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

died of malaria.
    What is beyond question is that Francesco Maria Bourbon del Monte was one of the great patrons of early Baroque Rome. Genuinely benevolent, besides being a lover of the arts, he was a good friend to more than a few struggling artists. Everyone is in his debt for discovering Caravaggio and making possible his career.

X
    Palazzo Madama, 1596–1600
    C aravaggio spent four years at the Palazzo Madama. His room was no better than a monk’s cell, and he probably had to wait on the cardinal at table. Although on the site of the present Palazzo Madama, now occupied by the Italian Senate, the house was completely rebuilt between 1610 and 1642. It was much smaller. From a survey made just before Caravaggio’s arrival, we know that it measured sixty by forty feet, with thirteen rooms on the ground floor—“halls, withdrawing rooms, chambers and antechambers.”
    Caravaggio would have had to pass through three or four rooms before coming to the
salone
. The “cupboard,” where gold and silver plate and Venetian glass were displayed, was in an adjoining room, with a buffet from which servants might fetch drink and refreshment. The furniture must have been very sparse, compensating by its magnificence, with gilded leather on the few chairs. The tapestries and hangings were of equal splendor, woven with gold or silver thread. Presumably the house’s greatest charm for Caravaggio was the picture collection. Soon his own paintings were hanging on the walls, among them
The Cardsharps
, the
Concert of Youths, The LutePlayer
, a
Bacchus
, and a new version of
The Fortune Teller
, almost certainly commissioned by del Monte to accompany
The Cardsharps
.
    As a courtier, Caravaggio lived on an upper floor. According to the survey of 1595, the courtiers’ rooms were “in part of wood like friars’ cells, with walls at half-height”—cubicles with partition walls that did not reach the ceiling. He dressed in black, receiving two free suits a year. The fashion for black clothes was due to Spanish influence. “Hee is counted no Gentleman amongst them that goes not in black,” Thomas Nashe tells us. “They dresse theyr jesters and fooles only in freshe colours.”
    Historians often exaggerate the comfort of Caravaggio’s life at the Palazzo Madama, one writing of “the easy, sybaritic existence that he must have enjoyed in del Monte’s palace.” In reality, although food, clothing, and a bed were provided, his life was cramped and frugal. They also exaggerate his “friendship” with del Monte, distorting the relationship between patron and protégé in a hierarchic world. There was an unbridgeable gap between a cardinal and a
gentiluomo
. The latter never dared to forget that; if he had certain privileges, he was nonetheless an upper servant.
    Francesco Liberati, author of the
Perfect Master of the Household
, had once administered the establishment of an
Illustrissimo
. (Princes of the Church were called
Illustrissimo
instead of
Eminenza
until well into the next century.) He describes how the gentlemen of a cardinal’s household waited on him with an elaborate ceremonial, which bordered on the liturgical. They had to keep their hats on while attending him at table, so that they could doff them whenever he drank.
    There were, of course, comparatively informal moments, such as the entertainments for Cardinal del Monte’s guests, which would certainly have included concerts and plays. We know that the cardinal was very fond of music, especially madrigals, but we can only speculate about his taste in plays. The plays fashionable in Rome during Caravaggio’s time in the city included tragedies bloodier than anything in Elizabethan drama. In Giraldi’s
Orbeche
,the king of Persia, learning that his daughter has married beneath her, orders the heads and hands of her husband and children to be served up to her at a meal, whereupon she kills both the king and herself. The themes of Speroni’s
Canace
are incest and