Caravaggio_ A Life Sacred and Profane - Andrew Graham-Dixon [169]
The word Baglione used for public was popolani, which specifically denoted the lower classes: peasants, hoi polloi. To convey the kind of fuss they made over the picture, he used schiamazzo, which means a din of chattering, but can also be used to describe the cackling of geese.
Bellori and Baglione represented the values of the academy, of idealized classical style. But they spoke not only for a particular notion of decorum in art: they spoke also for power and for wealth, and for forms of religious art that spoke down to, rather than for, the mass of Christian believers. Caravaggio had not painted The Madonna of Loreto for them. He had painted it for the popolani, and whether they cackled like geese or not, the popolani took it to their hearts. Not for nothing is the picture commonly known by its ‘popular’ title – which is, simply, The Madonna of the Pilgrims.
LENA WHO STAYS ON HER FEET IN THE PIAZZA NAVONA
Precisely when Caravaggio finished and delivered the altarpiece to Sant’Agostino is unknown. It may not have been until the autumn of 1605, or even later: he was probably still working on the picture at the end of July, but could have done no work on it at all in August, because for the whole of that month he was again in trouble with the law.
On 29 July 1605 a junior notary called Mariano Pasqualone accused Caravaggio of assault and grievous bodily harm. The young man arrived, still bleeding, in the legal offices of a certain Paolo Spada, where a clerk of the criminal court took his statement under oath:
I am here in the office because I have been assaulted by Michelangelo da Caravaggio, the painter, as I am going to relate. As Messer Galeazzo and I – it may have been about one hour after nightfall [8.30 p.m.] – were strolling in Piazza Navona in front of the palace of the Spanish ambassador, I suddenly felt a blow on the back of my head. I fell to the ground at once and realized that I had been wounded in the head by what I believe to have been the stroke of a sword. As you can see, I have a wound on the side of my head. Thereupon, the aggressor fled.
I didn’t see who wounded me, but I never had disputes with anybody but the said Michelangelo. A few nights ago he and I had words on the Corso on account of a woman called Lena who is to be found standing at the Piazza Navona, past the palace, or rather the main door of the palace, of Messer Sertorio Teofilo. She is Michelangelo’s woman. Please, excuse me quickly, that I may dress my wounds.87
After Pasqualone’s departure from the office, his companion, Galeazzo Roccasecca, who gave his profession as a writer of apostolic letters, added his own witness statement:
I saw a man with an unsheathed weapon in his hand. It looked like a sword or a small pistol. He turned round at once and made three jumps and then turned towards the palace of the Illustrious Cardinal del Monte, which was nearby down the little street where we were. He wore a black cloak on one shoulder only. I said to Messer Mariano, ‘What is it? What is it?’ and he replied to me, ‘I have been assassinated and I am wounded.’ I saw that he had a wound in the head and he said, ‘I am assassinated … it could not have been anyone other than Michelangelo da Caravaggio.’ And that is the truth.88
Some seventy years later Giambattista Passeri wrote a long and circumstantial account of what might have been behind the trouble between Caravaggio and Pasqualone. Passeri was a painter, poet and author of artists’ lives, who had clearly been told some version of the story while he was doing his research in the artists’ studios of Baroque