Caravaggio_ A Life Sacred and Profane - Andrew Graham-Dixon [170]
In the first chapel to the left of the entrance in S. Agostino, Caravaggio painted the Holy Virgin with the Child in her arms and two pilgrims adoring her. At that time he lived in the House of the Eight Corners, in one of the little streets behind the Mausoleum of Augustus. Nearby lived a lady with her young daughter, who was not at all unattractive; they were poor but honest people. Michelangelo wished to have the young girl as a model for the Mother of God which he was to paint in this work, and he succeeded in this by offering them a sum of money which was large enough, considering their poverty, to enable him to carry out his wish.
This girl was being courted by a young man who was a notary by profession and who had asked the mother for her daughter’s hand in marriage. However, he had always received a negative answer because this simple and naive woman was unwilling to give her daughter to a notary since, as she said, all notaries are surely bound for damnation. The young man was indignant at this refusal, but he nevertheless did not lose track of his beloved. Thus he found out that she frequently went to the house of Caravaggio and remained there for long periods of time posing for him.
Full of jealousy and totally enraged, he contrived to meet the mother one day and said to her, ‘My good woman, you’re so scrupulous and such a good guardian, and here your lovely daughter, whom you refused to let me marry, goes to this miserable painter so that he can do anything he likes with her. Really, you have made a wise choice and one which is worthy of your class, refusing to let her marry a man like me so that you can make her the concubine of this scoundrel. Now you can just keep her and I hope it will do you a lot of good.’ Then turning his back, he left her confused and completely upset.
It seemed to this lady that she had inadvertently done the wrong thing by taking her daughter to Michelangelo, even though she had done so in perfectly good faith, and it also seemed that this notary had good reason, at least from his point of view, for treating her so badly. She went immediately to Caravaggio in tears and complained about what had happened on his account. He smiled bitterly at this accusation and asked her who it was that had so unjustly mistreated her. From her description he easily recognized him as a person whom he frequently met in the street. He consoled the lady with gentle words and sent her home.
He was upset by this incident and, being by nature irritable and violent, the next morning he put a hatchet under his coat and went out to look for this young man. This being Wednesday, market day, he carried the affair right into Piazza Navona, just when a fair was being held there. It took place in front of the church of S. Giacomo degli Spagnoli, near the Triton Fountain. He went up to the notary and gave him such a terrific blow on the head with the hatchet that he fell to the ground unconscious and covered with his own blood. And Michelangelo said, ‘Now learn to behave yourself if you don’t know how.’ After this misdeed he took refuge at San Luigi dei Francesi and remained there for a long time. Fortunately for Caravaggio, the notary did not die from the blow, even though he was unconscious and for a long time remained ill. It was some years before they settled their feud and the indemnity.90
In several striking respects, Passeri’s account is impressively close to the witness statements given in the immediate aftermath of the attack. Passeri gets Pasqualone’s profession right, correctly specifies the place where the attack occurred, describes it as a surprise assault on an unarmed man. So even though his ‘poor but honest’ female characters sound like the heroines of a fairy story, Passeri’s assertion that the young lady at the centre of the dispute was Caravaggio’s model is worth taking seriously.
Passeri’s description