I heard the iron grate clank open. A rope ladder was lowered and I climbed up. A man gestured to me to follow him. I followed him through a narrow passage cut out of solid rock, its stone steps led down to the moat. He never spoke a word and I didn’t ask any questions. He pointed to a rowboat and disappeared into the narrow passageway from which we had exited. I frantically rowed across the moat onto dry land. In the rowboat was a small sacco (sack) in which were a wedge of cheese, bottle of wine, bread, and a purse of gold ducats, enough money to sustain me for several months.
HOST In reconstructing the escape you obviously had inside help. Someone high up must have been pulling the strings of that puppet show. There’s evidence that in Naples the marchesa was advised by Cardinal Borghese that having the most famous painter in Italy imprisoned in Malta might be embarrassing to Rome and personally to Wignacourt. Having been informed of this advice Wignacourt, himself a political-religious appointment, knew how to play the game.
CARAVAGGIO I also knew how to play the game.
HOST Moreover a Carafa, a cousin of the marchesa, was warden of prisons in Malta. With Wignacourt’s approval he could have planned and managed your unprecedented escape.
CARAVAGGIO I made my way out of the penninsula to Valletta where I hired a felucca to take me to Siracusa. I was so happy to be free I never made any inquiries.
HOST You spent about 15 months in Malta. Yet there aren’t any records that you committed a crime or of your imprisonment or your escape. Do you know why?
CARAVAGGIO No but it could be omertà, the Italian criminal code of silence for the high or low, noble or commoner. After several days of sailing I landed in Siracusa.
HOST You landed in Siracusa, Sicily in the autumn of that year 1608. At that time Spain ruled Sicily.
CARAVAGGIO In Siracusa I located my old friend Mario Minniti who invited me to live in his house. He was helpful in obtaining for me the commission for painting the altarpiece Lucy’s Burial. It was to be a large altarpiece for the Basilica of Santa Lucia del Sepolcro (Basilica of Saint Lucy’s Sepulcher).
HOST Legend has it that Lucy a young Christian virgin was martyred because she refused to marry a pagan. When seized for martyrdom she gave away all her possessions. Her throat was cut and her eyes gouged out.
CARAVAGGIO Eyeless she was named luce (light) and given the name Lucia (Lucy). She became the patron saint of Siracusa and virgin bride of Christ.
HOST All brides of Jesus are supposed to be virgins. Lucy’s Burial is one of your biggest paintings about 10x13 feet. In the painting the bottom half is tightly composed with many figures fronted by dead Lucy lying supine on the ground. She’s centered between two poor muscular laborers digging her grave. Many mourners back the three prominent figures. The top half is almost a blank darkness except for an arch.
CARAVAGGIO To dramatize the burial rite.
HOST You didn’t show Lucy’s empty eye sockets from having her eyes gouged out.
CARAVAGGIO I did in my sketches but priests would not accept a painting with two eyeless sockets in her head. They insisted she be shown normally with her eyes closed. I was allowed to retain the gruesome view of her butchered throat to retain some indication that she was martyred. I finished the painting in time for the Feast of Saint Lucy in December and was paid the handsome sum of 1,000 scudi.
HOST In December of that year1608 the Knights exercised a pro forma prerogative by expelling you ‘in absentia’ from the Knights of Malta. They defrocked you, stripped you of knighthood, and declared you a fugitive from justice. When you escaped you deserted, thereby breaking another law by leaving the island without written permission from Wignacourt.
CARAVAGGIO I refused to accept my expulsion because I was given papal dispensation for joining the Knights of Malta and only the pope could defrock me. I still considered myself a Knight.
HOST Being defrocked meant you lost your protection against being arrested or killed by anyone in papal territory.
CARAVAGGIO Also I learned that the noble Knight I wounded had relatives in Sicily. If they knew of my presence they’d certainly seek revenge. I slept fully dressed ready to escape and with a dagger ready to defend myself.
HOST You remained in Siracusa for about 9 months then suddenly departed for Messina. Why?
CARAVAGGIO Gentlemen strangers in town were asking for the whereabouts of the famous painter Caravaggio. They described me as the ‘pazzo pittore’ the ‘carzy painter’ who happened to be a Knight. Fearing they were avengers for the aggrieved noble Knight, I decided to leave. Minniti arranged for me to accompany a merchant friend of his sailing by felucca to Messina because the coastal roads were populated with banditti. Messina is about 90 miles north of Siracusa, only 3 miles or so from the Italian mainland.
HOST You spent the winter of 1609 in Messina where Fra Antionio Martelli, whose portait you painted, was prior of the Knights of Malta. For obvious reasons Knights there did not pursue you.
CARAVAGGIO Perhaps word had not yet reached the priory.
HOST Don’t think so. The priory would certainly have heard by that time. Your friend the prior was protecting you. Later Martelli resigned and returned to his homestead in Florence.
HOST In June the wealthy businessman Giovanni dei Lazzari commissioned you to paint Lazarus Raised, an altrarpiece for la Chiesa dei Padri Crociferi (Church of the Crucified Fathers). Giovanni chose Lazarus because it mimicked his own name Lazzari. The contract referred to you as a Knight of Malta.
CARAVAGGIO I told them I was still a Knight because it helped me get the commission.
HOST The general layout of the painting mimicks Lucy’s Burial in that the top half is a blank darkness and the bottom half is a tight composition of figures. Is it true you had a recently buried male exhumed so you could paint Lazarus uisng a real corpse?
CARAVAGGIO Why do you keep asking me stupid questions? I keep telling you I paint from nature’s models. I had gravediggers exhume a corpse of a recently buried man.
