Caravaggio_ A Life Sacred and Profane - Andrew Graham-Dixon [246]
When he got to Palo, however, something went badly wrong. His papers may have been out of order, or perhaps he just made a remark the captain of the garrison did not like. Whatever it was, before his luggage could be unloaded, he was taken away to a holding cell. ‘In all the uproar,’ Deodato Gentile told Scipione Borghese, ‘the felucca went back out into the open sea and returned to Naples.’ Gentile’s wording suggests a fracas, with Caravaggio resisting arrest, shouting and perhaps characteristically trying to draw his sword as he was forcibly restrained.
Avoiding further involvement in the scuffle, the skipper put out to sea again. He would indeed return to Naples, but not immediately. First, with his other customer, or to make his other delivery, he had to get to Porto Ercole, some fifty miles north and, depending on the wind, about a couple of days’ journey by sea further from Rome, and from Naples.
Meanwhile, Caravaggio was forced to cool his heels in jail. The cause of his imprisonment may have been trivial, because he was allowed to buy his way out. At this point all the accounts become a little vague, or fanciful, suggesting there were no witnesses to what happened next. According to Deodato Gentile, Caravaggio, ‘perhaps on foot, reached Porto Ercole by land’. Baglione elaborated that speculation into the maddened run of a desperate man along a parched coastline in the height of summer: ‘in his desperation he started out along the beach in the cruel July sun, trying to catch sight of the vessel which was carrying his belongings.’ The story clearly appealed to Bellori, who repeated it.
But it is obviously false. Assuming that Caravaggio got out of jail within a day of his arrest, he left Palo on 16 or 17 July. Scipione Borghese knew that he was dead by 23 July, which means that he actually died on 21 July at the very latest, and probably earlier. In other words, his journey from Palo to Porto Ercole can only have taken a few days, probably just a couple. But the distance between the two places is some fifty miles. In high summer, a man convalescing from serious injuries would have struggled to make that journey on foot in less than four or five days.156
Caravaggio may have been desperate, but he was not mad. Throughout his life he had shown a cool head in tight situations. It suited Baglione’s purposes to invent the story of the enraged pursuit, because it paved the way for his smug ending – ‘he died miserably – indeed, just as he had lived’ – but the truth is that Caravaggio had to catch up with the boat because it was carrying the paintings that were the price of his compact with Scipione Borghese. If he did not, he could not return to Rome. He knew from conversations with the skipper, or with his travelling companion, that the boat had gone to Porto Ercole. Given the ‘uproar’ that had accompanied his arrest at Palo, he certainly could not count on the boat returning there with his possessions. So he had to go to find it.
Palo was a staging post, so even though the boat had a head start, he could easily get to Porto Ercole first. He would simply have to ride post along the coastal delivery route. With a change of horse, he might cover the whole distance in a single day. It would have been exhausting, but it was no insane race against fate. It was the logical thing to do. He left Palo probably on 16 or 17 July, and a day later arrived in Porto Ercole, another small coastal settlement, manned by a Spanish garrison. But the stress of his arrest at Palo, and the effort of getting to Porto Ercole to recover his paintings, finally broke him. In Porto Ercole, probably on 18 or 19 July, Caravaggio died.
The boat carrying his paintings arrived almost simultaneously, perhaps shortly afterwards. The skipper