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Five weeks later, on 12 October, in a desperate bid to stir Caravaggio into action, Masetti gave him an advance of 12 scudi. By that time the painter had managed to find a new place to live, and had probably retrieved his possessions from Prudentia Bruni (though we do not know how the case between them was settled). He had moved into the house of Andrea Ruffetti, a lawyer with an interest in art and literature, in the Piazza Colonna, almost next door to the palace of Caravaggio’s very first protector, the Marchesa di Colonna.

The new lodging brought about no more ordered a life. Towards the second half of October, Caravaggio was injured in a fight with a person or persons unknown. The affair was serious enough to warrant investigation. But when the law came calling on him, the bedridden painter was decidedly incommunicative. The investigating officer’s report is dated 24 October 1605:

I, the notary of warrants, etc., visited the painter Michelangelo Caravaggio who was lying in bed in the house of Sr Andrea Ruffetti in Piazza Colonna, wounded in the throat and left ear. Because of the bandages placed on it, this wound could barely be seen, but it is noted here. He was sworn to tell the truth and interrogated by me as to where, by whom and for what reason he was wounded. He replied: ‘I wounded myself with my own sword when I fell down these stairs, I don’t know where it was and there was no one there.’ Although I exhorted him several times to tell the truth, he replied, ‘I can say no more.’ And I got no other response from him.103

Throughout the winter, the Este agent continued to chase Caravaggio for the duke’s painting. On 5 November 1605 he reported that ‘Caravaggio says the picture is almost ready and that he needs money; I replied that once the appointed thing has been done there will be no want of the money.’104 But by 16 November, Masetti had capitulated to Caravaggio’s demands. On that day he noted paying the artist another 20 scudi ‘because the painting will definitely be finished by this coming weekend’.105

But it was not ready by the coming weekend. Nor the next. Nor the one after. After a long silence Fabio Masetti wrote one more exasperated letter on 18 January 1606: ‘I have given Caravaggio 32 scudi for this thing. He goes red when he sees me.’ Cesare d’Este never would get his painting.106

‘SO MUCH TROUBLE’

Caravaggio is unlikely to have felt any regret over the unfinished and most probably unstarted picture for the ducal palace of Modena, or any embarrassment at taking money for it. By the beginning of 1606 he had already begun work on a far more prestigious commission. He had finally been asked to paint an altarpiece for St Peter’s, the central church of Catholic Christendom.

The wheels of papal influence had turned in the painter’s favour. Scipione Borghese, pleased with his new picture St Jerome Writing, had praised Caravaggio to the pope. According to Bellori, the papal nephew personally ‘introduced Caravaggio to Pope Paul V, whom he portrayed seated, and by whom he was well rewarded’.107 That portrait is lost, although a hamfisted copy of it still survives in the collections of the Palazzo Borghese. With papal favour came papal preferment. Paul V had plans for St Peter’s. Caravaggio now became part of them.

In September 1605 the new pope had ordered the final demolition of the ancient nave of Old St Peter’s, which still survived beneath the great dome of the new cathedral begun by Bramante and completed by Michelangelo. Seven altars lost in the destruction of the old basilica were moved to the new transept. One of these was owned by the Confraternity of the Palafrenieri, or ‘papal grooms’, whose patron saint was Anne. By the end of October the members of the confraternity had resolved to commission an altarpiece for their ‘altar of St Anne in St Peter’s’.108 Within a month they had been steered towards Caravaggio.

On 1 December 1605 Antonio Tirelli, deacon, gave the painter a down payment of 25 scudi. Caravaggio would receive only another 50 scudi