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By Root 1350 0

and out of several verses I made one. Rotolanti didn’t want to give me the original because he said he wanted to learn it by heart. I asked him who had written them and he answered that a young man had written it, a student of logic or maybe physics, a valent’huomo, who was really good at it and would write a sonnet or two for a woman for me if I so desired. He told me he was a graduate and wrote exquisite verse. So I returned to see Tommaso about fifteen or twenty days after the first visit and showed him this other poem and left it with him. It was on a quarter-page filled with small handwriting from one side to the other. He told me that he had lost the first one and asked me if I would be kind enough to give him a copy. Since I had learned almost all of it by heart I made him a copy there at his home the way I remembered it.

Trisegni’s testimony directly contradicted Salini’s deposition to the court. The man whom he claimed had given him the verses, Gregorio Rotolanti, now became a key witness. But he was never called to testify. Perhaps he had gone into hiding, like Onorio Longhi. Or maybe Trisegni had simply invented Rotolanti and his story about the student of physics or logic with a talent for versification.

Gentileschi was next to be questioned by the court. The main purpose was to identify the handwriting of the various documents that the sbirri had confiscated at his home. These included a letter to which some playful verses were attached, as well as four sonnets written on a single piece of paper. After having admitted that ‘I know how to write but not very correctly’, Gentileschi denied that any of the verses produced in evidence were written in his hand. He said that the eight lines of verse attached to the letter were written by a friend of his called Lodovico. As for the four sonnets, ‘I say that about six to eight days ago one Giovanni Maggi, an engraver and painter that lives in Vicolo dei Bergamaschi, gave them to me. He dabbles in these things but I don’t really know if it’s his handwriting. But it could be his handwriting.’

On the next day, 13 September, the magistrate arranged a confrontation between ‘Mao’ – Tommaso Salini – and Filippo Trisegni. This was common practice when two witnesses had given opposing testimonies. Neither man changed his story. Salini repeated his assertion that Trisegni had listed the names of those who had written the two poems. He stressed once again that Trisegni had told him that he been given some of the verses by the bardassa, the catamite ‘who lives behind the Banchi’. But Trisegni denied everything and maintained that Salini was lying.

Later the same day Caravaggio was called to give evidence. The notary, Decio Cambio, made his usual careful report of the proceedings, but the painter gave him less work than any of the other witnesses. He was haughty and taciturn. He gave his answers grudgingly and kept them short. At one point he asked, with evident irritation, how much more he would have to listen to, as if to suggest that the enquiry was just an elaborate waste of his time. He declared, improbably, that he had never heard of any scurrilous poems written about Giovanni Baglione and Mao Salini. He claimed that he had not even spoken to Orazio Gentileschi for three years. But he made no pretence of his utter contempt for Baglione’s work. That was the one subject on which, dangerously, he became almost effusive. But perhaps the most noteworthy part of his testimony is his grumpy, one-line definition of a good painter.

Here is the full court record of his interrogation:

Before His Excellency the Illustrious Alfonso Tomassino assistant examining magistrate and myself … Michelangelo Merisi of Caravaggio interrogated under oath by the magistrate.

Asked how, under what circumstances, and for what reason he was incarcerated.

Answered:

I was arrested the other day in Piazza Navona but I don’t know what the reason and circumstances are.

Asked what profession he exercises.

My profession is painting.

Asked if he knew and knows some painters in Rome and