Caravaggio

by Andrew Graham-Dixon

  But its biggest compliment of all is paid implicitly to the painter himself. He it is who personifies the Medusa, the monster who might be defeated but whose magical powers, none the less, loom larger than anything else in her legend. With eyes wide open and mouth agape, the painter takes on her role and in doing so claims for himself her dark powers of enchantment. Whomsoever the Medusa looks at, she freezes, preserving them forever in a single, charged instant of being. From the flux of life she takes a moment and makes it last for all time. That is what Caravaggio does too. Her magic is his magic, a petrifying art.

  IN THE LABORATORY OF THE ALCHEMIST

  Sometime around 1599 del Monte invited Caravaggio to his villa near the Porta Pinciana and commissioned him to decorate the ceiling of the Tesoretto, a narrow, rectangular room next to the distillery where the cardinal conducted his alchemical experiments. A hidden, private space, it is reminiscent of the studiolo of Francesco de’ Medici in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, a chamber like a jewellery box, which had been richly decorated in the Mannerist style by Giorgio Vasari and his assistants in the late 1560s. Francesco de’ Medici himself appears in one of those paintings, in the character of an alchemist. Although Caravaggio did not actually paint Cardinal del Monte surrounded by his phials and retorts, he did create a kind of portrait of the alchemically inclined mind. Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto is a wall painting but it was executed in the unusual and fugitive medium of oil on plaster, which strengthens the suspicion that Caravaggio had never learned to paint in fresco, despite his supposed apprenticeship to Peterzano. The picture, which is still in situ and in surprisingly good condition, was first described by Bellori:

  In Rome in the Ludovisi Gardens near the Porta Pinciana, they attribute to Caravaggio the Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto in the casino of Cardinal del Monte, who was interested in chemical medicines and adorned the small room of his laboratory, associating those gods with the elements and with the globe of the world placed in their midst. It has been said that Caravaggio, reproached for not understanding either planes or perspective, placed the figures in such a position that they appear to be seen from sharply below, so as to vie with the most difficult foreshortenings …48

  For the first and last time Caravaggio flirted with out-and-out Mannerism.49 The picture’s primary function might almost be, as Bellori insinuates, to demonstrate difficulties triumphantly overcome. The plunging perspective is of a type known as di sotto in sù, literally meaning ‘of above, from below’, executed here with light-hearted bravado. Jupiter, mounted on an eagle, reaches a hand into the translucent celestial sphere at the centre of the ceiling’s painted sky. The frowning figure of Neptune, mounted on a rearing seahorse, is yet another of Caravaggio’s self-portraits.50 The most dramatically foreshortened figure is that of Pluto, whose carefully painted penis is uncircumcised and surrounded by a dark bush of pubic hair. The Mannerist painter Giulio Romano had painted a similarly vivid di sotto in sù depiction of male genitalia – the undercarriage of a flying charioteer – in his mid sixteenth-century decorations of the Palazzo del Te in Mantua. Caravaggio’s bawdy fantasy of airborne larking about belongs squarely in the same tradition.

  There is an allegorical alibi for the emphatic phallus. The overarching theme of the painting is the procreative role of the three elements. From their seminal confluence, everything in the known universe depends. The picture reflects a particular twist in sixteenth-century alchemical theory. During the middle years of the century, the cardplaying astronomer Gerolamo Cardano had proposed a revision of the ancient Aristotelian belief in the four elements of Fire, Air, Water and Earth. Cardano argued that fire should not properly be regarded as an element, thereby reducing their number to three. Caravaggio followed this refinement, presumably advised by del Monte.

  Michelangelo had made dramatic use of di sotto in sù perspective for his depictions of God Separating Light and Darkness, God Creating the Sun and Moon and God Calling Forth Life from the Waters on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The subject of Caravaggio’s painting for del Monte is, in essence, a profane version of the same story, told at the start of the Book of Genesis. Caravaggio’s use of the same device may have been his way of mischievously pointing up the parallel between the most famous cycle of religious frescoes in all of Rome and his own, rather more playful ceiling decoration.

