Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane (81 page)

26.
See Vincenzo Pacelli, ‘New Documents concerning Caravaggio in Naples’, p. 820.

27.
See Bernardo de Dominici,
Vite de’ pittori, scultori ed architetti napoletani
(Naples, 1742–3), pp. 275–6. Cited in John T. Spike,
Caravaggio
, in his entry on
The Flagellation.

28.
This could be said to bring full circle that fruitful interplay between painting and sculpture already embodied by Caravaggio’s own work. He himself had been powerfully influenced by the polychrome statuary of Lombardy and the
sacri monti
.

29.
See Ann Tzeutschler Lurie and Denis Mahon, ‘Caravaggio’s
Crucifixion of St Andrew
from Valladolid’,
Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Arts
, vol. 64 (Jan. 1977), pp. 3–24. The picture had reportedly found its way to a convent in Spain by 1972, and was on sale in the art market in Switzerland a year later; it was purchased by the Cleveland Museum of Art through the L. C. Hanna Jr Bequest in 1976. See the
CD
-
ROM
catalogue entry on the painting in John T. Spike,
Caravaggio.

30.
See
Caravaggio: The Final Years
, exhibition catalogue, p. 109. Keith Christiansen’s entry on this particular painting also contains an outstandingly lucid account of the wider issues surrounding the much debated chronology of Caravaggio’s later pictures.

31.
The quotation is taken from
The Golden Legend
of Jacobus de Voragine, translated and adapted from the Latin by Granger Ryan and Helmut Ripperberger (New York, 1969), p. 13.

32.
John Varriano, in his
Caravaggio: The Art of Realism
(Pennsylvania, 2003), notes that ‘goiters are known to be geographically linked to mountainous places and were especially common in the region around Naples, the site where the earliest research on the disease was conducted.’

33.
See Walter Friedlaender,
Caravaggio Studies
, p. 314.

34.
It was taken there by Finson, who by that time had assumed sole ownership of the work. He subsequently bequeathed it to his friend and business partner, Vinck.

35.
The picture was either sold or given to Emperor Josef II of Austria when he visited Antwerp in 1781.

36.
See the
CD
-
ROM
catalogue entry on the painting in John T. Spike,
Caravaggio
, for the relevant documents.

37.
For Mancini’s correspondence in connection with the sale of
The Death of the Virgin
, see Michele Maccherini, ‘Caravaggio nel carteggio familiare di Giulio Mancini’,
Prospettiva
, vol. 86 (1997), pp. 71–92.

38.
For Magno’s correspondence with Chieppio, see Walter Friedlaender,
Caravaggio Studies
, pp. 308–10.

39.
See Sandro Corradini,
Materiali per un processo
, document 110, 2–4 Nov. 1606.

40.
See Maryvelma Smith O’Neil,
Giovanni Baglione: Artistic Reputation in Baroque Rome
, pp. 166–7.

41.
Walter Friedlaender,
Caravaggio Studies
, p. 313.

42.
Ibid., p. 313.

43.
Giacomo Bosio,
Dell’istoria della sacra religione
(Rome, 1594–1602), vol. 3, p. 574. My attention was called to this and the following quotation by David M. Stone’s article ‘The Context of Caravaggio’s
Beheading of St John
in Malta’,
Burlington Magazine
, vol. 139, no. 1,128 (Mar. 1997), pp. 161–70.

44.
Ibid., vol. 3, p. 574.

45.
Helen Langdon,
The Lives of Caravaggio
, p. 79.

46.
See Walter Friedlaender,
Caravaggio Studies
, p. 266.

47.
Just a year before, at the start of 1606, Capeci had helped to organize another painter’s journey to Malta. He had provided the artist in question, an unnamed Florentine, with canvases and pigments. He had also arranged his passage to the island via Messina in Sicily. For unknown reasons the painter from Florence never actually made it on to the island, but the episode strongly suggests that Capeci was involved in Caravaggio’s transfer to Malta as well. See Keith Sciberras and David Stone,
Caravaggio: Art, Knighthood and Malta
(Malta, 2006), p. 22.

