Caravaggio_ A Life Sacred and Profane - Andrew Graham-Dixon [148]
Immediately afterwards Mao Salini made his own deposition, fleshing out Baglione’s account of events with more detail. Salini particularly relished telling the story of how he had trapped Filippo Trisegni into helping him obtain copies of the incriminating poems:
I was taking a stroll around with the said Filippo asking him what painters were saying about the picture that the said Giovanni had done for the church of Gesù. He told me that Michelangelo of Caravaggio, Onorio Longhi, and Orazio Gentileschi, all three painters, had put together some verses against the said Giovanni, and against me since I am his friend, concerning the said painting. And so, a few days later, the said Filippo with fine words gave me a paper with several verses written against the said Giovanni, which were on a quarter-page. Then he told me that the said Orazio had written them together with Ottavio Padovano [a nickname for Ottavio Leoni], likewise a painter, and that Ludovico Bresciano, also a painter, was going around distributing them to numerous painters. In particular, he had given them to one Mario, in like manner a painter, who lives in Via del Corso.
Then – I don’t know how many days later – the said Filippo came to my house one day towards evening to see a painting. After showing it to him, I begged him to tell me a little about the sonnet that he had given me a while back. That was before he gave me the said verses that I mentioned above. Then he told me that he had already given it to me once, and when I said that I had misplaced it he finally wrote the sonnet out for me there in my house on half a page, which if I don’t remember badly begins ‘John Baggage’, telling me that the said Michelangelo and Onorio had written it, and that he had received it from a catamite [bardassa] of Onorio and Michelangelo called Giovanni Battista who lives behind the Banchi.
What’s more, he told me that the said Michelangelo, knowing that this Filippo had been handed the said sonnets, had warned him to be careful that these sonnets didn’t fall into the hands of the said Giovanni or in my hands because trouble would be caused, and that certain young men had done them at his home for their pleasure, telling me also that a certain Bartolomeo, servant of the said Michelangelo, was going around distributing these sonnets to whoever wanted one, and that he had also written others.
What Salini so carefully described was exactly what the new libel law had been brought in to eradicate: a systematic attempt to blacken a man’s reputation. The cast of villains was impressive. First there was the naive accomplice, Trisegni, with his ‘fine words’, taking a malicious pleasure in the whole affair while unwittingly playing the part of a patsy. Then there was the network by which the slanders were distributed. It included the Lombard artist called Ludovico from Brescia and his friend Mario – possibly Caravaggio’s old friend from Sicily, Mario Minniti – who took the poems from one artist’s studio to the next. An alleged catamite and a servant of doubtful morals were also involved. Finally, at the centre of the conspiracy, were Caravaggio and his shady friends. They wrote the poems at Caravaggio’s home, which at this time was the Palazzo Mattei, and they did so out of pure malice, ‘for their pleasure’. After Salini’s testimony, the judge had little choice but to prosecute.
Less than two weeks later, the black-cloaked sbirri swooped. On 11 September 1603 they took Filippo Trisegni while he was having lunch at home in the Via della Croce. Caravaggio was seized in the Piazza Navona the same day. Less than twenty-four hours later, they arrested