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By Root 1460 0

and crew soon learned the news of Caravaggio’s illness and death. The painter was buried, hurriedly and without ceremony. In the heat of summer a body would decay quickly, so there could be no delay. Since he died alone, without relatives or friends to care for him, he was placed in an unmarked grave. His death was not recorded in the parish records. This has been regarded as a sinister omission by the conspiracy theorists. But there is an unsinister explanation for it. Porto Ercole’s only priest was in dispute with the town fathers and on strike at the time. No deaths were recorded there in the summer of 1610.157

The boat carrying Caravaggio’s possessions could do no more than return to Naples. Presumably the vessel left immediately. It was certainly back in Naples by 29 July, when Deodato Gentile reported to Scipione Borghese that Caravaggio’s paintings had been returned to Costanza Colonna’s palace.

The exact cause of Caravaggio’s death is unknown. Deodato Gentile, writing just over a week after the event, simply said that he fell ill and departed life. On the evidence of the agonized self-portrait in The Martyrdom of St Ursula, and the shakiness of the hand that painted it, he was already unwell when he set out for Rome. The stress of his arrest, and the frantic ride to Porto Ercole in the extreme heat of July, was more than a man in his condition could take. Heat exhaustion, or perhaps a heart attack, may have been what finally killed him.

One question remains. Where did Deodato Gentile get his information? What was his source for all this close detail about the final journey and strange, sad death of a sick man trying to reach Rome from Naples? Whatever it was, it was also the source on which the later biographers drew when they elaborated their own accounts of the painter’s death. No one added anything meaningful to it, except red herrings like Bellori’s mistaken arrest or Baglione’s headlong footrace along the coast.

It might be thought that Gentile had put his feelers out in Porto Ercole, where the death had taken place, or had sent for information to Palo, where Caravaggio had been arrested. But he could have done neither of those things: the dates of his correspondence with Scipione Borghese preclude it. Borghese wrote to Gentile on 23 July and Gentile received the letter the following day. He replied to Borghese just five days later, on 29 July. It was two or three days by boat to Palo, the same again to Porto Ercole. By horse, even riding post, it would have taken at least four days in each direction, since it is two hundred miles from Naples to Porto Ercole. A week, more likely ten days, would have been needed to get there, make enquiries, and then report back. So Gentile must have found his information in Naples. Who could he have spoken to? Who would have known all this?

Only one person could have told the papal nuncio about what happened when Caravaggio landed at Palo. Only one person could have told him about the painter’s death in Porto Ercole. That person was the boatman, who had just returned to Naples with the dead painter’s belongings. His crew had accompanied him, but it was the owner of the boat whom Deodato Gentile would have brought in for questioning. The whole story must have been his testimony. Hence the use of nautical terminology – ‘the felucca went back out into the open sea’, he had said, alto mare158 – as well as the ship’s-eye perspective of the entire account. Hence too the vagueness after Caravaggio is arrested and the boat pulls off: that was the moment when the boatman lost sight of the painter.

The interview would have been short and to the point. The boatman was being accused of nothing and had nothing to hide. He had no reason to be evasive, so he simply told the truth as best he could.

Where did you take Michelangelo Merisi? Palo, the garrison. What happened there? Some kind of trouble. They arrested him. There was a real uproar, so it was best to take the boat on to Porto Ercole.

How did the painter get to Porto Ercole? The skipper does not know, so he shrugs and makes