The pictures for the Contarelli Chapel were compellingly original public works of art. At a stroke they brought Caravaggio’s new style of painting to a much broader public. His matchless sense of drama and his use of extreme contrasts of light and dark would prove intoxicatingly influential. The painting of such seventeenth-century masters as Rembrandt in Holland, Georges de La Tour in France, Ribera in Spain, even the work of much later Romantic artists such as Géricault and Delacroix, all are inconceivable without the pictorial revolution first unleashed by Caravaggio in his two pictures of scenes from the life of St Matthew. It is no exaggeration to say that they decisively changed the tradition of European art. But in their own time, they were controversial.
Caravaggio’s rival, imitator and future biographer Giovanni Baglione went to see the pictures as soon as they were installed. His account of the visit conveys the impact of Caravaggio’s work on those who first saw it. But it also hints at the jealousies aroused by the sudden rise to fame of a previously little-known painter from Lombardy. Baglione went to see the pictures with Federico Zuccaro, the president of Rome’s art academy, the Accademia di San Luca. Sixty years old, Zuccaro was an éminence grise who aspired to the mantle of Michelangelo while painting late Mannerist monstrosities.12 He claimed to be unimpressed by Caravaggio’s work, as Baglione reported with evident pleasure:
This commission with the paintings done after life … made Caravaggio famous, and the paintings were excessively praised by evil people. When Federico Zuccaro came to see this picture, while I was there, he exclaimed: ‘What is all the fuss about?’ and after having studied the entire work carefully, added: ‘I do not see anything here other than the idea of Giorgione in the picture of the saint when Christ calls him to the Apostolate’; and, sneering, astonished by such commotion, he turned his back and left.13
At first sight Zuccaro’s response seems as puzzling as it is petty. Caravaggio’s monumental, tenebristic Calling of St Matthew has little in common with the works of Giorgione, painter of The Tempest, The Sleeping Venus and the Three Ages of Man. But Zuccaro’s phrase, ‘the idea of Giorgione’, suggests that he meant to invoke the Venetian master first and foremost as a stereotype – the embodiment of a particular approach to painting. It is by no means certain that the crusty academician was familiar with Giorgione’s actual works. But he certainly knew Giorgio Vasari’s life of Giorgione, which had emphasized the painter’s absolute dependence on the evidence of his own eyes. According to Vasari, Giorgione ‘would never represent anything in his works without copying it from life’.14 Vasari was a partisan of the Tuscan–Roman approach to art, with its strong emphasis on idealized forms, usually realized in the medium of fresco; his portrayal of Giorgione as a slavish naturalist was part of a systematic damning of the great Venetian oil painters with faint praise. So in declaring that Caravaggio was merely another Giorgione, Zuccaro was tarring him with the same brush: the comment was shorthand for saying that Caravaggio had no faculty of invention or imagination, that he was a painter who brought everything down to the level of mundane actual life, even the sacred mysteries. The curmudgeonly and conservative Zuccaro may well have been genuinely disturbed by the painter’s decision to depict Matthew in his tax office as if he were a character in a low-life genre scene. If so, he would not be the last to take offence at Caravaggio’s perceived sins against decorum.
In certain circles of the Roman art world Caravaggio would always be seen as an unwelcome outsider. Not only did Zuccaro criticize him for being an empty-headed naturalist, but he also implied that Caravaggio was polluting the pure and noble traditions of Roman painting with a seditious foreign idea – ‘the idea of Giorgione’ – brought in from Venice. Caravaggio’s dark and monumental oil paintings would certainly have looked extremely Venetian in the chapel of a Roman church in 1600, because only in Venice, where dampness and humidity discouraged fresco painting, was it common to see such large works of religious art carried out in oil on canvas. Caravaggio’s painting must have seemed truly foreign, alien.15
Caravaggio may not have been unduly concerned by Zuccaro’s dislike for his work, but it was hardly a good omen. The Accademia di San Luca was an influential organization that could play an important role in a painter’s career. He seems to have tried to be a part of it. A few years earlier he had been one of 105 artists to participate in the religious devotion known as the Forty Hours, annual celebrations in honour of St Luke. At that time he was not yet a member of the academy, although there is evidence to suggest that he may have joined some time after 1600.16 He was, however, never admitted to its inner circle.
