Caravaggio_ A Life Sacred and Profane - Andrew Graham-Dixon [156]
Unlike many Roman streets, the Vicolo was, and still is, unshaded by any large church or monastery. In high summer the sun beats down on to the roofs and through the windows of the houses there, creating dramatically Caravaggesque effects of light and shade. The painter’s new home had a cellar and a small courtyard garden with its own well. His landlady, Prudentia Bruni, charged him the modest sum of 40 scudi a year in rent. His reasons for moving are not known. Perhaps he wanted privacy. He was living alone with his one assistant, according to a communion census carried out for the parish of San Nicola dei Prefetti. The document in question, part of a Status animarum, or report on ‘the state of souls’, records that ‘Michelangelo, painter’ had taken communion as required, together with ‘Francesco, his servant’67 – Cecco, the model for Omnia vincit amor, the source of all those rumours about Caravaggio’s homosexuality that would still be current half a century later. There must have been talk, but Caravaggio was paying no attention to it.
An inventory of Caravaggio’s household contents was drawn up when his tenancy ended abruptly in August 1605, an event that will be described below. The inventorist noted the objects in the order in which he encountered them, so the list of things also describes a sequence of rooms. Like many of the documents concerning Caravaggio, the inventory is fascinating but tantalizing. Reading it is like leafing through a dossier of arbitrarily cropped and framed snapshots of the things a man once owned – the furniture he sat on, the weapons with which he fought, the books he read, the tools he used. But all the photographs are just a little out of focus. Crucial details are missing and there is no one to fill in the gaps:
This is the inventory of all the personal property of the painter Michelangelo from Caravaggio … First, a kitchen-dresser made of white poplar-wood, with three compartments and an alder frame, containing eleven pieces of glassware, namely glasses, carafes and flasks covered in straw, a plate, two salt-cellars, three spoons, a carving board and a bowl, and on the above-mentioned dresser two brass candlesticks, another plate, two small knives and three terracotta vases. Item a water jug. Two stools. Item a red table with two drawers. Item a couple of bedside tables. A picture. Item a small chest covered with black leather, containing a pair of ragged breeches and a jacket. A guitar, a violin. A dagger, a pair of earrings, a worn-out belt and a door-leaf. Item a rather big table. Item two old chairs and a small broom. Item two swords, and two hand daggers. Item a pair of green breeches. Item a mattress. Item a shield. Item a blanket. Item a foldaway bed for servants. Item a bed with two posts. Item a chamber-pot. Item a stool. Item an old chest. Item a majolica basin. Item another chest containing twelve books. Item two large pictures to paint. Item a chest containing certain rags. Item three stools. Item a large mirror. Item a convex mirror. Item three smaller pictures. Item a small three-legged table. Item three large stretchers. Item a large picture on wood. Item an ebony chest containing a knife. Item two bedside tables. Item a tall wooden tripod. Item a small cart with some papers with colours. Item a halberd. Item two more stretchers.68
‘Once he put on a suit of clothes he changed only when it had fallen to rags.’ Bellori’s remark, repeated in one or two other early sources, finds confirmation in the ragged breeches and jacket and the worn-out belt. There