Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane (47 page)

Call him Johnny Bollock,

this man who sets about criticizing another man

who could be his master for a hundred years.

I mean in my beloved art of painting,

because he would like to call himself a painter

although he’s not even fit to grind colours for that other man.

Using colours isn’t as easy as one two three,

even if he shamelessly wants to pretend it’s like that.

Everyone knows the truth of the proverb:

Men like to attack those whom they should really be praising.

I’m not one for washing my mouth out,

nor for exalting someone who doesn’t merit it,

as he praises his false idol.

If I wanted to start describing

the pathetic things this man has done

a whole month wouldn’t be enough, nor even two.

Come here for a moment, you who like to criticize

the paintings of another,

even though you know that your own

are still in your house

because you’re ashamed to show them to anyone.

In fact I’m going to stop this humiliation in a minute

because I’ve just got too much material to work with

especially if I start on that necklace

of gold which you so undeservedly wear round your neck

because I believe, if I’m not mistaken, that you should

really have an iron one attached to your ankle.

As for all that [Johnny Bollock] has said with such passion,

well, it can only be because he’s drunk, in my opinion,

as he ought to be,

otherwise he’d just be a fucked-over cuckold.

There was a long and carnivalesque tradition of colourful insult in Rome, embodied by the battered ancient statue known as
Pasquino
, which stood at the corner of Palazzo Braschi to the western side of Piazza Navona. It had long been the custom to attach squibs, satires, scurrilous pieces of graffiti and other outbursts of defamatory rage to the wall next to the statue, under the cover of darkness. There was a collective noun for these libels:
pasquinate
, or ‘pasquinades’
.
Caravaggio, a familiar sight in the Piazza Navona, sword strapped to his side, may well have attached the verses attacking Baglione to the so-called ‘speaking statue’. In any case it must have been fairly obvious to anyone who knew about the trouble between the two men that Caravaggio was behind this poetry of scabrous ridicule.

The timing of his attack was unwise. During the early years of the seventeenth century there was a fierce crackdown on libel in Rome, in direct response to the widespread unrest that had followed a notorious trial and public execution. In the summer of 1599 a beautiful young noblewoman called Beatrice Cenci had been sentenced to death for murdering her tyrannical and incestuous father.
58
Her mother, Lucrezia, and her two brothers, Giacomo and Olimpio, had also been convicted as accomplices to the crime. Appeals for clemency were turned down by the pope, and on 11 September of the same year the execution had taken place on a temporary scaffold erected on the Ponte Sant’Angelo. Lucrezia and Beatrice were publicly beheaded, while Giacomo had his flesh torn piece by piece from his body with red-hot pincers. Olimpio was spared because he was still a minor. But he was forced to watch the suffering of the others and roused with cold water on the many occasions when he fainted. A vast crowd was present, including perhaps Caravaggio: artists were encouraged to witness executions so that they might imagine the pains of the Christian martyrs all the more sharply. The sympathies of the people were firmly with the Cenci. It was widely believed that the execution was no more than a judicial murder, designed to enrich Clement VIII and other members of the Aldobrandini family. The pope did not care for justice, it was said. He was just looking for an excuse to sequester the Cenci’s estates. There was rioting and seven died in the crush.

The notoriously tough Governor of Rome, Ferrante Taverna, had personally supervised the extraction of Beatrice Cenci’s confession. In the immediate aftermath of her trial and execution, he clamped down brutally on the circulation of seditious rumours. At the end of 1599 he issued a decree,
Contro detrattori della fama, & honor’ d’altri in lettre d’avisi, versi, prose, o altrimenti
, ‘to curb the audacity of those . . . who use their pernicious tongues, in writing newsletters to various parts, filling their papers with lies and calumnies’. Tough penalties would be imposed on anyone who ‘defamed, and detracted from honour and reputation . . . under the guise of cleverly written poems, and witty epigrams, or libellous prose, & pasquinades’.
59
A man found guilty of the most serious form of libel could expect a sentence of from seven years to life rowing in the papal galleys. Many of those convicted requested beheading instead.