The Contarelli paintings divided opinion, but they instantly established Caravaggio as one of the leading painters of the city. However, there is no sign that success mellowed him. His life on the streets of the city was more turbulent than ever. At some point during the winter of 1600 – the precise date is unknown – he clashed with one of Rome’s many unemployed mercenaries. Both men drew their swords. The painter outfought the soldier, who retired hurt. Caravaggio’s friend, the notoriously hot-headed Onorio Longhi, was also involved. The injured man prosecuted and the legal document that records the affair also notes that it was settled out of court. Caravaggio must have compensated the man for his injuries:
In favour of Michelangelo Caravaggio, summoned and prosecuted for a sword wound which he had inflicted on the hand of Flavio Canonico, a former sergeant of the guards at Castel Sant’Angelo, with the complicity of Onorio Longhi, without danger to life, but with a permanent scar … the most Illustrious and Reverent Lord, the Governor [of Rome], in view of the accord and reconciliation obtained from the aforesaid Flavio who was the injured party, ordered that the lawsuit … and all other documents existing against the aforesaid [Caravaggio] for the above mentioned cause shall be cancelled and annulled and that the same [Caravaggio] shall not be molested any further on the ground of the aforesaid incident …17
Flavio Canonico was not Caravaggio’s only victim that winter. On 19 November 1600 the painter was charged with a nocturnal assault on a young art student named Girolamo Spampa from Montepulciano in Tuscany. This is what Spampa told the court:
You should know that last Friday night, three hours after nightfall, while returning from the Academy [the Accademia di San Luca], where I had been studying, when I got to the Via della Scrofa – Messer Orazio Bianchi was with me – and I was knocking at the candlemaker’s door to get some candles, the defendant came up with a stick and began to beat me. He gave me a good many blows. I defended myself as best I could, shouting: ‘Ah, traitor, is that a way to act!’ Some butchers arrived with lights, and then Michelangelo drew his sword and made a thrust at me, which I parried with my cloak, in which he made a gash, as you can see, and then fled. Then I recognized him, whereas previously I had not been able to recognize him.18
Spampa’s description of the attack was confirmed by his companion, Orazio Bianchi, who gave his own town of origin as Lyon in France; he was the moderately accomplished religious painter Horace Le Blanc. Le Blanc’s finest hour would come in 1622, long after his return from Italy, when he was commissioned to design sets for the triumphal entry of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria into Lyon. His decorously idealized paintings, and the pattern of his later career, when he served for years as master of Lyon’s guild of painters, identify him as a pillar of the academic establishment. Although he was only about twenty years old in 1600, he was already a member of the Accademia di San Luca.
Caravaggio’s attack on the industrious young Spampa and his aesthetically conservative friend was not a spur-of-the-moment fracas: it was a premeditated assault that reeked of vendetta. Caravaggio had clearly lain in wait for the young student, tailing him through the dark Roman streets as he made his way home from the Accademia di San Luca. Revenge attacks of this sort were often carefully calculated. The convention was that the punishment should fit the crime. Is it possible that Spampa, keen to nail his colours to the mast of the academy, had been parroting Fed
erico Zuccaro’s criticisms of the Contarelli Chapel pictures? Had Caravaggio been tipped off by one of his own friends and allies? If so, his response had a certain brutal logic to it. Spampa had been guilty of back-stabbing. So Caravaggio attacked him from behind.
The case went no further, perhaps because of lack of evidence, perhaps because Cardinal del Monte intervened on Caravaggio’s behalf. But there were other incidents besides, including one sighting of the painter that suggests he himself had been on the receiving end of a beating.
