XXXIV
Even today, there are few pleasanter places to approach from the sea than Naples, passing between Capri and Ischia. Perhaps the beautiful prospect raised Caravaggio’s spirits for a moment, but when he landed reality would soon catch up with him. Meanwhile, it seems that he went to stay at the Marchesa di Caravaggio’s palace on the Riviera di Chiaia.
It was fear for his life that had brought him back to Naples. He was running from an implacable pursuer who, he must have known, was planning either to kill him or arrange for his death. Probably very few people were aware of the artist’s arrival in the city, and he would have been perfectly safe so long as he stayed inside the marchesa’s palace. Unfortunately, he was unable to resist the lure of the fleshpots. The famous tavern Osteria del Ciriglio beckoned irresistibly, with its delicious food and wine, uproarious good company, and “free-living ladies.” He must have known that the place was very dangerous, and that he would almost certainly be seen there by any enemy who was searching for him, but he took the risk.
Murders occurred in Naples every day, frequently committed by the upper classes. There seems to have been a positive mania for feuding and dueling among the haughty, hot-tempered, revengeful nobility of the southern kingdom, and Knights of Malta were often all too prominent in countless bloodthirsty confrontations in the city’s narrow, dimly lit streets. At the same time, assassination was a highly efficient business, a murder being very easily and cheaply arranged, the famous “Neapolitan Shrug.” Its extremely sinister practitioners had a terrifying reputation throughout Europe, which was obviously well deserved; an English secret agent credited them with poisoning their victims by envenoming the scent of flowers, strangling them with a fragment of fine linen thrust down their throats, piercing their windpipes with a needle point, or pouring mercury into their mouths as they slept. Generally, however, the sword or the knife was used. It is clear that there was never any difficulty in finding such men.
Caravaggio was about to fall victim to a relentless vendetta on the part of the Knight of Justice he had wounded so badly on Malta. There would be a deliberate, well-organized attempt to murder him. Probably the unknown knight was not personally involved in the actual attack. Since he had already been worsted in combat by Caravaggio, he can have had no wish to face him again at the point of a sword, and in any case he regarded him as a social inferior. It is therefore more than likely that he hired professional bravi to do the killing for him.
On 24 October 1609, an avviso sent to Urbino reported, “We learn from Naples that the celebrated painter Caravaggio has been killed, though others say only wounded.” Bellori goes into more detail, recording how “he was stopped one day in the doorway of the Osteria del Ciriglio and surrounded by armed men, who attacked him and wounded him in the face.” Baglione tells the same story, adding that the sword cuts on his face were so deep that he was almost unrecognizable. He was very lucky to escape with his life, being no doubt mistakenly left for dead.
He must have been dangerously ill for a long time. According to Bellori, he had not recovered from his wounds by the following July. Too weak to move, he could not leave where he was hiding, presumably in the marchesa’s palace. During his convalescence, there was no mention of him in the Neapolitan police records, or in the Roman avvisi, which regularly reported gossip from Naples. He was in no condition for brawling. However, a single document shows that at some moment before May 1610 he had started painting again and was ready to accept commissions.
His last paintings are obsessively gloomy. He does not seem to have used models, perhaps because of his need to remain in hiding. It is unlikely that he could have produced all the pictures attributed to him during this second stay in Naples, although he may have sold some he had brought with him from Sicily, or even Malta. Perhaps he thought the Neapolitan nobles could afford to pay more than the Sicilian nobles. That his paintings were carried around may explain why so many have been mistaken for copies; rolling up the canvases made the paint flake, so that they had to be retouched.
Bellori writes of at least one picture painted during this second stay in Naples: “And hoping to placate the Grand Master, he sent him as a gift a half-figure of Herodias with the head of St. John in a basin.” Perhaps it was accompanied by a plea for Fra’ Alof to call off the unknown knight. Sir Denis Mahon believes that this painting was begun by Caravaggio immediately after his arrival in Naples but had to be put aside after the attempted murder at the Osteria del Ciriglio. Caravaggio never stopped hoping for a pardon from the Religion, continuing to call himself a Knight of Malta until the day he died.
