Caravaggio_ A Life Sacred and Profane - Andrew Graham-Dixon [215]
Wignacourt was a dynamic and formidable Grand Master, with great aspirations for Malta. Caravaggio’s portrait shows him as the proud absolute ruler of a brand-new city, founded on the monastic ideals of Christian chivalry. But he must have been conscious to a degree that Valletta was something of an artistic desert. Wignacourt had tried once before to address that deficiency, attempting but failing to lure an unnamed Florentine painter to Malta in 1606.59 the Grand Master knew that it would be hard to tempt any truly sought-after artist to faraway, provincial, sun-baked Malta, in the shadow of the threat of Islam. But now fate had brought Caravaggio to the island. He had even come of his own accord.
The Grand Master’s ambitions and the painter’s needs might appear to have dovetailed perfectly: Wignacourt would get his great altarpiece, while Caravaggio would get his knighthood, and the death sentence that had hung over him for nearly two years would be lifted. But the painter may not have understood the true nature of the deal being dangled in front of him. That phrase in Wignacourt’s first letter to his Roman ambassador Lomellini, in which he talks of knighting Caravaggio in order ‘not to lose him’, is telling. Not to lose him carries a further implication, which might seem obvious but has gone largely overlooked: to keep him. By giving Caravaggio a knighthood, Wignacourt would automatically acquire the power to do just that. Under the statutes of the order no Knight of Malta was allowed to leave the island, even for a day, without the Grand Master’s permission.60 For Caravaggio, his knighthood was a short-cut back to Rome. But there is nothing to indicate that Wignacourt viewed it like that at all. It was just as likely his way of laying a trap. Having got a great painter to Malta, why should he ever let him go?
There was no reason why any of this would have dawned on Caravaggio until his actual arming as a Knight of Magistral Obedience. Only then need he be informed about the extent of the obedience required of him. Meanwhile, in the spring and summer of 1608, he concentrated on planning and painting the largest altarpiece of his entire career, The Beheading of St John. The daunting scale of the work, which was to be over ten feet high and more than fifteen feet across, meant that he probably had to change workshop.61 In addition, models would have to be found and a few necessary props sourced: a butcher’s knife, a gilded plate, a sheepskin and a length of rope.
The story of St John’s martyrdom is told in the New Testament books of Matthew (14:3–12) and Mark (6:17–28). King Herod had thrown John into prison because he had dared to reprimand him for his illicit marriage to Herodias. Herod’s consort plotted with her daughter, Salome, to bring about John’s execution. At the king’s birthday feast, Salome danced so seductively for Herod that he granted her anything she desired. She asked for the head of John the Baptist. An executioner beheaded the saint in his prison. The severed head was laid on a platter and given to Salome at the feast.
There were two main conventions for artists painting John’s martyrdom. Either they depicted the moment when the dish was served up to a gloating Salome, or they depicted the instant before the beheading, with the executioner poised to strike. Caravaggio painted his own version of the latter subject, but imagined something even darker taking place. The scene is set in the gloomy courtyard of an oppressively harsh prison, beside a gateway built of massively heavy stone quoins and a barred window at which two prisoners huddle pathetically for a glimpse of the killing. The executioner is another in the line of Caravaggio’s impassive, workmanlike killers. He leans over the body of his victim, whose hands are trussed