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translated in Howard Hibbard, Caravaggio : see p. 381. Minniti had lived a chequered life since returning to his native Sicily in about 1604, at one point having been forced to seek sanctuary in the Carmelite monastery at Syracuse ‘for a homicide casually committed’ – for which see Francesco Susinno, Le vite dei pittori messinesi of 1724, Valentino Martelli (ed.) (Florence, 1960), p. 117. By the autumn of 1608 Minniti had long since redeemed himself, by painting numerous altarpieces for the religious institutions of Syracuse and Messina. He often worked for the Franciscans, which indicates that he had a close relationship with the order. His sister, Maria, was a Capuchin tertiary. See Gioacchino Barbera and Donatella Spagnolo, ‘From The Burial of St Lucy to the Scenes of the Passion: Caravaggio in Syracuse and Messina’ in the catalogue to the exhibition Caravaggio: The Final Years, p. 81.

85. See Susinno in Howard Hibbard, Caravaggio, p. 381; in fact, the church and its adjacent monastery were not assigned to the Minorite friars of the Franciscan order until 1618. But they had been lobbying to have the site restored and given to them for many years, so they are also likely to have had a strong say in the choosing of Caravaggio. The Franciscans were the poorest of the poor orders. They are likely to have been highly sympathetic to an artist whose work so aggressively insisted on the poverty of Christ and his early followers. Franciscan involvement also supports Susinno’s account of the part played by Minniti in winning the commission for Caravaggio.

86. St Lucy’s name was derived from the Latin word lux, meaning ‘light’, a fact that had not been lost on the early Church fathers. St Ambrose, in his commentaries on her martyrdom, noted that ‘In Lucy is said the way of light.’

87. Susinno as reprinted in Howard Hibbard, Caravaggio, from which the translation used here derives. See p. 381.

88. See Keith Sciberras and David Stone, Caravaggio: Art, Knighthood and Malta, pp. 35–6.

89. Susinno as reprinted in Howard Hibbard, Caravaggio, from which the translation used here derives. See p. 386.

90. Ibid. The name of the dog is disclosed by Giovanni Baglione in a comic aside in a passage from his life of Caravaggio’s follower Carlo Saraceni. See Giovanni Baglione, Le vite de’ pittori, scultori, architetti, dal pontificato di Gregorio XIII del 1572, fino a’ tempi di Papa Urbano VIII nel 1642 (Rome, 1642), p. 147.

91. See Francesco Susinno, Le vite dei pittori messinesi, p. 119.

92. See Vincenzo Mirabella, Dichiarazioni della pianta delle antiche Siracuse, e d’alcune scelte medaglie d’esse e de’ principi che quelle possedettero (Naples, 1613), p. 89. The whole passage is quoted in Italian in Maurizio Marini, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio ‘pictor praestantissimus’, p. 100. The translation given here is my own.

93. See Ferdinando Bologna, ‘Caravaggio: The Final Years’, in Caravaggio: The Final Years, p. 32.

94. See Keith Sciberras and David Stone, Caravaggio: Art, Knighthood and Malta, pp. 36–7.

95. See George Sandys, A Relation of a Journey, pp. 245–6.

96. Susinno as reprinted in Howard Hibbard, Caravaggio, from which the translation used here derives. See p. 382.

97. The documents recording this commission are now lost, presumed destroyed in the catastrophic earthquake that struck Messina in 1908. Before their destruction, they were transcribed and published. See V. Saccà, ‘Michelangelo da Caravaggio pittore. Studi e ricerche’, in Archivio storico messinese, vol. 7 (Messina, 1906), p. 58, and vol. 8 (Messina, 1907), p. 78.

98. There is proof positive that he was familiar with the knights’ book of statutes in his Maltese altarpiece, The Beheading of St John. The image of the prison, with inmates, is clearly drawn from one of the illustrations in the order’s book of statutes. See David M. Stone, ‘The Context of Caravaggio’s Beheading of St John in Malta’, Burlington Magazine, vol. 139, no. 1,128 (Mar. 1997), pp. 161–70. It should also be noted that the document of consignment in which he is referred to as a Knight of