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By Root 1419 0

Renieri, is known to have been in the service of the dukes of Urbino. Ever since the days of the fifteenth-century soldier-intellectual, Federigo da Montefeltro, the rulers of Urbino had hired out their services as battle-hardened mercenaries to the highest bidder. The Duke of Urbino who employed del Monte’s father was particularly active on behalf of the Venetians during the years from 1539 to 1552. Since Renieri went by the title of ‘colonel’, it seems likely that he was a soldier, who had won the respect of the Venetians by fighting their enemies.2

Del Monte was decidedly not a military man, but a student of law and humanities. He and his elder brother, Guidobaldo – later to become a distinguished mathematician and the author of a treatise on perspective – were educated at the courts of the della Rovere family in Pesaro and Urbino. They also studied at Padua, long established as a centre of humanist learning, which was where Prince Francesco Maria della Rovere himself received his education.3 Del Monte had been named in honour of Prince Francesco Maria. But he later switched allegiances and eventually travelled to Rome, in 1572, in the service of a Sforza cardinal.

Del Monte switched allegiances again in the early 1570s. He won the patronage of Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici, younger son of Grand Duke Cosimo I, ruler of Florence and Tuscany. Groomed for the Church from an early age, Ferdinando had been made cardinal when he was just fourteen years old. He was a patron of music as well as a discerning art collector, who adorned the gardens of the Villa Medici with ancient Roman sculptures. Del Monte worked for many years as Ferdinando’s secretary and assistant. By the mid 1580s he had become his closest confidant. Then, in 1587, both men’s lives were transformed by news of a dramatic series of events in the Medici stronghold of Florence. Ferdinando’s elder brother, Grand Duke Francesco I, had died of a mysterious illness. The duke’s wife had succumbed to the same ailment. In Florence, with its long and murky political history of plot and counter-plot, foul play was inevitably suspected. With Medici power in the balance, Ferdinando felt compelled to renounce his vows and return to Tuscany. He became grand duke, and del Monte his right-hand man. A contemporary witness described the atmosphere at court in the immediate aftermath of Ferdinando’s accession. The new grand duke would dine alone, allowing no one save his trusted adviser to share ‘his most secret thoughts’. He considered del Monte a kindred spirit, the source added, because he was ‘knowledgeable in literature and other learned subjects’.4

Ferdinando’s resignation from the curia left the ruling family of Florence without a voice in Rome. So in 1588 the new Grand Duke of Florence used his influence with Pope Sixtus V to have del Monte appointed in his place. Del Monte would remain a cardinal for almost forty years, reporting to his Florentine master on the twists and turns of papal politics and promoting the interests of Tuscany whenever he could. His umbilical connection to Florence, and to the court of Ferdinando de’ Medici, would have numerous consequences for Caravaggio’s career.

The Medici had strong links with the pauperist wing of Counter-Reformation Catholicism. During his years in Rome, Ferdinando had been close to the charismatic churchman Filippo Neri, the dominant religious personality in the city during the second half of the sixteenth century and founder of an order of secular priests known as the Congregation of the Oratory. His style of teaching was informal and direct, inspired by a desire to return to the simplest and most direct forms of Christian belief. He preferred discussion to sermonizing, improvisation to the set text, and had a knockabout, down-to-earth sense of humour. Despite a profound difference in temperaments, Neri was greatly admired by Carlo Borromeo, who on several occasions in the 1560s and 1570s protected him from accusations of heresy. One of Neri’s ideals was pilgrimage, which he interpreted as a model for the Christian