On the next day, 13 September, the magistrate arranged a confrontation between ‘Mao’ – Tommaso Salini – and Filippo Trisegni. This was common practice when two witnesses had given opposing testimonies. Neither man changed his story. Salini repeated his assertion that Trisegni had listed the names of those who had written the two poems. He stressed once again that Trisegni had told him that he been given some of the verses by the bardassa, the catamite ‘who lives behind the Banchi’. But Trisegni denied everything and maintained that Salini was lying.
Later the same day Caravaggio was called to give evidence. The notary, Decio Cambio, made his usual careful report of the proceedings, but the painter gave him less work than any of the other witnesses. He was haughty and taciturn. He gave his answers grudgingly and kept them short. At one point he asked, with evident irritation, how much more he would have to listen to, as if to suggest that the enquiry was just an elaborate waste of his time. He declared, improbably, that he had never heard of any scurrilous poems written about Giovanni Baglione and Mao Salini. He claimed that he had not even spoken to Orazio Gentileschi for three years. But he made no pretence of his utter contempt for Baglione’s work. That was the one subject on which, dangerously, he became almost effusive. But perhaps the most noteworthy part of his testimony is his grumpy, one-line definition of a good painter.
Here is the full court record of his interrogation:
Before His Excellency the Illustrious Alfonso Tomassino assistant examining magistrate and myself … Michelangelo Merisi of Caravaggio interrogated under oath by the magistrate.
Asked how, under what circumstances, and for what reason he was incarcerated.
Answered:
I was arrested the other day in Piazza Navona but I don’t know what the reason and circumstances are.
Asked what profession he exercises.
My profession is painting.
Asked if he knew and knows some painters in Rome and which ones.
Answered:
I think I know almost all the painters in Rome starting with the valent’huomini. I know Gioseffe, Caracci, Zucchero [sic, for Zuccaro], Pomarancio, Gentileschi, Prospero, Giovanni Andrea, Giovanni Baglione, Gismondo and Giorgio Todesco, Tempesta, and others.
Asked if all the painters named above are his friends and are all (as they are commonly called) valent’huomini.
Answered:
Almost all the painters I have listed above are my friends, but not all of them are valent’huomini.
Asked to identify what he means by the word ‘valent’huomo’.
Answered:
By the term ‘valent’huomo’ I mean he who knows how to do well, that is, he who knows how to do his art well. So in painting a valent’huomo is one who knows how to paint well and imitate natural objects well.
Asked to identify which of them are his friends and which are his enemies.
Answered:
Of those I listed above neither Gioseffe, nor Giovanni Baglione, nor Gentileschi, nor Giorgio Todesco are my friends because they don’t speak to me. The others all speak and converse with me.
Asked to specify which of the above-named he considers and holds to be valent’huomini (as they are commonly called) and those which he does not consider as such.
Answered:
Of the painters I listed above as good painters, Gioseffe, Zucchero, Pomarancio and Annibale Carracci; as for the others I don’t consider them valent’huomini.
Asked if he knows if the above-named painters are judged respectively to be good or bad by other painters, just as he judges and reputes them to be.
Answered:
Valent’huomini are those who are well versed in painting and will judge as good and bad painters those that I judge myself to be good and bad. But those that are bad and ignorant painters will judge as good painters the ignorant just as they are.
Asked if he knows of any person or painter who praises, considers and holds to be a good and virtuous painter one of those painters named above that he esteems is not a good painter.
Answered:
I don’t know of any painter that praises and considers a good painter any of those painters that I don’t esteem to be good painters.
Then:
I have gone and forgotten to tell you that Antonio Tempesta – he too is a valent’huomo.
Asked in particular if any other painter has praised and praises the said painter Giovanni Baglione and who he might be.
Answered:
I don’t know of any painter who thinks that Giovanni Baglione is a good painter.
Asked if he has seen any of the works of the said Giovanni Baglione and which ones.
