XXVI
The first mention of Caravaggio on Malta is during an investigation by the Inquisition into the rumored bigamy of an unnamed Greek artist. On 14 July 1607, Caravaggio had been a guest in a knight’s house at Valletta when the Greek was present. He was questioned by Paolo Cassar, an official of the “General Inquisitor for Heretical Depravity.” “I don’t know anything about what your most reverend lordship is asking me, except that there was a Greek painter staying at Fra’ Giacomo Marchese’s residence and that he arrived here on the galleys a fortnight ago,” Caravaggio told him. “I’m aware of nothing that ought to be reported to the Holy Office about this knight, or about anyone else, and I don’t know where the painter came from.”
A novice, he was technically in convento, living as if he were in a monastery. Most of the seven Langues into which the order was divided had their own fortress-like auberge, in Caravaggio’s case the Auberge of Italy. It housed the novices and younger knights, who slept in cubicles and dined in its refectory. Because of his age, he was probably allowed to lodge with a knight in Valletta, but he would have had to dine at the auberge, besides attending church services and lectures with the other novices; led by a senior knight, they said the Little Office together daily and recited the Rosary,visiting the infirmary once a week to nurse “Our Lords the Sick.” They also received instruction in seamanship, gunnery, and fencing. Presumably Caravaggio was excused from these, though not classes on the statutes, customs, and traditions of the “Religion,” the brethren’s name for their order.
The Master of the Novices, their spiritual adviser, was Don Giovanni Bertolotti, a chaplain of the order. A distinguished theologian from Bologna, as the grand master’s confessor he had great influence. During his term of office, the Oratory of St. John was built onto the conventual church, specifically for the novices’ use. In addition, Caravaggio must have had the guidance of a senior knight from the Langue of Italy. Probably this was Fra’ Antonio Martelli. In 1966 a portrait of a Knight of Malta at the Pitti Palace in Florence was identified as Caravaggio’s work. At first the sitter was thought to be Wignancourt, but recent research has established that it is Fra’ Antonio. A Florentine born in 1534, he had fought so bravely during the Great Siege that Grand Master de la Vallette rewarded him with a rich commandery. He received rapid promotion when Wignancourt became grand master, appointed prior of Messina, one of the Langue of Italy’s key posts. Caravaggio’s portrait shows a battered if well-preserved old noble with a cropped head and a faded red beard. Despite his scraggy neck, the weathered, sunburned face is alarmingly formidable, with a tight mouth and very shrewd eyes.
We do not know how often Fra’ Ippolito Malaspina came over from Naples, but he was on Malta in February 1608. Possibly it was then that Caravaggio painted, or at least finished, the St. Jerome. Although some think St. Jerome’s face may be the grand master’s, it is almost certainly the prior’s, since the artist has added the Malaspina arms at the bottom right-hand corner, a thornbush in flower. Recently restored, the picture now hangs in the Oratory of St. John. Cleaning has brought back the dazzling light in which Caravaggio clothed the saint, the light of divine inspiration.
If there was never any chance of Caravaggio going to sea to fight the Turks, apparently he sympathized with his brethren’s crusader ideals. Sandrart claims that he “generously equipped a carrack,” though the enormous sum required would clearly have been beyond his resources. It is more likely that he contributed to the fund that the grand master was amassing to build a big, new square-rigged warship, a carrack, for the religion’s navy.
Malta was far from being a “dreary isle,” as Howard Hibbard calls it. Before the knights’ arrival, it had resembled a miniature Sicily even if most of the population spoke Maltese. Its cities looked like Sicilian or Italian cities, particularly the new capital at Valletta, while the order’s international membership made it “an epitome of all Europe.” The seamen and merchants, Italians, Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, who swarmed in its ports, added to the cosmopolitan air. Although stony and largely treeless, the landscape was not unpleasing. Admittedly the sweltering summers were trying, an unpleasant sirocco blowing in August. “They here stir early and late, in regard of the immoderate heat, and sleep at the noonday,” reports Sandys. Throughout the winter there were gales and high seas. But, accustomed to Rome and Naples, Caravaggio can have found little difficulty in coping with the climate.
Valletta, where Caravaggio spent most of his time, was a handsome city of yellow limestone, a grid of smart streets behind massive fortifications. Although the Auberge of Italy, now the General Post Office, was bombed during the Second World War, he would still recognize its sculpted facade and great Baroque entrance, its spacious courtyard around a well surmounted by a high arch; next door stood the Italian Langue’s own church, dedicated to St. Catherine of Italy. As a novice, he had to be in St. John’s church, just round the corner from the Auberge, almost every day. No other buildings, not even the Contarelli Chapel, have such close associations with him.
When not at sea, the life of a knight was comfortable, even luxurious, with Turkish or North African slaves to wait on him. The cuisine was world-famous, first-class cooks being brought from Europe, while fine wines were imported, together with snow from Mount Etna to cool them. Social amusements consisted of a never-ending round of receptions and card parties in richly furnished apartments or shady gardens. There were concerts and sometimes plays at the Auberges. There were also temptations. Sandys writes of “the number of allowed curtizans (for the most part Grecians) who sit playing in their doors on instruments; and with the art of their eyes inveigle those continent by vow.” There do not seem to have been many models among them, judging from the lack of young women in Caravaggio’s painting while he was on the island. In any case, he himself was preparing to become continent by vow.
Apart from going to sea on a “caravan,” the most dangerous thing a knight could do was to quarrel with one of his brethren. Confined on their little island, they were prone to fall out and settle disputes in the manner of their class, by dueling, although fatalities were rare. The statutory penalty for fighting a duel was “Loss of the Habit,” expulsion from the order, but usually lesser punishments were imposed if nobody had been killed or badly wounded. Yet for over a year there is no record of Caravaggio quarreling. He was well aware that as a novice he was on probation. It is also likely that he went in awe of those three grim old men, the grand master and the priors of Messina and Naples.
Malta gave Caravaggio a new country and a new identity. The island was a sovereign state and, as Malta Gerosolomitana, heir of the old crusader states in Palestine. What it lacked in size, it made up for in prestige; for an Italian, there was no more honorable profession than that of a “Jerusalem Knight” (or Cavaliere Gerosolomitano). And membership conferred nobility on those without blue blood, which cannot have displeased a painter of ill-defined social standing. No doubt he enjoyed the company too. If men of the sword, the knights were by no means Philistines. Many were younger sons of immensely wealthy families, who had grown up in palaces, surrounded by beautiful possessions. This was especially true of the Italian Langue, more than a few of whose members would have known great painting when they saw it. They had genuine respect for so magnificent an artist, while he himself must have been deeply flattered by their acceptance and at the prospect of joining them. Above all, he enjoyed the warm approval of the grand master, Fra’ Alof. The time that Caravaggio spent on Malta may well have been the happiest of his entire life.