XXVII

The Grand Master

One of the knights’ ablest and most likable rulers, Caravaggio’s grand master, Fra’ Alof de Wignancourt, had been born in Artois in 1547. Although he did not come out to Malta until 1566, a year after the Great Siege, he had served under the legendary Grand Master de la Vallette, who made him Captain of Valletta with special responsibility for guarding the order’s new capital while it was being built. After completing his caravans at sea, he had gone home to run a commandery in the dangerous France of the Wars of Religion, returning to Malta as Hospitaller in 1597.

As soon as Fra’ Alof was elected grand master in 1601, it became clear that an innovator was in charge. He put real vigor into the knights’ crusade against the infidel, their galleys raiding Greece, Turkey, Syria, and North Africa, bringing back impressive booty together with quantities of slaves. Anxious to enhance the pomp and grandeur of his office, he established a corps of twelve pages, aspirant novices, to wait on him. In 1611 George Sandys noted, “For albeit a Frier (as the rest of the Knights), yet is he an absolute Soveraigne, and is bravely attended on by a number of gallant yong Gentlemen.” He chose them from the poorer nobility, paying for their education himself.

Wignancourt took good care of his Maltese subjects, much better than any shown by his predecessors. Formerly, whole families of country people had been dragged off to the Moorish slave markets by Barbary corsairs, on one occasion the neighboring island of Gozo’s entire population, so he built small forts where they could take shelter from raiders, besides setting up a bank for ransoming captives. The Maltese, who idolized him, thought he was a wizard, which probably means that, like del Monte, he took an active interest in alchemy.

For all his fire-eating appearance in Caravaggio’s famous portrait at the Louvre, Fra’ Alof was a pleasant, modest man, genuinely benevolent, and gifted with exceptional tact. Despite his firm leadership and his innovations, he was never autocratic or overbearing, never attempted to rule as an absolute monarch, “Very easy to do business with, always open to suggestions before taking a decision, always ready to listen to the opinions of the experts on both civil and military matters,” writes the historian dall’ Pozzo, who had obviously spoken to elderly knights who remembered his reign. “He chose extremely well qualified officers and counselors, ruling with their advice and taking careful account of their views…. Among his principal advisers was the Bailiff of Naples, Fra’ Ippolito Malaspina.”

Every grand master made the painful discovery that he had extremely difficult subjects to govern. The main disturbance during Caravaggio’s time on Malta came from the Langue of Germany. In 1607 uproar broke out among the German knights when they learned that Fra’ Alof had given permission for the Comte de Brie, a bastard son of the Duke of Lorraine, to join the German Langue. There was a long and noisy dispute. At one point the enraged Germans pulled down the arms of the grand master and the Religion from their accustomed place over the main gateway of the Langue of Germany. Eventually, Fra’ Alof was forced to give in, arranging for the count to be admitted into the much less demanding Langue of Italy, where he became a novice with Caravaggio. The Italians were nearly always prepared to accept a papal dispensation for inadequate proofs of nobility, and the grand master must have asked Scipione Borghese to provide one for Brie.

The Comte de Brie’s story shows Wignancourt’s ability to compromise and his diplomatic finesse at using Rome. It also underlines the extraordinary emphasis placed by the Religion on the value of impeccably noble birth, and in the very uneasy position in which painters of obscure origin might find themselves if they became Knights of Malta. Brie should have been a warning to Caravaggio.

The grand master was in frequent contact with the cardinal nephew, through the Religion’s ambassador at Rome. He needed his support constantly in dealing with such problems as the Inquisitor, who saw himself as unofficial papal nuncio to Malta. Knights in trouble for some offense often appealed through him to the pope against the order’s sentence, so that his meddling was an endless source of vexation. Fra’ Alof had every reason to keep on good terms with Borghese, whose weakness for Caravaggio made Wignancourt no doubt still more inclined to like the artist.

Even so, Fra’ Alof’s primary motive was to use Caravaggio in the service of the Religion. He had seen Valletta rise from the ground and now he wanted to make it as beautiful as possible. Probably while he was still in the novitiate, Caravaggio produced not less than three portraits of Fra’ Alof. The first, now at the Louvre and the only one to survive, shows him in a splendid, gold-inlaid ceremonial armor, grasping an admiral’s baton. The second portrait has disappeared, although there is a clumsy copy at Rabat; it depicted Fra’ Alof as hospitaller instead of crusader, wearing his choir mantle and seated at a desk on which there were a crucifix and a book of hours. The third, a head and shoulders, is known only from a French engraving of 1609. Was the grand master aware that Caravaggio had painted the pope, and is that perhaps why he sat for him so many times?

During the sittings, Fra’ Alof had plenty of opportunity to speak with the artist, and obviously he could see no reason to change his mind about admitting him to the Religion. After only a few months, the grand master decided that his protégé definitely possessed a vocation to become a Knight of Malta. On 29 December 1607, he wrote two letters, one to the order’s amabassador at Rome, Fra’ Francesco Lomellini, and the other to its former ambassador, Fra’ Giacomo Bosio, asking them to obtain a papal dispensation to enter the Religion for someone who had committed a murder. No letter to the omnipotent Cardinal Borghese survives, but it would have been unthinkable not to seek his help.

On 7 February 1608, the grand master formally petitioned the pope for a dispensation, “on this occasion only, to clothe and adorn with a Magistral Knight’s habit two persons of whom he has a very high opinion and whom he is nominating, although one of them has committed a homicide during a street brawl.” There must have been a good deal of discreet lobbying before Fra’ Alof presented the petition. Again, it is likely that the cardinal secretary played a key role behind the scenes. No names are mentioned in the petition, but it is inconceivable that Rome remained unaware of the murderer’s identity. The grand master was far too shrewd to risk trying to deceive the Curia, let alone Pope Paul.

Rome was notoriously slow at answering petitions, yet somebody, presumably Borghese, made sure that the pontiff answered at once. On February 15, he sent a papal “brief” to Malta, granting Wignancourt’s request, while warning that it was a special case that must not be seen as creating a precedent.

In July, Fra’ Alof issued a magistral bull, commanding that “the honorable Michelangelo of Caracca in Lombardy, in the vernacular called ‘Caravaggio,’ ” should be admitted into the Order of Malta as a Knight of Magistral Obedience, because of “his burning zeal for the Religion … and his great desire to be clothed with the habit.”

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