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There may have been an element of condescension about Cesari’s decision to channel Caravaggio’s energies towards still life – a trace of dismissive preconception about painters from the north. It was not unknown for Lombard artists to be caricatured as rustic provincials, country bumpkins of painting, unacquainted with the grand traditions of Renaissance art. Artists were ranked according to a strict hierarchy determined by subject matter. At the top were those who specialized in paintings of the human figure shown in heroic or significant action – paintings from the Bible or mythology. Lower down the scale came portraits, then paintings of animals. Then came another relatively new genre, the landscape, followed last and least by the humble still life. Such distinctions mattered a lot, especially to a man as touchy and as self-conscious about his own status as Caravaggio.

There are strong indications that he resented the lowly nature of the work that he was given to do in the Cesari studio. Bellori suggests that he already had the ambition to work in the higher reaches of art, but had to take whatever employment he was offered simply to survive:

Since models, without which he did not know how to paint, were too expensive, he did not earn enough to pay his expenses. Michele was therefore forced by necessity to work for Cavaliere Giuseppe d’Arpino, who had him paint flowers and fruit, which he imitated so well that from then on they began to attain that greater beauty that we love today. He painted a vase of flowers with the transparencies of the water and glass and the reflections of a window of the room, rendering flowers sprinkled with the freshest dewdrops; and he painted other excellent pictures of similar imitations. But he worked reluctantly at these things and felt deeper regret at not being able to paint figures.22

Shorthand notes in the manuscript of Mancini’s biography yield several tantalizing glimpses of Caravaggio in the Cesari workshop. They are obscure and hard to interpret, but suggest that the painter’s relationship with his employers was fraught. At first they rescue him, but then they let him down or betray him in some unspecified way. There is a reference to Caravaggio in poor and ragged clothing. Then Bernardino Cesari takes him into the ‘Torretta’, which was the name of the building in which the Cesari workshop was housed. He is put up on a straw mattress on a raised platform, presumably some kind of minstrels’ gallery in one of the rooms. He boards there, in all, for eight months. But at a certain point something bad happens, although Mancini’s notes do not say what that something was. Giuseppe Cesari is a witness: ‘Giuseppe sees and is petrified and in order to distract him makes him retreat and flee so he does not appear.’ Following this nameless act and its enigmatic aftermath, the Cesari brothers seem to feel that Caravaggio’s presence in their workshop has to be concealed. Mention is made of ‘C. G.’, short for Giuseppe Cesari, painting a picture of St Joseph on which Caravaggio perhaps collaborates; but wherever this takes place, Cesari is very keen that Caravaggio should not be seen. Then Caravaggio gets kicked by a horse so badly that his leg swells alarmingly, but a surgeon is not called because he still must not be seen by anyone. A Sicilian friend who owns or runs a shop – more likely to be Lorenzo Siciliano than Mario Minniti – takes him to the hospital of the Consolazione. The Cesari brothers never go to visit him and he never goes back to them.23

Mancini’s finished life of Caravaggio is much less circumstantial than his notes, except on the subject of the artist’s stay in the hospital of the Consolazione. During his convalescence there, Caravaggio is said to have painted ‘many pictures for the prior, who brought them to Seville, his home’. Reversing the chronology suggested by his jottings, Mancini then asserts that it was after his illness that the painter ‘stayed with Cavaliere Giuseppe’. But whatever the precise sequence of events, a clear enough picture