If there exists a corridor between heaven and humanity, the footsteps that follow it with the most magnificence should be the trail that Caravaggio left behind. It is as if Micael Angelo Amerigi, or Caravaggio, was the one chosen by God to paint the scenic beauty of eternal life between reality and fallacy. In fact, he was the only one who never bound himself to any natural restrictions while creating such compositions. Instead, nature became the first element that merged with his craftsmanship to impress heaven. For so long, we only found divinity in the light and disappearance in darkness, but Caravaggio introduced us to the fact that darkness gives light, and into that melancholy of darkness, the pale reluctant ray breaks to give us hope as flashes of a stormy night. This artist, not only formed fantastic paintings by ideal light and shade with a tremendous breadth of manner but also forcibly put his mind onto them. Living a hard life and dying young, Caravaggio’s life revolved around powerful patrons, sybaritic cardinals and saints, disputes and criminal cases, and even street boys, prostitutes, and rivalrous painters. Born in 1571 near Milan, the tragic darkness of his art is because of his early childhood, where he saw his father and grandfather killed in the plague on the same day. In his late twenties, he decided to move to Rome and lived a dividend life, but his later years had a stink of libe trials and a questionable charge of homicide. From spending his last years in exile to eventually dying in mysterious circumstances, there is a lot to know about the artist’s later life and an answer to the most undiscussed question- How did Caravaggio die?
In 1609, Caravaggio returned to Naples to flee his enemies in the hope of being pardoned and to be freed from the oppressive conditions of exile. After being protected by an old protector, Marchesa di Caravaggio, the artist stayed in the Palazzo Cellamare at Chiaia. Being the most celebrated painter of Naples once, Caravaggio was tired, tired of running away from disputes and enemies. It felt like he was not battling with people but with himself. And in all these years, Chiaia seemed like a small retreat to the artist, as if he was a refuge of the paradisial beauty. Chiaia was a beautiful location, often described as
“Oh Chiaia, blessed shore: and oh, what gardens
Are to be seen in those confines:
And oh such strolls, and ah such glorious sports,
As would restore the dead to life…”
However, even living in this paradise, the enemies of Caravaggio were in pursuit. Following this, on 24 October 1609, he was wounded badly by them in the Osteria del Cerriglio, and a newspaper sent word of his death to Rome: ‘There has come from Naples the news that Caravaggio the famous painter has been killed, while other say disfigured.’ Hearing this news, everyone rejoiced in Naples: the walls were adorned with proverbs celebrating the joys of wine and food, women were an offer in the rooms, the tavern was frequented by poets, artists, and writers, and there were festive rites of Bacchus. Yes, they were celebrating the supposed death of the artist. But Caravaggio was not dead as the assault by four men on him badly wounded his face as if he was almost unrecognizable. And this fact was known to us by the letter of Mancini (Maccherini, 1977), who wrote again after two months,
“They say that Caravaggio may be near here, he wishes, soon to return to Rome…”
By now, Caravaggio left the city, and between October and July, when he left for Rome, he produced some of the finest of his artworks, but again with a new style. Every time Caravaggio painted in a new style, it was because of his thoughts and mind over those canvases, which changed with his personal life incidents. After this attack, he painted figures in isolated and darker areas, setting back in an architectural space with a tender mood to convey a profound sympathy with the poor and meek who make up the Christian community. These paintings were starker, more concentrated, built up with very colors with a narrative pared down to the essentials. These pictures invite contemplation, and their theme revolves around death and human evil. They portray executioners and their victims bound together in suffering, but this time, they apparently had no hope, as if there is a sense of draining of faith and submission to the tragic fate of any human life. Some paintings from this time were Crucifixion of St Andrew, Salome with the Head of John the Baptist, and David with the Head of Goliath. All these pictures had one thing in common; their theme, which shows that they were both perhaps pleas for clemency as the artist himself feared death by execution.