HOST I can only imagine the sickening sweet odor of that rotting body and the nausea it must have inflicted on the living. I have a note stating that ‘The gravediggers were seen to vomit and cried out ‘Un pitore matto, Gesù Cristo misericordia’ (A crazy painter, Jesus Christ have mercy.)
CARAVAGGIO When they dropped the corpse I threatemed them with my dagger and warned them that if they didn’t position the corpse as I wanted I would make them corpses.
HOST The altarpiece is another large painting about 9x13 feet. Out of the darkness of the painting, figures emerge from death’s vast funereal black in which Lazarus’ corpse is resurrected.
CARAVAGGIO (Rises and threateningly points his index finger at the HOST) Why do you keep saying ‘out of the darkness, out of the darkness’. Many painters used dark backgrounds, da Vinci and Titian.
HOST Sorry about that. In the painting the top half is in the dark and the bottom half is peopled with Lazarus, his sisters Maratha and Mary, the gravediggers who exhumed him, and others. The light cast on them has a reddish glow as if from a nearby house on fire. At far left Jesus is barley visible as he points to and raises Lazarus with his miraculous animating power. At Jesus’ right is a face looking directly at him. Is that your likeness?
CARAVAGGIO Show me (HOST shows color print). It’s possible; I needed to paint many heads to fill in the background.
HOST Why was the altarpiece rejected?
CARAVAGGIO The church assumed I would paint a visible Christ bathed in heavenly divine light as he miraculously raises Lazarus to life. Enraged at their criticism and with my dagger I slashed to pieces the altarpiece amid cries of protest and disbelief ‘fermata! fermata!’ (stop! stop!)
HOST They declared you were profaning the miracle of Jesus.
CARAVAGGIO I yelled back that I was the one who painted the miracle. They begged me to paint another altarpiece so I painted a second version the church accepted. On entering the church for its installation I bypassed the font of holy water without using it to cleanse myself of venial sin. A nearby priest asked me why I didn’t cleanse myself upon entering the house of God. I declared holy water cleanses only venial sins and my sins were mortal sins.
HOST Do you think God will judge you a sinner?
CARAVAGGIO When the time comes I will offer my paintings to God and he will judge me.
HOST Did you feel your internal struggles were outed in paintings of violence and death?
CARAVAGGIO Some of your questions are silly, goffo.
HOST Perhaps a little awkward for you to answer. That summer you got a commission from Nicolo di Giacomo for several paintings of Jesus’ Passion. No one knows what happened to those paintings. Did you in fact paint them for him?
CARAVAGGIO Of course, he paid me for them.
HOST Where are they? Were they lost or stolen?
CARAVAGGIO I paint pictures I don’t exhibit or store them.
HOST Speaking to friends di Giacomo referred to you as a very disturbed man.
CARAVAGGIO He never told me that.
HOST He probably feared for his life. Some evenings you were seen swaggering in the streets with your sword and dagger. You were frequently seen in taverns drinking and in the company of gamblers and prostitutes.
CARAVAGGIO I was never arrested in Messina or anywhere else in Sicily.
HOST Perhaps not.
CARAVAGGIO What do you mean perhaps not? Are you deaf? I said I was never arrested in Messina or anywhere else in Sicily.
HOST But in Messina you had a confrontation with a schoolteacher who questioned you about your daily observations of the young schoolboys in his custody. When you continued your daily observations the schoolteacher charged you with moral turpitude for dallying with several of the boys.
CARAVAGGIO I confronted him explaining that I was looking for a young boy to model for a painting. He dismissed me; we argued; I hit him with the flat of my sword wounding his head. When several of the boys saw their teacher bleeding they crid out and ran away for help. To avoid further embarrassment and possible arrest I quickly departed Messina for Palermo about 100 miles west.
HOST In Palermo you painted Narcissus, the young man kneeling by blackface pond fondly gazing at the water’s reflective echo of self. Is Narcissus kneeling by the pond at nighttime?
CARAVAGGIO What do you mean?
HOST The background is black.
CARAVAGGIO Backgrounds are often black or dark.
HOST In a homoerotic experience he falls in love with his reflection barely visible in the painting.
CARAVAGGIO What do you mean barely visible? I painted his image.
HOST It’s barely visible in my color print.
CARAVAGGIO Let me see it. (HOST shows him.) There it is, are you blind? The problem is with your color print.
HOST His arms appear to be badly positioned and awkwardly proportioned. Is that his left knee sticking out or the stump of his amputated leg? It looks like Paul’s amputated right leg in the second version of his conversion. It could represent the circumcision of the Colossus of Rhodes tragically gone wrong.
CARAVAGGIO (Jumps up.) Am I to be questioned by an inquisitor who admittedly knows nothing about painting? (Attacks HOST and using his fists beats him. The two doormen pull him away from the HOST.)
HOST Calmo! Quieto! Sorry, sometimes my sarcasm gets away from me. Oh well in the end the young man, who was a hunter, metamorphoses to the flower narcissus. The next painting in my portfolio is the Annunciation. The Archangel Gabriel informs the Virgin Mary of her Immaculate Conception of Jesus ‘Blessed are you among women’. Gabriel appears to be riding on a dirty cloud and is wrapped in voluminous folds of white drapery. How is it possible for Gabriel to fly when wrapped in voluminous folds of heavy drapery? He appears to have a man’s arm and a woman’s slender leg.
CARAVAGGIO What are you talking about?
HOST Next to Gabriel are what look like jasmine flowers, symbols of the physical love. Missing are the ‘white doves’ symbols of divine intervention by the Holy Ghost who came upon Mary in the act of her Immaculate Conception. You should have painted the doves and not the jasmine. The young demure and virginal Mary is kneeling on the ground. She’s cloaked in a dark blue gown. The scene appears harmless enough but is very confusing. You painted the profane in place of the sacred. Also the massively draperied Gabriel is more prominent than the Virgin Mary. Is that why the painting was rejected?
