It would be harder to enter the brotherhood of Malta than Caravaggio had perhaps imagined. Knights of Justice were the elite of the order, from whose ranks the Grand Crosses who sat on the Venerable Council were drawn, but to be considered for such a knighthood the candidate had to be able to prove unbroken noble lineage of two hundred years. Below Knights of Justice came Knights of Grace, but they too had to prove a high degree of nobility. Considering his humble origins, Caravaggio could only aspire to the still lower Knighthood of Magistral Obedience, which was reserved for men of merit – valent’huomini, to use his own favoured terminology – and awarded at the discretion of the Grand Master. But just before Caravaggio’s arrival on the island, Wignacourt had introduced a statute putting an end to the conferment of such knighthoods. He had grown irritated by the number of applicants for them and felt they were cheapening the status of the brotherhood as a whole. Honorific knighthoods were viewed as being open to corruption, tradeable awards akin to a form of simony. On his travels in Palestine, Sandys was contemptuously amused by the sight of an apothecary from Aleppo being dubbed a knight in exchange for hard cash.
If Caravaggio were to become a Knight of Malta, special arrangements would have to be made by the Grand Master himself. Little is known about the artist’s activities during his first several months on the island. But on the evidence of three pictures that he painted during the second half of 1607, he was working hard to impress those in the upper echelons of the order. With each new commission, he moved closer to the centre of power.
SIGNED IN BLOOD
Soon after establishing a workshop on Malta, Caravaggio painted a sombre devotional picture for Ippolito Malaspina. St Jerome Writing had the same subject as the picture painted for the papal nephew, Scipione Borghese, two years earlier. The image of the saint, this time, is less a generic old man and more the portrait of an actual individual. Spotlit in the gloom of his study, Jerome has wispy grey hair scraped across the sunburned crown of his head, deep wrinkles, a slightly cauliflowered right ear – emphasized by the raking light – and a dimpled, beak-like nose. In contrast with his coppery, weathered face, his bare torso is pale and white. His physique is lean, although the skin at his ribs and belly has begun to sag with age.
The saint looks down at the pages of the book in which he is writing. In his right hand he holds a quill, in his left an inkpot. On the desk before him lie three symbolic objects: a stone the colour of a bruise – the stone with which, according to his legend, he used to beat his breast; a tip-tilted skull, eyes gaping and teeth glinting; and a crucifix on which a stretched figurine of the agonized Christ is represented in shadowy foreshortening.
To the saint’s right, his red cardinal’s hat hangs from a rudimentary peg. All else is in shadow. Semi-nude, swathed up to the waist in a sheet of red drapery, Jerome the scholar-saint looks more like a military man sitting up in bed before first light, writing out the orders of the day. The sinews at the juncture of neck and shoulderblade are taut with nervous energy. Did Caravaggio model him on Malaspina himself? One of Wignacourt’s closest advisers, Malaspina had been away from Malta for four years, and had returned on the same flotilla that had brought the artist to the island. Now in his late sixties, he had chosen to rededicate himself to the Order of St John, and to God. Caravaggio’s picture was perhaps intended to commemorate that decision.
With its skilful foreshortenings, dramatic light and shade and compellingly lifelike depiction of dignified old age, the picture was a virtuoso performance and a demonstration of just what Caravaggio could do for the Knights of the Order of St John. Malaspina would eventually bequeath the St Jerome Writing to the chapel of the Italian Langue – it now hangs in the co-cathedral of St John in Valletta, having survived a heist in 1985, during which it was cut out of its frame with a Stanley knife – but originally he hung it in his house. Because Malaspina was in Wignacourt’s immediate circle, the painting would soon have been seen by all the right people. More commissions followed.
In the autumn or winter of 1607 Caravaggio was approached to paint the likeness of one of the most senior and distinguished Knights of Malta, Fra Antonio Martelli. The picture, which now hangs in the Pitti Palace in Florence, is one of the most impressive of all seventeenth-century portraits. This depiction of an obdurate and forceful man, in lean old age, rheumy eyes gazing off into the distance, anticipates the mature portraiture of Rembrandt by some half a century. In the darkness of Caravaggio’s Maltese studio, the air feels dense with thought. The old warrior, mouth set in an expression of habitual determination, looks out and away – but it is really as if he is looking within, sifting his own memories and remembering his old battles. His left hand rests on the pommel of his sword, a swiftly painted tangle of finely wrought metal, while in his right hand he holds a string of Rosary beads. These are the twin attributes of the Friar of War, dedicated at once to God and the profession of arms. Caravaggio has painted the hands so cursorily they seem unfinished. It was the sitter’s face that fascinated him.