  Caravaggio was always highly responsive to circumstance and milieu. Throughout his life, his art would be deeply coloured by the different social, political and religious environments that he encountered. Entering the circle of Cardinal del Monte, living in his palace, absorbing his ideas, listening to his musicians, looking at his art collections – those experiences are all clearly reflected in Caravaggio’s paintings of the late 1590s. His work becomes more sophisticated, and more intellectually rarefied. Certain details, such as the exquisite wine glass held up by Bacchus, with its delicately blown stem and the whirlpool patterning of its shallow bowl, express his palpable delight in a previously unknown world of beauty and luxury.

  The work of this period is also marked by a spirit of experiment. The artist is trying out new ideas and striving to impress, so much so that he occasionally paints against the grain of his own dark and intense personality. The mythical Mannerist comedy of Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto would not be repeated. But the fact that Caravaggio was prepared to undertake a commission so alien to his own sensibility demonstrates his determination to succeed.

  Away from his painting room, and away from the company of Cardinal del Monte, Caravaggio was still the same turbulent young man who had committed nameless misdeeds in Milan. Those who knew him at this time thought of him as a person split asunder, a man who contrived to live two opposing lives. Karel van Mander, a Dutch painter in Rome, described him as a piece of living chiaroscuro:

  There is … a certain Michelangelo of Caravaggio who is doing remarkable things in Rome … he … has risen from poverty through his industry and by tackling and accepting everything with farsightedness and courage, as some people do who refuse to be held down through timidity or through lack of courage but who advance themselves candidly and fearlessly and who boldly pursue gain – a procedure which, if it is taken in honesty, in a proper manner, and with discretion, deserves no censure. For Fortuna will offer herself by no means frequently of her own accord; at times we must try her, prod her, and urge her …

  But again there is beside the grain the chaff, to wit that he does not pursue his studies steadfastly so that after a fortnight’s work he will swagger about for a month or two with his sword at his side and with a servant following him, from one ball-court to the next, ever ready to engage in a fight or argument, with the result that it is impossible to get along with him. All of which is wholly incompatible with our Art. For certainly Mars and Minerva have never been the best of friends. Yet as regards his painting, it is such that it is very pleasing in an exceedingly handsome manner, an example for our young artists to follow …51

  Caravaggio lived his life as if there were only Carnival and Lent, with nothing in between. His pictures are the legacy of his lenten days. To encounter his carnivalesque alter ego it is necessary to consult the records preserved in the labyrinthine vaults of Rome’s Archivio di Stato: a paper city within the city of stone, made up of witness statements and accusations. Through smokescreens of rumour, denial and furtive insinuation, this other figure comes clearly into view, accompanied by his friends, his lovers and his enemies.

  PAINTERS, SWORDSMEN AND WHORES

  On 11 and 12 July 1597 three men were summoned to appear before the Tribunal of the Governor of Rome and interrogated in connection with a case of assault. It was literally a cloak-and-dagger affair. A young man called Pietropaolo, apprentice to a barber-surgeon, had been hurt in a fight on the Via della Scrofa. Following the incident, he had been detained in prison because he refused to reveal the identity of his attacker. Violent crime was on the increase in Rome and steps were being taken to limit the unlicensed bearing of arms. Pietropaolo’
s silence irked the authorities. They were also interested in the discovery of a black cloak near the scene of the crime. Someone had handed it into the barber’s shop where the apprentice worked. Who was that person? Might he be able to shed light on the matter?