Within a matter of months of Caravaggio’s poems starting to circulate, Baglione and Tommaso Salini – Mao, as he was known – decided to take the case to court on a charge of criminal libel. They prepared their evidence with care. Salini cultivated the acquaintance of a painter who was close to Caravaggio, Filippo Trisegni. In a show of friendship, he lent Trisegni various studio props, including a helmet, and promised to teach him how to paint cast shadows. Eventually Salini managed to wheedle a copy of the first poem out of Trisegni. He then persuaded him to write the second one out for him in longhand. Armed with Exhibit A and Exhibit B in the case for the prosecution, Baglione and Salini struck back at their enemies. On 28 August, Baglione lodged a complaint with the Governor of Rome about some
libelli famosi
, or ‘famous libels’. The accused were Onorio Longhi, Caravaggio, Orazio Gentileschi and the hapless Filippo Trisegni. Baglione produced his manuscripts of the offending poems, incriminatingly written out in the hand of Caravaggio’s known friend Trisegni, as he addressed his deposition to Judge Alfonso Tomassino, judicial representative of Governor Taverna:

You should know that I am a painter by profession and have been practising this profession here in Rome for a good many years. Now it happens that I have gone and painted a picture of the resurrection of Our Lord for the Father General of the Company of Jesus, which is in a chapel of the church of Gesù. When they found out about the said picture, which was this past Easter, the said accused were envious because they intended, I mean, the said Michelangelo intended to do it himself. So this Michelangelo out of envy, as I said, and the said Onorio Longhi and Orazio, his friends and followers, have gone round speaking ill of me and reproaching my work. And, in particular, they have done some verses that dishonour and insult me. They gave these round and circulated them among many different people, these being the ones I’m showing you, which I had from the painter Messer Tommaso Salini. He told me he got them from Filippo Trisegni, also a painter, and that a part of the said verses were written by Filippo in his presence, being those that begin ‘John Baggage’ and end ‘your painting deserves only vituperation’ and that the others are those on this quarter page that begin ‘Johnny Bollock’ and end ‘otherwise he’d just be a fucked-over cuckold’. So I take action against the above-named and any others that have assisted, or in whatever way were aware of and found guilty of this fact, asking that action be taken against them as justice requires, since the above-named accused have always persecuted, emulated, and envied me seeing that my works are held in higher esteem than theirs.
60

Immediately afterwards Mao Salini made his own deposition, fleshing out Baglione’s account of events with more detail. Salini particularly relished telling the story of how he had trapped Filippo Trisegni into helping him obtain copies of the incriminating poems:

I was taking a stroll around with the said Filippo asking him what painters were saying about the picture that the said Giovanni had done for the church of Gesù. He told me that Michelangelo of Caravaggio, Onorio Longhi, and Orazio Gentileschi, all three painters, had put together some verses against the said Giovanni, and against me since I am his friend, concerning the said painting. And so, a few days later, the said Filippo with fine words gave me a paper with several verses written against the said Giovanni, which were on a quarter-page. Then he told me that the said Orazio had written them together with Ottavio Padovano [a nickname for Ottavio Leoni], likewise a painter, and that Ludovico Bresciano, also a painter, was going around distributing them to numerous painters. In particular, he had given them to one Mario, in like manner a painter, who lives in Via del Corso.

Then – I don’t know how many days later – the said Filippo came to my house one day towards evening to see a painting. After showing it to him, I begged him to tell me a little about the sonnet that he had given me a while back. That was before he gave me the said verses that I mentioned above. Then he told me that he had already given it to me once, and when I said that I had misplaced it he finally wrote the sonnet out for me there in my house on half a page, which if I don’t remember badly begins ‘John Baggage’, telling me that the said Michelangelo and Onorio had written it, and that he had received it from a catamite [
bardassa
] of Onorio and Michelangelo called Giovanni Battista who lives behind the Banchi.

What’s more, he told me that the said Michelangelo, knowing that this Filippo had been handed the said sonnets, had warned him to be careful that these sonnets didn’t fall into the hands of the said Giovanni or in my hands because trouble would be caused, and that certain young men had done them at his home for their pleasure, telling me also that a certain Bartolomeo, servant of the said Michelangelo, was going around distributing these sonnets to whoever wanted one, and that he had also written others.

What Salini so carefully described was exactly what the new libel law had been brought in to eradicate: a systematic attempt to blacken a man’s reputation. The cast of villains was impressive. First there was the naive accomplice, Trisegni, with his ‘fine words’, taking a malicious pleasure in the whole affair while unwittingly playing the part of a patsy. Then there was the network by which the slanders were distributed. It included the Lombard artist called Ludovico from Brescia and his friend Mario – possibly Caravaggio’s old friend from Sicily, Mario Minniti – who took the poems from one artist’s studio to the next. An alleged catamite and a servant of doubtful morals were also involved. Finally, at the centre of the conspiracy, were Caravaggio and his shady friends. They wrote the poems at Caravaggio’s home, which at this time was the Palazzo Mattei, and they did so out of pure malice, ‘for their pleasure’. After Salini’s testimony, the judge had little choice but to prosecute.