CARAVAGGIO (approaches the HOST) You’re not a painter! Did you bring me here to insult me? Why are you always complaining about my paintings? (The two doormen beg Caravaggio to return to his seat.)
HOST I don’t believe in the Anunciation or in God.
CARAVAGGIO You weren’t even living when I painted it and your disbelief has nothing to do the painting.
HOST Let’s continue. In that summer you painted your last altarpiece in Sicily, Nativity with Francis and Lawrence for the Oratory of Saint Lawrence Church. You sojourned in Sicily for about a year, then suddenly returned to Naples.
CARAVAGGIO I felt I was being stalked by strangers. I feared being captured, so decided to return to Naples where I’d again be under the protection of the marchesa. I hired a felucca and to avoid being followed instructed the captain to sail a northerly course in the open sea and then turn south to Naples. Without incident and to my great relief I arrived in Naples. The marchesa graciously accepted me at the Palazzo Cellamare where she was living at that time.
HOST In October 1609 you were 38 and back in Naples. Meanwhile in Rome cardinals and aristocratic art lovers yearned for your return.
CARAVAGGIO The marchesa got good news from Rome. The pope appointed his nephew Cardinal Scipione Borghese Secretary of Papal States. As secretary he had the authority to deal with criminal matters, including the issuance of pardons approved by the pope.
HOST Your art-loving cardinal had your destiny in his hands.
CARAVAGGIO As one of my most ardent patrons and also a friend I was hoping for a quick pardon.
HOST In Naples you painted your second version of the decapitation of John Baptist called Herodias with Head of John Baptist. In it you painted an older woman, surely not Salome but her mother Herodias. Also the painting is larger than the first version with Salome.
CARAVAGGIO I sent it to Wignacourt hoping to regain his good will to facilitate my pardon.
HOST In the painting, emerging from the darkness of the black background is revealed four heads, one of which is the severed head of John on a tray. The decapitated head looks like the same head in the first version. Herodias is wrapped in red drapery and the top of her breast is exposed. But what is that to the right of John’s head? Is that the executioner’s arm jutting out from his dark face? It’s very confusing.
CARAVAGGIO Your color prints are deceiving. It’s obviously the executioner’s strong arm.
HOST You then got involved in a disastrous sword fight outside the famous, some say infamous, Cerriglio Tavern on a Neapolitan wharf.
CARAVAGGIO Painting and waiting for a pardon I needed some diversion, so I went to the Cerriglio Tavern. A patron noticed I had paint on my clothes and wanted to know if I was the famous painter in Palermo accused of molesting young schoolboys. I angrily protested I never molested any schoolboy in Palermo or elsewhere. We argued. I called him a lazzarone (unemployed male) and he called me a briccone (scoundrel). To avoid a brawl I exited the tavern. Suddenly he and three well-dressed men surrounded me. They drew their swords and attacked me. I held them off and then felt cold steel slice across my face. Bleeding profusely, my face and chest covered with blood, I got dizzy and losing consciousness remember falling on the wharf.
HOST In Naples and Rome the rumor spread that an unknown gang of four swordsmen attacked and killed the famous painter Caravaggio outside the notorious Cerriglio Tavern. Neapolitan witnesses, given to drama, declared the swordfight one against four was better than an opera. You were left for dead on the wharf. Who were the assailants?
CARAVAGGIO Don’t know, never saw them before. They could have been banditti but I wasn’t robbed. Maybe they were the ones stalking me.
HOST Your attackers could have been papal agents looking for the reward of killing you.
CARAVAGGIO No, they would have had to submit my body as proof of death. Cardinal Borghese would never approve such an attack against me.
HOST I don’t think Tomassoni’s relatives would have pursued you through Sicily and then to Naples, which leaves only assassins hired by the noble Knight you wounded. He certainly had cause and the money to do so. There’s something bothering me about that attack. I can think of three reaons for it, (1) you seriously wounded a noble Knight who took revenge by hiring four assassins and (2) you deserted the Knights when you escaped. These two reasons were cause to expel you from the Knights of Malta but not sufficient cause to pursue you to Siracusa, Messina, Palermo and then follow you to Naples in order to kill you. That leaves only (3) the unproved allegation that you sodomized a noble page. In the eyes of Knights a most heinous crime to be avenged by them. To think that a commoner inserted his sperm into the adolescence of a noble page was anathema to them. The honor of the innocent page had to be avenged by killing the pedophile.
CARAVAGGIO I never sodomized a page.
HOST What’s further troubling is that in the normally detailed records of the Knights of Malta there isn’t a single entry of your challenge to the noble knight, your escape, or alleged crime for which you were imprisoned. You survived the attack but do you remember who rescued you from bleeding to death on the wharf?
CARAVAGGIO When I awoke I saw two men bending over me and the marchesa beside them. They were doctors. I was in the palazzo Cellamare. The marchesa told me my face was so disfigured she hardly recognized me. I was fortunate she summoned her doctors to close and dress my deeply wounded face and care for me.
HOST Once again you were rescued by the Colonnas. During November and December news reports stated you had returned to Naples because your enemies were closing in on you. You were attcked by four unknown assassins who killed you outside the Cerriglio Tavern. One report stated that God had administered justice when the famous painter Caravaggio bled to death as had Tomassoni in 1606.
HOST Throughout the winter and spring you continued to live in the palace.
CARAVAGGIO I recovered sufficiently to finish several paintings including a John intended for Cardinal Borghese as a gift for my pardon.
