Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane by Andrew Graham-Dixon Read Free Book Online

all the way across to Germany and Austria. He gave particular emphasis to the importance of keeping a grip on Milan, a key military outpost at the crossroads of Europe:
    Leave German affairs, as I now do, to my brother Ferdinand, but maintain contacts there, for your vigilance must be alert throughout all the possessions of our house. The most constant threat comes from France. Their kings have been and are bound to us by treaties, but remember that they are not true to their undertakings and only keep to their word when they are too poor to go to war . . . Keep a good guard on our northern borders with France, and maintain a fleet of galleys in the Mediterranean as a warning both to the Turks and to the French. We need to maintain good relations with Genoa because of its port, so take good care for this.
    In the north-east I have strengthened Flanders against France by my annexation of Guelders, Utrecht and Frisia. Still, you must keep money on hand there in case there is need for a sudden mobilisation; the inhabitants are reasonably loyal to us, but do not relax your watchfulness . . . I have settled the affairs of Savoy somewhat to the detriment of our ally the Duke, but do not help him to recover the lands occupied by the French even if they are his by right. That could give the French an excuse to press south again against our Milan and if that happens our links with Genoa and Florence and our rule in Naples and Sicily could all be put at risk.
    Still Charles V continued, spinning out a web of complex alliances and counter-alliances, seeking to pass on to his son his own, pragmatically paranoid brand of statecraft:

    Further to Italy: do not trust the Pope, who neither honours his word nor has the general interests of Christianity at heart; keep an eye on any strengthening of the Duke of Ferrara’s family relationships with the French; Venice is unlikely to form any close attachment to France, Florence is much indebted to our support of the Duke and is safe, but be watchful of Lucca and Siena. Above all, keep Milan and Naples well garrisoned with troops regularly paid to keep them loyal to us. As for the rest, remember that the Swiss covet part of our Franche-Comte; keep on good terms with England but, given the Pope’s resentment against that country, very warily; with Scotland, you need have little to do. 13
    Charles V gave Philip II that advice in 1548. By the 1570s relations between Spain and the papacy had somewhat improved, but Europe remained the same fractious place described in the emperor’s world-weary anatomy of the continent’s political and religious divisions. And Milan, important enough to get two mentions in his long memorandum, remained vital to Spanish interests. Charles V always regarded the city as ‘the key to Italy’, and his son Philip II never deviated from that view. To lose Milan would not only expose the whole of Spanish rule in southern Italy to danger; it would also separate Spain from its territories in the Low Countries. The caution of Milan’s Spanish rulers was exacerbated by their knowledge that the city’s defence was in the hands of no more than around 5,000 soldiers. Any hint of trouble – the merest suggestion that the French were fomenting revolt in Genoa, the chance appearance of a group of gypsies from Venice – and a state of emergency was liable to be declared.
    On the surface, the city where Caravaggio spent much of his youth was run as it had been during the era of Sforza rule. The Duchy of Milan might have become a vassal of Spain, but its bureaucratic appar atus remained unchanged and the same magistracies held the reins of power. The most significant difference was that the Consiglio Segreto, or ‘secret council’, that had once advised the Sforza dukes now reported to the Spanish governor. The Senate continued to exercise supreme judicial and administrative authority in the city, but was obliged to do so with a careful eye to Spanish interests. 14 The members