Caravaggio_ A Life Sacred and Profane - Andrew Graham-Dixon [212]
The saint looks down at the pages of the book in which he is writing. In his right hand he holds a quill, in his left an inkpot. On the desk before him lie three symbolic objects: a stone the colour of a bruise – the stone with which, according to his legend, he used to beat his breast; a tip-tilted skull, eyes gaping and teeth glinting; and a crucifix on which a stretched figurine of the agonized Christ is represented in shadowy foreshortening.
To the saint’s right, his red cardinal’s hat hangs from a rudimentary peg. All else is in shadow. Semi-nude, swathed up to the waist in a sheet of red drapery, Jerome the scholar-saint looks more like a military man sitting up in bed before first light, writing out the orders of the day. The sinews at the juncture of neck and shoulderblade are taut with nervous energy. Did Caravaggio model him on Malaspina himself? One of Wignacourt’s closest advisers, Malaspina had been away from Malta for four years, and had returned on the same flotilla that had brought the artist to the island. Now in his late sixties, he had chosen to rededicate himself to the Order of St John, and to God. Caravaggio’s picture was perhaps intended to commemorate that decision.
With its skilful foreshortenings, dramatic light and shade and compellingly lifelike depiction of dignified old age, the picture was a virtuoso performance and a demonstration of just what Caravaggio could do for the Knights of the Order of St John. Malaspina would eventually bequeath the St Jerome Writing to the chapel of the Italian Langue – it now hangs in the co-cathedral of St John in Valletta, having survived a heist in 1985, during which it was cut out of its frame with a Stanley knife – but originally he hung it in his house. Because Malaspina was in Wignacourt’s immediate circle, the painting would soon have been seen by all the right people. More commissions followed.
In the autumn or winter of 1607 Caravaggio was approached to paint the likeness of one of the most senior and distinguished Knights of Malta, Fra Antonio Martelli. The picture, which now hangs in the Pitti Palace in Florence, is one of the most impressive of all seventeenth-century portraits. This depiction of an obdurate and forceful man, in lean old age, rheumy eyes gazing off into the distance, anticipates the mature portraiture of Rembrandt by some half a century. In the darkness of Caravaggio’s Maltese studio, the air feels dense with thought. The old warrior, mouth set in an expression of habitual determination, looks out and away – but it is really as if he is looking within, sifting his own memories and remembering his old battles. His left hand rests on the pommel of his sword, a swiftly painted tangle of finely wrought metal, while in his right hand he holds a string of Rosary beads. These are the twin attributes of the Friar of War, dedicated at once to God and the profession of arms. Caravaggio has painted the hands so cursorily they seem unfinished. It was the sitter’s face that fascinated him.
Martelli was seventy-four years old when Caravaggio painted him and had been a Knight of Malta for almost fifty, a doughty veteran of the Great Siege and numerous other battles and engagements. He had served, for many years, as Ferdinando I de’ Medici’s consigliere di guerra, his ‘councillor of war’. He was a canny and gifted diplomat, the scion of an ancient Florentine family that had made the mistake of opposing the Medici earlier in the sixteenth century, and had paid the price. Martelli had undone the damage and re-established