Caravaggio_ A Life Sacred and Profane - Andrew Graham-Dixon [105]
Martha and Mary Magdalen was probably painted for Olimpia Aldobrandini.72 The picture’s subject may have reflected Olimpia’s own charitable activities. Gregory Martin, an English Catholic priest who was in Rome in the 1580s, observed that a group of noblewomen had formed an association for the reform of whores. Regardless of their own safety, they would go into the Ortaccio di Ripetta, the ‘evil garden’, and plead with prostitutes to mend their evil ways: ‘honest and wise matronnes of Rome … match them selves with the famous or rather infamous and notorious sinful wemen of the citie, such as sometime Marie Magdalen was, and so by their wordes and behaviour and promises and liberality towards them, they winne them to honest life, and by Gods merciful hand working with exceeding charity they plucke them out of the deepe pitte of dayly fornication, as it were raysing dead stinking carcasses out of their graves.’73 Perhaps Olimpia Aldobrandini was one of these modern-day Marthas. The reformed prostitutes were known as convertite, or convertites. ‘These be therefore so called,’ noted Martin, ‘bycause they are converted from their naughty life, and of common whores and harlots made good Christian wemen …’
‘I’LL GET YOU NEXT TIME’
The young Fillide Melandroni could pose as the Magdalen, but actually it seems that repentance was the last thing on her mind. During the years when Caravaggio knew and painted her, she was often in trouble with the authorities, and not solely for prostitution. On 4 December 1600 a Roman court investigated an accusation of assault made against her and another courtesan, Tella Brunora. The litigant was a third prostitute, Prudenza Zacchia, who lived directly ‘behind the monastery for the Convertites of the city’. All three of the women involved worked for the same pimp, a man called Ranuccio Tomassoni from Terni. Caffarelli, in The Families of Rome, described Ranuccio as ‘a good young man, and good in his conduct’, but others disagreed. Caravaggio, for one, would become his deadly enemy.
Ranuccio belonged to a family of soldiers and mercenaries with long-established links to the Farnese dynasty. One of Ranuccio’s brothers, Giovan Francesco, had served with honour under the general of the pontifical army, Giovan Francesco Aldobrandini. Another brother, Alessandro, had fought in Flanders. Ranuccio himself never saw military service, although he often carried a sword in the evenings. His excuse was that he was in the service of Cardinal Cinzio Passeri Aldobrandini.74 But his real job was running an unruly gang of prostitutes. If any of his girls’ clients turned nasty, it was as well to be armed. As well as taking a cut of their earnings, he took payment in kind from those he favoured. This sometimes caused trouble, as an investigation of December 1600 revealed.75
Prudenza Zacchia was called first by the court. She had recently been charged with throwing a brick at an agent of the Governor of Rome, but this time she was the injured party. She claimed that Fillide and Tella had been conducting a vendetta against her:
Your Honour should know that yesterday evening, at about the first hour of the night, the two accused came to look for me, and not finding me, they gave my mother several kicks, and went out. Nothing else happened yesterday evening. This morning I was in the house of Ranuccio, who lives at the Rotonda [i.e. next to the Pantheon]. The said Fillide, the accused, came to this said house and attacked me with a knife, which she had in her hand, and was restrained by Ranuccio. She came at me in every way, and gave me many blows, and tore off a lot of my hair. Then she left …
Later I was in a downstairs room in my own house, when both of the accused arrived and entered the house by force. In coming in they gave my mother, who was at the door, a shove. The said Fillide came at me with a knife to