Answered:
I’ve seen almost all the works of Giovanni Baglione, that is, the big chapel at the Madonna dell’Orto, a painting in San Giovanni Laterano, and recently The Resurrection of Christ at the Gesù.
Asked how he judges the above-named painting The Resurrection, and if he knows if it was praised or reproached by other painters.
Answered:
I don’t like that painting there at the Gesù because it’s a bungle. I think it’s the worst he’s done and I haven’t heard any painter praise the said painting. Of all the painters I’ve spoken to no one liked it.
Then:
Except that it is praised by someone who’s always with him, who’s called his guardian angel, who was there praising it when it was unveiled. They call him ‘Mao’.
Asked to identify with whom or with which painters he saw that painting The Resurrection.
Answered:
Prospero and Giovanni Andrea. And I saw it on other occasions when I went to the Gesù, but I don’t remember if any other painters were with me.
Then:
What am I going to have to hear next about this matter?
Asked if he knows if the said Mao is a painter and if he has done any paintings and if he has seen any of them.
Answered:
Maybe he dabbles in art and still daubs, but I’ve never seen any work of this Mao.
Asked if he has met and knows Onorio Longhi and Ottavio Padovano.
Answered:
I know Onorio Longhi, who’s very much a friend of mine, and I also know Ottavio Padovano.
Then:
But I’ve never spoken to Ottavio Padovano.
Asked if he has ever had a conversation with the said Onorio Longhi and Orazio Gentileschi concerning the said painting The Resurrection.
Answered:
I’ve never spoken to Onorio Longhi about the said painting of the Resurrection by Baglione, and it’s been more than three years since I’ve spoken to Gentileschi.
Asked if he knows the painter Lodovico Bresciano and Mario, also a painter.
Answered:
I know a Lodovico Bresciano and a Mario, both painters. This Mario once stayed with me and it’s been three years since he left and I haven’t spoken to him since. As for Lodovico I’ve never spoken to him.
Asked if he knows someone called Bartolomeo, who was once a servant of his, and his whereabouts.
Answered:
I know Bartolomeo. He was once my servant who went two months ago to the Castello del Soderino.
Asked if he knows someone called Giovanni Battista, a young man who lives behind the Banchi.
Answered:
I don’t know any young man called Giovanni Battista or any young man who lives behind the Banchi.
Asked if he knows how to write verse in the vulgar tongue.
Answered:
Your Excellency, no. I don’t dabble in verse either in the vulgar tongue, or in Latin.
Asked if he has ever heard of a poem or composition written in the vulgar tongue in which the said Giovanni Baglione was mentioned.
Answered:
I have never heard it in verse or in prose, in the vulgar tongue, or in Latin.
Asked if he has ever heard of a poem or composition written in the vulgar tongue in which the said Giovanni Baglione was mentioned.
>
Answered:
I have never heard in verse or in prose, in the vulgar tongue or in Latin, or in any other form, anything where mention of the said Giovanni Baglione was made.
And to his Excellency who said that according to the Bar he was aware that mention had been made of this Giovanni Baglione, and also of the said Mao, in some verses in the vulgar tongue.
Answered:
Never have I received information that mention has been made of Giovanni Baglione or of the said Mao in verse in the vulgar tongue.
Caravaggio’s definition of a good painter as ‘one who knows how to paint well and imitate natural objects well’ is almost comically prosaic. Perhaps he meant it as a deliberately provocative, no-nonsense assertion of his own notoriously direct naturalistic approach. But it is equally likely that he was just playing dumb. Caravaggio knew very well that there was more to painting than the mere reproduction of appearances. But it was not in his interests to appear before the court as an intellectual. After all, intellectuals were the kind of people who might write poetry in their spare time.
