Caravaggio_ A Life Sacred and Profane - Andrew Graham-Dixon [186]
BANDO CAPITALE
None of the witnesses said anything to the investigating magistrate about the causes of the duel. Who had challenged whom, and why?
There are possible answers to those questions too in the extensive but partial dossier of archival evidence about the killing. Fabio Masetti, in his letter to Cesare d’Este of 31 May, had said that Caravaggio had ‘killed a man who provoked him’, which implies that it was Tomassoni who had challenged the painter. Mancini, the only other source with anything to say on the matter, spoke of Caravaggio ‘defending himself’, which also suggests that Tomassoni was the initiator of the fight.
The most telling clue to the nature of Tomassoni’s grievance may lie in the identity of his chosen witnesses. He chose his brother, a soldier, as his second, and the other men there were his two brothers-in-law. It may be that Tomassoni challenged Caravaggio over a question of family honour – a question, specifically, involving the honour of Ranuccio Tomassoni’s wife. Her name was Lavinia. The painter had already stolen or tried to steal one of the pimp’s whores, Fillide Melandroni. Had he compounded that insult by starting something with Lavinia Tomassoni too? If so, that would have made Ranuccio a cuckold – a becco fotuto, to use one of the painter’s favourite phrases. Since nothing has been found in the archives to connect Caravaggio directly with Lavinia Tomassoni, a verbal provocation is more likely to have been the cause of the trouble. Perhaps Caravaggio had heard that Lavinia Tomassoni was being unfaithful to her husband, and had taunted him by repeating that rumour to his face. We may never know exactly what lay behind the duel but some kind of insult concerning Lavinia is the most likely explanation. This would explain why Tomassoni wanted Lavinia’s brothers watching when he exacted his revenge – or so he hoped – on the troublesome painter who had dared to cast aspersions on his wife.
Whatever the precise truth, another chain of archival evidence suggests that Lavinia Tomassoni was hardly a model wife and mother. Less than a fortnight after Tomassoni’s death, arrangements were set in train for a close friend of the family, the lawyer Cesare Pontoni, to look after the couple’s only daughter. Her name was Felicita Plautilla Tomassoni, and she was still only a baby. Tomassoni’s widow, Lavinia, made the excuse that she was too young to bring up a child on her own. She said that she wanted to remarry (which she did, as another document in the archive reveals, within less than a year). Lavinia’s mother-in-law, Tomassoni’s mother, claimed that she was too old to look after the little girl.134 On 10 October 1606 the legal guardianship of Felicita was ratified and she became Pontoni’s ward.135 Only one other document has been found concerning her, the will of a relation who died on 17 August 1615. This reveals that the girl had by then dropped her first name, Felicita, which means ‘happiness’ in Italian, and had entered a nunnery. The document refers to her as Sr Plautilla of the convent of S. Silvestro in Urbe.136
One other detail suggests that the cause of the fight may have been some kind of sexual insult. Ranuccio Tomassoni bled to death from the femoral artery. Caravaggio had struck him a low blow, aiming perhaps at the groin and missing by just a fraction. Was the artist using his sword as if it were a paintbrush, attempting to mark out the most graphic of sexual insults on the body of his enemy? Wounds were meaningful, as Fillide Melandroni had graphically indicated when threatening to cut the face of her own love-rival, Prudenza Zacchia. A cut to the face was a sfregio, but it was by no means the only form of symbolic, premeditated injury that vengeful Italians inflicted upon their enemies.
The practice was sufficiently common to be mirrored in the provisions of the law, where widely differing penalties were specified for different forms of