HOST That was John John Baptist with Ram and Staff, your sixth painting of him. In the painting seminude John is a young man sitting in the wildrness. A white sash covers his crotch amid voluminous folds of red drapery. He’s looking out at something in front of him, perhaps at viewers who look at him. He holds his reed staff while a ram in the dark feeds on leaves in the dark. The John Baptist I remember is the adult who baptized converts to the Word called God.
CARAVAGGIO I told you before that my John is a young shepherd boy and that’s the way I painted him.
HOST In your multiple paintings of John you painted him as a nude adolescent or seminude young man. In other paintings of saints you portrayed them as much older, clothed in a Christian robe, or partially clothed.
CARAVAGGIO In Naples an agent for the Genoese Prince Marcantonio Doria commissioned me to paint Ursula Martyred.
HOST The story is that the beautiful and virginal Princess Ursula led 10,000 Christian virgins on a pilgrimage. The ravaging Huns intercepted and slaughtered all of them except for Ursula who the lustful Hun prince desired for himself. When she rebuked him he killed her with his great bow shooting an arrow into her breast, an act that symbolically raped Ursula by invading her innards. Today on TV that would be a version of telerape.
CARAVAGGIO What? I don’t understand that? You keep using words I’ve never heard.
HOST No matter, critics of your painting asked why you didn’t people the background with some of the ravaged virgins.
CARAVAGGIO I began doing that but all those heads in the background reminded me of the imaginary heads I painted for the Lorenzo Siciliano studio in Rome. Next day I overpainted them with dark earth shades.
HOST In the painting, out of the darkness of martyrdom, emerges four or five figures. There’s the old and ugly Hun prince who lusted after Ursula. He’s shown with his bow just after he shot the arrow into her breast. The problem is that the arrow is barely visible; it’s lost in the folds of her blouse and in the dark voluminous folds of the red drapery around her gown. Calmly examining the arrow she accepts its intrusion as the fulfillment of her destiny. To her left is the head of an old woman and at her right is your head and the barely identifiable head of a soldier. His armored arm appears to be steadying Ursula from the shock of being impaled. Next to your face is a hand holding what looks like a pole or spear. Is that your hand?
CARAVAGGIO You’re having more problems with color prints? It’s obviously the soldiers’ hand holding a spear. I sent the painting to Prince Marcantonio Doria in Genoa via felucca.
HOST You painted yet another John, John Baptist Reclining. I count at least seven John paintings. There might be more, perhaps lost or stolen. By the way how many times did you paint John?
CARAVAGGIO I don’t know, many times. I’m not a calcolatore (acountant).
HOST I must ask you why all the Johns?
CARAVAGGIO J ohn was the most popular saint. God inflicted on humankind Adam and Eve’s original sin, the Fall of Man, but John was the only human born without original sin.
HOST How was that possible?
CARAVAGGIO When in his mother’s womb God sanctified John because he was to be the baptizer of Christ and therfore of Christians. The remover of original sin cannot have the sin himself.
HOST That means Jesus the human Son of God was born with original sin but the human John who was not the Son of God was miraculously born without it. That fiction and preposterous precept is acutally believed by Christians!
CARAVAGGIO I’m not an ecclesiastic. Besides I was expelled from catechism class. You’ll have to ask my brother Battista the priest.
HOST In the painting a pensive John wrapped in his signature voluminous red drapery appears isolated in the darkness of the wilderness. He holds his traditional reed pole but its top cross cannot be seen in the dark background. Wasn’t it a chore for John to carry around all that voluminous red drapery in the wilderness? Perhaps that’s why he’s pensive, thinking of getting rid of it.
CARAVAGGIO Be careful of your sarcastic remarks.
HOST Beside him manifested like a ghost barely visible in the dark is the ram, his congenial companion. In all your paintings of John he’s shown as a nude adolescent or seminude young man. Did you intend his isolation in the wilderness to be symbolic of the separation from the assigned purpose of his adult life, baptizing converts to Christianity? You never painted John as an adult baptizer.
CARAVAGGIO I repeat, I always thought of him as a young shepherd in the wilderness and painted him that way.
HOST In the spring you finished the last of your paintings in Palazzo Cellamare. It was another David with Head of Goliath, the third and last of the series. It’s claimed that David is the grown young man Cecco.
CARAVAGGIO It was a convenient arrangement for both of us, having my model readily available.
HOST In the painting David holds at arms’ length the decapitated head of Goliath. You painted your own haggard and tortured likeness for Goliath’s severed head.
CARAVAGGIO I was a fugitive being pursued and hunted like a wild boar. I felt tortured as if I were Goliath about to be decapitated. I painted it for Cardinal Borghese as a reminder of my fate and as compensation for his intended pardon of me.
HOST In the painting David looks with some remorse at Goliath’s severed head. David points his sword downward towards his crotch. Did you intend any sexual symbolism?
CARAVAGGIO Such as?
HOST If you were captured it might mean self castration for Cecco and for you the end of life.
CARAVAGGIO If I were captured it would have certainly meant the end of everything for me.
HOST Meantime the marchesa received good news from Rome.
CARAVAGGIO She informed me that in Rome one of her friends the young, rich, art-loving Cardinal Ferdinando Gonzaga was petitioning for my pardon. His father Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga was one of my patrons; he bought Virgin Mary’s Death.