Martelli was seventy-four years old when Caravaggio painted him and had been a Knight of Malta for almost fifty, a doughty veteran of the Great Siege and numerous other battles and engagements. He had served, for many years, as Ferdinando I de’ Medici’s consigliere di guerra, his ‘councillor of war’. He was a canny and gifted diplomat, the scion of an ancient Florentine family that had made the mistake of opposing the Medici earlier in the sixteenth century, and had paid the price. Martelli had undone the damage and re-established the influence of his family in the Grand Duchy of Florence. In the portrait he is dressed for winter, in a thick black monastic habit with a white long-sleeved shirt underneath. A large, eight-pointed cross of the Order of St John gleams on his chest in the half-dark. The habit marks him out as a Grand Cross of the order, the highest rank to which an elite Knight of Justice could rise. Martelli was indeed a member of the Venerable Council, an ally of Wignacourt and Malaspina. He had been appointed the order’s Prior of Messina in 1606,57 and was regarded in Medici circles as something of a phenomenon: as late as 1618, when Martelli was in his eighty-fifth year, the Grand Duke of Florence would appoint him General of Artillery in Tuscany. There is a strong sense of his formidable character in Caravaggio’s portrait, even a hint of hero-worship about it. As a child, thanks to the plague, he had known few men on whom to model himself. A man like Martelli may have awoken in him not only admiration, but something resembling the emotion of filial respect.
By November or December, Caravaggio was painting the Grand Master himself. According to Bellori he depicted Wignacourt both seated and standing with a page, but only the second picture survives. It can be seen in the Louvre. The painting is somewhat damaged but remains none the less an impressive essay in a type of grand manner portrait originally pioneered by Titian in his work for the Spanish royal family more than half a century earlier. It is a more old-fashioned, stiff, conservative work of art than the portrait of Martelli, which may be a reflection of Alof de Wignacourt’s unbending sense of his own importance. Instead of a monastic habit the Grand Master wears an ornate suit of mid sixteenth-century armour, a deliberate anachronism intended to evoke the glorious past, and in particular the heroism of the Great Siege. Bellori says the portrait was actually hung in the knights’ armoury, where the similarly ornate armour of Jean de la Valette was also displayed, which must have reinforced the association. He holds the baton of high office in his gauntleted hands.
Wignacourt had a prominent wart on the left side of his nose, which Caravaggio has been careful to shroud in shadow. The Grand Master looks off to one side, but his look, unlike that of Martelli, is neither introspective nor retrospective. He looks to the future with necessary vigilance, the guardian of Christendom’s frontline with Islam. While Wignacourt strikes a slightly creaking pose of authority, his adolescent pageboy enters the scene, stage right, with an expression of cool wariness in his wide and curious eyes. He holds the Grand Master’s helmet against his downy cheek, allowing it
s plumes to caress the side of his face. The pageboy’s identity is unknown, but a possible candidate is Alessandro Costa, son of Caravaggio’s patron Ottavio Costa. He had travelled to Malta on the same flotilla as the artist, entering Wignacourt’s entourage of pages on his arrival. Within the conventions of state portraiture, he represents innocent youth, in contrast with Wignacourt’s wise old age. But his presence also adds an irregular, unexpected frisson of eroticism to the scene. Caravaggio’s evident interest in the boy threatens to unbalance the composition.
By all accounts, Wignacourt was delighted by the portrait. The artist’s biographers are unanimous in asserting that Caravaggio received the cross of the Order of St John as a direct reward for the Grand Master’s portrait. Wignacourt may even have discussed the matter with him during sittings for the picture. If so, he would have made Caravaggio aware that there was a considerable stumbling block to the conferment of the honour. Having abolished the Knighthood of Magistral Obedience, the only kind for which Caravaggio might have been eligible, Wignacourt would have to appeal directly to Pope Paul V for permission to reinstate it: he was obliged to seek papal support whenever going beyond the letter of the order’s statutes. That is exactly what he did.
