Caravaggio_ A Life Sacred and Profane - Andrew Graham-Dixon [172]
Seen in this light, many of the smaller or more puzzling details to emerge from the painter’s criminal record suddenly come into sharper focus. He is often seen out and about, carrying a sword, in the small hours of the morning. He attacks the house of two women, who have annoyed him in some way that seems to relate to sex. On the evening of the stone-throwing, he stops in the street to chat with Menicuccia, a whore whom he clearly knows well. All of this is consistent with the behaviour of a pimp.
The enmity between Caravaggio and Ranuccio Tomassoni, soon to reach its climax, may have been in some way territorial: certainly Tomassoni was a pimp himself. Caravaggio painted one of Tomassoni’s girls, Fillide Melandroni, and, having got her to model for him, perhaps he also tried to persuade her to work for him.
THE CASE OF THE DAMAGED CEILING
At the end of July 1605, concurrently accused of the assault on Pasqualone and the deturpatio of Laura and Isabella della Vecchia, Caravaggio skipped bail and fled to the coastal city of Genoa. He probably took letters of introduction with him from some of his patrons and protectors in Rome. Ottavio Costa and Vincenzo Giustiniani, both enthusiastic collectors of Caravaggio’s work, had strong links with the city, as above all did the Colonna family, his protectors since boyhood. The Marchesa Costanza Colonna was living in Rome, at the Palazzo Colonna, between 1600 and 1605. The Colonna family had intermarried with one of the great Genoese families, the Doria. As soon as Caravaggio got to Genoa, he sought out one of the marchesa’s relations, Prince Marcantonio Doria, who, although it came to nothing, offered him a prestigious commission.
Caravaggio spent the best part of a month away. On three separate occasions between 3 and 19 August, a Roman court notary reported his failure to attend hearings in the case brought by Laura della Vecchia. Repeated summonses were addressed to him and he was eventually fined for contempt.94 Meanwhile, his movements were being carefully tracked by Fabio Masetti, an agent in Rome working for Cesare d’Este, Duke of Modena.
Masetti was keeping a close watch on Caravaggio in the summer of 1605 because he was trying to get a picture out of him. Earlier in the year Cesare d’Este had conceived the idea of staging another pictorial competition between Caravaggio and Annibale Carracci. This rematch of the Cerasi Chapel contest of 1601 was to have been staged for a ‘Chapel of the Madonna’ in the newly renovated ducal castle in Modena. The idea was that each artist should paint a scene from the life of the Virgin. Carracci was to paint the altarpiece, Caravaggio a single canvas for one of the side walls. But there were problems from the outset. Carracci was crippled by depression, and Caravaggio had good reason to dislike the terms of the commission: his picture was to be considerably smaller than his rival’s, and in March 1605 another of the duke’s agents in Rome, Attilio Ruggieri, reported that Caravaggio was trying to wriggle out of the assignment altogether, truculently remarking that the duke would be better off hiring a miniaturist to paint such small figures.95 Caravaggio’s fee was to be just 50 or 60 scudi, compared to the 200 offered to Carracci.
In the end he had stuck with it, and by the summer responsibility for handling the commission had passed from Attilio Ruggieri to Masetti, whose letters from Rome to Modena are a paper trail of mounting frustration. On 17 August, Masetti told the duke that it was impossible to force a painting out of the depressive Carracci, saying that there was nothing for it but to accommodate the painter’s strange ‘humour’. Meanwhile, he added, ‘Caravaggio is in contempt of court, and is to be found in Genoa.