Caravaggio: A Passionate Life (16 page)

XXVII

The Grand Master

O
ne of the knights’ ablest and most likable rulers, Caravaggio’s grand master, Fra’ Alof de Wignancourt, had been born in Artois in 1547. Although he did not come out to Malta until 1566, a year after the Great Siege, he had served under the legendary Grand Master de la Vallette, who made him Captain of Valletta with special responsibility for guarding the order’s new capital while it was being built. After completing his caravans at sea, he had gone home to run a commandery in the dangerous France of the Wars of Religion, returning to Malta as Hospitaller in 1597.

As soon as Fra’ Alof was elected grand master in 1601, it became clear that an innovator was in charge. He put real vigor into the knights’ crusade against the infidel, their galleys raiding Greece, Turkey, Syria, and North Africa, bringing back impressive booty together with quantities of slaves. Anxious to enhance the pomp and grandeur of his office, he established a corps of twelve pages, aspirant novices, to wait on him. In 1611 George Sandys noted, “For albeit a Frier (as the rest of the Knights), yet is he an absolute Soveraigne, and is bravely attended on by a number of gallant yong Gentlemen.” He chose them from the poorer nobility, paying for their education himself.

Wignancourt took good care of his Maltese subjects, much better than any shown by his predecessors. Formerly, whole families of country people had been dragged off to the Moorish slave markets by Barbary corsairs, on one occasion the neighboring island of Gozo’s entire population, so he built small forts where they could take shelter from raiders, besides setting up a bank for ransoming captives. The Maltese, who idolized him, thought he was a wizard, which probably means that, like del Monte, he took an active interest in alchemy.

For all his fire-eating appearance in Caravaggio’s famous portrait at the Louvre, Fra’ Alof was a pleasant, modest man, genuinely benevolent, and gifted with exceptional tact. Despite his firm leadership and his innovations, he was never autocratic or overbearing, never attempted to rule as an absolute monarch, “Very easy to do business with, always open to suggestions before taking a decision, always ready to listen to the opinions of the experts on both civil and military matters,” writes the historian dall’ Pozzo, who had obviously spoken to elderly knights who remembered his reign. “He chose extremely well qualified officers and counselors, ruling with their advice and taking careful account of their views…. Among his principal advisers was the Bailiff of Naples, Fra’ Ippolito Malaspina.”

Every grand master made the painful discovery that he had extremely difficult subjects to govern. The main disturbance during Caravaggio’s time on Malta came from the Langue of Germany. In 1607 uproar broke out among the German knights when they learned that Fra’ Alof had given permission for the Comte de Brie, a bastard son of the Duke of Lorraine, to join the German Langue. There was a long and noisy dispute. At one point the enraged Germans pulled down the arms of the grand master and the Religion from their accustomed place over the main gateway of the Langue of Germany. Eventually, Fra’ Alof was forced to give in, arranging for the count to be admitted into the much less demanding Langue of Italy, where he became a novice with Caravaggio. The Italians were nearly always prepared to accept a papal dispensation for inadequate proofs of nobility, and
the grand master must have asked Scipione Borghese to provide one for Brie.

The Comte de Brie’s story shows Wignancourt’s ability to compromise and his diplomatic finesse at using Rome. It also underlines the extraordinary emphasis placed by the Religion on the value of impeccably noble birth, and in the very uneasy position in which painters of obscure origin might find themselves if they became Knights of Malta. Brie should have been a warning to Caravaggio.

The grand master was in frequent contact with the cardinal nephew, through the Religion’s ambassador at Rome. He needed his support constantly in dealing with such problems as the Inquisitor, who saw himself as unofficial papal nuncio to Malta. Knights in trouble for some offense often appealed through him to the pope against the order’s sentence, so that his meddling was an endless source of vexation. Fra’ Alof had every reason to keep on good terms with Borghese, whose weakness for Caravaggio made Wignancourt no doubt still more inclined to like the artist.

Even so, Fra’ Alof’s primary motive was to use Caravaggio in the service of the Religion. He had seen Valletta rise from the ground and now he wanted to make it as beautiful as possible. Probably while he was still in the novitiate, Caravaggio produced not less than three portraits of Fra’ Alof. The first, now at the Louvre and the only one to survive, shows him in a splendid, gold-inlaid ceremonial armor, grasping an admiral’s baton. The second portrait has disappeared, although there is a clumsy copy at Rabat; it depicted Fra’ Alof as hospitaller instead of crusader, wearing his choir mantle and seated at a desk on which there were a crucifix and a book of hours. The third, a head and shoulders, is known only from a French engraving of 1609. Was the grand master aware that Caravaggio had painted the pope, and is that perhaps why he sat for him so many times?