On 29 December 1607 the Grand Master wrote to his ambassador in Rome, Francesco Lomellini. He briefed Lomellini on his desire to bestow knighthoods of Magistral Obedience on Caravaggio and one other person. He did not name the painter, simply referring to him as ‘a person of great virtues, honourable, and respectful’, and explaining that he wanted to give him a knighthood in order so as ‘not to lose’ him – ‘per non perderlo’. Wignacourt wrote separately to the historian of the Order of St John, Giacomo Bosio, who was then in Rome, urging him also to lobby for papal favour in the matter. In addition, Wignacourt’s secretary, Francesco dell’Antella, wrote in support of the petition to grant the two knighthoods. The message was duly passed on to the pope himself:
Most Holy Father, the Grand Master of the [Order of the] Hospital of St John of Jerusalem wishes to honour some persons who have shown virtue and merit and have a desire and devotion to dedicate themselves to his service and that of the [Order of the] Hospital and does not have at the present moment any more suitable way of doing so; he therefore humbly begs Your Holiness to deign to grant to him, by a Brief, the authority and power for one time only to decorate with the habit of a Magistral Knight two persons favoured by him and to be nominated by him; despite the fact that one of the two had once committed homicide in a brawl and despite that it is prohibited by the Chapter General of the Order that the habit of a Magistral Knight can be conceded any further. He begs to receive this request as a very special favour, because of the great desire he holds to honour such persons who have shown virtue and merit. And may the Lord preserve you for a long time.58
The request was granted at once. Papal permission was given in a missive of 7 February 1608, spelling out that ‘It has pleased the Most Holy Father to approve for Aloph de Wignacourt Grand Master of the [Order of the] Hospital of St John of Jerusalem authority to present the habit of a Magistral Knight to two persons favoured by him despite the fact that one of the two committed homicide in a brawl.’ On 15 February the letter reached Malta. Wignacourt had secured for Caravaggio his much coveted knighthood.
There were two conditions. Like any other novice, he could not be dubbed knight until he had spent a full year on the island, so he would have to stay until mid July to receive the honour. He would also have to pay a tribute known as the passaggio before he could be allowed to enter the brotherhood. Being a fugitive from justice, Caravaggio had little money, but Wignacourt had a solution to that as well. The Oratory of St John, attached to the co-cathedral of St John in Valletta, had only recently been completed. It was one of the most important buildings in Malta’s new capital. But it had no altarpiece. If Caravaggio would supply one, the picture would be accepted in lieu of his passaggio.
The subject specified for the work was The Beheading of St John, which also meant a deadline before the end of summer. Wignacourt wanted to unveil the work on the Feast Day of the Decollation of St John – the day that marked his beheading – which was 29 August. Ideally the artist would have finished the work by July, so he could receive his knighthood exactly a year after his arrival on the island.
It is intriguing that Wignacourt should have omitted Caravaggio’s name from his letter to the pope. Perhaps he had been tipped off that there were those in Rome who would lobby against the petition if they knew that it was to benefit Caravaggio; or perhaps he worried that Paul V might himself object, because conferment of a Maltese knighthood automatically commuted a capital sentence to one of exile. The reference to a man ‘who had once committed homicide in a brawl’ was a smokescreen: the phrase made it hard for anyone in Rome to connect the candidate for a Maltese knighthood with Caravaggio, who had killed a man not in a brawl but in a premeditated duel, which was a very different matter. It is possible that Caravaggio himself had lied about the murder to Wignacourt – duelling was banned on Malta and greatly frowned upon by the Grand Crosses of the order. Whether he did so or not, the Grand Master himself was being economical with the truth. It seems he was absolutely determined that the deal should go through.
