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A Dungeon Called the “Birdcage,” September 1608

Meanwhile, in chains and under armed guard, Caravaggio had been taken by boat across Grand Harbor to the Religion’s state prison at Fort Sant’ Angelo. Landing, he was marched through a narrow gate, then up steep ramps into the inner castle. On the tip of the peninsula occupied by the city of Vittoriosa, Fort Sant’ Angelo was Malta’s Bastille, ringed by massive walls and bastions, surrounded by sea on three sides and by a deep moat on the fourth. It was constantly patrolled by sentries on guard against a sudden Turkish attack or a revolt by the slaves. Over the drawbridge, Vittoriosa was almost as closely guarded, its great gates firmly shut each night.

The prisoner Caravaggio was thrown into the fortress’s maximum-security cell, a painful experience in itself since the cell was eleven feet deep. He had been in jail many times before, but never in a place like this. Beehive-shaped and about twelve feet in diameter, the guva, or “birdcage,” had been hacked out of the limestone rock like a well; the only opening was the wellhead at the top, three feet round and closed by an iron grille. If someone gave him a candle before the grille slammed down, he would have been able to see from prayers or coats of arms scratched on the walls that other knights had been imprisoned here already; one sad little inscription referred to “this living grave.” Since the guva was near a key gateway, opposite the well-attended chapel of Our Lady of Victories, occasionally he could hear footsteps and voices. His horrible prison was stiflingly hot during the autumn days, icy cold at night. Bellori may well be quoting the artist’s own words, if at second hand, when he says he was “fearful of an evil end and in terror.”

However, Caravaggio spent only a few days in the guva. Baglione tells us that “during the night, he climbed out of the prison and fled, reaching the isle of Sicily,” while Bellori writes of his “fleeing unrecognized to Sicily, so fast that no one was able to recapture him.” It is obvious that in the darkness someone pulled Caravaggio up from out of his dungeon with a rope or a rope ladder and then lowered him over the high walls down to the sea; they also provided him with a safe conduct, so that the sentries of the most closely guarded fortress in the Mediterranean would not shoot at him. A boat was waiting below, because it was much too risky to cross Vittoriosa, whose gates were shut in any case. No one else is known to have got out of the guva and escaped from Fort Sant’ Angelo. The only possible explanation must be that he was “sprung” by people acting on the instructions of somebody very high up in the order indeed, presumably the grand master himself.

Somehow, Caravaggio mysteriously acquired a large sum of money, enough to hire a felucca and pay its crew sufficiently to risk putting to sea at night, despite the danger from corsairs lurking outside the harbor in the darkness. Bellori and Susinno both say that as soon as he reached Sicily, he went straight to Syracuse, remaining there for some months. Syracuse was the nearest big port to Malta, used by the order’s galleys and transports, with an important commandery; it was visited constantly by the knights, who were frequently to be seen in its streets. Not the slightest attempt was made to rearrest him while he was at Syracuse, which serves to confirm the suspicion that Fra’ Alof arranged his escape.

On 6 October 1608, the procurator made a formal complaint to the grand master and his council, to the effect that Fra’ Michelangelo had fled from Fort Sant’ Angelo. This implies he had escaped very recently. In response, Fra’ Alof and the council commissioned two knights to seek help from the master squire’s men in recapturing him and discovering how he had escaped. Needless to say, they could find no trace of him.

On 7 December, a general assembly of all members of the Religion on Malta was summoned to meet in the Oratory of St. John, to discuss the case formally. A report, now lost, was read to the assembly by the master squire. It stated that Fra’ Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio “while confined in the prison at Fort Sant’ Angelo had escaped from the said fortress by means of ropes” and that, despite numerous summonses in public places, he had not surrendered himself.

Wignancourt, who was absent, wanted the embarrassing business over as quickly as possible, presumably according to his discreet instructions. Instead of discussing Caravaggio’s assault on the distinguished knight, the assembly simply found him guilty of not giving himself up when summoned. A convenient clause in the statutes stated that any knight absent from the convent without written permission could be deprived of the habit, and expelled from the order.

In front of the oratory’s altar, below Caravaggio’s Beheading of St. John, stood a stool draped in a choir mantle, which represented Fra’ Michelangelo. By a bitter irony, the worst humiliation of his life took place under a painting many consider his masterpiece. Having tried him in absentia, the assembly of the Religion condemned him to suffer the ultimate penalty, the much feared Privatio Habitus, or Loss of the Habit, and be “thrust forth like a rotten and putrid limb from our Order and Community.” (This was the standard formula in such cases.) Finally, the black choir mantle with its white cross was symbolically ripped off the stool, as if ripping it off Fra’ Michelangelo’s shoulders.

Caravaggio always refused to accept the fact that he was no longer a Knight of Malta. He regarded his admission into the Religion as one of the supreme achievements of his life, placing him above all other painters. But, whatever he may have liked to think, his attempt to make a new beginning after Tommasoni’s killing and his flight from Rome as an outlaw ended in irretrievable disaster and rejection. It severely damaged his chance of obtaining a papal pardon. No less alarmingly, it had involved him in a sinister vendetta with the unknown knight, though for the moment he was unaware of this. He was thirty-seven, entering middle age, and, for all his wonderful gifts, a hunted outcast. Despair might certainly help to account for some of his strange behavior in Sicily.

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