Caravaggio

by Andrew Graham-Dixon

  He left with the hope of being pardoned and went to Civita Vecchia [Porto Ercole, to be precise, according to a marginal note in the text], where, stricken with a malignant fever, he died miserably and without care, at the height of his glory, being about thirty-five or forty years of age. He was buried nearby.145

  Certain elements of the early biographers’ accounts of Caravaggio’s death are questionable. He certainly did not travel to Porto Ercole on foot, for example. But in essence they got the facts right. What they said happened was, more or less, what actually happened.

  The true sequence of events has been confirmed and fleshed out by two contemporary newspaper reports and a remarkable letter found in the state archive of Naples.

  On 28 July a Roman avviso reported that ‘There has been news of the death of Michelangelo Caravaggio, the famous painter, excellent in colouring and in drawing from nature, following his illness in Port’ Ercole.’146 Three days later, another Roman avviso confirmed the news, adding the detail that he had died at Porto Ercole ‘while he was coming from Naples to Rome, having obtained the lifting of the death sentence he was under’.147 The speed with which these reports appeared suggests that the writers may have received their information direct from Porto Ercole itself, which was a day’s fast ride from Rome.

  But the papal nephew, Scipione Borghese, had heard the news even quicker than the avviso writers. He knew that Caravaggio was dead as early as 23 July. But although he got his information with lightning speed, it was not entirely reliable, because Borghese’s source wrongly told him that the painter had died not at Porto Ercole but on the little island of Procida, a day’s sail west of Naples.148 Presumably for that reason Borghese immediately wrote to the papal nuncio in Naples, Deodato Gentile, Bishop of Caserta, urgently demanding more intelligence. He wanted to know what had happened to poor Caravaggio. Even more pressingly, he wanted to know what had happened to the paintings in the dead man’s luggage. As far as Borghese was concerned, they were now his property.149

  The papal nuncio in Naples was indeed able to tell Scipione Borghese what had happened. His response to the papal nephew anticipates the accounts of Caravaggio’s death given by both Baglione and Bellori by many years. Yet it turns out to match their descriptions of what happened so exactly, albeit with more detail, that it was in all probability their main source of information in the first place. What Gentile told Borghese became common knowledge in Rome.

  Gentile’s letter was dated 29 July. He began by acknowledging receipt of Borghese’s request for information, which had reached him on 24 July.150 He confessed that Caravaggio’s death was ‘completely new’ to him. But he had made enquiries and found answers to the papal nephew’s questions. He gave Borghese the full story of the painter’s death, as he now understood it:

  Poor Caravaggio did not die at Procida, but at Port’ Ercole, because having arrived with the felucca, in which he went to Palo, he was incarcerated by the captain there. In the uproar, the felucca went back out into the open sea and returned to Naples. Caravaggio stayed in prison, then freed himself by paying over a huge sum of money, and perhaps on foot reached Port’ Ercole by land, where, falling ill, he departed this life.

  On its return, the felucca brought the things he’d left behind to the house of the lady Marchesa of Caravaggio, who lives at Chiaia, and from where Caravaggio himself had left. I immediately made sure the pictures were there, and found that there are no more than three, the two St Johns and the Magdalen, and they are in the above-mentioned house of the lady Marchesa, to whom I have sent [a message] straight away to ask that they be well looked after, so they are not ruined before they can be seen, or come into anyone’s hands, since they were intended [for Your Lordship], and it is necessary to negotiate on Your Lordship’s behalf with the heirs and creditors of the said Caravaggio and give them honest satisfaction.151

  Deodato Gentile signed off with a promise to make sure that the paintings would end up in ‘the hands of Your Most Illustrious Lordship’.

