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By Root 1281 0

Ottoman Sultan Suleiman ‘The Magnificent’, and then by his successor, Selim II. The bitter and bloody conflict between Muslim and Christian reached a climax at exactly the moment of Caravaggio’s birth. In 1570–71 Christian Cyprus, a strategically vital island fortress long controlled by the Venetians, fell into Ottoman hands. The garrison stationed at Famagusta, the last Christian stronghold in Cyprus, fought bravely before being forced to surrender. The survivors of the siege were cruelly massacred. Churches and cathedrals were converted into mosques, their stained glass smashed, their paintings and sculptures destroyed, their belltowers turned into minarets. Pope Pius V was appalled not only by the atrocity and its immediate consequences, but also by the possibility that the Ottomans might gain control over the principal trade routes of the Mediterranean. He joined forces with the Venetians, and together the allies sought additional support wherever they could find it. Missions were sent to Spain, to Portugal and to all the independent states of Italy. The princely families of southern Europe rallied together and thousands of soldiers were pressed into service. The result was no mere political alliance, but a self-styled Holy League for the defence of Christendom against the infidel.

Under the command of Don Juan of Austria, illegitimate brother of Philip II of Spain, a vast fleet of galleys – most of them constructed, in record time, within the great dockyard-cum-factory production-line that was Venice’s Arsenale – set out to humble the Turkish navy. Eight days after Caravaggio’s birth, on 7 October 1571, the two sides met in the Greek Gulf of Corinth, then known in the west as the Gulf of Lepanto. The result was the last great sea battle fought between galley-rowed ships. Both sides suffered heavy casualties. Eight thousand Christians died, and many more Turks. But, while the fleet of the Holy League survived the battle all but intact, the Ottoman fleet was destroyed and its commander-in-chief killed. One of the heroes of the battle was the commander of the papal forces, Marcantonio Colonna, father to Costanza Colonna, father-in-law to Francesco I Sforza, who had been witness at the wedding of Fermo Merisi and Lucia Aratori. After the victory, the pope declared that the Virgin Mary herself had interceded with God on behalf of the Holy League. Henceforward, the day of the victory was to be remembered as the Feast of Our Lady of Victory. Marian cults across Catholic Europe received a huge boost to their popularity. In Venice the day was declared a permanent festum solemnis, to be marked every year by a procession led by the doge, and by celebratory masses. All across Italy, churches were built in honour of Santa Maria della Vittoria. Devotion to the Rosary reached a new pitch of intensity.

The Battle of Lepanto was a triumph to salve the wounds of a Christian world that had been sundered by the Reformation some half a century before. The Protestant king of faraway Scotland, James VI, was so carried away by the news that he wrote an epic poem to celebrate the great Catholic victory (though he felt compelled to add a prefatory disclaimer that Don Juan of Austria, hero of his verses, should still be regarded as ‘a foreign papist bastard’). Meanwhile, Costanza Colonna’s father, Marcantonio, made his triumphal entry into Rome. He rode into the city on a white horse, a modern-day Mark Antony stealing the glory of the caesars of old. But he also had the decorum to temper that show of pride with a spectacular display of humility. Having processed in triumph, he exchanged the armour of victory for rags and set forth on a pilgrimage to give thanks to Our Lady of Loreto.9

Michelangelo Merisi had been born on a day full of promise for zealous Christians, whose world was under threat. Archangel Michael had been the guardian angel of the Hebrew nation, and was associated with the protection of the faithful from harm. He had also been adopted, in Christian times, as the principal saint of the Church Militant. In depictions of the