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I’d like you to do me a favour by hanging some offal on that chain you wear around your neck as an ornament to match your worth. I told you that if you sent me one in silver I would pay you for it. I would never under any circumstances send one in lead to a courteous gentleman, like the ones you see worn on hats.

And with this I take leave of you and return your friendship and who is saying this to you cannot be a blackguard.

This was conclusive proof of Gentileschi’s enmity. The robust style of the letter also showed that he had misled the court when he said he could barely string a sentence together on paper. Most incriminating of all, however, was the reference to Baglione’s chain. ‘In the sonnets written against me he mentions a neck chain saying I ought to wear an iron chain instead,’ Baglione told the court. ‘In this note he also speaks about the neck chain saying I should hang some offal in place of the chain. I steadfastly insist that it must have been him …’

The next day, as a final throw of the dice, the examining magistrate recalled Orazio Gentileschi. If he could be made to crack under cross-examination, the case would suddenly be thrown wide open.

At first the magistrate lulled Gentileschi into a false sense of security, asking him a series of questions about other artists, which Gentileschi parried with ease. It was at this point in the trial that he blithely volunteered the story about Baglione bringing his picture of Divine Love to the annual artists’ exhibition, to compete with his own St Michael the Archangel. He presumably wanted to demonstrate that he had nothing to fear from a discussion of the rivalry between them. He was happy to admit to the occasional disagreement with Baglione, but he also took care to distance himself from Caravaggio, complaining that both men had a habit of looking down on him:

I haven’t spoken to the said Giovanni Baglione since the St Michael affair and especially because he expects me to raise my hat to him on the street and I expect him to raise his hat to me. Even Caravaggio, who’s a friend of mine, expects me to salute him, and although both of them are my friends, there’s nothing more between us. It must be six or eight months since I’ve spoken to Caravaggio, although he did send round to my house for a Capuchin’s robe and a pair of wings I lent him. It must be about ten days since he sent them back.

Gradually the magistrate turned the conversation towards the incriminating note, although for the time being he kept the document itself up his sleeve. Did Gentileschi ever remember Baglione leaving Rome? Had Baglione ever given anything to him? The accused stumbled slowly but surely into the trap. Gentileschi told the court that Baglione had gone to Loreto and that he had brought him back some lead figurines ‘like the ones that are worn on hats’. He had hoped for silver ones, but he had thanked Baglione graciously none the less. What about a note? Had he written a note? Gentileschi pretended to struggle to remember. Baglione had written to him first, as he recalled, saying that he had heard that Gentileschi was complaining about the figurines. He had felt obliged to reply. ‘I answered him in a note that I held devotion dear, that I was surprised that he would write these things to me, that I had thanked him in the presence of several people … and that he shouldn’t think I was interested in all that silver nonsense.’

After a little more sparring the magistrate suddenly produced the note itself, to Gentileschi’s evident consternation. At first he tried to deny that he had written the note, then realized that the handwriting was so evidently his that he had better own up to it. But when confronted with the line about hanging offal on Baglione’s chain, he panicked and half-heartedly denied authorship of the letter once again. Drowning in his own inconsistency, all he could find to cling to was an implausible insinuation that the letter was a forgery. His testimony