HOST Later the marchesa received a letter from Cardinal Borghese suggesting that you leave Naples for Rome where he and others could protect you. I’ll read part of that letter from my copy:
‘Caravaggio must submit himself to papal agents, a prerequisite for my granting him a pardon. Papal agents in Naples are under the authority of Count Benevente, the Spanish Viceroy of Naples. The pope who’s allied with the de’ Medici and French factions, will not subordinate his authority to that of Spain. As Secretary of Papal States with power to deal with criminal matters I’m presently negotiating with my uncle for Caravaggio to turn himself over to papal agents in Rome. With due consideration of his valuable paintings and possibility of robbery by roadside banditti, I suggest that Caravaggio sail to our papal garrison at Palo about 12 miles west of Rome, only a few hours away. Palo avoids the publicity of landing at Rome’s public ports of entry at either Civitavecchia or Ostia.
It’s obvious to me that Borghese was planning to grant you a pardon and was ready to deliver it to you in Rome after you submitted yourself to the custody of papal agents.
CARAVAGGIO An attempt had already been made on my life. I was being hunted by the Knights of Malta, perhaps relatives of Tomassoni, or hired assassins, or bounty hunters looking for the reward and celebrity of killing me. After three years as a fugitive in exile, weary of being on the run, and after 8 months in Naples I decided to return to Rome. I appealed to Fortuna for my safe return in order to get my pardon.
Felucca to Porto Ercole
HOST I find in one of my notes that the Spanish garrison at Porto Ercole was the base for monitoring shipping between France and Naples. Feluccas departing from Naples periodically provisioned Porto Ercole.
CARAVAGGIO Speaking of feluccas I told the marchesa I’d have to wait for a felucca sailing for the port of Palo near Rome. Normally they stopped at the ports of Civitavecchia or Ostia. She notified her son Fabrizio of my intended voyage. As commander of Maltese gallyes, Fabrizio had knowledge of all the sea traffic in the area. Several weks later Fabrizio notified me that he arranged for a Spanish felucca en route to Porto Ercole to stop at Palo. Impatient and anxious to get my pardon I agreed to board that felucca.
HOST In mid-June 1610 you were 39 living in fugitive castigation. You decided to go directly into the lion’s den, hoping that when you got to Rome you’d receive in person from Cardinal Borghese your official pardon written in Latin.
CARAVAGGIO I withdrew all my money from the bank in Naples and with my few possessions and several rolled-up paintings departed Palazzo Cellamare and boarded the felucca en route to Porto Ercole.
HOST Which paintings did you take?
CARAVAGGIO I believe they were David with Head of Goliath, John Baptist with Ram and Staff orJohn Baptist Reclining, and Magdalen in Ecstasy. I intended to give one John to Cardinal Borghese and the other John to the pope. I left my other paintings with the marchesa.
HOST No one knows what happened to you after you boarded the felucca. You mysteriously vanished. You were never again heard from or seen. I’m wondering if you had any premonitions of your voyage to Palo. Do you have any memories of how your life ended?
CARAVAGGIO I had nightmares of being captured or killed. I always slept with a dagger to defend myself and fully dressed ready to escape.
HOST Do you recall any of your nightmares?
CARAVAGGIO I was on a felucca named Ship of Death sailing for Palo. It didn’t have a captain or crew. On deck and in the open sea I was breathing the salty sea air when several passengers emerged from below and approached me. They looked like the ones who attacked me outside the Cerriglio Tavern. Suddenly they surrounded me and I automatically reached for my sword but didn’t have it. They seized me and tied my limbs with rope. I felt the rope being tightened around my throat. One of them mumbled something about honor and revenge. Struggling to breathe, becoming light headed and weak, they faded from sight as I lost consciousness. I was momentarily revived as I plunged into the Tyrranean Sea and felt its cold seawater. I woke up screaming.
HOST You said nightmares. Do you recall another?
CARAVAGGIO I was on a felucca named Ship of Destiny sailing for Palo. When it docked at Palo policemen came aboard with orders to apprehend a bandito. Because my face was badly disfigured they arrested and imprisoned me as the bandito. I declared that I wasn’t the bandito and that Cardinal Borghese had given me safe passage to Rome. The police captain replied it would take several days to confirm my story.
HOST Why would it take days? Palo was about 12 miles west of Rome, only a few hours away.
CARAVAGGIO The Spanish police were incompetent. The next day I bitterly complained to the captain that I couldn’t wait several days. All I owned, especially my paintings, were on the felucca. I needed to retrieve my possessions from the felucca before it sailed for Porto Ercole. I had trouble communicating with him because my facial disfigurement impaired my speech. The captain told me it had already departed. In a fit of anxiety and rage I gave him most of my money and he released me.
HOST Did you see the felucca?
CARAVAGGIO On the horizon I saw a ship sailing north. I thought it was the felucca with my paintings. I ran along the shore shouting and waving frantically hoping someone on board would see me. I ran along the shore for several miles desperately pursuing the ship fading on the horizon
HOST It was only a phantom ship because after a day of sailing your felucca would have been out-of-sight.
CARAVAGGIO Traveling on foot and sloshing through marshes in the blistering July sun, I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes feasting on my sweat. Sweating and dying of thirst I scooped up some water with my hands and drank it.
HOST Drinking polluted water you probably got infected with disease, perhaps malaria or typhoid fever.
CARAVAGGIO When I lost sight of the ship, and with the little money I had, I hired farmers having wagons to take me north to Porto Ercole.
HOST Porto Ercole is about 62 miles north of Palo.
CARAVAGGIO Unfortunately they took me only a few miles at a time. Traveling on foot again I became ill, weak, and dizzy. Suffering from fever and intestinal distress, I collapsed on a pebble-strewn beach. That’s my last memory (Caravaggio exits/fades from view).
HOST In Caravaggio’s first nightmare he was garroted and his body thrown overboard. In his second nightmare he was aboard the felucca that turned out to be the Ship of Destiny (la forza del destino). After Caravaggio’s mysterious vanishment the felucca returned to Naples. His possessions and paintings were delivered to the marchesa at Palazzo Cellamare.