  Despite this letter’s dispassionate clarity, and despite the fact that it was written within days of the events that it describes, all kinds of arcane conspiracy theories about Caravaggio’s death continue to proliferate.152 He is said to have been the victim of a plot involving the Knights of Malta, or Costanza Colonna, or the pope himself – or all of them, acting fiendishly in concert. He is said to have been ambushed at sea, his body cut in pieces and dumped underwater in a sack. The proponents of such theories invariably claim that the information gathered by Deodato Gentile was nothing more than a smokescreen of falsehood and fabrication – a tall tale to cover up a murder. But there is no real reason to doubt the report that Gentile carefully filed to Scipione Borghese, who was not only one of the most powerful men in Italy but the head of the papal system of justice. Attempting to deceive such a man would have been foolhardy, and probably futile.

  In truth, the supposed mystery of Caravaggio’s death is nothing of the kind. Conspiracy theories are a distraction. Caravaggio’s true fate was dark and dramatic enough to need no elaboration or reinvention. His last journey can now be clearly reconstructed, the cause of his death understood.

  This is what happened.

  Hoping that his pardon had been arranged, the painter set out from Naples to Rome on or around 9 July 1610. He left in a felucca, probably the Santa Maria di Porto Salvo, with his three paintings stowed in the hold. He is unlikely to have been the only passenger. A felucca was a two-masted boat with square-set sails and a spitsail, which could be rowed if winds were unfavourable. It was crewed by between six and eight men, and to hire one was expensive. The usual practice was for a skipper to wait until he had two or more customers going in the same direction before beginning a journey. It is probable that Caravaggio had a travelling companion who was going to Porto Ercole, or the boatman had a delivery to make there. Either way, Caravaggio knew that Porto Ercole was the boat’s final destination.153

  About a week after setting sail, the felucca carrying Caravaggio and his paintings docked at Palo, a high-security fort manned by a Spanish garrison, some twenty miles west of Rome. It was not the most common landing place for travellers to Rome, especially travellers wanting to arrive discreetly.154 But Palo was a centre for the distribution and transportation of goods and materials, as well as a fortress.155 It made sense for Caravaggio to land there because with his three heavy paintings in large boxes he needed a horse-drawn carriage or cart to complete his journey.

  When he got to Palo, however, something went badly wrong. His papers may have been out of order, or perhaps he just made a remark the captain of the garrison did not like. Whatever it was, before his luggage could be unloaded, he was taken away to a holding cell. ‘In all the uproar,’ Deodato Gentile told Scipione Borghese, ‘the felucca went back out into the open sea and returned to Naples.’ Gentile’s wording suggests a fracas, with Caravaggio resisting arrest, shouting and perhaps characteristically trying to draw his sword as he was forcibly restrained.

  Avoiding further involvement in the scuffle, the skipper put out to sea again. He would indeed return to Naples, but not immediately. First, with his other customer, or to make his other delivery, he had to get to Porto Ercole, some fifty miles north and, depending on the wind, about a couple of days’ journey by sea further from Rome, and from Naples.

  Meanwhile, Caravaggio was forced to cool his heels in jail. The cause of his imprisonment may have been trivial, because he was allowed to buy his way out. At this point all the accounts become a little vague, or fanciful, suggesting there were no witnesses to what happened next. According to Deodato Gentile, Caravaggio, ‘perhaps on foot, reached Porto Ercole by land’. Baglione elaborated that speculation into the maddened run of a desperate man along a parched coastline in the height of summer: ‘in his desperation he started out along the beach in the cruel July sun, trying to catch sight of the vessel which was carrying his belongings.’ The story clearly appealed to Bellori, who repeated it.

 
But it is obviously false. Assuming that Caravaggio got out of jail within a day of his arrest, he left Palo on 16 or 17 July. Scipione Borghese knew that he was dead by 23 July, which means that he actually died on 21 July at the very latest, and probably earlier. In other words, his journey from Palo to Porto Ercole can only have taken a few days, probably just a couple. But the distance between the two places is some fifty miles. In high summer, a man convalescing from serious injuries would have struggled to make that journey on foot in less than four or five days.156

  Caravaggio may have been desperate, but he was not mad. Throughout his life he had shown a cool head in tight situations. It suited Baglione’s purposes to invent the story of the enraged pursuit, because it paved the way for his smug ending – ‘he died miserably – indeed, just as he had lived’ – but the truth is that Caravaggio had to catch up with the boat because it was carrying the paintings that were the price of his compact with Scipione Borghese. If he did not, he could not return to Rome. He knew from conversations with the skipper, or with his travelling companion, that the boat had gone to Porto Ercole. Given the ‘uproar’ that had accompanied his arrest at Palo, he certainly could not count on the boat returning there with his possessions. So he had to go to find it.