The David with the Head of Goliath shows a desperate plea that the Cardinal should pardon Caravaggio and his plea must be sent to Rome too. One of the exceptional facts that Bellari tells us about this painting is that Caravaggio painted his own features in this artwork. The head of the artist left for dead at the Cerriglio, wounded beyond recognition, is the Caravaggio’s witty reminiscent of his past assault and a terrible clarity waiting for his own death. He even wrote,
“Just at the stroke, when my veins start and spread,
Set on my soul an everlasting head…”
After all these Caravaggio paintings, The Martyrdom of Ursula is considered the last work of Caravaggio, where he illuminates the figure with a moonlight with rapid brushstrokes. Here, the artist paints himself with an ashen and haggard face, mouth open in horror, appearing for the last time in the same position as he was depicted years earlier in the Mattei Taking of Christ. These works tell us that Caravaggio was frantically painting during his final years of life. It was because he wanted to accumulate as much money as he could to return to Rome. Hence, he also painted three canvases for Sant’Anna dei Lombardi; a Resurrection, a St John and St Francis, and a large Circumcision for the Dominican Church of Santa Maria della Sanita, all lost.
Hence, at last, he accumulated enough money to leave for Rome in the summer of 1610. He boarded the felucca at Chiaia, leaving from the Palazzo Cellamare with a few pictures intended for Cardinal Scipione Borghese while leaving others with the Marchesa. He knew that he would have the pardon, and after everything, Caravaggio would live in Rome, which he wanted for so long. But destiny and fate had different plans for him.
How Did Caravaggio Die?
As he traveled through the felucca, it was put in at Palo, a tiny port between Civitavecchia and Tiber’s mouth, where there was a little fortress castle. Caravaggio disembarked here, perhaps intending to go to Rome. The captain of the fortress castle found something wrong with his credentials and so he put him in prison. Bellori remarked that arresting Caravaggio was an error by the Captain. But that was late enough as the felucca eventually went on to the Port’Ercole. Caravaggio’s situation was desperate as if he wanted to reach Rome at every cost. Hence, even after his felucca was long gone, he didn’t lose the hope to get to his city, Rome.
Being the most celebrated painter once, he found himself in a situation where he was alone and destitute. In the marshy terrain, infested with mosquitoes where lawlessness and bandits threatened, Caravaggio fought all of it to be in the bliss of his city. The situations were worsened to such an extent that his pictures were lost in his 100 kilometers of harsh journey on foot and sometimes by sea. The return to home is never easy but Caravaggio did keep a hope that he often portrayed in his paintings through the sharp contrasts of light in the delusion of loneliness and desolation.
When Caravaggio reached the small fortress town, Port’Etcole in the hope to find his felucca again with one of its pictures, he was saddened to know that this felucca was gone. Despite all the efforts he made, he became very ill from a fever and died at the local infirmary. Baglione wrote an account of his death,
“In desperation, he started out along the beach under the fierce heat of the July sun, trying to catch sight of the vessel that has his belongings. Finally, he came to a place where he was put to bed with the ragist fever; and so, without the aid of God or man, in a few days he died, as miserably as he had lived.”
It should be noted that even though the stories of Caravaggio’s death have numerous faces, one of the revelations from 2010 presented his remains with a surety of approximately 85%, thanks to carbon dating and remains excavated in Tuscany, and revealed that the artist might have died of lead poisoning.
Hence, the mystery of the artist’s death is still unresolved.
Conclusion.
Though Caravaggio had short-tempered behavior, I feel real despair at the fact that the paintings that he adored most during his last days were gone, he lived in acute isolation during those later days and he never saw Rome again. Though he was cut off from the world and was ringed by the mountains, sea, and great fortress during his end days, he was still a genius and continues to inspire millions of us through his compositions.
Resources.
- Caravaggio’s Studies by Walter Friedlaender.
- Caravaggio: A Life by Helen Langdon.
- Caravaggio: The Complete Works by Rossella Vodret Adamo.
- Featured Image: Boy Bitten by a Lizard by Caravaggio; Caravaggio, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
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