by Matt Rees
‘God willing. Then we’ll never be parted again. I’ll never ask anything more of you. Since you were a boy, you’ve made such sacrifices for me.’
He protested, but she held up her palm to stop him. ‘I understand that you left my household for Fabrizio’s sake. I can hardly know what it cost you. You’ve nothing more to pay.’
Soon enough that’ll be so, he thought. His injured eye wavered and she was a flickering blur, her hands over her heart until the cart went out of the gate.
The mules turned down to the beach. Caravaggio watched the bay curve towards the sap-green haze of Posillipo. The water was a vibrant shimmer of gold. The sea held his fate now.
When the carter reached the bottom of the road, he made to turn for Santa Lucia and the port. Caravaggio held his wrist. ‘Not that way.’
With a shrug, the man yanked at the reins and took him inland. They went uphill and skirted behind the Stigliano Palace and the edge of the Spanish Quarter. Caravaggio directed the driver to a gate in a long plain façade. He whispered a few words to the man, gave him a bag of coins, and jumped down. He went through the gate and crossed a sunny grove of mandarin and lemon. He murmured the melody of the old Bolognese song. You are the star that shines. More than any other lady. At the far side of the courtyard, four armed men leaned against the wall of a chapel. Their faces were stern and hostile. Above them, a red flag dangled in the humid stillness. The white cross of the Order of the Knights of Malta.
In her study, Costanza wrote to the Grand Master of the Knights. She informed him that Caravaggio had returned to Rome under the protection of del Monte and would take up a position in Scipione’s household. She wanted the man who held the key to Fabrizio’s freedom to know that she had secured an influential ally in the Pope’s retinue and that she believed her son must now be freed. Most humbly I salute you and pray God for your every happiness, she signed off. From Naples, July 18, 1610.
The interminable slope of Vesuvius rose to its daunting crater across the bay. The sun shimmered on the water with an intensity that made her feel so much more a northerner, alien to this southern madhouse of vivid colours and crowds. The distant town of Caravaggio, where she had spent her adult life, was small, its weather damp and misty most of the year. From the street below, the raucous, gabbling dialect of the Neapolitans rose up to her and she wished she were at home.
She went along the loggia of the piano nobile and down the main stairs. Without the company of the artist she loved, she was drawn to his studio. She recalled her days as a young mother when Michele and Fabrizio had brought so much life to her palace – before her husband had made them part.
On the steps of the basement, she stopped to fill her nostrils with the scent of his paints. She expected the room to be empty, but the air would carry the memory of his work, the sweetness of linseed. She would find his presence there, even though he was gone to Rome.
The basement was dark but not empty. She went towards the window, stumbling against a trolley. It overturned and she heard the clattering of brushes as they dropped to the flagstones. She climbed the step to the window and pushed open the shutters. The sun lit up a canvas on an easel. It was the Magdalene Caravaggio was supposed to have taken to Cardinal Scipione. She went closer. She knew the features of the woman he had painted, though she had never met her. Often enough in his works she had looked at the strong eyebrows, the straight nose, the gentle mouth. But he would never have left behind a picture of Lena. His materials, his preparations and pigments, his brushes and palette, his mirrors, his swords and armour and other props, were strewn around the basement.
She reached up to the next window and shoved at the shutter. Her breath was tight. Had he betrayed her? On the furthest easel, the light from the window fell now on another canvas. It was the David with the Head of Goliath she had seen him working on the night before. She caught her hand to her breast and cried out as though someone had been slain before her eyes. The massive head of the biblical giant wore the suffering features of the painter. Blood gushed from Caravaggio’s severed neck. His eyes were open, his lips parted as if for a final word.
Shaking, Costanza dropped to her knees before the canvas. She hadn’t been mistaken. The boy’s features were those of Caravaggio too. He had painted his young, innocent self as the regretful executioner of the adult, the murderer, the condemned man. She stared at Goliath’s mouth, his choking tongue. The giant spoke, even in death, she was sure.
On the blade of the sword, something was inscribed. She peered closer and saw the motto of the Augustinian monks. Humilitas occidit superbiam. Humility kills pride. Did it mean that arrogance had led Caravaggio to sin? For the wicked pride to be eliminated, would he have to suffer death, like Goliath?
She heard a carriage enter the courtyard and a man shouting. Footsteps sounded on the stairs to the basement. The Inquisitor entered the room, squinting into the shadows. Costanza reached out for the wall to support herself. The motion caught the Inquisitor’s attention. ‘Michele? In God’s name what’re you doing? Why didn’t you come to the port?’
