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By Root 1305 0

the caporione Captain Francesco Tomassoni came and said, ‘Go to the Heavens. The prisoners are mine.’ And we said, ‘Take them,’ but also that he would have to give us an account of it. Then he said, ‘Do us a favour, take us to the militia [Tomassoni’s own headquarters].’ And so we escorted him to his house in Piazza S. Lorenzo in Lucina. When we were inside we told him to make a list of the prisoners with their names and surnames, and someone who was dressed in long clothes began to write it. While they were being written down, I told him to make out the receipt saying that we had consigned them to him, and he replied: ‘I don’t want to make out a receipt, etc.’ Ranuccio, the caporione’s brother, came towards me and said: ‘I’ll talk with my brother Gian Francesco, who’s here in a house where the prisoners are, etc.’ Then the caporione and his people forced us to halt, saying, ‘Stop there! Stop there!’ and putting their hands to their swords and pointing them at us sbirri and prisoners. I know two of them, one of whom was Captain Ranuccio, and another one, an old man who is his relative.78

Giovanni Baglione was also a caporione during the period of the two Vacant Sees. His area of jurisdiction was the district of Castello. Perhaps his civic duties brought him into contact with the Tomassoni clan. Baglione would later describe Ranuccio Tomassoni as an honourable young man, which suggests that they may have been friends. Honourable or not, Ranuccio and his family were certainly well connected in Rome. When his brother Alessandro died later in the year of an unspecified illness, he was accorded the signal honour of burial in the Pantheon.79

On 29 May 1605 Camillo Borghese was elected as Pope Paul V. The new Borghese pope, considerably less severe than his predecessor, allowed the revival of the traditional nepotism of the papal court, ensuring that his nephew Scipione was elected to the cardinalate. The papal nephew loved food and art in equal measure and would soon become an acquisitive collector of Caravaggio’s pictures. But private and public domains were very different. The official religious style of the Borghese papacy would be far removed from Caravaggio’s simplicity and austerity. For major commissions, the graceful manner of an artist such as Guido Reni was preferred. The ground was being prepared for the soaring majesty of the full-blown Baroque style.

On the eve of Paul V’s coronation, Caravaggio was back in jail. He had been stopped yet again for bearing arms. When he failed to produce a licence for his weapons, he was taken to prison – not the Tor di Nona this time but the governor’s jail. The name of the arresting officer was Captain Pino. His testimony was brief:

Last night about seven hours after nightfall [3 a.m], as I was on patrol with my constables at Sant’Ambrogio on the Corso, there came a man by the name of Michelangelo, wearing a sword and dagger. Stopped and asked whether he had a licence to carry the said weapons, he said he had not. I had him arrested and brought to jail, and I now make my report, as is my duty, that he may be punished according to justice.

In the margin of his report, Captain Pino drew a little sketch of the offending sword and dagger. The questioning of Caravaggio followed. The court notary took down his responses and made a note of the outcome:

I was seized on the street of the Corso in front of the Church of Sant’Ambrogio. It may have been eight hours after nightfall [4 a.m.] for it was light, and I was seized because I had a sword and dagger.

I have no written licence to carry a sword and dagger. However, the Governor of Rome had given oral orders to the captain and his corporal to let me carry them. I have no other licence.

He recognized the weapons taken from him by the constables.

He was allowed to go at large, with three days’ time to prepare his report.80

Just what Caravaggio had been doing in the middle of the night is anyone’s guess. He is unlikely to have been up to much good. Six weeks later, on 19 July 1605, he was back in the Tor di Nona, having