In late October 1600 trouble had broken out again between Caravaggio’s friend Onorio Longhi and Onorio’s brother Stefano. The pair were still arguing over their contested inheritance. Stefano had charged Onorio with assault and threatening behaviour. In the course of a three-day investigation of his grievances and accusations, the court looked into a number of incidents in which Onorio had been involved. Caravaggio’s presence is mentioned. The evidence is confused and fragmentary, but presents a vivid picture of the painter’s life on the streets of Rome in the first year of the new century.19
During the investigation, Onorio Longhi was asked to cast his mind back to an altercation involving himself, Stefano and others that had taken place earlier that year. Under cross-examination, he conjured up the vibrancy of Rome in the high summer in holiday mood, packed with men watching sport and spoiling for a fight:
Yes, sir, if I remember correctly, in July I was at the French tennis court at Santa Lucia della Tinta to see a match between two fencers, one of whom is called Cencio Abruzzese and the other is a Bolognese, whose name I don’t know. After I had seen the two fencers fight, I went on to Piazza Navona, where some people were playing ball. I went up to watch them play. I met Vicenzo da Ascoli, a fencer, Livio Freta, who had been the judge of the said combat, Fulvio Scocimarro da Riete and Geronimo Roncalli, a merchant; there was one other with them, who they say is from Terni, but I don’t know his name or anything else. They asked me what I thought about the fight between the two fencers, and who struck the most blows. I told them in my opinion Cencio had struck the most; then the man from Terni suggested that I hadn’t seen well, or that I didn’t understand much. I told him that he had gambled away ten scudi on the first hit, and in response the said Stefano made a mistake and threw a punch at me, then he put his hand to his sword. For my honour and defence I put my hand to my sword too. We threw so many punches that I don’t know who was hit, because we were separated by many, and I was alone. But according to what I heard from the Duke of Acquasparta, who brokered a peace between us, he told me that he was hurt a little in the hand.
The magistrate then told Onorio that he was not asking about that fight, but another one that had taken place on the Via della Scrofa near the harbour of the Ripetta, the whore’s part of town.20 It was a brawl that had started because someone had called out ‘Testicles for a penny’ (a double-edged provocation, since the Italian word for testicles, coglione, could also signify a moron or imbecile). Longhi remembered that fracas too and described it:
Sir, I was walking down the street with some friends of mine. We were talking among ourselves and I said to them that bollocks were one a penny. Someone happened to be passing, accompanied by a certain painter whom I didn’t know at all. He took it as meant for himself and told me not to speak to him like that, saying that he ate bollocks like me fried. We went at each other with our fists, and were separated. Then I went off on my own business, because after the fist-fight, those two took up stones to throw, but I didn’t throw back because we had been separated.
Longhi insisted that nothing else happened and that no one else came to blows, but the magistrate continued with his cross-examination:
Who else was present at the scene?
With him, that is, the one who came to blows with me, was one Marco Tullio, a painter, and with me was Michelangelo Merisi, the painter, who separated us.
Was Caravaggio armed at the time?
At the time Messer Michelangelo was convalescing, so he had his sword carried by a boy. This boy had the sword and was with him when the fight occurred, but Messer Michelangelo never took it out of the scabbard.
Did anyone else take up the scabbard and throw it, and if so, at whom?
When Messer Michelangelo was separating us, my adversary drew the scabbard to himself. I don’t know what he did with it then and whether he threw it at me or not.
Did Michelangelo have the sword in its scabbard? Why was the scabbard thrown?
I don’t know about that, because Messer Michelangelo was so ill he could barely stand, and when he saw the sword without its sheath he went off about his own business.
Suddenly the magistrate changed tack, perhaps revealing his main reason for enquiring into this otherwise apparently trivial affair. Longhi was asked to give the name of the man from Terni, the one with whom he had fought. He replied that he was not sure, but that he had heard that the man was called Luca Ciancarotta. At this point, the cross-examiner abruptly brought up the name of Ranuccio Tomassoni, also from Terni.
Had Longhi ever had an argument with the said Ranuccio? If so, when had he quarrelled with him, and over what?
No, sir, I’ve never had any words with Ranuccio Tomassoni from Terni. Even if he is a little related to the said Stefano, he is my friend and we’ve never had any disagreements in the past.