She dropped into the window alcove and he recognized her. ‘My lady, forgive me. I thought you were––’ He saw the canvas, saw Goliath’s head. ‘By Christ.’
‘What has he done?’ She knew this painting wasn’t the work of a man on his way to freedom. It was as though Michele’s spirit hovered on the canvas, on the edge of death.
The Inquisitor shook his head, his lips pursed in fury. He kicked at a pile of dirty rags. ‘May he be damned for doing this to me.’ He pushed his beret to the back of his head. ‘Ah, but this is the best thing he’s painted.’
Costanza hurried up the steps to the courtyard and called for her carriage. If Caravaggio hadn’t gone to the port, perhaps he had chosen a different way so that he might avoid the Inquisitor. She would follow him by the land route and force him to take the canvases. He must have them, so that he could be free. She would save him.
A rider came through the gates. He jumped down from his horse. Costanza rounded her carriage to see him. Is it Michele?
The horseman looked about him. When he saw Costanza, he ran across the cobbles towards her.
Fabrizio grasped his mother to him and laughed.
She shook like a palsied old woman. He took her shock for astonishment at his unexpected arrival. ‘The knights brought me to Naples yesterday. They kept me here at the Priory. Then this morning they set me free. I’m pardoned, Mama, can you believe it? Thank you.’
‘My soul, you’re here.’
‘It must be because of you. Thank you, darling Mama.’ He kissed her cheeks and neck. ‘They must’ve let me go for your sake.’
For my sake. She trembled and shook her head. Her sight went black. From the canvas in the basement, Michele’s severed head glided towards her out of the darkness. His features were possessed by Death, and though they had no words she heard them speak. Michele had found a way to redeem himself. He’s gone to the knights. She would have Fabrizio, and those killers would have Michele.
The needle slipped in and out of the calico sackcloth. The fishermen on the small boat laughed viciously, spitting. ‘Careful you don’t stick him with that pin,’ one of them said. ‘Wouldn’t want to hurt him.’
With each stitch, the sunlight through the opening of the sack narrowed. Caravaggio watched it become a single shaft across the darkness, such as he had often used to illuminate his paintings. At the prow of the boat, Roero turned away. The final gap in the sack closed. Caravaggio linked the fingers of his bound hands in prayer.
The men picked him up and dropped him over the side. He hit the water. All his rage left him like a fire quenched. In the darkness under the surface, his father floated towards him. He sensed his touch as he passed. The martyrs he had painted drifted by, hands raised in benediction. Absolute silence and peace enveloped his body. As the breath went out of him, he saw a diffuse light. It crowned Lena. She inclined towards him as she had done in his Madonna of Loreto. She re
ached out. When her hand cradled his cheek, he felt cool and ecstatic.
The Knight Prior of Naples, Vincenzo Carafa, waited for Roero on the quay. He glanced with disdain at the lumpy, damp sack in the well of the boat as the fishermen put in.
‘Did you get his paintings from the Marchesa?’ Roero asked.
‘Mind your own business.’
‘Be sure you send them to the Grand Master. They’re to be his compensation for Brother Fabrizio’s freedom. Don’t think you can keep them. The Marchesa has her precious son back. She won’t complain about losing a few canvases.’ He stepped up to the quay.
The Prior put a restraining hand on Roero’s shoulder and gestured towards the sack. ‘I don’t want him here. You’ve had your revenge, Brother. Get rid of him a long way from Naples – and not at sea. If he drifts ashore in a sack, people will know what it means. That’s how we do it.’
Roero returned to the boat. He commanded the surly fishermen to row back out into the bay.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
For several centuries, critics scorned Caravaggio as a ruffian whose work lacked depth. But his influence on painting is immense. Rubens spread his style across Northern Europe. Velazquez took his aesthetic to Spain. He’s central to the style of contemporary artists, photographers and film-makers like David Hockney and Martin Scorsese.
Yet his death is an enigma, usually explained by art historians with a tortuous tale of mistaken identity, missed boats and a malarial beach in Tuscany. Some say it’s not so unusual for a man who died 400 years ago to have simply disappeared from record, but look at it this way: Caravaggio is the most important of all the historical figures in this book – all my characters are based on real people – yet his end is the one mystery among all these lives. Even the deaths of the historically insignificant people in this book can be accounted for. Onorio Longhi died of syphilis in Rome in 1619. Mario Minniti lived until 1640, producing banal but remunerative religious canvases at his Syracuse workshop. Giovan Francesco Tomassoni, Ranuccio’s brother, became military governor of Ferrara and died in 1628. Fillide Melandroni died in 1618 at the age of thirty-seven. Because she was a courtesan, the Church denied her a Christian burial. Her friend Menica Calvi lived to fifty and bequeathed her sister property and other investments. Lena Antognetti died in Rome at twenty-eight, just a few months before Caravaggio disappeared.
