Caravaggio_ A Life Sacred and Profane - Andrew Graham-Dixon [210]
It is not known where Caravaggio lived during his time on the island. Prospective knights on their first tours of duty were given accommodation in the auberge belonging to their particular Langue, or country. Altogether there were eight Langues, of Italy, Provence, Auvergne, England, France, Aragon, Castille and Germany. The Italian auberge, with its long façade decorated with trophies and escutcheons, was close to the main city gate of San Giorgio. But Caravaggio is unlikely to have lodged there with the other Italian novices, because when he first arrived no one other than his Colonna protectors seems to have known of his plan to be elevated to a knighthood. It appears from the archive that his desire for the Cross of St John was not communicated to the highest levels of the order until the winter of 1607. So he probably lived in the household of Fabrizio Sforza Colonna, at least during the first months of his stay.
Caravaggio was swiftly made aware of the sharp divide between public morality and the private behaviour of the knights and their companions. On 14 July, two days after his arrival on the island, a welcome party was thrown for him and a number of other new arrivals by a Sicilian knight named Giacomo Marchese. Marchese was overheard joking about a Greek painter who kept two wives. But for at least one of the other guests, it was no laughing matter. Judge Paolo Cassar, a doctor of civil and canon law, promptly denounced the unnamed painter to the Inquisition. On 26 July, Caravaggio was called by the Inquisitor, Leonetto Corbiaro, to answer questions about the identity of the alleged bigamist. He answered with his customary reticence, learned in the courts of Rome:
About that which you ask me, most Reverend sir, I know nothing except that in the house of the Knight Fra Giacomo de Marchese there was staying a Greek painter who arrived with the galleys, but about the rest I have nothing to say concerning the said knight nor about anything which concerns the Holy Office [of the Inquisition] also I know nothing of the name of the said painter nor of which country he claims as his homeland.52
The case fizzled out, but it was a clear sign of how easy it could be to get into trouble with the law on Malta. Even more fearsome than the Inquisition was the Grand Master, Alof de Wignacourt, whose rule on the island was absolute. ‘This man is a Pickard borne,’ Sandys would write, ‘about the age of sixtie, and hath governed eight years. His name and title, The illustrious and most reverent Prince my Lord Frier Alosius of Wignian-court, Greate Maister of the Hospitall of Sainte Johns of Jerusalem: Prince of Malta and Goza [sic]. For albeit a Frier (as the rest of the knights) yet is he an absolute Soveraigne, and is bravely attended on by a number of gallant young gentlemen.’53 Like all Knights of Malta, Wignacourt was bound by vows of poverty and celibacy. But he lived in grand style none the less, in the Grand Master’s Palace, an elegant building constructed around a courtyard garden, with walls frescoed with scenes of the Great Siege by a minor Italian artist named Matteo Perez d’Aleccio – who, like Caravaggio, had fled to Malta after getting into trouble in Rome. Wignacourt surrounded himself with young page boys, the flower of the European aristocracy. On his death, he bequeathed to the order more than 200 slaves and a fortune in ransom money.54
As supreme authority on Malta, Wignacourt was answerable only to the pope. He presided over the Venerable Council of the order, composed