Caravaggio: A Passionate Life by Desmond Seward Read Free Book Online

the Palazzo Madama, within walking distance of Valentin’s shop, and who was reputed to be one of the most discerning art lovers in Rome.
    It is not difficult to guess the excitement in the shop at the sale of a picture to the cardinal. It transformed Caravaggio’s prospects. A summons came for him to present himself at the Palazzo Madama. Del Monte then asked him if he would enter his
famiglia
, his household of gentlemen, in
servitu particolare
, that is to say, do him special service as his painter in residence. He would live at the palazzo, and the cardinal would buy his paintings at a fair price. Caravaggio had found the perfect patron.

IX
    Cardinal del Monte, 1596
    N o one could have played a more benevolent role in Caravaggio’s life, or one of more vital importance to his development as an artist, than Cardinal del Monte. Seemingly without hesitation, he took the shabby, tricky-tempered young man out of the gutter into his household, where he gave him
parte e provisione
, a room, clothes, and an allowance of food and wine. Del Monte’s object was to enable Caravaggio to paint in peace and security. He protected and encouraged him for over four years, even taking in his no less ragged friend Mario Minniti, presumably at Caravaggio’s request.
    Del Monte is something of an enigma. The official account of his distinguished, if not very eventful, career is in Chacon’s massive history of the popes and cardinals, which was published in Rome in 1677. From the comparatively small space devoted to him, we learn that he came from a noble family in Umbria; that he was born in Venice in 1549; and that, as a boy, he had been a brilliant student of classical learning and the law. He had then gone to Rome, entering the
famiglia
of his cousin, Cardinal Alessandro Sforza, and becoming his right-hand man. After Sforza’s death in 1581, del Monte entered the service of Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici, with whom he established a lifelong friendship. When Ferdinando “resigned the Purple”in 1588 on inheriting the grand duchy of Tuscany, he petitioned Pope Sixtus to let del Monte succeed him as cardinal deacon of Santa Maria in Dominica. Consecrated Bishop of Palestrina, and then Ostia, he was dean of the College of Cardinals by the time he died in 1627.
    Among his duties was the rebuilding of St. Peter’s. He also rebuilt the ruined monastery of Sant’ Urbino for a community of Capuchin friars. He was generous to sculptors, painters, and alchemists. “On Sundays, in honor of the Blessed Virgin, he fasted on bread and water, giving alms to the poor,” writes Chacon’s continuator, and he lived with the utmost frugality, always wearing shabby clothes.
    His godfathers had been Titian, the architect Sansovino, and the satirist Aretino, friends of his father, who was a soldier in the duke of Urbino’s service. Because of his friendship with Grand Duke Ferdinando, he occupied a Medici palace, representing Tuscan interests at Rome. Essentially a bureaucrat, he was among the poorer cardinals, with an income of twelve thousand scudi but no private fortune. Although as a young man he had flirted with girls and played the guitar, in the puritanical climate of the Counter-Reformation he could scarcely help being austere. Still, his interests were never exclusively clerical. When Federigo Borromeo left Rome, his place as cardinal protector of the Accademia di San Luca was filled jointly by del Monte and Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti, author of a treatise on what sacred art should be in the light of the Council of Trent. His brother, Marchese Guidobaldi del Monte, was a famous mathematician, who had taught Galileo and introduced him to the Medici.
    He was also a keen student of alchemy, which was much more than a mere precursor of chemistry. Believing the “divine science” had little to do with magic or making gold, he thought its purpose was to “extract the quintessence of things” and prepare healing elixirs, even if a patient