E-Book, Englisch, 280 Seiten
Ellis The Caravaggio Conspiracy
1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-1-84351-316-2
Verlag: The Lilliput Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 280 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-84351-316-2
Verlag: The Lilliput Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
WALTER ELLIS is a journalist who worked as a feature writer and foreign correspondent for The Irish Times,Financial Times, Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Times. He is the author of two non-fiction books, The OxbridgeConspiracy, about elitism in British higher education, and The Beginning of the End, a memoir of growing up inBelfast as best friend to the man who would become the INLA's most ruthless assassin. Both books were widelyreviewed and serialized. The author now lives in New York.
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Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio after his home town east of Milan, looked up from his most recent commission, Death of the Virgin, intended for the church of Santa Maria della Scala in Trastevere. His model, 23-year-old Anna Bianchini, a striking red-haired courtesan often used by the city’s artists, was lying full-length on a kitchen table, with one hand resting on her stomach, the other stretched out on a cushion.
She looked ravishing, but Caravaggio’s mind was elsewhere. Earlier in the day he had been insulted by one of the most influential men in Rome. Father Claudio Acquaviva, Superior General of the Society of Jesus, had turned up a little after midday at the home of the banker Ciriaco Mattei and demanded to view his Supper at Emmaus, newly completed and still awaiting its final coat of varnish.
The moment when the resurrected Christ revealed himself to two of his disciples in Emmaus was a familiar theme. Of the two versions seen by Mattei, one, by Titian, had struck him as bloodless and stylized, while the other, a Veronese, was almost comically overcrowded, with Christ barely visible among a host of the patron’s family seeking his blessing.
But the Caravaggio was breathtaking – worth every baioccho of the 150 scudi Mattei had paid for it. It was, he told its creator, as inspired and brilliant in its execution as anything produced in the last hundred years.
Acquaviva didn’t share the banker’s judgment. Instead of admiring the canvas, set on an easel next to a window, the black-clad divine had recoiled, claiming it was ‘sinful and quite possibly heretical’. The fact that Christ, just prior to his Ascension, had been portrayed without a beard caused him literally to splutter with indignation.
Caravaggio’s nature had once been judged by a Jewish apothecary – a man whose skill extended beyond leeches and potions to the science of the four humours – to be a dangerous mix of choleric and melancholic. On this occasion, as he recalled Acquaviva’s splenetic response to his art, the dominant emotion was rage.
‘Bloody Jesuits!’ he began, causing Anna to roll her eyes. ‘I said to him, after he was resurrected, not as a man but as the Saviour of the world, Jesus probably wouldn’t have a beard. When you think about it, it was probably the fact he was clean-shaven that made it so difficult for the disciples to recognize him. They’d spent most of the previous three years in his company, yet it was only halfway through the meal that it hit them who he was. But Mattei stopped me. Said I’d only make matters worse.’
‘Wise man,’ said Anna.
‘Scared of getting on the wrong side of the Jesuits more like. Do you know what Rubens said about my Emmaus? He said it was a work of genius. It humbled him, he said. Not Acquaviva. Christ, no! Treated me like a serving boy. He’s supposed to be a humble man – a learned friar, simple in his tastes. Yet the moment I opened my mouth, it was obvious he thought I was lucky to be in the same room as him, breathing the same air. My clothes were a disgrace, he said. My hair was a mess. Who does he think he is? Fucking bigot.’
Anna’s eyes widened. ‘You want to watch what you say, Michelangelo. The Church runs Rome. For God’s sake, it is Rome. You’ll get yourself into trouble if you go on saying stuff like that about them.’
‘Are you saying I’m wrong?’
‘I’m not saying nothing. I’m just pointing out that if the sbirri come calling, it’s no good you telling them the Jesuits are a load of hypocrites.’
The sbirri, Rome’s corrupt, ineffectual police force, were no friends of the city’s artists. Unable, or unwilling, to do much about real crime – murder, burglary, footpads, the ill-treatment of the poor by the Church and nobility – they preferred to concentrate on the crimes that they could solve, mainly prostitution, sodomy and drunkenness. Just a week before, the artist had spent a night in the cells of the Tor di Nona, a notorious interrogation centre, after getting into a fight in the Turk’s Head tavern. If it hadn’t been for the intervention of Cardinal Del Monte, his erstwhile patron, who had known him for years, he could have gone to jail for three months, or even been sent to the galleys.
‘I suppose you’re right,’ he said.