Caravaggio’s eventual list of valent’huomini was influenced by calculation. Most of those chosen were conservative and academically minded painters. None were his friends, least of all Annibale Carracci, with whom he had crossed paintbrushes in the Cerasi Chapel. He included Federico Zuccaro, who had insulted Caravaggio’s Contarelli Chapel canvases in the presence of Giovanni Baglione. Zuccaro was president of the Academy, so no wonder Caravaggio wanted the court to think he thought well of him. This was not merely false magnanimity: it was a shrewd attempted alignment with respectability.
Shortly after Caravaggio gave his evidence, Baglione decided to concentrate his attack on Gentileschi. He came back to the court that afternoon with another exhibit for the prosecution. It was an angry letter to Baglione from Gentileschi, written earlier that summer. Baglione had been on a pilgrimage to the shrine at Loreto and Gentileschi had asked him to bring him back some silver figurines of the Madonna. Baglione had given him two figures, but they were in lead, which Gentileschi had taken as a slight. Having explained the background to the court, Baglione then produced the letter:
To Giovanni the painter,
I am not returning your Madonna figurines as you deserve but will keep them for the devotion they represent. However, I consider you a man with just about enough courage to buy them in lead. Your other actions have shown everyone all the riches you are made of and I don’t give a hoot about you.
I’d like you to do me a favour by hanging some offal on that chain you wear around your neck as an ornament to match your worth. I told you that if you sent me one in silver I would pay you for it. I would never under any circumstances send one in lead to a courteous gentleman, like the ones you see worn on hats.
And with this I take leave of you and return your friendship and who is saying this to you cannot be a blackguard.
This was conclusive proof of Gentileschi’s enmity. The robust style of the letter also showed that he had misled the court when he said he could barely string a sentence together on paper. Most incriminating of all, however, was the reference to Baglione’s chain. ‘In the sonnets written against me he mentions a neck chain saying I ought to wear an iron chain instead,’ Baglione told the court. ‘In this note he also speaks about the neck chain saying I should hang some offal in place of the chain. I steadfastly insist that it must have been him …’
The next day, as a final throw of the dice, the examining magistrate recalled Orazio Gentileschi. If he could be made to crack under cross-examination, the case would suddenly be thrown wide open.
At first the magistrate lulled Gentileschi into a false sense of security, asking him a series of questions about other artists, which Gentileschi parried with ease. It was at this point in the trial that he blithely volunteered the story about Baglione bringing his picture of Divine Love to the annual artists’ exhibition, to compete with his own St Michael the Archangel. He presumably wanted to demonstrate that he had nothing to fear from a discussion of the rivalry between them. He was happy to admit to the occasional disagreement with Baglione, but he also took care to distance himself from Caravaggio, complaining that both men had a habit of looking down on him:
I haven’t spoken to the said Giovanni Baglione since the St Michael affair and especially because he expects me to raise my hat to him on the street and I expect him to raise his hat to me. Even Caravaggio, who’s a friend of mine, expects me to salute him, and although both of them are my friends, there’s nothing more between us. It must be six or eight months since I’ve spoken to Caravaggio, although he did send round to my house for a Capuchin’s robe and a pair of wings I lent him. It must be about ten days since he sent them back.
Gradually the magistrate turned the conversation towards the incriminating note, although for the time being he kept the document itself up his sleeve. Did Gentileschi ever remember Baglione leaving Rome? Had Baglione ever given anything to him? The accused stumbled slowly but surely into the trap. Gentileschi told the court that Baglione had gone to Loreto and that he had brought him back some lead figurines ‘like the ones that are worn on hats’. He had hoped for silver ones, but he had thanked Baglione graciously none the less. What about a note? Had he written a note? Gentileschi pretended to struggle to remember. Baglione had written to him first, as he recalled, saying that he had heard that Gentileschi was complaining about the figurines. He had felt obliged to reply. ‘I answered him in a note that I held devotion dear, that I was surprised that he would write these things to me, that I had thanked him in the presence of several people … and that he shouldn’t think I was interested in all that silver nonsense.’
