Caravaggio_ A Life Sacred and Profane - Andrew Graham-Dixon [245]
Gentile’s letter was dated 29 July. He began by acknowledging receipt of Borghese’s request for information, which had reached him on 24 July.150 He confessed that Caravaggio’s death was ‘completely new’ to him. But he had made enquiries and found answers to the papal nephew’s questions. He gave Borghese the full story of the painter’s death, as he now understood it:
Poor Caravaggio did not die at Procida, but at Port’ Ercole, because having arrived with the felucca, in which he went to Palo, he was incarcerated by the captain there. In the uproar, the felucca went back out into the open sea and returned to Naples. Caravaggio stayed in prison, then freed himself by paying over a huge sum of money, and perhaps on foot reached Port’ Ercole by land, where, falling ill, he departed this life.
On its return, the felucca brought the things he’d left behind to the house of the lady Marchesa of Caravaggio, who lives at Chiaia, and from where Caravaggio himself had left. I immediately made sure the pictures were there, and found that there are no more than three, the two St Johns and the Magdalen, and they are in the above-mentioned house of the lady Marchesa, to whom I have sent [a message] straight away to ask that they be well looked after, so they are not ruined before they can be seen, or come into anyone’s hands, since they were intended [for Your Lordship], and it is necessary to negotiate on Your Lordship’s behalf with the heirs and creditors of the said Caravaggio and give them honest satisfaction.151
Deodato Gentile signed off with a promise to make sure that the paintings would end up in ‘the hands of Your Most Illustrious Lordship’.
Despite this letter’s dispassionate clarity, and despite the fact that it was written within days of the events that it describes, all kinds of arcane conspiracy theories about Caravaggio’s death continue to proliferate.152 He is said to have been the victim of a plot involving the Knights of Malta, or Costanza Colonna, or the pope himself – or all of them, acting fiendishly in concert. He is said to have been ambushed at sea, his body cut in pieces and dumped underwater in a sack. The proponents of such theories invariably claim that the information gathered by Deodato Gentile was nothing more than a smokescreen of falsehood and fabrication – a tall tale to cover up a murder. But there is no real reason to doubt the report that Gentile carefully filed to Scipione Borghese, who was not only one of the most powerful men in Italy but the head of the papal system of justice. Attempting to deceive such a man would have been foolhardy, and probably futile.
In truth, the supposed mystery of Caravaggio’s death is nothing of the kind. Conspiracy theories are a distraction. Caravaggio’s true fate was dark and dramatic enough to need no elaboration or reinvention. His last journey can now be clearly reconstructed, the cause of his death understood.
This is what happened.
Hoping that his pardon had been arranged, the painter set out from Naples to Rome on or around 9 July 1610. He left in a felucca, probably the Santa Maria di Porto Salvo, with his three paintings stowed in the hold. He is unlikely to have been the only passenger. A felucca was a two-masted boat with square-set sails and a spitsail, which could be rowed if winds were unfavourable. It was crewed by between six and eight men, and to hire one was expensive. The usual practice was for a skipper to wait until he had two or more customers going in the same direction before beginning a journey. It is probable that Caravaggio had a travelling companion who was going to Porto Ercole, or the boatman had a delivery to make there. Either way, Caravaggio knew that Porto Ercole was the boat’s final destination.153
About a week after setting sail, the felucca carrying Caravaggio and his paintings docked at Palo, a high-security fort manned by a Spanish garrison, some twenty miles west of Rome. It was not the most common landing place for travellers to Rome, especially