Wild man of Rome

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This was published 13 years ago

Wild man of Rome

Desmond O'Grady views some of Caravaggio's finest paintings in the city where the artist worked and brawled.

It is rare to find a two-storey building in central Rome but there is one in narrow Vicolo del Divino Amore (Divine Love Lane). It has been there since Shakespeare's era, when a tenant, at No. 19, was ousted for four months' rent arrears.

The tenant was Michelangelo Merisi, better known by the name of his parents' town, Caravaggio. With the landlady's agreement, he had dismantled half the ceiling to accommodate huge canvases that projected into the attic. In midsummer 1605, Caravaggio had fled Rome after a sword attack, from behind, on a notary who was trying to steal his mistress, Lena.

On his return the following month to make peace with the notary, Caravaggio found his landlady had evicted him and seized his possessions, which included a guitar, a violin, two swords, two daggers, two large canvases, two mirrors and 12 books. At 5am one day he pelted her home with stones and returned later with a friend to play guitars beneath the broken windows.

Such episodes emerge in a ground-breaking exhibition, Caravaggio a Roma (Caravaggio in Rome), at the State Archives in Rome. Finding that the ink used in court records and other documents was corroding the parchment and paper, the archives employed seven researchers to save the Caravaggio material. The exhibition throws new light on his time in Rome: where he lived and what he painted in the city that holds more than a third of all his works.

Caravaggiomania is often irritating. Some biographers presume he is proof that the wilder an artist, the better his art. Often his epigones, the Caravaggeschi or school of Caravaggio, forgot the searching light of his paintings, preserving only the darkness, and their subjects were more melodramatic than dramatic. There have been many mediocre Caravaggio shows but last year, for the 400th anniversary of his death, nearly all paintings confirmed as his were exhibited together at Rome's Scuderie del Quirinale gallery and deserved the half a million visitors they got. The hype surrounding that show, entitled Caravaggio, has spurred new research, some of which is evident in the current archives exhibition.

Caravaggio worked, ate and brawled in an area of only a few city blocks and they are still recognisable today, mainly between the well-known Piazza Navona and Piazza del Popolo. The key thoroughfare is Via della Scrofa (Sow Street), where Caravaggio worked in the studio of a minor Sicilian painter, Lelio Costa, soon after arriving in Rome, probably late in 1595.

Within a three-minute walk is Divine Love Lane (called Via San Biagio in Caravaggio's time). At the corner of the parallel Via della Lupa he caroused at the Lupa hostelry. A haberdashery now occupies the site but the same Association of Marchegiani still owns the four-storey building. The next parallel street, which, like the others, runs into Via dei Prefetti, is Via della Pallacorda, where Caravaggio killed an adversary.

On the corner with Via dei Prefetti is Palazzo Firenze, which was bought by the ruler of Florence, Cosimo Medici, for his two sons, who were cardinals. It is worthwhile taking time to admire its proportions and reflect on the cheek-by-jowl nature of Caravaggio's Rome. There was no zoning - Renaissance splendour and earthy street life were jumbled. This was a district of artisans - cobblers, saddlers, lute makers and basket weavers - and the location of magnificent palaces and churches. Even today there are no department stores in the vicinity, only small enterprises such as bakeries, grocery shops, a watch repairer, bars and restaurants - and a shop selling food grown on land reclaimed from the Mafia.

Florentines and the French were making an impact on this area when Caravaggio reached Rome at the age of 24 (previously it was thought he had arrived from Milan three to six years earlier, which raises the question of what he was doing in these years).

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Florentines owned Palazzo Madama, now the Senate, where Caravaggio stayed as a guest for a time with his patron, Cardinal Del Monte. Diagonally opposite, the French-owned San Luigi dei Francesi church had just been completed. In 1599, Caravaggio was commissioned to "affresco" a side chapel: the resulting trio of paintings about St Mark made his reputation. Later he was accused of using a prostitute as the model for the Madonna in his Death of the Virgin and his lover, Lena, as the model for Madonna of the Pilgrims, whose bare feet, moreover, were scandalously dirty. Some objected to his updating of biblical scenes with characters wearing contemporary garb, as well as to his inclusion of himself in scenes. But his cardinal friends and patrons defended him.