During the sittings, Fra’ Alof had plenty of opportunity to speak with the artist, and obviously he could see no reason to change his mind about admitting him to the Religion. After only a few months, the grand master
decided that his protégé definitely possessed a vocation to become a Knight of Malta. On 29 December 1607, he wrote two letters, one to the order’s amabassador at Rome, Fra’ Francesco Lomellini, and the other to its former ambassador, Fra’ Giacomo Bosio, asking them to obtain a papal dispensation to enter the Religion for someone who had committed a murder. No letter to the omnipotent Cardinal Borghese survives, but it would have been unthinkable not to seek his help.

On 7 February 1608, the grand master formally petitioned the pope for a dispensation, “on this occasion only, to clothe and adorn with a Magistral Knight’s habit two persons of whom he has a very high opinion and whom he is nominating, although one of them has committed a homicide during a street brawl.” There must have been a good deal of discreet lobbying before Fra’ Alof presented the petition. Again, it is likely that the cardinal secretary played a key role behind the scenes. No names are mentioned in the petition, but it is inconceivable that Rome remained unaware of the murderer’s identity. The grand master was far too shrewd to risk trying to deceive the Curia, let alone Pope Paul.

Rome was notoriously slow at answering petitions, yet somebody, presumably Borghese, made sure that the pontiff answered at once. On February 15, he sent a papal “brief” to Malta, granting Wignancourt’s request, while warning that it was a special case that must not be seen as creating a precedent.

In July, Fra’ Alof issued a magistral bull, commanding that “the honorable Michelangelo of Caracca in Lombardy, in the vernacular called ‘Caravaggio,’ ” should be admitted into the Order of Malta as a Knight of Magistral Obedience, because of “his burning zeal for the Religion … and his great desire to be clothed with the habit.”

XXVIII

“Fra’ Michelangelo,” July 1608

T
he great monument to Michelangelo da Caravaggio’s dream of becoming a Knight of Malta is still to be seen in the procathedral at Valletta, formerly the order’s conventual church. It is the
Beheading of St. John the Baptist
, the most magnificent of all his paintings. It is peculiarly personal in that it enshrines his devoted allegiance to the Religion.

John the Baptist was the knights’ protector in the holy land, on Rhodes and on Malta, as he remains today. On more than one occasion his sudden appearance in the sky, accompanied by the Virgin, announced triumph over apparently hopeless odds. The
Vittoria
Mass on 8 September (the Feast of the Virgin’s Nativity) was one of the greatest days in the order’s calendar. Everyone on Malta believed the Turks had abandoned the Great Siege on that day in 1565, leaving the knights victorious, because they had seen the Baptist and the Virgin in the clouds, coming to the brethren’s rescue. The “Victory” Mass has been said ever since. In Caravaggio’s time the Religion marched through Valletta, the prior bearing the icon of Our Lady of Philermo—its most cherished relic—while during Mass the grand master brandished the sword presented to Vallette by King Philip II, and from the city walls cannon fired salute after salute.

The Baptist sailed into battle with the knights, his gilded statue at the poop of every galley and his head on their banners. His likeness was engraved on many of the brethren’s breastplates, helmets, swords, and daggers. Several times a year his hand, cased in silver, was borne in procession around the conventual church.

The Religion’s greatest feast was St. John’s Nativity on 24 June. During the week before, all seagoing was suspended; no boat would leave the harbor till it was over. At the vigil on the previous day, the knights heard how John’s father had prophesied that the Last of the Prophets “shall convert many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God.” On the feast itself, all the brethren on the island were present at Mass in the conventual church, when the sermon extolled the holy war against the foes of the risen Christ, promising salvation to all who died fighting in it or as captives of the infidel. The rest of the day, apart from vespers, was given up to banqueting, regattas, and fireworks.