When Caravaggio took refuge in Genoa in 1605, after attacking Pasqualone, he had declined to paint a fresco for Marcantonio Doria, the son of a former Doge. On 11 May 1609, Lanfranco Massa, the Doria family’s agent at Naples, wrote a letter to Prince Marcantonio, saying that soon he would be able to send a painting by Caravaggio to Genoa. This was the Martyrdom of St. Ursula. Massa explained that he was having to wait because the artist had applied the varnish so thickly; Massa had left the picture to dry in the sun, with disastrous consequences—it had had to be revarnished. (In the same letter, Massa refers to Caravaggio as Marcantonio’s “friend,” implying that they had met fairly frequently, no doubt in Rome.) The painting finally left Naples for Genoa on May 17.
It was probably commissioned by Marcantonio Doria for the convent of his beloved stepdaughter, Sister Orsola. The story of the gruesome martyrdom that it depicts comes from The Golden Legend, which tells how the virgin Ursula was murdered by a king of the Huns for refusing to marry him, and how he shot her with an arrow. The king is a gnome-like figure in a Baroque cuirass, grimly clutching an oriental bow, while an impassive Ursula gazes with strange calm at the arrow in her bosom that has killed her.
Cruelty of a different sort is in The Tooth-Drawer, a rare exception from Caravaggio’s usual religious themes. A 1637 inventory of paintings at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence lists such a picture, while in his Microcosmo della Pittura, published twenty years after the inventory, Francesco Scannelli relates how he saw in the grand duke of Tuscany’s apartments “a painting of half-length figures with [Caravaggio’s] accustomed naturalism.” Scannelli adds that it was in very bad condition. The Tooth-Drawer’s authenticity has been accepted only in recent years, and not by everybody. Dating from the artist’s second stay at Naples, it is notable for the grotesque spectators’ fascinated enjoyment of the patient’s agony.
The Denial of St. Peter also dates from this second Neapolitan period, inspired by the Gospel of St. Mark: “Now when Peter was in the court below, there cometh one of the maidservants of the high priest. And when she had seen Peter warming himself, looking on him, she saith: ‘Thou also wast with Jesus of Nazareth.’ But he denied, saying: ‘I neither know nor understand what thou sayest.’ ” An uneasy St. Peter and the suspicious maidservant have their faces illuminated by the firelight behind them, heightening the chiaroscuro, while a bystander’s face remains wholly in shadow.
Another David and Goliath shows a handsome young David holding up an agonized head, which, however, wears a curiously reflective expression. Once again, it is a self-portrait. David holds a broad-bladed “sword-rapier” of the type that may have slashed Caravaggio’s face at the Osteria del Ciriglio. The picture has also been attributed to his second Neapolitan period. A tent flap at the top left-hand corner indicates that the scene is not the moment immediately after David killed Goliath, but another, described in the Book of Kings: “And when David was returned after the Philistine was slain, Abner took him in before Saul with the head of the Philistine in his hand.” No one can be unmoved by this painting.
Some think that this interpretation of David and Goliath is meant to convey the artist’s foreboding of imminent death, since Goliath appears to see something we cannot. Both faces are self-portraits, Goliath being the middle-aged, sinful Caravaggio, while David is Caravaggio restored to his youthful innocence. The most likely meaning is that the painter is showing the pure, intelligent soul freed from the battered, sinful body, released from suffering and grief, redeemed by Christ. This is probably how most contemporaries familiar with alchemy would have read it. The picture was acquired by Cardinal Borghese, who remained one of Caravaggio’s greatest admirers.