Success did not improve Caravaggio's behaviour. At a tavern he asked a waiter if his artichokes had been cooked in butter or oil. When the waiter pushed one at his nose, Caravaggio threw his plate at him - as was recorded when the wounded waiter complained to the police. With two painter friends he wrote doggerel, full of scatological references and allusions to male and female genitalia, denigrating a canvas of his rival, Giovanni Baglione. Baglione took them to court on the grounds that his potential clients had been influenced. He also wrote one of the first biographies of Caravaggio.

The artist was arrested several times for swaggering around with an unlicensed sword plus either a dagger or pistol and, on one occasion, two compasses that the police took not as tools but weapons. On each occasion his powerful patrons and allies intervened on his behalf.

But things got worse. With three other toughs, he fought in an arranged clash against a four-man gang. Caravaggio killed an adversary by driving a sword into his thigh.

Evidence comes from the trial of one of the participants, whose entire left side was slashed. He was treated by a barber, as they often gave emergency aid. It makes you look with new eyes at a barber's shop just off Via della Scrofa.

Caravaggio, whose head was wounded in the eight-man stoush, did not wait for the murder trial - he fled south to Naples, Malta and Sicily. Condemned to death in absentia, he began to paint scenes of decapitations where the severed head had his own features, as in David with the Head of Goliath in the Borghese Gallery.

Ten years later, as friends were on the verge of obtaining his pardon, Caravaggio sailed to Palo Laziale, north of Rome, where he was arrested as a fugitive but swiftly released, perhaps because the police were told his pardon was imminent. His ship, which carried three of his paintings, had sailed further north to Porto Ercole and there he died on July 14, 1610, at the age of 38. It was thought he died on the beach but new evidence suggests he died in a hospital bed from lead and mercury poisoning picked up from his paints. One symptom of the poisoning is extreme irritability, which could have provoked his clashes.

His paintings show he was more than a quick-tempered thug. After his success at San Luigi dei Francesi, he was commissioned to paint St Paul thrown from his horse and converted on the road to Damascus; St Paul crucified (at Santa Maria del Popolo church); and the Madonna of the Pilgrims (at St Augustine church, just around the corner from San Luigi dei Francesi).

Those who want to see other aspects of Caravaggio can walk or take a bus ride through the Borghese Gardens, which begin just beyond Santa Maria del Popolo, to the Borghese Gallery, which holds six Caravaggios - more than any other gallery in the world. The founder of the gallery was Cardinal Scipione Borghese, who arranged a truce between Caravaggio and the notary he attacked. He also obtained a pardon for him in 1610. Caravaggio's ship, which he left at Palo Laziale, carried paintings for Borghese, one of which, John the Baptist, is now in the gallery.

From the Borghese Gallery, the Caravaggio crawl continues downhill along Via Veneto, the street made famous in the film La Dolce Vita. Towards the bottom on the left is the Capuchin church in which hangs a painting of St Francis in meditation, attributed by some to Caravaggio. Nearby, in the National Gallery at Palazzo Barberini, are two more Caravaggios.

Further downhill, on the central Corso, the Doria Pamphilj Gallery holds three Caravaggios. And within a few minutes' walk is the Capitoline (Town Hall) Museum, where there are another two of his paintings.

A bus from Piazza Venezia goes to the Vatican, which has a Caravaggio. Another disputed Caravaggio is in the Palazzo Corsini, reached by a walk downstream along the bank of the Tiber. The walk allows time to reflect on the relationship between Caravaggio and Rome, both deeply marked by religion and violence.

FAST FACTS

Getting there

Emirates has a fare to Rome for about $2025, non-stop to Dubai (about 14hr), then to Rome (6hr 25min). Fare is low-season return from Sydney and Melbourne including tax and allows you to travel to Dubai via Asia and back from another European city.

Viewing there

Caravaggio a Roma (Caravaggio in Rome) is at the State Archives, until May 15. At Corso Rinascimento 40; open daily

9am-5.45pm. Advance booking is recommended, phone +39 (0)6 661 3451, see www.biglietto.it.

Entry to the Borghese Gallery must be pre-booked by phoning +39 (0)6 32810 or online at ticketone.it.

Two other Caravaggio exhibitions are at Palazzo Venezia at Piazza Venezia. One, until May 29, is a knowledgeable attempt to reconstruct his studio and working methods. The other, until October 15, explains the radiographic research by conservationists into his San Luigi dei Francesi paintings of St Mark.

Galleries and museums in Rome are closed on Mondays. For more information see turismoroma.it.

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