Caravaggio could have chosen no subject with a greater impact on the Knights of Malta than the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, nor could anything have fascinated him more, given his own ghastly obsession with decapitation. As usual, Bellori has a good description, having traveled to Malta to see the painting, which Caravaggio probably completed while he was still a novice: “The saint has fallen to the ground while the executioner, as though he had not been able to cut it off at once with his sword, takes his knife from his side in order to sever the head from the trunk. Herodias is looking on intently, while the jailer, dressed as a Turk, points fiercely at this awful butchery.” Caravaggio had succeeded in finding just the right model, beautiful and auburn haired, for Herodias, who holds the charger in readiness for her daughter’s gruesome reward. Perhaps she was one of the Greek courtesans who shocked Sandys.

The largest of his pictures, it must have been painted where it was to hang, in the recently completed Oratory of San Giovanni Decollato in the conventual church, as an altarpiece between the Doric pillars on the east
wall. The oratory was used as a lecture hall for the novices, and was more than familiar to him. Here he spent the night before taking his vows, in vigil before what many consider his masterpiece. It was his
passagio
or passage money, the sum paid by every Knight on entering the Religion.

Understandably, Caravaggio was pleased with this painting, the only one he is known to have signed, “F Michelangelo.” It is not clear if he signed it before or after his profession; he may well have done so afterward, proud of at last being able to call himself “Fra’ Michelangelo.” The signature is in blood, or at any rate blood red, as if lifeblood streaming from the Baptist’s neck. The head is not a self-portrait. Even Caravaggio dared not shock his new brethren in such a way.

The painting’s impact on the Religion, especially on the grand master, was overwhelming. We have to remember the knights’ intense devotion to their conventual church, whose decoration was the first item in the order’s annual budget. So far, it was a starkly functional building, largely unadorned, and therefore an unrivaled setting for so dramatic a painting.

Caravaggio took his vows at Mass in the Oratory on 14 July 1608, between the Epistle and the Gospel, in front of his own painting of St. John. Having confessed his sins, wearing a red silk surcoat embroidered with a great white cross, he stood before Fra’ Alof. First, he was made a knight. At the Giving of the Sword, he was reminded that normally membership of the Religion was “by custom granted only to those who, by virtue of their ancient lineage and personal virtue, are accounted worthy.” He promised to defend the Church, together with “those who are poor, dispossessed, orphaned, sick and suffering.” Next, he was clothed as a monk, swearing on the crucifix to obey his superiors and live in poverty and chastity. He was given the habit, the black choir mantle with a white cross, and a stole embroidered with symbols of the Passion.

The bull for his admission states that Malta would honor him “as the island of Cos honoured its own Apelles,” suggesting the document was issued after he had produced some particularly impressive painting, probably the
Beheading of St. John
. Bellori says it so delighted Fra’ Alof that he gave Caravaggio a gold chain and two slaves as a reward. He was doing just what the grand master had hoped—producing pictures that would shed luster on the Religion.

Even so, judging from his small output on Malta, he seems to have spent comparitively little time painting. Perhaps he had difficulty in finding the right models, though whoever posed for Herodias was a woman of great beauty. Possibly he painted works that await rediscovery. He certainly produced a now-lost portrait of Fra’ Ippolito Malaspina, once in Ottavio Costa’s collection, which, no doubt, had been commissioned by that discerning patron. A picture that has survived from the Maltese period is a repellent
Sleeping Cupid
, the subject of which, with his swollen stomach, looks more like a dead baby intended as a warning for celibates against the joys of fatherhood. Today in the Galleria Palatina at Florence, it originally belonged to a knight, Fra’ Francesco dell’ Antella.

Now that he had been professed, he would have time to dazzle his new brethren with his genius. But, if neither noble nor young enough to fight at sea against the infidel, was a painter really suited to the last crusaders’ calling? Not everyone on Malta thought so.

XXIX

The Unknown Knight, September 1608

C
aravaggio’s career as a Knight of Malta was all too brief, ending suddenly in his arrest and disgrace. We do not have the full details, but we can discount the theory that he was disowned by the order when it learned about the killing of Ranuccio Tommasoni. The grand master had always known this and had obtained a dispensation.

While contemporary sources agree on the broad outlines of what happened, the key account is by Susinno, who wrote a hundred years later. From his vocabulary, it looks as though he himself belonged to the Order of Malta, as either a chaplain or as a Priest of Obedience, that is, a priest employed to serve one of the knights’ chapels. He therefore understood the Religion and its members’ highly individual mentality. No other early writer on Caravaggio possessed this sort of specialist knowledge.

Bellori’s version of Caravaggio’s Maltese downfall is, however, the one that has been used most. He says, “abruptly, his disturbed genius caused him to forfeit the Grand Master’s favor, and because of a stupid quarrel with a most noble Knight, he was thrown into prison….” Clearly, Bellori had heard that his opponent was someone of considerable distinction.