Less than two weeks later, the black-cloaked
sbirri
swooped. On 11 September 1603 they took Filippo Trisegni while he was having lunch at home in the Via della Croce. Caravaggio was seized in the Piazza Navona the same day. Less than twenty-four hours later, they arrested Orazio Gentileschi at his quarters in Via Paolina. They also searched Gentileschi’s rooms and removed certain letters and sonnets, to be used as evidence. The only defendant to escape arrest was Onorio Longhi. He had left town, presumably after a tip-off.

The accused were kept apart, in order to prevent them getting their respective stories straight before the trial. Gentileschi was held at the crumbling Corte Savella. Caravaggio and Trisegni were kept in solitary confinement at the Tor di Nona. Their dark, single cells were on the first floor. Nearby was another prison known as the
galeotta
, so called because it housed convicts who had already been condemned to row in the papal galleys. It was a vivid reminder of the fate awaiting Caravaggio and his associates if Giovanni Baglione had his way.

Filippo Trisegni was the first of the accused to give evidence. He began by pretending that he barely knew Mao Salini: ‘I know a painter called Tommaso but I don’t know his surname. He lives near me on Via della Croce. I usually call him Mao and I believe he’s from Rome.’ But there was an immediate surprise in store for him. Salini had provided the court with a note written to him by Trisegni, requesting the loan of an iron helmet. The judge produced the note, which surely implied that Trisegni and his neighbour were closer than he had just said. He had written the note, had he not? Wrongfooted, Trisegni backtracked hurriedly. He could not deny that the note was in his handwriting. On reflection, he added, ‘the said Tommaso is a very good friend of mine, who lent me chalks and anything else I needed.’

It was not an auspicious beginning. But Trisegni managed to recover his composure when questions were asked – as he must have known they would be – about certain scurrilous verses. His responses were teasing and ambiguous, clearly intended to deflect attention away from himself, as well as from Caravaggio and the other suspects. He implied that a mysterious man called Gregorio Rotolanti had commissioned the verses from a yet more mysterious and unnamed man, a student of physics or logic – Trisegni was not sure which. Here is the main body of his testimony:

I heard some insulting poems about the said Tommaso told by Gregorio Rotolanti, and since Tommaso is my friend I pretended to like them and begged the said Gregorio to give me a copy. And so I went to his home and he let me copy some verses but I don’t remember exactly what they said. The wife of the said Tommaso was mentioned in it and he was called Mao and it said ‘Your pictures are woman’s work’ or something similar and I think they were on a quarter-page. After I copied them I went to see the said Tommaso and told him that he ought to be aware that while he was going around speaking badly of other
people’s
paintings people were speaking badly of him too. Then I told him I wanted to show him something that had been written against him and so I showed him that poem. I gave it to him and [Mao] pressed me to tell him who had given it to me and who had written it, but I never wanted to tell him because I didn’t want to cause trouble.

Yet he pressed me and named a lot of people and especially Michelangelo of Caravaggio, Bartolomeo, who was Michelangelo’s servant, and Orazio Gentileschi, a man from Parma called Ludovico Parmigianino, another called Francesco Scarpellino, and he asked me if the person could be one of them. I said to him ‘It could be any one of them – it might be one of them but I don’t want to tell you his name.’ I had been waiting for him to teach me how to do figures in cast shadows and then I would have told him. But he never taught me, and so I didn’t tell him.

But he did beg me to tell him if I heard anything else about him. And so I spoke to the said Rotolanti, who said that he had another poem against the said Tommaso. Then on the following day we met on Via della Croce and went into the apothecary, where he let me copy some more verses that I think began with, ‘Johnny Bollock’. It was in a nice style and well written. But I don’t know much about verse and out of several verses I made one. Rotolanti didn’t want to give me the original because he said he wanted to learn it by heart. I asked him who had written them and he answered that a young man had written it, a student of logic or maybe physics, a
valent’huomo
, who was really good at it and would write a sonnet or two for a woman for me if I so desired. He told me he was a graduate and wrote exquisite verse. So I returned to see Tommaso about fifteen or twenty days after the first visit and showed him this other poem and left it with him. It was on a quarter-page filled with small handwriting from one side to the other. He told me that he had lost the first one and asked me if I would be kind enough to give him a copy. Since I had learned almost all of it by heart I made him a copy there at his home the way I remembered it.

