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112. See Roberto Longhi, Opere complete (Florence, 1968), vol. 4, p. 58.

113. The date of The Death of the Virgin is disputed, but there are compelling reasons to place its completion close to the very end of Caravaggio’s Roman period, i.e. around May 1606. Before the discovery of the contract for the painting, of 14 June 1601, the work was dated 1606 by most art historians on purely stylistic grounds. There seems little reason to reverse that view simply because of the discovery of the contract. It was common for paintings to be delivered late, sometimes years late (witness the travails of poor Fabio Masetti). The picture is certainly much closer in its facture, palette and mood to Caravaggio’s later, post-Roman works than it is to such paintings of 1601–2 as The Supper at Emmaus. In my opinion, it was finished directly after the Madonna of the Palafrenieri, since it is painted in the looser, freer style of that picture’s right half – the half containing St Anne – which directly prefigures the style of the artist’s last years. As a compromise solution some experts have chosen to date the painting to 1604, but this seems perverse, bearing in mind both the picture’s appearance and the existing documentary evidence. The first detailed reference to the picture occurs in a letter by Giulio Mancini, dated 14 Oct. 1606, in a context strongly suggestive of the picture having been finished just a matter of months earlier. Another reference to it from around the same time occurs in the correspondence of an agent working for the Duke of Mantua, who noted that the painters of Rome were complaining that they had not yet been able to see the painting. If it really had been finished as early as 1604, it would seem strange indeed that Caravaggio’s friends and rivals had still not seen it all of two years later. In addition, in his biography of the painter Mancini explicitly connects its rejection with ‘the trouble’ that ruined Caravaggio’s life, i.e., the killing of Ranuccio Tomassoni. It would therefore seem logical to assume that it was the very last picture the artist painted before his flight from Rome.

114. Saints should never be given the recognizable features of ‘persons of ill repute’, Paleotti had written. Gabriele Paleotti, ‘Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane’, p. 360. I am obliged to Opher Mansour for pointing out both these references to me.

115. See Giulio Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, vol. 1, pp. 120, 132; see also Walter Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, p. 195.

116. See Michele Maccherini, ‘Caravaggio nel carteggio familiare di Giulio Mancini’ in Prospettiva, vol. 86 (1997), pp. 71–92.

117. See Sandro Corradini, Materiali per un processo, document 78. It is not clear what type of document this is; perhaps a journal.

118. See Helen Langdon, The Lives of Caravaggio, pp. 29–31.

119. Ibid., p. 52.

120. Ibid., p. 76.

121. See Peter Burke, ‘Rome as Center of Information and Communication for the Catholic World 1550–1650’, in From Rome to Eternity: Catholicism and the Arts in Italy, c. 1550–1650, Pamela M. Jones and Thomas Worcester (eds.) (Leiden, Boston and Cologne, 2002), p. 259.

122. See Sandro Corradini, Materiali per un processo, document 81.

123. The tennis courts were all destroyed in a fire during the eighteenth century. The site is now occupied by an underground car park. I am grateful to Maurizio Marini for showing me its exact whereabouts.

124. See Sandro Corradini, Materiali per un processo, document 85; the translation given here is from Walter Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, p. 286.

125. Ibid., document 82.

126. His report on the man’s injuries can still be consulted in the ‘Barbitonsores’ section of the Roman State Archives. This document confirms that Caravaggio’s ally in the fight had indeed been badly wounded. See ibid., document 80.

127. Ibid., document 83.

128. Ibid., document 84.

129. Ibid.document 95: ‘initi duelli cum Michelangelo de Caravaggio … ac pro presenti duello’.

130. For the document discussed below, see ibid., document 101.

131. Ibid., documents 163, 164.