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By Root 1420 0

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