Trisegni’s testimony directly contradicted Salini’s deposition to the court. The man whom he claimed had given him the verses, Gregorio Rotolanti, now became a key witness. But he was never called to testify. Perhaps he had gone into hiding, like Onorio Longhi. Or maybe Trisegni had simply invented Rotolanti and his story about the student of physics or logic with a talent for versification.

Gentileschi was next to be questioned by the court. The main purpose was to identify the handwriting of the various documents that the
sbirri
had confiscated at his home. These included a letter to which some playful verses were attached, as well as four sonnets written on a single piece of paper. After having admitted that ‘I know how to write but not very correctly’, Gentileschi denied that any of the verses produced in evidence were written in his hand. He said that the eight lines of verse attached to the letter were written by a friend of his called Lodovico. As for the four sonnets, ‘I say that about six to eight days ago one Giovanni Maggi, an engraver and painter that lives in Vicolo dei Bergamaschi, gave them to me. He dabbles in these things but I don’t really know if it’s his handwriting. But it could be his handwriting.’

On the next day, 13 September, the magistrate arranged a confrontation between ‘Mao’ – Tommaso Salini – and Filippo Trisegni. This was common practice when two witnesses had given opposing testimonies. Neither man changed his story. Salini repeated his assertion that Trisegni had listed the names of those who had written the two poems. He stressed once again that Trisegni had told him that he been given some of the verses by the
bardassa
, the catamite ‘who lives behind the Banchi’. But Trisegni denied everything and maintained that Salini was lying.

Later the same day Caravaggio was called to give evidence. The notary, Decio Cambio, made his usual careful report of the proceedings, but the painter gave him less work than any of the other witnesses. He was haughty and taciturn. He gave his answers grudgingly and kept them short. At one point he asked, with evident irritation, how much more he would have to listen to, as if to suggest that the enquiry was just an elaborate waste of his time. He declared, improbably, that he had never heard of any scurrilous poems written about Giovanni Baglione and Mao Salini. He claimed that he had not even spoken to Orazio Gentileschi for three years. But he made no pretence of his utter contempt for Baglione’s work. That was the one subject on which, dangerously, he became almost effusive. But perhaps the most noteworthy part of his testimony is his grumpy, one-line definition of a good painter.

Here is the full court record of his interrogation:

Before His Excellency the Illustrious Alfonso Tomassino assistant examining magistrate and myself . . . Michelangelo Merisi of Caravaggio interrogated under oath by the magistrate.

Asked how, under what circumstances, and for what reason he was incarcerated
.

Answered
:

I was arrested the other day in Piazza Navona but I don’t know what the reason and circumstances are.

Asked what profession he exercises
.

My profession is painting.

Asked if he knew and knows some painters in Rome and which ones.

Answered
:

I think I know almost all the painters in Rome starting with the
valent’huomini
. I know Gioseffe, Caracci, Zucchero [
sic
, for Zuccaro], Pomarancio, Gentileschi, Prospero, Giovanni Andrea, Giovanni Baglione, Gismondo and Giorgio Todesco, Tempesta, and others.

Asked if all the painters named above are his friends and are all (as they are commonly called) valent’huomini.

Answered
:

Almost all the painters I have listed above are my friends, but not all of them are
valent’huomini
.

Asked to identify what he means by the word ‘valent’huomo’.

Answered
:

By the term ‘
valent’huomo
’ I mean he who knows how to do well, that is, he who knows how to do his art well. So in painting a
valent’huomo
is one who knows how to paint well and imitate natural objects well.

Asked to identify which of them are his friends and which are his enemies
.

Answered
:

Of those I listed above neither Gioseffe, nor Giovanni Baglione, nor Gentileschi, nor Giorgio Todesco are my friends because they don’t speak to me. The others all speak and converse with me.

Asked to specify which of the above-named he considers and holds to be valent’huomini (as they are commonly called) and those which he does not consider as such
.

Answered
:

Of the painters I listed above as good painters, Gioseffe, Zucchero, Pomarancio and Annibale Carracci; as for the others I don’t consider them
valent’huomini
.

Asked if he knows if the above-named painters are judged respectively to be good or bad by other painters, just as he judges and reputes them to be
.

Answered
:

Valent’huomini
are those who are well versed in painting and will judge as good and bad painters those that I judge myself to be good and bad. But those that are bad and ignorant painters will judge as good painters the ignorant just as they are.

Asked if he knows of any person or painter who praises, considers and holds to be a good and virtuous painter one of those painters named above that he esteems is not a good painter
.

Answered
:

I don’t know of any painter that praises and considers a good painter any of those painters that I don’t esteem to be good painters.

Then
:

I have gone and forgotten to tell you that Antonio Tempesta – he too is a
valent’huomo
.