Another work, ascribed to the same period, although it may have been produced in Sicily, is an Annunciation. One of Caravaggio’s most mysterious and saddest paintings, it was his last altarpiece, commissiond by Duke Henry II of Lorraine for the high altar of the cathedral at Nancy. Inspired by the Gospel of St. Luke, it shows a strapping, winged angel hovering over a submissive, abject Virgin, as he brings his wonderful message to her: “And Mary said: ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it done to me according to thy word.’ ” What is striking is the Virgin’s haunted desolation, her look of utter dejection at the prospect of giving birth to the Messiah. The desolation may well reflect Caravaggio’s own wretchedness. If the Annunciation was painted in Naples, and not in Sicily, then the bed and the chair at the right of Mary’s chamber could be those of the artist’s sickroom.
During 1609—1610, his normal gloom must have been intensified by terrifying memories of the attempt to kill him, the constant pain of slowly healing wounds, and the frustrations of an invalid’s life. His brooding, melancholy temperament made him peculiarly ill-equipped to bear such miseries. Yet, when examined objectively, his future still seemed glowing.
As early as 1606, there had been rumors in Rome of a pardon. In May 1607, and again in August the same year, the Duke of Modena’s Roman agent reported that efforts were being made to secure one. During the first months of 1610, Cardinal Ferdinando Gonzaga, who now owned theDeath of the Virgin, begged Pope Paul to forgive the artist. Vain and weak, Gonzaga was scarcely a papal favorite, but almost certainly he was warmly supported by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, who wanted his favorite painter back in Rome. For Caravaggio, a pardon meant not only returning to Rome but a guarantee that he would be feted as the greatest artist of the age. He could command an enormous income, and powerful friends in the College of Cardinals might even persuade the pope to restore the habit to “Fra’ Michelangelo.”
Meanwhile, he appears to have gone on working despite his poor health. Although the one surviving picture that can be dated with absolute certainty to this Neapolitan period is the Martyrdom of St. Ursula, the fact that he was able to paint it shows that he was regaining his strength. Probably he seldom left the marchesa’s palace, let alone dared to visit the Ciriglio. He seems, however, to have gone to the Lombard community’s church of Sant’ Anna dei Lombardi, painting two pictures for the Fenarolli Chapel. One was a St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, the other a Resurrection of Christ, considered by some to be excessively naturalistic because, instead of depicting Christ in glory, the artist showed him with one foot still inside the grave. Both were destroyed by an earthquake in 1793.
Naples was the ideal place to wait for news of his pardon, since it was so close to the Papal States and a mail coach regularly brought letters from Rome. Nevertheless, by midsummer 1610 Caravaggio had become desperately anxious to get out of the city. He may have heard from friends thatthe unknown knight had learned he was still alive and in Naples and was planning another attempt to murder him.
Some historians suggest that Caravaggio left Naples on a boat bound for Genoa. But of his principal Genoese friends, the Giustiniani brothers and Ottavio Costa lived in Rome, while he could easily do business with Prince Doria without visiting Genoa. Rome had far more to offer him. Baglione and Bellori both say his destination was Rome. The only difference between their accounts is that Baglione thought Cardinal Gonzaga was still negotiating with Rome for the pardon, while Bellori thought he had already obtained it. There is also evidence that the cardinal secretary knew Caravaggio was on his way to Rome, bringing pictures with him, though he did not know how many or what they were. Obviously, these were intended for Borghese and Gonzaga, perhaps even for the pope himself. It looks as if Scipione Borghese had received a letter, either from the marchesa or from the artist, before Caravaggio left Naples.
According to Bellori, Caravaggio, “despite suffering agonizing pain, went on board a felucca as soon as possible with his few possessions, and set off for Rome.” This was early in July. Probably he fancied that, from his hostess’s window, he could see his enemy’s bravi lurking outside. A recently discovered report from the nuncio in Naples, Bishop Deodato Gentile, sent to Borghese at the end of July, says that he left “from the house of the Signora Marchesa di Caravaggio di Caravaggio, who lives on the Chiaia.” The felucca would have anchored just off the seafront, immediately below her palace, so that he could go aboard and embark without attracting too much attention.