End of Interview
Caravaggio the Man
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) was an innovative painter. Some art historians call him a genius. He was normally a loner operating without a studio of painters or apprentices. His paintings were requested by many of Italy’s art-loving powerful aristocrats and ecclesiastics. Caravaggio was loyal to his friends and they to him. But his enemies hated his sarcasm, his sardonic criticism of their paintings, and were jealous of his innovating style. Some of his contemporaries considered him a bully, some mad, and others a disturbed unstable painter.
Caravaggio was an arrogant angry man with a tempestuous personality. He was defiant and hostile, a social misfit living a bohemian lifestyle. Hot-blooded and quick-tempered he was easily aroused to anger he couldn’t manage. He swaggered in the streets of Rome’s dissolute districts with a sword and dagger strapped to his waist sometimes alone or with his like-minded friends. His antisocial behavior often got him into confrontations in which he fought with his fists, dagger, and/or sword but he never set out to deliberately kill anyone. Caravaggio had a long record of arrests (rap sheet) including childish pranks, brawling, and sword fighting (see Antisocial Happenings near the end of Postlog).
Some of his contemporaries remarked they never saw him smile. Perhaps he had clinical depression, suffered from genetic gloom, or from lead poisoning in paints. The angry painting genius and swaggering practitioner of violence displayed the sins of anger, lust, and pride but none of the virtues. In one swordfight he killed a man and became a fugitive painter fleeing from Rome to Naples to Malta to Siciliy, then back to Naples, then vanished during his sailing journey to Palo (near Rome). What happened after he boarded a felucca in Naples bound for Palo is unknown. His body was never found.
Caravaggio died without a Will as had his father. Eventually the Spanish Viceroy in Naples confiscated his paintings and persosnal property. The viceroy assigned an executor to settle Caravaggio’s estate with his brother priest Giovan Battista and sister Caterina. Caravaggio’s estate consisted of many valuable paintings and many debts.
Caravaggio’s Legacy
Caravaggio did two things very well, paint and fight. He was a revolutionary painter who eschewed the ordinary painting conventions of his time for greater use of reality. He preferred painting figures rather than pastoral scenes. Using dark colors he concealed background details in order to use light for dramatizing figures of the subject matter. He changed religious painting from the conventional niceties of religious faith to the brutal realism of human nature. Much to the distress of the Church he painted Jesus, Madonna, and saints as humans. He avoided painting flocks of angels flying on billowy clouds bathed in heavenly divine light. He eschewed painting halos and nimbi enveloping holy persons and crowds of begging worshipers with eyes turned towards heaven. He imposed realism upon faith-based portrayals of religious subject matter.
Because of his apostate style the clergy considered him Antichrist, divorced from God, and rejected some of his religious paintings. During his life and after his death Caravaggio’s painting style was copied by many painters called Caravaggisti. Today art historians declare he was a genuis, the prototype of modern art because his artistic naturalism broke away from the usual Renaissance painting.
Caravaggio’s Sexuality
Caravaggio’s habit of homoerotic painting is linked to his alleged homosexuality. Critics declare he was attracted to young boys and support this by citing his early homoerotic paintings of androgynous youths. In his paintings of Cupid Victorious and John Baptist with Ram’s Head, he painted the young boy Cecco in full frontal nudity. In Messina, Sicily a schoolteacher charged him with indecent behavior because of his predatory attention to the teacher’s young boys. In some of his religious painting including Jesus and saints, males look like body-builders having bulging muscles and rippling abdomens. In viewing these paintings one might reach the conclusion he had a predilection for maleness and for the advertised potency of muscular males (as did his predecessor Michaelangelo Buonarroti).
In his early paintings he painted young boys as girls. In several of his later paintings he painted Jesus to look like a woman (Supper at Emmaus 1st version and Walk to Emmaus). Perhaps conflicts over his sexual preference or sexual identity were revealed in his paintings. Of particular interest to those who believe Caravaggio was homosexual is that none of Caravaggio’s paintings is of a nude or seminude female. If one of those paintings exists it’s unknown. It’s also alleged Caravaggio had sexual relations with females; perhaps he was bisexual. But for some reason he also threw stones at women whether prostitutes or not. Perhaps his acting out and getting into trouble were a cover for his homosexuality. It’s conjectured that Caravaggio laid with his boy Cecco and after killing Tomassoni Caravaggio took Cecco with him when he fled from Rome. Whatever the truth of Caravaggio’s sexuality his homoerotic paintings satisfied Rome’s art patrons, many of whom were aristocrats and ecclesiastics.
What matters is Caravaggio’s paintings not his sexuality.
Caravaggio’s Self Images
Caravaggio’s critics considered him a narcist because he inserted his image in several paintings:
David and Goliath (1610), his head is Goliath’s head.
Jesus Betrayed, he’s rightmost figure holding lantern.
Matthew’s Martyrdom, in background his head is left of the
executioner.
Musicians, he’s horn player, second head from right.
Sick Bacchus, mirror image of self.
Ursula Martyred, his head at right next to Ursula.
It was surely easier and cheaper for Caravaggio to paint his image rather than searching for and hiring models.
Caravaggio’s Antisocial Happenings
Below is a summary of confrontations, arrests, and imprisonments of at least 23 alleged antisocial happenings in which Caravaggio was involved.
1590 age 19 MIlan
1. Arrested and imprisoned by Spanish police when questioned about the
death of a Spanish policeman.