48.
See Maurizio Calvesi,
Le realtà del Caravaggio
, pp. 132–3; Keith Sciberras
and David Stone,
Caravaggio: Art, Knighthood and Malta
, p. 20; Helen Langdon,
Caravaggio: A Life
, p. 346.

49.
Much of this sequence of events was established by the discovery of a long-overlooked letter of June 1607 in the Farnese deposit in the Naples State Archives, written by Alessandro Boccabarile, agent for Duke Ranuccio Farnese: ‘Eight days ago five galleys of the Religion of Malta arrived here, from Provence, under the command of the Prior of Venice, brother of the Marquis of Caravaggio [i.e., Fabrizio Sforza Colonna]. He brought his mother, who was staying at the Torre del Greco with the Prince of Stigliano . . . The aforesaid galleys will leave for Malta once the Feast of St John is over, taking with them two unequipped galleys newly made in Provence, and above all slaves . . .’ This material was discovered by Antonio Ernesto Denunzio and published in the catalogue to the National Gallery’s
Late Caravaggio
exhibition, p. 49.

50.
Keith Sciberras’s second chapter in
Caravaggio: Art, Knightood and Malta
, entitled ‘Virtuosity Honoured, Chivalry Disgraced’, is an invaluable source of information about Caravaggio’s time on Malta, much of it recently unearthed by Sciberras himself in the Maltese archives. For the documents concerning the journey to Malta, see p. 22.

51.
See George Sandys,
A Relation of a Journey
, p. 234.

52.
For these documents, see John Azzopardi’s contribution to the catalogue
The Church of St John in Valletta 1578–98 and the Earliest Record of Caravaggio in Malta
, Fr John Azzopardi (ed.) (Malta, 1978).

53.
See George Sandys,
A Relation of a Journey
, p. 230.

54.
See Helen Langdon,
Caravaggio: A Life
, p. 345.

55.
See Commander Denis Calman,
Knights of Durance
(Malta, 1963), p. 12.

56.
See George Sandys,
A Relation of a Journey
, p. 230.

57.
Martelli did not take up his position until 1608, when a Medici agent reported his arrival in the Sicilian port town: ‘yesterday the galleys arrived here from Malta and with them Prior Martelli, who if much aged remains in excellent health.’ For this quotation, see Keith Sciberras and David Stone,
Caravaggio: Art, Knighthood and Malta
, p. 89. Stone’s account of Caravaggio’s portrait of Martelli is clear and perceptive. The most informative essay on Martelli’s life and career is by John Gash: ‘The Identity of Caravaggio’s Knight of Malta’,
Burlington Magazine
, vol. 139, no. 1,128 (Mar. 1997) pp. 156–60. Some authors continue to question the picture’s attribution to Caravaggio, others to doubt that it represents Martelli. But a mid seventeenth-century inscription in a Medici collection inventory records the name of the painting’s sitter as Antonio Martelli and I see no reason to doubt that. He was a celebrated man and the painting probably hung in the Vasari corridor alongside other depictions of worthies and notables treasured by the Medici, which makes it all the more likely that the inventorist would have got his name right. It used to be thought that Martelli could not have been painted by Caravaggio on Malta in 1607–8 because of his appointment to the Priory of Messina in 1606, so the archival evidence showing that he did not actually leave for Messina until the autumn of 1608 is important. Last but not least, the nonpareil moral and intellectual force of the painting, its abbreviated style, its depth of chiaroscuro, even such details as the slightly blocky impasto highlights in the prominent sunburned ear of the sitter – all scream out late Caravaggio. I cannot see who else could possibly have painted the picture.

58.
For these documents, see Fr John Azzopardi, ‘Documentary Sources on Caravaggio’s Stay in Malta’, in
Caravaggio in Malta
, Philip Farrugia Randon (ed.) (Malta, 1986), pp. 45–56; and Stefania Macioce, ‘Caravaggio a Malta e i suoi referenti’, in
Storia dell’Arte
, vol. 81 (1994), pp. 207–8. Helen Langdon, in conversation with me, has expressed second thoughts about whether this document actually refers to Caravaggio. She points out that Knights of Malta were so universally prone to violence that the reference to a homicide committed does not necessarily point the finger at Caravaggio alone as the intended recipient of one of the two knighthoods for which papal approval was being requested. However, given the scarcity of Knighthoods of Magistral Obedience awarded by Wignacourt – indeed, so great was his reluctance to award such knighthoods at all that he had all but abolished them – it seems highly unlikely that he gave two in the same year to men who had committed murder. In my opinion, the man mentioned in the document, and Caravaggio, are beyond all reasonable doubt the same person.

