Exhibition At Rome’s State Archives Shows Carravaggio to Have Been ~ Mad, Bad and Dangerous

Written by Jenny Canestraro Friday, 17 June 2011 20:20

Rome, Italy - Infamous while he lived, forgotten almost immediately after his death, it was only in the 20th century that the importance of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio to the development of Western art was rediscovered. An exhibition of documents at Rome's State Archives now throws light on his tumultuous life there at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries. Caravaggio's friendships, daily life and frequent brawls, including the one which brought him a death sentence from Pope Paul V, are described in handwritten police logs, legal and court parchments all bound together in heavy tomes and carefully preserved in this unique repository of Rome's history during the Renaissance and after. Four hundred years after his death, Caravaggio is a 21st Century superstar among old master painters. His stark, dramatically lit, super-realistic paintings strike a modern chord - but his police record is more shocking than any modern bad boy rock star's. Exhibition on view February 11 to May 15, 2011 shows Carravaggio to have been almost constantly In trouble with local police.

The picture the documents paint is that of an angry young man who went about town carrying personal weapons (a sword, dagger, and even a pistol) without written permits boasting that he enjoyed the protection of the ecclesiastical authorities who commissioned some of his most famous works. He had frequent brushes with the police, got into trouble for throwing a plate of cooked artichokes in the face of a waiter in a tavern, and made a hole in the ceiling of his rented studio, so that his huge paintings would fit inside. His landlady sued, so he and a friend pelted her window with stones.

All these events are documented with eyewitness accounts in this collection of yellowing parchments rich in contemporary detail for a skilled archivist. The documents also shed light upon Caravaggio's death at Porto Erole, north of Rome in July 1610. He did not die alone on a beach after escaping from his creditors and the police, as some of his biographers say, but in a hospital bed. Only 38 years old, he was on his way back to the city from the south in the belief that his powerful friends had secured a pardon for his offences.

The documents that record Caravaggio's life in Rome are written in a mixture of Latin legal jargon and racy Italian vernacular that any modern Roman could easily understand. They needed careful restoration, as parts of the parchment were breaking up, the acid in the ink literally devouring the pages. A handful of sponsors including a local bus company and the Italian Land Rover distributors helped to fund the work. The Italian Culture Ministry has slashed budgets this year as part of Italy's austerity program and libraries and archives have been particularly badly hit.

The restored files provide the historical context for the sellout show in Rome last year, when more than three-quarters of a million visitors queued for hours in stifling summer heat to see some 50 of the mad, bad and dangerous painter's works. "A window has been opened into the past," said Federica Galloni, head of culture for the Lazio region at the opening of the new exhibition.

All the events described in the documents occurred within walking distance of one another in a small area of the city. Caravaggio's haunts such as the Osteria del Moro (inn of the Moor) and Osteria della Lupa (inn of the she-wolf) are long gone, and the church of St Ambrose has been subsumed in a larger, more recent church on the Via del Corso. But the narrow streets are still there, often clogged with parked motorbikes, but still dotted with medieval buildings that Caravaggio would have known. Walking along them, after visiting the exhibition, the vivid tales of the painter's rumbustious life linger in the imagination.

Visit the Rome's State Archives website at :  http://www.archiviodistatoroma.beniculturali.it