Susinno’s account is not so very different, but it contains one particularly
significant clue. “Michelangelo paraded in front of everybody with the Cross on his chest, but this did not calm his troubled spirit, and he let himself be blinded by
the madness of thinking himself a nobleman born
[italics mine]. A Knight’s quality is not shown by pride, but by a wish to please. He grew so rash that one day he competed with other Knights, and he fought with a Knight of Justice.”

If there was one thing of which every member of the Religion was profoundly convinced, it was the value of noble blood, descent from a long line of warrior aristocrats with unquestioned lordship over the land and those who toiled on it. God had placed all men in the condition He saw fit, and Susinno reflected the general view, that Caravaggio was insane to think himself the equal of a man who was a Knight of Justice by right of noble birth. Generally, other men of obscure origin who became knights through dispensation were gratifyingly mindful of their “low extraction.”

Speculation about just what prompted the quarrel has ranged from a dispute over a woman to a sexual assault on one of the grand master’s pages, lurid fantasies for which there is not the slightest shred of evidence. The most plausible explanation is undoubtedly Susinno’s, that it was a fight over rank and birth. Some years later another painter-knight, Mattia Preti, also a Knight of Magistral Obedience, found himself in a situation of this sort when a member of the Religion began to sneer at his questionable pretensions to noble blood and his undistinguished background. After a few days, Preti lost his temper, whipped out his rapier, and left the man for dead.

Caravaggio’s haughty antagonist may well have told him that he was no more than a painter. It was probably a considerable time since anyone had spoken unpleasantly to Fra’ Michelangelo. As Bellori put it, Caravaggio “had lived on Malta as an honoured guest, prospering in every way.” He had forgotten that he had arrived on the island as a fugitive. The Religion’s flattery and his new status as a professed knight had completely turned his head.

We do not know his opponent’s name, though Bellori’s “most noble
Knight” sounds very like a Bailiff Grand Cross, one of the order’s senior officers. It is also possible that he belonged to one of the great families of southern Italy, since he had unusually good contacts in Naples. Clearly very important, and perhaps elderly, he was a man whom Caravaggio should never have dared to confront. The combat that ensued was much more than a brush with swords. No one else seems to have taken part, since no one else was arrested afterward. It looks as though Caravaggio attacked his antagonist in a burst of blind rage. He appears to have hurt him very badly, inflicting wounds that would take months to heal.

Why did the fight cause such outrage among the Religion? Despite the harsh penalties, duels were not uncommon at Valletta, generally taking place in Strada Stretta. It was customary to mark with a cross the spot where a knight had been killed, and during the next century an English tourist counted twenty crosses in this street. What seems to have angered the brethren was not so much Caravaggio fighting a duel as his opponent’s distinction.

Instead of rushing down to the harbor, boarding a boat about to sail, and escaping from Malta without delay, Caravaggio simply went home and stayed there, apparently unhurt. What makes his behavior so extraordinary is that, during his novitiate, his novice master must surely have made sure that the killer of Ranuccio Tommasoni learned all about the savage penalties on Malta for this sort of offense. He was quickly arrested by the grand viscount, the island’s senior police officer; perhaps significantly, he was not apprehended by the master squire, who normally dealt with errant brethren. Far from being confined to his house, he was immediately dragged off to prison, plainly on orders given at the very highest level.

His arrest by the grand viscount, who seldom had dealings with members of the Religion, was so unusual that everyone in Valletta must have heard about it. Undoubtedly, the order was very angry indeed and wanted to punish him severely. Yet, if it did, it would face an international outcry for imprisoning such a great artist. The grand master was well aware that Scipione Borghese, in particular, could be counted on to make serious trouble,
and he had no wish to upset the omnipotent cardinal secretary. Fra’ Alof may even have wanted to pardon Caravaggio. He had the power to do so, but, conceivably, he feared that a pardon in this case might upset the brethren. He seems to have decided that the simplest solution was to let the painter escape, and then expel him from the Religion.

Caravaggio had done more than make it impossible for himself to remain a member of the Order of Malta. He had acquired the most dangerous enemy of his entire career. We can be sure of at least one thing about the unknown knight. He was implacably revengeful. When he recovered from his wounds, he would begin a carefully planned vendetta, and Caravaggio would live in fear for his life until the day he died.