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`Frater Michael Angelus in tumultu': the cause of Caravaggio's imprisonment in Malta

2002; Burlington Magazine Publications; Volume: 144; Issue: 1189 Linguagem: Inglês

2044-9925

Keith Sciberras,

Renaissance and Early Modern Studies

oN 6th October 1608 Fra Hieronymus Varays, Procurator for the Treasury of the Order of Malta, informed the Venerable Council that the Knight Fra Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio had, while detained in the Castle of S. Angelo in the Grand Harbour of Malta, escaped from it and secretly fled from the island, thereby breaching the statutes of the Order. This eventually led to the solemn privatio habitus ceremony of 1st December 1608, during which Caravaggio was defrocked in absentia of his habit as Knight of the Order.' While the story of what happened in Malta following his dramatic escape is very well known, there has up to now been no precise indication of why Caravaggio had been detained, or why he had so suddenly lost the favour of the Grand Master, Fra Alof de Wignacourt, and of the Venerable Council. Caravaggio had been admitted into the Order as Knight of Obedience on 14thJuly 1608 and had seemed finally to have settled down and achieved a much needed mental stability. He had just finished the Beheading ofSt John the Baptist for the Oratory of the Decollato (Fig.27). There has been much speculation about what could have led to Caravaggio's detention in the prisons of the Castle of S. Angelo, and various theories have been put forward on the subject. Nobody at the time, not even the early biographers, seems to have had detailed information about the affair, even though it can now be seen that some of them got very close to the truth. More recent writers have suggested that the reason for Caravaggio's arrest may have been information received by the Malta authorities about his involvement in the murder of Tomassoni in Rome, or some more recent homicide, sodomy or crime 'too appalling to be recorded'.2 The document published in the Appendix below (Document II) shows, for the first time, evidence that Caravaggio had simply been involved in a brawl.