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life itself, as a journey travelled in prayer. As well as the Oratory, he founded the Archconfraternity of the Most Holy Trinity of the Pilgrims and Convalescents – the Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini – to care for the poor and the sick, and especially the many thousands of destitute pilgrims who travelled to Rome during Jubilee years. The Pellegrini would eventually have their own church, a somewhat severe building constructed between 1587 and 1597 and designed by Martino Longhi the Elder (the father, as it turned out, to one of Caravaggio’s most turbulent companions). But much of its energies were devoted simply to health care. For several years Ferdinando de’ Medici served honourably as protector of its hospital. Probably as a result of his connections with del Monte and the Medici, Caravaggio would himself develop close links with Neri’s Archconfraternity of Pilgrims, and with the Order of the Oratory. Two of his most impressive altarpieces, The Madonna of Loreto and The Entombment of Christ, would result.

The political alliances of the Medici would also shape the development of Caravaggio’s painting. Throughout Cardinal del Monte’s long Roman career, but especially during the early years, when he was closest to Caravaggio, the balance of European power was delicately poised between Spain and France. Like other members of the family before him, Ferdinando de’ Medici favoured France. He married the Valois princess Christine of Lorraine, the marriage celebrated with great pomp and ceremony in 1589. Just over a decade later the Medici’s links with France would become closer still. Ferdinando’s niece, Marie de’ Medici, would marry Henri IV and become Queen of France. That union could never have taken place without Henri IV’s acceptance into the Church of Rome. So throughout the early 1590s del Monte’s overriding concern, and the Medici’s greatest goal, was to ensure that Henri IV’s conversion from Protestantism went ahead as planned. Del Monte’s diplomatic style was subtle and self-effacing, but effective. In 1593, when the long-hoped-for event occurred, the Medici cardinal could congratulate himself on having played his part in one of the decisive political events of the age. Clement VIII was deeply grateful for del Monte’s help in winning the French king back to the Catholic faith. The cardinal’s position within the curia was strengthened as a result.

It was no coincidence that Caravaggio’s first major religious commission, secured for him by del Monte – ‘his cardinal’, as the jealous Baglione put it – would be for San Luigi dei Francesi, the church of the French in Rome. The paintings would be completed in 1600, the year of Henri IV’s marriage to Marie de’ Medici. The first of them, The Calling of St Matthew, showing the saint roused from spiritual slumber by the coming of Christ, probably alluded to the conversion of the French king. When del Monte looked at the picture, he could reflect on his finest hour as a servant of the Medici, and France.

The cardinal had two official residences in Rome, the Palazzo Firenze, near the old Roman harbour of the Ripetta, and the Palazzo Madama, around the corner from San Luigi dei Francesi. The Palazzo Madama was where he chose to live, and where he gave Caravaggio room and board – presumably on one of the attic floors of the palace, in the servants’ quarters. The painter’s new surroundings were visible proof of his sudden change of fortunes, a far cry from his mean lodgings with Monsignor Insalata and a world away from the ramshackle platform on which he had been compelled to sleep in the Cesari workshop. The Palazzo Madama was an imposing building in the heart of Rome, its broad façade emblazoned with the famous Medici coat of arms, a shield decorated with six round balls – often, apocryphally, said to symbolize pills, but actually emblematic of bezants, or coins, in allusion to the family’s origins as moneylenders. The state rooms of the palace were richly decorated with tapestries and oriental carpets, as well as a small but choice selection of classical sculptures and other