Caravaggio_ A Life Sacred and Profane - Andrew Graham-Dixon [182]
On the aforesaid Sunday night a serious quarrel took place in the Campo Marzio, with four men on either side. The leader of one side was Ranuccio of Terni, who died immediately after a long fight; and of the other Michelangelo da Caravaggio, a painter of some renown in our day, who reportedly received a wound, but his whereabouts [are] not known. Severely wounded, however, and taken to prison, was one of his companions whom they call the Captain, from Bologna, and who was a soldier of Castel Sant’Angelo. The incident is alleged to have been caused by a dispute over a game involving 10 scudi which the dead man had won from the painter.124
A number of other documents found in the Roman archives confirm many elements of the accounts given in the two avvisi. On 29 May 1606, the notary responsible for the registry of births and deaths in the parish of San Lorenzo in Lucina recorded that Ranuccio Tomassoni had been murdered in the Via della Scrofa.125 Since the fatal blow had actually been struck on a tennis court in the nearby Via di Pallacorda, this reference must be to Tomassoni’s place of death – presumably at the shop of a barber-surgeon, who was unable to stem the flow of blood from the stricken man’s wounds. The mortal thigh wound mentioned by several sources is consistent with this. Caravaggio must have caught Tomassoni high in the leg, near the groin, severing or at least seriously rupturing the femoral artery. It is very difficult to stop the bleeding from such injuries, which make the tying of an effective tourniquet all but impossible. Tomassoni would have died quickly, as the sources indicate, but it is unlikely that he would have had time to confess, as the author of the first report of 28 May optimistically suggested.
While Ranuccio Tomassoni’s companions were taking him and his brother Giovan Francesco to the barber-surgeon’s in the Via della Scrofa, Caravaggio’s friends were tending to Captain Petronio Toppa from Bologna. They took him to another barber-surgeon, a man called Pompeo Navagna,126 who treated him for a cut in his left arm so deep that seven pieces of bone had to be removed before it could be dressed. He had eight stab wounds in his left thigh, one in his left shin, and another in his left heel. Taken altogether, Navagna concluded, these were life-threatening injuries, and despite them Toppa had subsequently been taken to the prison of Tor di Nona for questioning.
Meanwhile, Fabio Masetti was still keeping his eye on Caravaggio and reporting the latest developments back to Cesare d’Este in Modena. In a letter of 31 May he confirmed that Caravaggio had been wounded, and that he had fled Rome. According to Masetti’s spies, the painter was on his way to Tuscany, a logical destination, given his links with Cardinal del Monte and the Medici. Masetti even found cause for a certain grim optimism in this sudden turn of events: ‘The painter Caravaggio has left Rome badly wounded, having killed a man who provoked him on Sunday evening. I am told that he is heading in the direction of Florence, and perhaps will also come to Modena, where he will give satisfaction by making as many paintings as are wanted.’127
On the same day, another letter was written by another representative of the Este in Rome, Pellegrino Bertacchi. He too had heard that a game of tennis had been the cause of all the trouble: ‘the fight was over the question of a penalty, while we were playing at racquets, near the [palace] of the Ambassador of the Grand Duke [i.e the Palazzo Firenze].’ He had also heard that the painter ‘lay down his head, mortally wounded’ and that ‘two others were dead.’128 Clearly all kinds of wild rumours were flying about.
But a month later some of the smoke had cleared and the sbirri had begun to get to the bottom of the whole murky business. As the avviso of 31 May had stated, eight men had been involved. By the end of June the authorities had established the names of everyone on Ranuccio Tomassoni’s side. He had been accompanied by his two brothers-in-law, Ignazio and Federigo