Anna brightened. ‘Course I am. And, by the way, Acquaviva wasn’t wrong about the way you dress. You’re making good money these days, you’re one of the most famous painters in Rome. And you’re really quite good looking, with those thick lips and ebony eyes. So why not smarten yourself up and buy some decent clothes?’ She raised her hand to scratch her nose, causing Caravaggio to look sternly at her.
‘Stay still,’ he said.
‘What? You mean if I don’t put my hand back in exactly the same position, you’d paint two of them?’
‘Anna!’
‘Anyway, it’s funny what you were saying. ’Cos there was this Dominican, from Venice, came to see me the other day – in town to discuss legal business. He says Rome’s an abomination, full of whores and thieves and the worst kinds of priests.’
‘Keep still. And he told you this while he was fucking you, did he?’
‘Afterwards, matter of fact, while he was picking at some olives and enjoying a glass of wine.’
‘Typical. What was his name?’
‘I can’t tell you that.’
‘Why not?’
Anna looked at him with an expression of perfect mock seriousness. ‘Priests aren’t the only ones with secrets, you know.’
‘Oh … right. I forgot about the Knocking Shop Code of Conduct. So what did he say about the clergy?’
‘He said there wasn’t a sin in Christendom that the priests and bishops of Rome don’t commit on a daily basis. Cardinals too. Said it wouldn’t surprise him if some of them didn’t even believe in Our Lord.’
‘That’s going a bit far, don’t you think?’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘And how did he reply?’
‘He stuck his hand between my legs.’
‘I’ll bet he did.’
‘What?’
‘Never mind. Stop fidgeting. Remember, you’re not only a virgin, you’re the Mother of God. You’re not supposed to look as if you were born in a bawdy house.’
‘You didn’t mind last time.’
‘When was that?’
‘The Flight into Egypt. One of my best, if you ask me.’
‘Very true,’ said Caravaggio. ‘But you were younger then.’
Anna glared at him. ‘You saying I’m past it?’
A tricky one. After all, she was past twenty now. He remembered how she looked when she posed for the Egyptian painting, holding the baby Jesus to her breast. She had just learned she was pregnant – not by him, as it happened – and the news had filled her with a kind of … holiness. But then she’d had a miscarriage, all too common in her line of work, which, as it happened, made her perfect for his next commission, the Penitent Magdalene. The composition, though more narrowly focused, was practically the same: crouched over, shoulders bent, hands clasped on her lap, her long red hair streaming down her right shoulder. The difference this time was that she was consumed with grief. There was a hole in her life – an emptiness at the heart of her. The awareness she had shown of her loss was not only genuine, it had moved him to tears.
‘Well?’ she said, holding her pose with obvious difficulty. ‘I’m waiting.’
Caravaggio rubbed his nose violently with the knuckles of his left hand. ‘Don’t be daft, Anna,’ he said. ‘If anything, you’re more beautiful now than you were then. It’s just that, these days you … you know more – and it shows.’
‘I should bloody well hope so. In this town, you need a good head on your shoulders, and a long memory, just to survive. Why do you suppose I keep a list of my clients hidden away, along with all their hidden bits – identity marks, if you know what I mean? It’s because I don’t want no one doing me harm and thinking they can get away with it. The way things are, if you’ve not got the pox, you’ve got the plague, and even if you haven’t, the sbirri want to cut your nose off, or your ears, just ’cos you try to earn a decent living with the gifts God gave you. That’s Christian charity for you.’
This made Caravaggio smile. He had always liked Anna. She stood up for herself – didn’t let men walk all over her. ‘So what about your Dominican?’ he asked her. ‘The one from Venice. He mention anything about the Turks? Longhi thinks they’re getting ready for war.’
Onorio Longhi, from Lombardy, was an architect and a loudmouth and one of Caravaggio’s close circle of drinking companions. War and fighting were in his blood.
Anna’s eyes widened at the mention of Longhi’s name. ‘No surprise there,’ she said. ‘You know what they say about Onorio … if he’s not wearing a sword, it’s because he’s got a dagger down his tights.’
Caravaggio grinned at the aptness of the observation. ‘That’s as maybe,’ he said. ‘But what did the Good Father have to say about it?’
‘He said the Turks were building up their navy and he wouldn’t be surprised if they sailed on Crete. In that case, he said, it would be up to the Venetians to save the day – as usual. The Pope would just celebrate High Mass and call on divine aid.’
‘Sounds about right.’ He mixed a little more red for the Virgin’s dress. ‘Has it ever occurred to you, Anna, that we’re only Christians...
