Caravaggio_ A Life Sacred and Profane - Andrew Graham-Dixon [221]
One of several documents thus uncovered was a report of the preliminary results of an enquiry ordered by Grand Master Wignacourt and the Venerable Council on 19 August 1608. The purpose of that enquiry was to outline the events of a ‘tumult’ that had taken place the night before. The incident had involved several knights, some of whom had smashed open the door of the residence of the Organist of the Conventual Church of St John, Fra Prospero Coppini.
As a result of that preliminary enquiry, a criminal commission was set up to investigate the incident in more detail. The three investigators were Fra Philiberto de Matha, Fra Giovanni Gomes de Azevedo and Antonio Turrensi. They established that a brawl, involving seven knights altogether, had broken out in the house of Fra Coppini, but since he himself had not taken part, he was absolved. The commission found that Fra Giovanni Rodomonte Roero, the Conte della Vezza, had been the victim of an assault by six aggressors, including Caravaggio.
The artist’s companions on the night in question included two senior figures in the Maltese hierarchy, both Knights of Justice like the victim, Roero. One was Fra Giulio Accarigi, who was originally from Siena but who had been a Knight of Malta since 1585. He had a reputation for violence and a criminal record to match, having spent two months in detention for assault in 1595 and a further two years in jail some ten years later. The other Knight of Justice involved was Fra Giovanni Battista Scaravello, from Turin, who had arrived on Malta in 1602 and had entered the Order of St John two years after that.
Two young novices were also implicated: Francesco Benzi, who had come to the island in 1606; and Giovanni Pecci, from Siena, who had arrived on Malta within a day of Caravaggio himself, on 13 July 1607. Both men would have known the painter as a fellow novice. One of the conditions of entry to the order was a rigorous programme of training in the selfsame Oratory of St John – also known as the Oratory of the Novices – for which the artist had painted his altarpiece of The Beheading of St John. Benzi and Pecci would have prepared for their knighthoods alongside Caravaggio.
No eyewitness description of the fight has been found in the Maltese archives, so the parts played by those involved have to be deduced from the punishments each received. Accarigi and Scaravello seem to have taken minor roles. Each would eventually be given six months in jail, a relatively mild sentence in the harsh context of Maltese justice (although it is also possible that they were let off lightly on account of their rank). Benzi and Pecci were condemned to two and four years in prison respectively. The main culprits appear to have been Caravaggio himself and a certain Fra Giovanni Pietro de Ponte, who was a deacon of the church, and another frequent offender.75 De Ponte was identified by the criminal commission as a prime mover of the assault. On the night of the fight he had been carrying a small pistol referred to as a sclopo ad rotas. It was a bullet or bullets from the sclopo that had inflicted serious wounds on Roero. De Ponte would be defrocked, deprived of his habit and denied forever his status as a Knight of Malta. Caravaggio was never sentenced for his part in the assault, for reasons that will become clear. But his crime was clearly deemed to be at least as serious as that of de Ponte, because the first report of the criminal commission into the case recommended that these two – but none of the others involved – be arrested immediately.
That report was submitted to the Venerable Council, whose members included Alof de Wignacourt, Fabrizio Sforza Colonna, Antonio Martelli and Ippolito Malaspina,