Caravaggio_ A Life Sacred and Profane - Andrew Graham-Dixon [106]
Other testimony fleshed out the story. Geronimo Mattei told the court that he had been warming himself by the fire downstairs in Ranuccio’s house earlier that morning. ‘Ranuccio was in bed together with a woman called Prudenza Zacchia … and a woman called Fillide came into the house and ran upstairs to the said Ranuccio and Prudenza, and as soon as she saw the said Prudenza she began saying, “Ah, you slag, you baggage, there you are!” and at the same time she ran to the table and took a knife and went to the said Prudenza, saying, “Whore, I’m going to scar you everywhere.” ’
Geronimo intervened and took the knife from Fillide, but he could not prevent her from attacking Prudenza again. This time, ‘she tore lots of hair from her head.’ Later on, he told the court, ‘I was passing by the said Prudenza’s house, just behind the monastery of the Convertites, when Prudenza called out to me and showed me a wound in her hand, saying that Fillide and Tella had attacked her in her house, and that Fillide had taken a knife to scar her, and had wounded her in the hand …’ It is not hard to imagine how Fillide might have acquired the bent and damaged finger of her own left hand.
There was one more witness, a man called Cesare Pontoni. He was a close friend of Ranuccio and Giovan Francesco Tomassoni, and often testified in cases where they were involved. He had witnessed only the last incident in this serial fracas. Cesare told the court that he was walking down the street when he saw Fillide shouting at Prudenza. Fillide was at the window of Tella’s house, which was opposite where Prudenza lived. Prudenza was standing in her own doorway. ‘You dirty whore!’ Fillide screamed. ‘I hurt your hand, when I wanted to stab you in the mouth, but I’ll get you next time!’ Moments later Fillide advanced on Prudenza with a stone in her hand, yelling, ‘You dirty whore! I want to cut you! I want to cut you!’
The interpretation of the case is clear enough. Prudenza and Fillide were vying for Ranuccio Tomassoni’s affections. Amongst the elaborate rituals of insult and injury, the crucial terms in the court documents are sfregio and the related verb sfregiare. Literally, a sfregio was a facial scar, but in the honour code of the time it also carried the figurative meaning of a serious affront to a person’s reputation. When Fillide said, repeatedly, that she wanted to cut Prudenza in the face, she was expressing a desire to dishonour and shame her. She uttered her threats publicly because she wanted her intentions to be known in the public arena of the street – the theatre in which reputation was made and harmed. Prudenza repeated those threats in court for the same reason. To accuse someone of the intention to inflict a sfregio was to alert the law to a potentially serious offence.
In the event, the many threats of wounds to Prudenza’s face seem not to have actually been carried out, perhaps because Fillide’s main aim was to frighten her rival. If she had actually cut her in the mouth, or sliced off her nose – a not unheard-of tactic in the more extreme revenge assaults – Prudenza would have become damaged goods. That would not have pleased Ranuccio. The impression that emerges from the testimony is that, for all her apparent wildness, Fillide knew what she was doing and remained in control throughout. Probably because nobody was seriously hurt, the case seems to have come to nothing.
Caravaggio’s name does not appear in the trial transcripts involving Fillide, Tella, Prudenza and Ranuccio, so these documents shed little direct light on