59.
See n. 47 above.

60.
I am indebted to Keith Sciberras for explaining this crucial sequence of points to me, in conversations on Malta in 2001.

61.
It has been suggested that he may have painted the work
in situ
, in the Oratory of St John itself, but I think that is implausible on the grounds that the light in that space would have been so far from ideal, even in the summer months. There is no absolute proof either way, but I think it more likely that he found a space elsewhere and adapted it accordingly.

62.
Some writers have identified her with Salome, others with Salome’s mother, Herodias, Herod’s consort. But she is dressed in the clothes of a serving wench. Everything about the way in which Caravaggio painted her indicates that she is meant to be seen as a member of the chorus, not as a leading player in the drama.

63.
The inscription has occasionally been thought to imply the phrase ‘
fecit
Caravaggio’, ‘Caravaggio made this’, rather than ‘Fra Michelangelo’. But the fact that it was his reception painting into the Order of St John argues compellingly for the latter as the true reading.

64.
Cited in John T. Spike,
Caravaggio
, pp. 209–10. Fr John Azzopardi published a photograph of the document, with transcription and translation, in ‘Documentary Sources on Caravaggio’s Stay in Malta’, pp. 55–6.

65.
I am grateful to John T. Spike for pointing out to me dell’Antella’s prob
able authorship of the Bull, and for teasing out the implication that by praising
Caravaggio as Apelles, it offers even higher praise to Wignacourt as his patron.

66.
For dell’Antella’s life and personality, see Helen Langdon,
Caravaggio: A Life
, p. 354; and Keith Sciberras and David Stone,
Caravaggio: Art, Knighthood and Malta
, p. 80.

67.
I am indebted to Elizabeth Cropper’s enlightening article about the links between Marino and Caravaggio: ‘The Petrifying Art: Marino’s Poetry and Caravaggio’,
Metropolitan Museum Journal
, vol. 26 (1991), pp. 193–212.
For the connections between Marino’s poem about sleeping Cupid and Caravaggio’s painting, see pp. 199–200. The quotations are taken from Giambattista Marino,
La Galeria
, Marzio Pieri (ed.) (Padua, 1979), vol. 1, pp. 273–7. The translations given here are my own very slightly adapted versions of those given in Cropper’s article.

68.
See Giorgio Vasari,
Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects
, vol. 2, p. 650.

69.
Letter dated 24 Apr. 1610. See David Stone, ‘In Praise of Caravaggio’s
Sleeping Cupid
: New Documents for Francesco dell’Antella in Malta and Florence’,
Melita historica
, vol. 12, pp. 165–77.

70.
See Helen Langdon,
The Lives of Caravaggio
, p. 80.

71.
See fn. 33 to Keith Sciberras’s second chapter in
Caravaggio: Art, Knightood and Malta
, for the full quotation in Italian. The translation given here is my own.

72.
See Walter Friedlaender,
Caravaggio Studies
, p. 292. The translation given there is more faithful than that in Helen Langdon,
The Lives of Caravaggio
, pp. 52–3. Baglione’s wording is important.

73.
See Helen Langdon,
The Lives of Caravaggio
, p. 80.

74.
I owe a debt of gratitude to Fr John Azzopardi for showing me around the Maltese archive, and allowing me to examine for myself the documents – both legible and obliterated – relating to Caravaggio’s crime and punishment on Malta. Keith Sciberras, who also generously shared much information with me on my visits to the island, first published the results of his X-ray examinations under the title ‘“Frater Michael Angelus in tumultu”: The Cause of Caravaggio’s Imprisonment in Malta’,
Burlington Magazine
, vol. 144, no. 1,189 (Apr. 2002), pp. 229–32. My account of the events surrounding Caravaggio’s crime is, inevitably, hugely dependent on his pioneering research.