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Tiny Yet Strategic Malta |
Turmoil, Art, and Demise
My
tale begins, of all places, with a visit to Malta, a
small independent island nation just south of Sicily. Malta, only an hour’s flight time from
Naples, is rich in history, positioned at a strategic chokepoint in the
Mediterranean. It’s famously known as
the final stronghold of the Knights of Saint John, who, despite being
outnumbered, successfully resisted the May-September 1565 siege of Ottoman
Sultan Suleiman, the Magnificent. Three hundred seventy-eight
years later, Malta served as the headquarters for Operation Husky, the Allied
invasion of Europe via Sicily that preceded the D-Day invasion of Normandy
during World War II, a year later. From Neolithic
times, Malta oozes history.
We may be familiar with these gory incidents, but I’d wager few, if any, of us have ever heard of
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Valletta, Capital of Malta |
For us, Caravaggio’s story began in Valletta, the capital of Malta, while attending a performance of Into the Woods. In one scene, flashes of lightning froze the actors' movements like a strobe light, offering brief glimpses of the characters. In a similar fashion, it was on another day in Valletta when flashes of insight into Caravaggio’s tragic and historic life
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The Cast Takes |
Our Caravaggio enlightenment gelled at a performance of The Caravaggio Experience. in the Oratory Chamber inside the overwhelming St. John’s Co-Cathedral (“Co” for conventual or monastic. The weighty history of this soaring chamber dates to 1602 and was later embellished in a Baroque style. Entering this chamber, we were projected through time to a place of sacred fraternity where, in setting and mood, we joined with the Knights. It was not just a convenient site to host a dramatic explanation of Caravaggio’s life, but the actual location of investitures and functions of the Knights of St John of which Caravaggio was a member.
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Saint John's Co-Cathedral Main Altar |
It was in this evocative setting that Caravaggio’s tumultuous life and this monumental painting unfolded. Accompanied by classical music, the tale was brought to life in theatrical fashion by a cast of three exceptionally talented performers: a costumed narrator swathed in sword and dagger, an angelic soprano, and an accomplished musician who performed on an 1886 harp named Lucia, the very organ that loomed above, and a Baroque cello. The
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Organ Above Entrance to Oratory Side Room |
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Fra Bartolomeo Swordplay with Dagger |
Caravaggio was born in 1571. Orphaned at the age of seven by a bubonic plague that swept through northern Italy, he began his life’s journey when he was apprenticed to a painter in Milan six years later. Essentially self-taught, he developed a distinctive artistic style, characterized by an intense blend of religious themes with the realism of raw human emotion in dramatic, visceral representations. To this he added what would become his unique trademark, the dramatic interplay of light and dark, known as chiaroscuro. This became his realm, something utterly unique. For Caravaggio, his intentional use of dominating blackness and brilliant whites was not a mere aesthetic expression, but likely a reflection of an inner plague, some personal torment that haunted him throughout his life, mimicking the world as he saw it. His complex life was as dramatic as the scenes he painted. Caravaggio’s character could be described as volatile, yet prone to violent reactions to any perceived
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The 1886 Harp, Lucia |
He perceived a different world, one of harsh realities which he expressed with a pictorial intensity as they had likely occurred. The passion of Christ was brutal, the beheading of John the Baptist bloody. Consequently, he depicted them as such. His audacious style, characterized by unflinching realism, employed visceral human drama, emotional intensity, and the bold use of light, where scenes seemed to melt from view into blackness, challenging the idealized norms of the Renaissance. Additionally, his choice of everyday people for his models—rugged laborers, street vendors, often prostitutes—was revolutionary when religious themes and saintly characters were the unshakable standard. This was a stark departure from the idealized forms celebrated in earlier works throughout Italy. His painting The Death of the Virgin, for instance, caused outrage for depicting the Virgin Mary as a lifeless, overweight figure. In total, his
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Caravaggio's Beheading of St. John the Baptist |
His approach took root and resonated deeply
with the faithful. Something this shockingly
realistic about life proved magnetic. It
remains so to this day. Imagine a gallery
arranged with masterworks by other artists, such as Rembrandts, Rubens, and a
piece by Johannes Vermeer, like The Girl with a Pearl Earring. Near them, add a single piece by Caravaggio, like
his Beheading of Saint John. I’d venture
that in no time viewers, as though drawn by an invisible force, would soon
gather, shoulder to shoulder, before the Caravaggio.