Had he ever tried to attack Ranuccio, alone or in company?
No, sir, no such thing, because, as I said, Ranuccio is my friend. We ate together only a few days ago. And I’ve never had any arguments or attacked him.
A swordfight on a tennis court; the painter barely able to walk, ‘convalescing’ probably not from illness but from injuries sustained in some fight or other; an argument involving testicles; a rivalry with a group of men from Terni. These events would soon enough be replayed – low farce turning to tragedy – in the lives of Caravaggio and Ranuccio Tomassoni. Stirrings of the trouble that lay ahead between the two men can be sensed behind the evasive testimony of Onorio Longhi.
Longhi did know Ranuccio Tomassoni well enough to be on first-name terms, as he had claimed. Just two weeks after the investigations of late October 1600, he was up before the magistrates again. The case at hand was his alleged assault of Felice Sillano, which by then had rumbled on for more than two years. Part of the investigation turned on whether a particular witness could possibly have recognized Longhi at night. When challenged, the witness turned to him and said ‘I know you by your voice, because I’ve heard you talking with Messer Ranuccio at the Rotonda [the Pantheon], and seen you playing tennis in the Vicole de’ Pantani.’21 Longhi may once have been on good terms with the philandering, tennis-playing pimp. But their friendship had soured by the summer of 1600, perhaps because of Caravaggio’s relationship with Fillide Melandroni, or perhaps because Ranuccio had taken the side of Stefano Longhi in the brothers’ long-running battle over their inheritance.
In the archives of the tribunal of the Governor of Rome is another illuminating document, in effect an early seventeenth-century restraining order. On 17 November 1600 a sculptor called Hippolito Butio, of Milan, gave his pledge that Longhi would neither attack, nor cause to be attacked, a whole host of people.22 The list included the long-aggrieved Felice Sillano as well as Stefano Longhi and Flavio Canonici (sic), whose hand Caravaggio had marked with ‘a permanent scar’, and Ranuccio Tomassoni.
There is a strong sense, in all this, of battle lines being drawn. A dangerous pattern of alliances was forming, a web of personal and patriotic rivalries. Caravaggio and Onorio Longhi stand on one side of the street, while Tomassoni and his henchmen from Terni gather on the other.
TWO PAINTINGS FOR TIBERIO CERASI
Meanwhile, in the autumn of 1600 Caravaggio had been offered another important commission. Two more lateral pictures were required, this time on the subjects of The Conversion of St Paul and The Crucifixion of St Peter, for a chapel that had been acquired by Monsignor Tiberio Cerasi in the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo. It was ano
ther exceptional opportunity for the artist to excel on a public stage. The Augustinian foundation of Santa Maria del Popolo, at the northern edge of Rome, marked the start of one of the principal routes of pilgrimage through the city. Caravaggio was well aware that over the years millions of pilgrims would see his depictions of Peter and Paul, the beloved Princes of the Apostles. With the help of Cardinal del Monte, he was becoming famous.
Caravaggio’s new patron, Monsignor Tiberio Cerasi, was a rich man. Born in 1544, he had made his fortune practising law at the papal court. Since 1596 he had been Treasurer-General to the Apostolic Chamber, responsible for authorizing papal expenditure. During the same period Cardinal Vincenzo Giustiniani was the Depositary-General, whose job it was to receive and distribute the funds. The two men were often brought together by their work. It may have been Giustiniani, close friend of Cardinal del Monte and owner of The Lute Player, who first suggested that Cerasi employ Caravaggio to paint two pictures for his burial chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo.
Caravaggio may also have been favoured by the religious order that owned the church, the Augustinian Friars of the Congregation of Lombardy. They were from his corner of Italy, and would have had every chance to admire his new pictures in San Luigi dei Francesi, which was only a short walk from their door. St Augustine himself had regarded human beings as essentially helpless recipients of divine mercy, measured out according to the inscrutable logic of a predestined universe, so an Augustinian community may have been impressed by the painter’s The Calling of St Matthew, which shows a sudden, inexplicable shining of divine grace into the life of a sinner.
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