Wignacourt was a dynamic and formidable Grand Master, with great aspirations for Malta. Caravaggio’s portrait shows him as the proud absolute ruler of a brand-new city, founded on the monastic ideals of Christian chivalry. But he must have been conscious to a degree that Valletta was something of an artistic desert. Wignacourt had tried once before to address that deficiency, attempting but failing to lure an unnamed Florentine painter to Malta in 1606.59 the Grand Master knew that it would be hard to tempt any truly sought-after artist to faraway, provincial, sun-baked Malta, in the shadow of the threat of Islam. But now fate had brought Caravaggio to the island. He had even come of his own accord.
The Grand Master’s ambitions and the painter’s needs might appear to have dovetailed perfectly: Wignacourt would get his great altarpiece, while Caravaggio would get his knighthood, and the death sentence that had hung over him for nearly two years would be lifted. But the painter may not have understood the true nature of the deal being dangled in front of him. That phrase in Wignacourt’s first letter to his Roman ambassador Lomellini, in which he talks of knighting Caravaggio in order ‘not to lose him’, is telling. Not to lose him carries a further implication, which might seem obvious but has gone largely overlooked: to keep him. By giving Caravaggio a knighthood, Wignacourt would automatically acquire the power to do just that. Under the statutes of the order no Knight of Malta was allowed to leave the island, even for a day, without the Grand Master’s permission.60 For Caravaggio, his knighthood was a short-cut back to Rome. But there is nothing to indicate that Wignacourt viewed it like that at all. It was just as likely his way of laying a trap. Having got a great painter to Malta, why should he ever let him go?
There was no reason why any of this would have dawned on Caravaggio until his actual arming as a Knight of Magistral Obedience. Only then need he be informed about the extent of the obedience required of him. Meanwhile, in the spring and summer of 1608, he concentrated on planning and painting the largest altarpiece of his entire career, The Beheading of St John. The daunting scale of the work, which was to be over ten feet high and more than fifteen feet across, meant that he probably had to change workshop.61 In addition, models would have to be found and a few necessary props sourced: a butcher’s knife, a gilded plate, a sheepskin and a length of rope.
The story of St John’s martyrdom is told in the New Testament books of Matthew (14:3–12) and Mark (6:17–28). King Herod had thrown John into prison because he had dared to reprimand him for his illicit marriage to Herodias. Herod’s consort plotted with her daughter, Salome, to bring about John’s execution. At the king’s birthday feast, Salome danced so seductively for Herod that he granted her anything she desired. She asked for the head of John the Baptist. An executioner beheade
d the saint in his prison. The severed head was laid on a platter and given to Salome at the feast.
There were two main conventions for artists painting John’s martyrdom. Either they depicted the moment when the dish was served up to a gloating Salome, or they depicted the instant before the beheading, with the executioner poised to strike. Caravaggio painted his own version of the latter subject, but imagined something even darker taking place. The scene is set in the gloomy courtyard of an oppressively harsh prison, beside a gateway built of massively heavy stone quoins and a barred window at which two prisoners huddle pathetically for a glimpse of the killing. The executioner is another in the line of Caravaggio’s impassive, workmanlike killers. He leans over the body of his victim, whose hands are trussed cruelly behind his back. The executioner has laid down his sword, the cold steel of its blade glinting on the dull earth.
Shockingly he has made a botch of the job, cutting deep into the saint’s neck, deep enough to sever the jugular, but leaving the head still attached to the trunk. Now he reaches behind him for the sharpened knife in the scabbard at his belt, which he needs to cut the last flap of flesh connecting John’s head to his body. He grabs the saint by his hair so that he can get at the place he needs to with his knife. He might be a butcher working at his slab.
Does the saint still live? His pale face seems animated, as if he were in his last death agonies, recoiling from the gurgled, choking rush of his own blood. In the frozen world of Caravaggio’s painting, he must wait forever for the coup de grâce. A swathe of red drapery has been thrown carelessly across his otherwise naked body. This sudden shock of colour in the prison gloom emphasizes the atrocious nature of what is taking place. It is like a pictogram or symbol of bloodletting in the dark. The martyr lies on a sheepskin, which symbolically makes of him a blessed Christian lamb, brought to sacrifice. The painter has contrived to pick out the martyr’s naked left foot with a stray shaft of light. Surrounded by pools of darkness, placed next to some twisting coils of rope, it is almost like a still life detail – separate from the rest of the scene and yet emblematic of the poor and painfully solitary death which the saint endures.
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