  Palo was a staging post, so even though the boat had a head start, he could easily get to Porto Ercole first. He would simply have to ride post along the coastal delivery route. With a change of horse, he might cover the whole distance in a single day. It would have been exhausting, but it was no insane race against fate. It was the logical thing to do. He left Palo probably on 16 or 17 July, and a day later arrived in Porto Ercole, another small coastal settlement, manned by a Spanish garrison. But the stress of his arrest at Palo, and the effort of getting to Porto Ercole to recover his paintings, finally broke him. In Porto Ercole, probably on 18 or 19 July, Caravaggio died.

  The boat carrying his paintings arrived almost simultaneously, perhaps shortly afterwards. The skipper and crew soon learned the news of Caravaggio’s illness and death. The painter was buried, hurriedly and without ceremony. In the heat of summer a body would decay quickly, so there could be no delay. Since he died alone, without relatives or friends to care for him, he was placed in an unmarked grave. His death was not recorded in the parish records. This has been regarded as a sinister omission by the conspiracy theorists. But there is an unsinister explanation for it. Porto Ercole’s only priest was in dispute with the town fathers and on strike at the time. No deaths were recorded there in the summer of 1610.157

  The boat carrying Caravaggio’s possessions could do no more than return to Naples. Presumably the vessel left immediately. It was certainly back in Naples by 29 July, when Deodato Gentile reported to Scipione Borghese that Caravaggio’s paintings had been returned to Costanza Colonna’s palace.

  The exact cause of Caravaggio’s death is unknown. Deodato Gentile, writing just over a week after the event, simply said that he fell ill and departed life. On the evidence of the agonized self-portrait in The Martyrdom of St Ursula, and the shakiness of the hand that painted it, he was already unwell when he set out for Rome. The stress of his arrest, and the frantic ride to Porto Ercole in the extreme heat of July, was more than a man in his condition could take. Heat exhaustion, or perhaps a heart attack, may have been what finally killed him.

  One question remains. Where did Deodato Gentile get his information? What was his source for all this close detail about the final journey and strange, sad death of a sick man trying to reach Rome from Naples? Whatever it was, it was also the source on which the later biographers drew when they elaborated their own accounts of the painter’s death. No one added anything meaningful to it, except red herrings like Bellori’s mistaken arrest or Baglione’s headlong footrace along the coast.

  It might be thought that Gentile had put his feelers out in Porto Ercole, where the death had taken place, or had sent for information to Palo, where Caravaggio had been arrested. But he could have done neither of those things: the dates of his correspondence with Scipione Borghese preclude it. Borghese wrote to Gentile on 23 July and Gentile received the letter the following day. He replied to Borghese just five days later, on 29 July. It was two or three days by boat to Palo, the same again to Porto Ercole. By horse, even riding post, it would have taken at least four days in each direction, since it is two hundred miles from Naples to Porto Ercole. A week, more likely ten days, would have been needed to get there, make enquiries, and then report back. So Gentile must have found his information in Naples. Who could he have spoken to? Who would have known all this?

  Only one person could have told the papal nuncio about what happened when Caravaggio landed at Palo. Only one person could have told him about the painter’s death in Porto Ercole. That person was the boatman, who had just returned to Naples with the dead painter’s belongings. His crew had accompanied him, but it was the owner of the boat whom Deodato Gentile would have brought in for questioning. The whole story must have been his testimony. Hence the use of nautical terminology – ‘the felucca went back out into the open sea’, he had said, alto mare158 – as well as the ship’s-eye perspective of the entire account. Hence too the vagueness after Caravaggio is arrested and the boat pulls off: that was the moment when the boatman lost sight of the painter.