After a little more sparring the magistrate suddenly produced the note itself, to Gentileschi’s evident consternation. At first he tried to deny that he had written the note, then realized that the handwriting was so evidently his that he had better own up to it. But when confronted with the line about hanging offal on Baglione’s chain, he panicked and half-heartedly denied authorship of the letter once again. Drowning in his own inconsistency, all he could find to cling to was an implausible insinuation that the letter was a forgery. His testimony rapidly descended into incoherence. ‘It seems to me,’ he stammered, ‘yet it doesn’t, that I wrote about offal and chains, but the handwriting looks like mine. I recognize this letter by my handwriting. It’s true I wrote about someone who had done something bad and that he face up to it but I don’t think I’ve written about chains and offal.’
At this point the notary reported, ‘He got confused.’ Again and again the magistrate pressed him for the truth about the letter, but Gentileschi just went round and round in ever-decreasing circles: ‘it doesn’t seem to be in my hand, but I know I haven’t written this note in this manner: it is like my handwriting but I don’t know of having written these things … the handwriting looks like mine, but I don’t think I’ve written this letter in this way, but it is my handwriting …’ It was not quite a confession, but he must have signed such a testimony with a heavy heart.
But just as the case seemed to have swung decisively against them, the defendants were reprieved. Someone must have told the Governor of Rome to call off his hounds, because on 25 September 1603 Caravaggio was suddenly released from prison. He was bailed under guarantee from the French ambassador, which strongly suggests that Cardinal del Monte, friend to the Medici and to France, had engineered his release. The condition of bail was that he ‘was not to leave his habitual residence without written permission … at the risk of being condemned to the punishment of galley slave’.61 He was also obliged to make himself available for a further hearing in a month’s time. In another document of the same date, Ainolfo Bardi, Count of Vernio, undertook to ensure that Caravaggio would offend ‘neither the life nor the honour’ of either ‘Giovanni Baglione, painter’ or ‘Tommaso, alias Mau [sic]’.62
In the event, there were no further hearings and the case was dropped. But that was not
quite the end of the affair. By November 1603 Caravaggio’s friend Onorio Longhi was back in Rome. He wanted revenge for the ordeal of the lawsuit and tried to pick a fight with Baglione and Salini. This time, Longhi was the one who ended up in court, arrested for threatening behaviour by a sbirro who signed himself ‘Tullio, assistant to the head of police’. The events leading up to the arrest were described by Salini in his deposition to the court:63
I was in the church of Minerva together with my friend Messer Giovanni Baglione. We wished to hear Mass and while we were waiting I saw Onorio Longhi who was standing in front of us staring at me saying something very softly with his mouth that couldn’t be heard. Then he beckoned me with his head and I went over and asked him what he was calling me for. He started to say, ‘I’d like to make you swing from a wooden scaffold, you fucking grass.’ To which I answered that he was insulting me so in church but that outside he wouldn’t have dared say such a thing. Then, raising his voice, Onorio told me to come outside and said I was a fucker and a grass if I didn’t and that I should come out and he’d be waiting for me.
He immediately went out of the rear door of the Minerva and picked up a stone saying, ‘Come out, you scum you grass.’ Then I told him he was lying through his teeth and that he should put down the brick or we’d be uneven. And then the said Messer Giovanni Baglione came out and held me back and Onorio began to say, ‘There are two of you’, and a companion of the said Onorio, a procurator from Truffia who lives in Montecitorio, turned towards Messer Giovanni and seeing him with a dagger said, ‘Put the dagger down.’ Onorio, likewise, said ‘Get the dagger off him’, … and the said procurator approached him [and punched the said Messer Giovanni in the chest64 ] … and all at once Onorio threw the brick at Messer Giovanni, which hit his hat but didn’t hurt him. Then he turned towards me, but having a stone in my hand I told him to stop or I’d knock him down. All the same he came towards me saying, ‘You fucking grass’, and so I called him a liar and entered the church and he went off with the said procurator.
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