  The investigators would soon discover that the man who found the cloak was Michelangelo da Caravaggio, artist in the service of Cardinal del Monte. Because he had friends in high places, they decided not to call him until their preliminary enquiries were complete. Instead, they called two of the friends with whom he had been seen on the evening of the fracas, namely Prospero Orsi, the painter of grotesques, and the picture-dealer Costantino Spata. In the event, Caravaggio himself never would be asked to testify in connection with the case. But the words of those who were summoned give us vivid glimpses of the life that he led, at night, in the streets of Rome.52

  It is with the testimony of Pietropaolo’s employer, a barber-surgeon called Luca, that the case records begin. ‘I am a barber, and I practise the profession of barber here by the church of Sant’Agostino,’ Luca told the court. What did he know about the article of clothing that had been handed into his shop? Luca answered that a ferraiuolo – a black cloak, fastened with iron hooks – had been given to his apprentice, Pietropaolo, on the night in question. Luca himself was busy having dinner with his father and some others, but later Pietropaolo showed him the cloak and told him that a certain painter had brought it. ‘He told me his name, but I can’t remember it.’ When pressed to say if he knew the painter in question, Luca said that certainly he did: ‘One time he came into my shop to be spruced up, and another time he came to have a wound dressed … he had been in an argument with one of the grooms of the Giustiniani or Pinello families.’

  When the case investigator expressed scepticism that Luca could not remember the man’s name, he protested that it was the truth: ‘Really, sir, I do not recall it.’ Then, as if ashamed of his own memory lapse, he gave a startlingly precise physical description of the painter whose injuries he had treated, and whose beard he had trimmed. All is carefully transcribed in the spidery handwriting of a court notary. Suddenly here is Caravaggio, caught in the flashbulb glare of a barber’s memory: ‘This painter is a stocky young man, about twenty or twenty-five years old, with a thin black beard, thick eyebrows and black eyes, who goes dressed all in black, in a rather disorderly fashion, wearing black hose that is a little bit threadbare, and who has a thick head of hair, long over his forehead.’

  Returning to the matter of the lost-and-found cloak, Luca remembered Pietropaolo telling him that another man had been present when it was handed in – ‘a certain Costantino, who buys and sells paintings and whose shop is attached to the Madonella next to San Luigi dei Francesi’. All this happened shortly after Pietropaolo had been assaulted, and the fact that he was looking after the shop suggests that he cannot have been very badly injured. Luca made no mention of his apprentice’s wounds. Instead, he stressed that the cloak had never belonged to his apprentice in the first place. He probably hoped the whole investigation would come to nothing, so that normal business could be resumed.

  Costantino Spata was the next witness called by the court. ‘I am a seller of old paintings and I have a shop at San Luigi,’ he declared. He had been there for four years, since 1593, always on the same premises. He lived over the shop with his wife, Caterina Gori, and their four children, two adolescent girls and two little boys. The boys went to school, to the ‘Letteratura’. Costantino had no assistant and he did not employ members of his family in the business, so when he went out the shop was closed.

  Having established these particulars, the investigator asked him to recall the events of the previous Tuesday evening, the night of the fracas. Costantino said that, having been in his shop all day, he closed up at sunset, when the Ave Maria sounded. Just as he did so, two painters whom he knew walked by.

  One of them was Monsignor Michelangelo from Caravaggio who is the painter of Cardinal del Monte, and lives in the house of the said cardinal, and the other was a painter called Prospero, who comes from I know not where but lives near Monsignor Barberini over a boarding house … he is of small stature, with a little black beard, and is around twenty-five to twenty-eight years old. They asked me if I had eaten and I said yes but they said they hadn’t eaten and wanted to go to dinner at the Tavern of the Wolf [‘all’hostaria della Lupa’], where we all went together, and I stopped there with them while they ate.

  After dinner the three companions left the tavern. Moments later, the trouble erupted. ‘We all heard someone coming towards us from the Piazza San Luigi, yelling out and saying “ahi, ahi”.’ Caravaggio and Prospero headed off in the direction of Sant’Agostino, while Costantino hurried homewards. As he was walking, a running man passed him. For the rest of his testimony, Costantino stonewalled the investigators. He never really saw the man who was in such a hurry. He could not judge his height or make out how he was dressed. He could not even tell if he had a cloak, or if he was wearing a hat on his head. He did not see if either of the painters had picked up a cloak. He did not have his glasses with him, and without his glasses he could not see very well. Besides, it was dark.