1597 age 26 Rome
2. Police report refers to him in the assault of a barber’s apprentice.
3. Questioned by police about witnessing a crime.
1598 age 27 Rome
4. Arrested and imprisoned for carrying a sword (also two compasses)
without a license and starting a brawl.
1600 age 29 Rome
5. Police question him about his part in an argument bertween artist
Marco Tullio and friend architect Onorio Longhi.
6. Arrested for assaulting Girolama Spampa.
1601 age 30 Rome
7. Arrested for assaulting former policeman Flavio Canonico.
8. Arrested for assaulting Tommaso Salini.
1603 age 32 Rome
9. Arrested and imprisoned for libeling artist Giovanni Baglione.
1604 age 33 Rome
10. Threw a bowl of hot artichokes at a waiter injuring him.
11. Arrested and imprisoned for destroying property.
12. Arrested and imprisoned for cursing a policeman.
1605 age 34 Rome
13. Arrested for carrying sword and dagger without a license.
14. Arrested and imprisoned for writing sexually abusive verses against
mother and daughter (Laura and Isabella), harrassing them, and
destroying their property.
15. Arrested and imprisoned for assauling Notary Mariano
Pasqualone.
16. Arrested for destroying property of Prudenzia Bruni his landlady.
17. Seriously wounded by an unknown brawler in swordfight, was arrested
for illegal swordfighting and paid a big fine.
18. Jealous of fellow artists challenged Guido Reni to a duel and
destroyed Passignano’s studio-tent in Saint Peter’s Bailica.
19. Encounter with Cavaliere d’Arpino, challenged him to a duel.
1606 age 35 Rome
20. In a swordfight killed Ranuccio Tomassoni, fled Rome under threat of
execution by hanging.
1607 age 36 Valletta, Malta
21. Because of a confrontation with a noble Knight he’s arrested,
imprisoned, and miraculously escaped.
1609 age 38 Messina, Sicily
22. Assaulted the schoolteacher who questioned his attention to young
boys in his custody.
1609 age 38 Naples
23. Attacked by four swordsmen outside Cerriglio Tavern, was severely
wounded in a swordfight and given up for dead.
Police records of his multiple arrests do not include any arrests because of homosexuality or whoring. He was never arrested on a sexual complaint from anyone. He was never arrested for cheating art patrons or stealing. His problem was his inability to control his anger.
Mystery of Caravaggio’s Death (18July1610)
In mid-June 1610 Caravaggio boarded a felucca for the port of Palo (near Rome) and vanished. In mid-July1610 he was declared dead. The presumed and prevalent date of Caravaggio’s death is 18July1610; he was 39, two months before his 40th birthday.
Reports of what happened to him are based on hearsay. Notices of his vanishment began in mid-July about a month after he departed Naples. Since his departure no one reported to have seen him, heard from him, or knew of his whereabouts. One report had him dying in Procida, one of the many small stony islands in the Bay of Naples. Another report declared he died in Palo. Another report stated he died in Porto Ercole north of Palo. There were no witnesses to his death and his body was never found.
Considerations of Caravaggio’s Death
In trying to determine what happened to Caravaggio, the following events should be considered:
Caravaggio was defrocked and expelled from the Knights of Malta for ostensibly assaulting a noble Knight and leaving Malta without Wignacourt’s permission. These are not justifiable reasons for killing him.
Avenging Knights probably don’t kill a former fellow Knight over a swordfight. But the aggrieved noble Knight, humiliated by his defeat by a commoner, could have hired assassins to kill him. There’s no evidence Caravaggio was killed by avenging Knights or hired assassins.
Vengeance killing of a fellow Knight might be for a more serious and nefarious crime such as sodomizing a page. Pages were the sons of noble Knights and sexual crimes against pages had to be severely punished, perhaps by death. There’s no evidence Caravaggio sodomized a page or was killed because of that perception.
Speculation on Caravaggio’s Death
About 1620, ten years or so after Caravaggio vanished, information began appearing about the mysterious circumstances of his death. The biographies I’ve read do not include any copies of public records of his movements from the time he presumptively boarded a felucca at Naples and his vanishment. The below possibilities about how Caravaggio might have died are pure speculation:
1. If someone boards a sea-going ship and thereafter is never heard from or seen, that person is at the bottom of the sea. On board the felucca sailing from Naples to Palo, were assassins and/or crewmen hired to kill him by the aggrieved noble Knight. They killed Caravaggio and dumped his body into the Tyrrhenian Sea.
2. Caravaggio collapsed on the Versilia Beach at Porto Ercole about 62 miles north of Palo. Was he on his way to Genoa to sojourn with friends such as Ottavio Costa until he was assured of a pardon? But to get pardoned Caravaggio had to be in Rome in the custody of papal agents. He apparently headed north to Porto Ercole to retrieve his paintings on the felucca but there’s no documented evidence of that or what happened between Palo and Porto Ercole. Perhaps he was chasing a distant felucca he thought had his paintings and possessions. The prevalent report is that Caravaggio’s diseased body was found at the Versilia Beach and was taken to the Holy Cross Confraternity (Confraternita da Santa Croce) for the destitute. He was nursed, given the last rites, died, and was buried on grounds of its cemetery adjacent to the small Chapel of Saint Sebastian. There’s no record of his burial or the burial of a homeless unknown man with a badly disfigured face.
3. During high tide his body was swept out to the deep waters
of the Tyrranean Sea.
4. When Caravaggio collapsed on the Versilia Beach or elsewhere
his body was found by local bandits, stripped of valuables, and buried
in an unknown grave.
5. There's no record of anyone finding the corpse an unknown man with a badly disfigured face.
6. There’s no provable documented evidence of his vanishment - when, where, and how Caravaggio died or where his remains are.