There has never been an explanation which didn’t pose as many questions as it resolved, however, for the death of the greatest by far of all the characters in this book – Caravaggio.
This story is my answer.
THE PAINTINGS
This is a list of the paintings mentioned in my story. You can look at them on my website (www.mattrees.net), but if you want to view them in person, here’s where you’ll find them (in the order in which they appear in the novel):
The Calling of St Matthew, Church of San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome
The Martyrdom of St Matthew, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome
St Francis in Ecstasy, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut
The Musicians, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
St Catherine of Alexandria, Fondación Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
The Gypsy Fortune-Teller, Capitoline Museum, Rome
Judith and Holofernes, Palazzo Barberini, Rome
Love Victorious, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
The Martyrdom of St Peter, Church of Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome
Martha and Mary Magdalene, Institute of Fine Arts, Detroit
Portrait of Pope Paul V, Palazzo Borghese (private collection), Rome
The Madonna of Loreto, Church of Sant’Agostino, Rome
Rest on the Flight into Egypt, Galleria Doria Pamphilij, Rome
Death of the Virgin, Musée du Louvre, Paris
The Madonna with the Serpent, Galleria Borghese, Rome
Our Lady of Mercy (Seven Works of Mercy), Chapel of the Pio Monte della Misericordia, Naples
Portrait of Alof de Wignacourt, Musée du Louvre, Paris
The Beheading of St John the Baptist, Co-Cathedral of St John, Valletta
Nativity with St Lawrence and St Francis, formerly in the Oratory of the Compagnia di San Lorenzo, Palermo (stolen)
The Flagellation of Christ, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples
Salome with the Head of St John the Baptist, National Gallery, London
The Denial of St Peter, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
St John the Baptist, Galleria Borghese, Rome
David with the Head of Goliath, Galleria Borghese, Rome
You’ll find more works by Caravaggio in these same galleries and in other museums in London, Vienna, Potsdam, Moscow, Messina, Florence, Syracuse, Genoa, Cremona, Milan, Dublin, Fort Worth, Kansas City, Cleveland, Barcelona, Nancy and Rouen. The Nativity with Sts Francis and Lawrence, which appears in the Palermo section of my story, was stolen in 1969 and never recovered. If you know where to see that one, let me know.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Brother John Critien is the sole Knight of St John who now lives in Sant’Angelo Castle in Malta. He was gracious enough to guide me around, though the fortress isn’t open to the public, and to exchange theories about Caravaggio’s time there. Philip Farrugia Randon, the president of the Knights in Valletta and an authority on Caravaggio, and his assistant Nadia Chetcuti were extremely welcoming. Joan Sheridan showed me around the Grand Harbour towns with great enthusiasm.
In Rome, Patrizia Piergiovanni generously accorded me access to the magnificent Colonna Palace. Only partially open to the public on Saturday mornings, it’s well worth a visit.
My friends Ugo Somma and Marcella Tondi were great companions on my visits to the finest sights in Naples and some of its more squalid and shameful ones, too. Marco de Simone allowed me access to one of the Colonna family’s Neapolitan palaces – and to his excellent restaurant in Chiaia, da Marco, which is almost as good a reason to visit Naples as the works of Caravaggio.
I’m grateful to Dr Raz Chen-Morris, professor of the history of early modern science at Bar-Ilan University, for introducing me to the extensive recent research about Caravaggio’s likely use of a camera obscura.
To be better able to describe what Caravaggio did, I tried to pick up some new skills. I learned oil painting with the guidance of Yael Robin, filling my office with my own copies of Caravaggio’s works. At the Academy for Historical Fencing in my home town of Newport, Wales, Nick Thomas gave me the benefit of his practical expertise, teaching me to fight with a rapier and passing on insights into swordsmanship in Caravaggio’s era.
My wife Devorah was full of enthusiasm and intuition as we hunted down Caravaggio’s art and the places he touched. I’m grateful to our friends Miriam Silinsky and Danielle Ceder for taking our toddler Cai on his own tours of Rome (he likes all the fountains) while I conducted my research. Cai composed a little song about Caravaggio which he sang to me as I wrote this book. I’m humming it now.