  The interview would have been short and to the point. The boatman was being accused of nothing and had nothing to hide. He had no reason to be evasive, so he simply told the truth as best he could.

  Where did you take Michelangelo Merisi? Palo, the garrison. What happened there? Some kind of trouble. They arrested him. There was a real uproar, so it was best to take the boat on to Porto Ercole.

  How did the painter get to Porto Ercole? The skipper does not know, so he shrugs and makes a guess, not thinking properly about the distances involved – ‘perhaps on foot’.

  What happened at Porto Ercole? He is not sure about that either, probably because the painter had died before he got there. But he does know that Caravaggio had fallen ill, and had died at that place. It had probably only just happened when the boatman arrived. He may even have been asked to identify the body, so they could bury it as soon as possible.

  What about the paintings? Of course, he knows all about them. They are back at the Marchesa of Caravaggio’s house, the palace at Chiaia, the one at the edge of the city, facing the bay. He had returned them just the day before. That is where he had taken them from in the first place, when the poor man had hired him.

  Deodato Gentile could have had all this information second-hand from Costanza Colonna herself, because she must have quizzed the skipper of the felucca when he came back to her house in Naples, with the pictures but without Caravaggio. But he did not. Gentile makes it clear in his letter that he had not spoken to her, that he had only sent a message telling her to keep Caravaggio’s pictures safe at all costs. Gentile’s source can indeed only have been the captain of the felucca himself – the skipper, in all probability, of the Santa Maria di Porto Salvo.

  Caravaggio appears for the first time as a flesh-and-blood human being in the documentary records through the fleeting testimony of a Roman barber-surgeon named Luca. The painter had been ‘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’. That was in 1597. Less than thirteen years later, wounded and worn down, our last glimpses of Caravaggio are through the testimony of a humble boatman, Alessandro Caramano. Like Luca the barber’s apprentice, Alessandro was just an ordinary man. He could not read and he could not write. But he could tell the truth about what he had seen with his own eyes.

  Caravaggio had lived much of his life close to the margins of society, surrounded by poor and ordinary people. He painted them, staging the stories of the Bible with their bodies and their faces. He painted for them and from their pe
rspective. In the end he died among them and was buried among them, in an unmarked grave. He was thirty-eight years old.

  AFTERMATH

  In Naples, Rome and Malta, people in high places briefly lamented the passing of ‘poor Caravaggio’. Then they got into an unseemly scramble for his last few paintings.

  Having been told by the boatman that the three pictures in the painter’s luggage had been deposited with Costanza Colonna, Deodato Gentile had immediately written to her claiming them on Scipione Borghese’s behalf. But he had been too late. The Knights of Malta had also found out about Caravaggio’s death. On the very day that Gentile wrote to Costanza Colonna, the local prior of the Knights of Malta barged his way into her palace and forcibly confiscated the pictures. Caravaggio had been dead for only ten days, but an unholy row was already brewing over his last things.

  On 31 July 1610, Gentile reported back to Borghese in Rome: ‘Most Illustrious and Reverend Sir … The Marchesa of Caravaggio has informed me that the paintings of Caravaggio are no longer in her house, but have been sequestrated by the Prior of Capua … said prior is claiming that Caravaggio was a serving brother in his religious order, and that therefore all the spoils are his to take. The Marchesa says that this is all folly and vanity, and the prior is not right. I will do my best to find where they are kept, and use all diligence to secure them in the name of Your Illustrious Lordship …’159

  On the death of any Knight of Malta, his possessions indeed automatically reverted to the order. Suddenly it suited Wignacourt and his prior to pretend that Caravaggio’s defrocking had never taken place, and that he had still been a Knight of Magistral Obedience when he died. But the marchesa, who knew very well that Caravaggio had been stripped of his knighthood, saw straight through this rather crude gambit. Hence her audible disgust for the prior and his men, turning up at her house and taking the paintings, as if she were a bankrupt and they were the bailiffs – it was indeed all vanità.