Caravaggio_ A Life Sacred and Profane - Andrew Graham-Dixon [190]
The last piece in the puzzle of this haunting picture is furnished by the identity of its intended owner. Caravaggio painted the David and Goliath for Scipione Borghese, papal nephew and the chief administrator of papal justice – the man who, more than any other, had the power of life and death over Caravaggio himself. The David and Goliath was Caravaggio’s darkly ingenious plea to the one man who could save him: his way of saying that Borghese was welcome to have his head in a painting, if only he would let him keep it in real life.
Thanks to the help of his protectors, Caravaggio was able to despatch his pictures to Rome. The second Supper at Emmaus was sold to the banker Ottavio Costa;4 the David and Goliath, a precious gift to Scipione Borghese, may have arrived in Rome in the same Colonna carriage. It was likely to have been well appreciated: the papal nephew already owned Caravaggio’s severe St Jerome Writing, which the painter had probably also given to him as a gift, in exchange for helping to resolve the affair of his assault on the lawyer Pasqualone; and within less than a year he would sequester the entire art collection of the unfortunate Giuseppe Cesari, largely in order to get his hands on two early pictures by Caravaggio, the Boy with a Basket of Fruit and the moonlit Self-Portrait as Bacchus.
News of the David and Goliath’s arrival at the Palazzo Borghese was kept quiet. Scipione Borghese did not actually hang the picture for several years, perhaps because he did not want the artist’s death’s-head petition to him to be too widely known.5 But as the summer of 1606 turned to autumn, it seems that he was indeed working behind the scenes on Caravaggio’s behalf. News of the painter’s presence in the Alban Hills had spread to Rome, where it was rumoured that there were plans for Caravaggio to make a swift return. On 23 September the Este agent Fabio Masetti wrote to his masters in Mantua that ‘Caravaggio, having committed the murder previously reported, is staying at Pagliano with the plan of coming back soon. I will get repayment from him of the 32 scudi …’6
But though Caravaggio had support in Rome, he also had enemies. Bellori’s brief comment about his ‘being followed’ on his flight from the city is a reminder that certain people were determined to see him brought to justice. The Tomassoni clan may have sent men after him. Within Rome itself their voices must have been raised against an early pardon for Caravaggio. Whatever deal was being brokered on his behalf, by the end of September it had fallen through and the painter had resigned himself to a lengthy period of exile.
Caravaggio probably used the proceeds of the sale of the second Supper to Emmaus to pay his way to Naples. Certainly by early October he was living and working there, where he felt safe enough to show his face in public. But the fear of reprisals stayed with him. He was careful to remain under the protection of the Colonna family, who maintained a powerful presence in the city. With their help, he would attempt to repair his damaged and disordered life.
IN THE CITY OF BEGGARS
Naples at the start of the seventeenth century was the largest city in southern Europe. Its population was 300,000, three times that of Rome, and would soon grow to half a million. Founded by the Greeks in ancient times, and built around the crescent of a natural bay, Naples had always been a port town. Its lifeblood was maritime commerce. Although Muslim corsairs and Barbary pirates continued to make predatory forays from their bases along the African coast, the seas had become safer for Neapolitan traders since the victory of the Christians over the Turks at Lepanto.