At the age of 21, Caravaggio left Milan
for Rome, where he would spend much of his career and gain lasting fame. Rome was where his darker ‘bad-boy’
reputation for heavy drinking, fighting, gambling, and womanizing took
root. In truth, the city was a dangerous
place, rife with thieves, con men, and sudden violence. Whether to protect himself or due to an
innate inclination to join in, Caravaggio’s temper grew in reputation. He was soon caught up in brawls, legal
disputes, and violent altercations. Police
records show he was frequently arrested or cited for carrying weapons illegally,
but his most serious, persistent, and life-changing incident was the charge of
murder.
In May 1606, Caravaggio and three of his cohorts got into a brawl in Rome not far from the Pantheon. This melee appears to have been a prearranged duel to settle some issue of honor, complete with seconds, witnesses, and choreographed around daggers and swords. As a result, Caravaggio killed Ranuccio Tomassoni, a member of a powerful and well-connected family of mercenaries.2 Caravaggio, himself wounded in the turmoil, quickly fled Rome and in absentia was convicted and sentenced to death by papal authorities. A bando capitale (a capital sentence form of exile and death warrant) was issued, which allowed anyone to kill him and, with legal impunity, earn a bounty.4 The next three years, on the run to Naples, then Malta, followed by Sicily, and finally back to Naples, would remain a shadowy period in his life. All this time, despite his precarious circumstances, he continued to produce extraordinary works of art.
It was when he sought refuge in Malta that we picked up the details of his time there, thanks to that evening in the Oratory Chamber. Hoping to gain a papal pardon by his acceptance into the
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Eight-Pointed Maltese Cross |
powerful Knights of Malta. It was his donation of the painting of St John’s beheading, the Knight’s patron, that he cleverly offset the entrance fee needed to join the Knights.
This
image,
whose figures are approximately life-size, depicts the beheading of John the
Baptist following his execution. It is the only work by Caravaggio to bear the artist's signature, which
he placed in red blood spilling from the Baptist's throat. It
became visible to modern viewers only during restoration in the 1950s.1 The work is signed f. Michelango but
it is popularly claimed that Caravaggio signed "I, Caravaggio, did this."1 I’d rather believe the latter, where much
like Michelangelo Buonarroti, who had died seven years prior to Caravaggio’s
birth, had chiseled his name along the chest band of the Virgin of his famous
Vatican Pieta to make clear that he was its creator.
His status as a Knight, however, proved short-lived.
In September 1608, only six months after
his induction, a ceremony took place in the very Oratory we occupied. Before his momentous painting, Caravaggio was
defrocked in absentia, declaring him an "infamous
and a putrid member" 3 of the Order. This action followed another violent altercation
involving the assault and serious wounding of a distinguished
Maltese Knight, Fra Giovanni Rodomonte Roero, at the home of the Knight-organist
Fra Prospero Coppini. As a
result, Caravaggio was imprisoned in Malta’s fortress but managed to escape a
month later. On the run again, he headed
north to Syracuse, Sicily.
During his Sicilian exile, where he continued to
produce significant works for local patrons such as The Raising of Lazarus,
his behavior became increasingly paranoid, likely due to fear of retribution by
the nearby Knights or bounty hunters seeking reward per the bando capitale. He became desperate to regain his standing in
Rome.