  Prospero Orsi, the last witness to be called, corroborated Costantino’s story. He also went into more detail about Caravaggio’s decidedly marginal involvement in the evening’s events. Half an hour before the sounding of the Ave Maria, Prospero recalled, Caravaggio had come round to his place. They had gone out to eat. After dinner, they were walking along the Via della Scrofa when they heard shouts coming from the Piazza San Luigi – ‘screams and laments, someone saying “ohime, ohime” and other words’. But because they were still some way off, because it was getting dark and there was very little street lighting, Prospero could not really see what was going on. Moments later a man sprinted past him. What did he look like, this man? ‘Sir, I cannot say who that man was. I didn’t see his face, I didn’t see his clothes, because he passed like a shadow.’

  After the man ran past them, Prospero and Caravaggio carried on walking in the direction of the Pantheon. They came across a black cloak lying on the ground. Prospero didn’t touch the cloak, so he could not say of what material it was made. Caravaggio picked it up and said he would give it to a neighbour. With those words, he turned around and went back to the corner of Sant’Agostino and gave the cloak to a young man at the barber’s shop there. ‘I don’t know the young man’s name because I don’t go to that barber’s shop,’ Prospero added. The two artists wandered back towards San Luigi dei Francesi, where they bumped into Costantino again. He was closing his shop for the night. Prospero parted with Caravaggio at the Palazzo Madama and went home. The investigator enquired whether any of the parties involved had been bearing arms. ‘Costantino and I were not carrying weapons of any kind,’ Prospero said. But Caravaggio was wearing a sword. ‘He is the only one to carry a sword, because he is in the service of Cardinal del Monte. Before he used to carry it by day. Now he only carries it sometimes when he goes out at night.’

  Caravaggio’s remark that he would give the cloak to ‘a neighbour’, and his immediate decision to hand it in at Luca’s shop, indicate that he (unlike his conveniently short-sighted and confused friends) had immediately recognized the running man. Caravaggio knew that it was Pietropaolo, because he himself went to the barber-surgeon’s shop on the corner of Sant’Agostino.53 He assumed the cloak was his and took it straight to the apprentice’s place of work – only to find that Pietropaolo had run so fast that he was there to receive it himself.

  The enquiry was dropped and the case was closed, unsolved. It was a trivial matter. But the testimonies of those involved, fragmented and confused, reveal much about Caravaggio and the milieu in which he moved. He might have gone up in the world, but he had not forgotten his old friends. He still kept company with Prospero Orsi, who had pushed him to leave the Cesari workshop, and with Costantino Spata, the hard-pressed picture-seller with many mouths to feed. Taking advantage of his newfo
und status as member of a cardinal’s household, Caravaggio was now carrying a sword openly in the streets of the city. He was not afraid to use it. He had been to the barber-surgeon’s at least once, to have his wounds dressed, following a fight with a groom attached to another noble Roman household. History does not relate whether the groom’s injuries were worse than his.

  The barber-surgeon’s account of Caravaggio’s physical appearance closely matches descriptions of the painter in other early sources. Bellori, echoing Vasari’s idea that artists resemble their own work, wrote that ‘Caravaggio’s style corresponded to his physiognomy and appearance; he had a dark complexion and dark eyes, and his eyebrows and hair were black; this colouring was naturally reflected in his paintings … driven by his own nature, he retreated to the dark style that is connected to his disturbed and contentious temperament.’54 Bellori’s Caravaggio is the epitome of the melancholy artist, born under the sign of Saturn: dark looks, dark temperament, dark art. But the evidence of the criminal archive suggests a more literal explanation for Caravaggio’s sartorial style. People who went dressed in dark colours did so to avoid detection, especially at night. To describe a man as someone who wore black when the Ave Maria sounded was to mark him out as a trouble-maker. Like the dark cloak that may or may not have belonged to Pietropaolo, Caravaggio’s black clothes were a form of urban camouflage, designed to enable him to disappear into the poorly lit streets of the city at night. He pursued the same strategy on the streets as he did in the studio. In life as in art he hid what he wanted to hide in the shadows.