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I color no[n] ha mastro nel numero

si sfaciatamente nominar si vole

si sa pur il proverbio ch[e] si dice

ch[e] chi lodar si vole si maledice

Io no[n] son uso lavarmi la bocca

ne meno di inalzar quel ch[e] no[n] merta

come fa l’idol suo ch[e] è cosa certa.

Se io metterme volessi a ragionar

delle [s … re] fatte da questui

no[n] bastarian interi un mese o dui.

Vieni un po’ qua tu ch’[e] vo’ biasimare

l’altrui pitture et sai pur ch[e] le tue

si stano in casa tua a’ chiodi ancora

vergogna[n]doti tu mostrarle fuora.

Infatti i’ vo’ l’impresa aba[n]donare

ch[e] sento ch[e] mi abonda tal materia

massime s’intrassi n[e] la catena

d’oro ch[e] al collo indegnamente porta

ch[e] credo certo [meglio] se io non erro

a piè gle ne staria una di ferro.

Di tutto quel che ha detto con passione

per certo gli è p[er] ché credo beuto

avesse certo come è suo doùto

altrime[n]te ei saria un becco fotuto.

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,