Asked in particular if any other painter has praised and praises the said painter Giovanni Baglione and who he might be.

Answered
:

I don’t know of any painter who thinks that Giovanni Baglione is a good painter.

Asked if he has seen any of the works of the said Giovanni Baglione and which ones.

Answered
:

I’ve seen almost all the works of Giovanni Baglione, that is, the big chapel at the Madonna dell’Orto, a painting in San Giovanni Laterano, and recently
The Resurrection of Christ
at the Gesù.

Asked how he judges the above-named painting The Resurrection, and if he knows if it was praised or reproached by other painters.

Answered
:

I don’t like that painting there at the Gesù because it’s a bungle. I think it’s the worst he’s done and I haven’t heard any painter praise the said painting. Of all the painters I’ve spoken to no one liked it.

Then
:

Except that it is praised by someone who’s always with him, who’s called his guardian angel, who was there praising it when it was unveiled. They call him ‘Mao’.

Asked to identify with whom or with which painters he saw that painting The Resurrection.

Answered
:

Prospero and Giovanni Andrea. And I saw it on other occasions when I went to the Gesù, but I don’t remember if any other painters were with me.

Then
:

What am I going to have to hear next about this matter?

Asked if he knows if the said Mao is a painter and if he has done any paintings and if he has seen any of them.

Answered
:

Maybe he dabbles in art and still daubs, but I’ve never seen any work of this Mao.

Asked if he has met and knows Onorio Longhi and Ottavio Padovano
.

Answered
:

I know Onorio Longhi, who’s very much a friend of mine, and I also know Ottavio Padovano.

Then
:

But I’ve never spoken to Ottavio Padovano.

Asked if he has ever had a conversation with the said Onorio Longhi and Orazio Gentileschi concerning the said painting The Resurrection.

Answered
:

I’ve never spoken to Onorio Longhi about the said painting of the Resurrection by Baglione, and it’s been more than three years since I’ve spoken to Gentileschi.

Asked if he knows the painter Lodovico Bresciano and Mario, also a painter.

Answered
:

I know a Lodovico Bresciano and a Mario, both painters. This Mario once stayed with me and it’s been three years since he left and I haven’t spoken to him since. As for Lodovico I’ve never spoken to him.

Asked if he knows someone called Bartolomeo, who was once a servant of his, and his whereabouts.

Answered
:

I know Bartolomeo. He was once my servant who went two months ago to the Castello del Soderino.

Asked if he knows someone called Giovanni Battista, a young man who lives behind the Banchi.

Answered
:

I don’t know any young man called Giovanni Battista or any young man who lives behind the Banchi.

Asked if he knows how to write verse in the vulgar tongue.

Answered
:

Your Excellency, no. I don’t dabble in verse either in the vulgar tongue, or in Latin.

Asked if he has ever heard of a poem or composition written in the vulgar tongue in which the said Giovanni Baglione was mentioned.

Answered
:

I have never heard it in verse or in prose, in the vulgar tongue, or in Latin.

Asked if he has ever heard of a poem or composition written in the vulgar tongue in which the said Giovanni Baglione was mentioned.

Answered
:

I have never heard in verse or in prose, in the vulgar tongue or in Latin, or in any other form, anything where mention of the said Giovanni Baglione was made.

And to his Excellency who said that according to the Bar he was aware that mention had been made of this Giovanni Baglione, and also of the said Mao, in some verses in the vulgar tongue.

Answered
:

Never have I received information that mention has been made of Giovanni Baglione or of the said Mao in verse in the vulgar tongue.

Caravaggio’s definition of a good painter as ‘one who knows how
to paint well and imitate natural objects well’ is almost comically prosaic. Perhaps he meant it as a deliberately provocative, no-nonsense
assertion of his own notoriously direct naturalistic approach. But it is equally likely that he was just playing dumb. Caravaggio knew very well that there was more to painting than the mere reproduction of appearances. But it was not in his interests to appear before the court as an intellectual. After all, intellectuals were the kind of people who might write poetry in their spare time.

Caravaggio’s eventual list of
valent’huomini
was influenced by calculation. Most of those chosen were conservative and academically minded painters. None were his friends, least of all Annibale Carracci, with whom he had crossed paintbrushes in the Cerasi Chapel. He included Federico Zuccaro, who had insulted Caravaggio’s Contarelli Chapel canvases in the presence of Giovanni Baglione. Zuccaro was president of the Academy, so no wonder Caravaggio wanted the court to think he thought well of him. This was not merely false magnanimity: it was a shrewd attempted alignment with respectability.