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Inside Present Day Locando del Cerriglio |
While historical accounts vary, it is generally believed his life ended under murky circumstances, a fugitive from justice, his legal problems still unresolved. While some accounts suggest he died from malaria contracted from swamp mosquitoes, or the failure to recover from his earlier wounds due to infection, others propose theories ranging from lead poisoning following years of exposure to paint or to heatstroke. What exactly happened remains shrouded in thin evidence and speculation. A papal pardon through the auspices of the Pope’s nephew, Cardinal Scipione Borghese, was at hand. Caravaggio never knew for certain whether his pardon had been issued; the three paintings he carried, intended for Cardinal Borghese, were part of his efforts to reconcile and seal the deal. After his death, the Cardinal did receive one of the two Saint John paintings. The remaining two paintings, another of Saint John the Baptist and one of Mary Magdalen, disappeared.
Caravaggio’s influence on art is immeasurable. He’d opened a new vista on how humanity and divinity are portrayed in art. He could capture the divine in the faces of the ordinary, while ironically,
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Caravaggio the Artist |
his own life embodied a bloody turbulence couched in the violent world of the street, rife with crime. I’ve wondered whether Caravaggio’s lifestyle was symptomatic of madness, or something just shy of it.
In his defense, the term painter’s colic comes to mind. Painters were not bad people by nature, just people who used bad paint. Paint did not come in tubes then, but had to be made from dusty powders. Due to their lead content, they were especially toxic. Over time, due to the dust and the habit of painters licking the tips of their brushes, it took a toll on their bodies and behavior. Symptoms took the form of concentration problems, irritability, aggressiveness, depression, and anxiety. There were clear lapses in Caravaggio’s concentration, especially following some form of rejection that saw his art production fall off considerably. This form of impairment may have gone a long way in characterizing Caravaggio’s behavior when he lowered his brush to cruise Rome’s violent alleyways by night. He may not have been mad by nature, only driven that way.
Like Vincent van Gogh, Caravaggio fits the stereotype of "mad genius.” Seemingly, as oxymoronic as the juxtaposition of “mad” with “genius” may seem, our interpretation of it may hinge on what might be called the economics of madness. I see it as a trade-off between being productively or wastefully deranged. Society tends to romanticize unconventional behavior in geniuses as a form of brilliance. Their divergent approaches, as in Caravaggio’s consummate The Beheading of St John, are tolerated because of the perceived value of their innovations. As a form of collateral damage, any suffering that accompanies it is often ignored. Similar behavior in others, absent some special creative output, is interpreted as madness and quickly
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Caravaggio |
The play we attended early on during our visit offered a strobing glimpse, followed by darkness, and then another illuminated scene repeated over and over. In much the same way, we were given flashes of insight into the obscurity surrounding Caravaggio’s life. These intermittent revelations mirrored the interplay of light and shadow that defines his art. In step with these on-and-off glimpses, piece by piece, however imperfectly, we began to assemble an image of what may have happened. Even centuries later, pulses of fact and speculation, record and rumor, along with truth and fiction, continue to swirl around the enduring mystery of Caravaggio.
He was clearly visionary, amazingly talented, and in command of a daring technique capable of almost photo-quality paintings featuring unanticipated boldness. He created an unprecedented visual language of emotional impact, whether employing the blunt realism that captured the subtleties of lifelike features such as facial expressions, bleeding flesh, or a vagrant tear. The price for such never-before-seen works was survival on the fringe of society, rudderless, quick to reply with a sword, a life of struggles on the run. Caravaggio’s early demise extinguished his equivalent spark, reminding us that the line between genius and, call it madness, is not only thin but perilously fragile. Enigmatic Malta, layered in history, seated before the largest painting Caravaggio ever created, taught us that.
From That Rogue Tourist,
Paolo
1. The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist (Caravaggio), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ The _Beheading_of_Saint_John_the_Baptist_(Caravaggio)
2. Caravaggio Final Days, https:// www.metmuseum.org/perspectives/caravaggio-final-days
3. Caravaggio the Criminal: How a Life on the Lam Changed the Baroque Painter's Art, https://www.salon.com/2017/09/10/caravaggio-the-criminal-how-a-life-on-the-lam-changed-the-baroque-painters-art/
4. Exile
of Caravaggio, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exile_of_Caravaggio
