XXVIII
The great monument to Michelangelo da Caravaggio’s dream of becoming a Knight of Malta is still to be seen in the procathedral at Valletta, formerly the order’s conventual church. It is the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, the most magnificent of all his paintings. It is peculiarly personal in that it enshrines his devoted allegiance to the Religion.
John the Baptist was the knights’ protector in the holy land, on Rhodes and on Malta, as he remains today. On more than one occasion his sudden appearance in the sky, accompanied by the Virgin, announced triumph over apparently hopeless odds. The Vittoria Mass on 8 September (the Feast of the Virgin’s Nativity) was one of the greatest days in the order’s calendar. Everyone on Malta believed the Turks had abandoned the Great Siege on that day in 1565, leaving the knights victorious, because they had seen the Baptist and the Virgin in the clouds, coming to the brethren’s rescue. The “Victory” Mass has been said ever since. In Caravaggio’s time the Religion marched through Valletta, the prior bearing the icon of Our Lady of Philermo—its most cherished relic—while during Mass the grand master brandished the sword presented to Vallette by King Philip II, and from the city walls cannon fired salute after salute.
The Baptist sailed into battle with the knights, his gilded statue at the poop of every galley and his head on their banners. His likeness was engraved on many of the brethren’s breastplates, helmets, swords, and daggers. Several times a year his hand, cased in silver, was borne in procession around the conventual church.
The Religion’s greatest feast was St. John’s Nativity on 24 June. During the week before, all seagoing was suspended; no boat would leave the harbor till it was over. At the vigil on the previous day, the knights heard how John’s father had prophesied that the Last of the Prophets “shall convert many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God.” On the feast itself, all the brethren on the island were present at Mass in the conventual church, when the sermon extolled the holy war against the foes of the risen Christ, promising salvation to all who died fighting in it or as captives of the infidel. The rest of the day, apart from vespers, was given up to banqueting, regattas, and fireworks.
Caravaggio could have chosen no subject with a greater impact on the Knights of Malta than the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, nor could anything have fascinated him more, given his own ghastly obsession with decapitation. As usual, Bellori has a good description, having traveled to Malta to see the painting, which Caravaggio probably completed while he was still a novice: “The saint has fallen to the ground while the executioner, as though he had not been able to cut it off at once with his sword, takes his knife from his side in order to sever the head from the trunk. Herodias is looking on intently, while the jailer, dressed as a Turk, points fiercely at this awful butchery.” Caravaggio had succeeded in finding just the right model, beautiful and auburn haired, for Herodias, who holds the charger in readiness for her daughter’s gruesome reward. Perhaps she was one of the Greek courtesans who shocked Sandys.
The largest of his pictures, it must have been painted where it was to hang, in the recently completed Oratory of San Giovanni Decollato in the conventual church, as an altarpiece between the Doric pillars on the east wall. The oratory was used as a lecture hall for the novices, and was more than familiar to him. Here he spent the night before taking his vows, in vigil before what many consider his masterpiece. It was his passagio or passage money, the sum paid by every Knight on entering the Religion.
Understandably, Caravaggio was pleased with this painting, the only one he is known to have signed, “F Michelangelo.” It is not clear if he signed it before or after his profession; he may well have done so afterward, proud of at last being able to call himself “Fra’ Michelangelo.” The signature is in blood, or at any rate blood red, as if lifeblood streaming from the Baptist’s neck. The head is not a self-portrait. Even Caravaggio dared not shock his new brethren in such a way.
The painting’s impact on the Religion, especially on the grand master, was overwhelming. We have to remember the knights’ intense devotion to their conventual church, whose decoration was the first item in the order’s annual budget. So far, it was a starkly functional building, largely unadorned, and therefore an unrivaled setting for so dramatic a painting.
Caravaggio took his vows at Mass in the Oratory on 14 July 1608, between the Epistle and the Gospel, in front of his own painting of St. John. Having confessed his sins, wearing a red silk surcoat embroidered with a great white cross, he stood before Fra’ Alof. First, he was made a knight. At the Giving of the Sword, he was reminded that normally membership of the Religion was “by custom granted only to those who, by virtue of their ancient lineage and personal virtue, are accounted worthy.” He promised to defend the Church, together with “those who are poor, dispossessed, orphaned, sick and suffering.” Next, he was clothed as a monk, swearing on the crucifix to obey his superiors and live in poverty and chastity. He was given the habit, the black choir mantle with a white cross, and a stole embroidered with symbols of the Passion.
The bull for his admission states that Malta would honor him “as the island of Cos honoured its own Apelles,” suggesting the document was issued after he had produced some particularly impressive painting, probably the Beheading of St. John. Bellori says it so delighted Fra’ Alof that he gave Caravaggio a gold chain and two slaves as a reward. He was doing just what the grand master had hoped—producing pictures that would shed luster on the Religion.
Even so, judging from his small output on Malta, he seems to have spent comparitively little time painting. Perhaps he had difficulty in finding the right models, though whoever posed for Herodias was a woman of great beauty. Possibly he painted works that await rediscovery. He certainly produced a now-lost portrait of Fra’ Ippolito Malaspina, once in Ottavio Costa’s collection, which, no doubt, had been commissioned by that discerning patron. A picture that has survived from the Maltese period is a repellent Sleeping Cupid, the subject of which, with his swollen stomach, looks more like a dead baby intended as a warning for celibates against the joys of fatherhood. Today in the Galleria Palatina at Florence, it originally belonged to a knight, Fra’ Francesco dell’ Antella.
Now that he had been professed, he would have time to dazzle his new brethren with his genius. But, if neither noble nor young enough to fight at sea against the infidel, was a painter really suited to the last crusaders’ calling? Not everyone on Malta thought so.