Conspiracy against Caravaggio
If there were a conspiracy to kill Caravaggio who made it possible? If Caravaggio was killed by avenging Knights or hired assassins, who was it that knew he was to be a passenger on the felucca departing from Naples with an intermediate stop at Palo en route to Porto Ercole? Speculation points its finger to Fabrizio, son of the marchesa. His status and future as a Knight, his allegiance to Wignacourt and to the Knights were more important to him than his friendship with Caravaggio. As commander of Maltese naval galleys he had knowledge of ship traffic in the area. While not directly participating in Caravaggio’s vanishment Fabrizio and Wignacourt did not prevent it.
What about the motherly Costanza Colonna the Marchesa di Caravaggio, was she involved? Caravaggio might have been born in her palace in Milan, sought refuge in Colonna palaces, got commissions from her friends, bleeding to death from having his face sliced open in a swordfight he was nursed to health by the marchesa’s doctors. If there were a conspiracy, I don’t think the marchesa was an active participant.
Posthumous Competition for Caravaggio’s Paintings
Caravagio’s death began a mad scramble among Italians and some Europeans for his paintings. Cardinal Borghese had already collected manyof Caravaggio’s paintings and made inquiries about the whereabouts of the paintings intended for him as compensation for his promised pardon. He wrote to Deodato Gentile Bishop of the Province of Caserta inquiring about the whereabouts of Caravaggio’s paintings. Obviously Borghese was more interested in Caravaggio’s paintings than in the details of his death. Gentile responded that Caravaggio’s possessions and paintings were returned to the marchesa at Palazzo Cellamare. Later Gentile wrote to Borghese that the Knights of Malta confiscated the paintings claiming they had jurisdiction over them because Caravaggio was a Knight. However the shrewd marchecsa declared that at the time of his death he was no longer a Knight because he had been defrocked, nullifying their claim. The paintings were returned to the marchesa. Keep in mind paintings were considered valuable and saleable assets that only the rich could afford.
Caravaggio Irridenta (Unredeemed)
Caravaggio’s rivals and enemies probably rejoiced at the news of his death. His friends and patrons must have grieved including del Monte, Longhi, Giustiniani, Minniti, Melesi, and the m
otherly marchesa. Caravaggio ‘in absentia’ was never given a public funeral, a memorial service, or eulogized as was common for a famous painter especially a painter of genius. He died as miserably as he lived - alone, homeless, an unknown pauper. The poet Marzio Milesi memorialized him with poems and referred to him as a Knight. Today his death is still a mystery. No one knows exactly where, when, and how he died. Human bodies consist of physicals that do not disappear in air. If his remains are ever found it might clear up the manner and place of his death.
In accordance with Catholic doctrine if Caravaggio died with mortal sin on his soul for having killed Tomassoni, he died unredeemed and he’s still in Hell suffering its damnation. (If we could communicate or visit Hell, perhaps we could find out details of his mysterious death.) If the papal pardon was effective before he died, his soul probably transited to purgatory whence a pope acting vicariously for God could rescue him. In that event does rescue imply a new life without sex or with unisex?
Pantheist followers of the scholar Averroes (1126-1198) believe that upon death an individual’s soul and intellect are absorbed into the universe’s common soul and intellect.
Whether Caravaggio died with mortal sin on his soul is irrelevant to me because I don’t believe there’s a God, soul, heaven, purgatory, or hell. All postmortem activity, judgement, and abodes die when an individual dies.
Heresy
In his religious paintings Caravaggio ignored the painting edicts of
Pope Clement 8 and was slouching towards the heresies of Bruno and
Galileo. Bruno dared to challenge the authority of the Church. When Pope
Clement 8 demanded
Bruno recant he refused and the pope ordered him roasted alive, burned
to death in holocaust. Galileo was luckier; he balanced himself on a
razor’s edge declaring the Earth orbited the Sun while the pope
maintained the Sun orbited the Earth. Caravaggio ignored the classical
conventions of religious painting and won. Supported by cardinals and
aristocratic art lovers Caravaggio managed to escape Clement 8’s
punishing wrath. It’s obvious that religion and popes should be buried
in the ground of astrophysics and evolution.
Italia Irridenta (Italy Unredeemed)
For hundreds of years most of Italy, except for the Papal
States of central Italy, was ruled by the Holy Roman Empire and then by
foreign countries such as France and Spain. Italians called their
country ‘Italia Irridenta’ (Italy Unredeemed). It wasn’t until 1878,
under the leadership and generalship of the great Italian patriot
Giuseppe Garibaldi, that people who spoke Italian were incorporated into
a geographically and politically stable nation called Italy.
Caravaggio’s Paintings
On the following pages are two lists of Caravaggio’s paintings cobbled from source information shown on the Acknowledgement page of this book.
Dated List of Caravaggio’s Paintings
Alphabetic List of Caravaggio’s Paintings
When one considers the different versions he painted and the paintings destroyed, lost, or stolen his total output is probably far greater than the paintings itemized in the lists.
Dated List of Caravaggio’s Paintings
Paintings are oil on canvas except as noted.
(1) or (2) or * refer to notes at the end of this list and are applicable also to the Alphabetic List.
Notes
* The mature John Baptist, not young John in the wilderness.
Alphabetic List of Caravaggio’s Paintings
Sizes of Caravaggio’s Paintings
Most of Caravaggio’s paintings measured anywhere from 2-4 feet, except for Still Life in a Basket (12x18 inches), and his oversize paintings included:
Madonna of the Rosary, 8x12 feet
Matthew’s Calling, Matthew’s Martyrdom 11x11 feet
Lucy’s Burial, 10x13 feet
John Baptist Beheaded, 12x17 feet.
End of Book