Michelangelo Merisi Caravaggio is widely respected as one of the greatest painters of all time, and by good fortune (ours) and not so good fortune (his), he ended up living and working on the island of Malta for about 3 years whilst at the height of his powers.
After a disputed tennis match in Rome, (or because he was into the other man’s wife, or possibly because of an unpaid debt) Caravaggio got himself involved in street brawl and killed a gent called Tomassoni, reputed to be a pimp with powerful familial connections. The threat of these connections inspired Caravaggio to flee Rome and he ended up in Malta in 1607.
Caravaggio was probably hoping that the Knights Hospitaller of St John would put in a good word for him with the powers that be, and obtain a pardon for the *ahem* unfortunate incident in Rome. His paintings impressed, and the Knights duly accepted him into their order by way of a thank you for all of those lovely pictures. The Grand Master de Wignacourt (of whom a portrait by Caravaggio now hangs in the Louvre) was particularly impressed, and wrote to the pope asking to allow the master painter to enter the order as a ‘Knight of Obedience’.
Rarely has a title been so inappropriately awarded.
All looked rosy in Caravaggio’s world at this stage, but he was something of a tempestuous spirit, and trouble loomed. Another brawl, and this time he was implicated in the shooting of an Italian knight, just a few days before his master work ‘The Beheading of John the Baptist’ was to be unveiled in the oratory of St John’s co-cathedral. The knights were unimpressed, imprisoning the artist in the prison at St Angelo and swiftly kicking him out of their order, dubbing him: “a foul and rotten member”
An enormous fortified prison could not contain such a free spirit, and somehow Caravaggio managed to make his escape from first the prison, and then the island. He found his way to Sicily and was en route to Rome when – for reasons which history has not revealed – he perished before his journey was completed.
So although his stay on the island was brief, Caravaggio did leave a legacy in the form of two impressive works, which you can still see today hanging in St John’s co-cathedral in Valletta. St Jerome Writing is quite something all on it’s own, and The Beheading of John the Baptist is known as the one of the great master’s finest works, so there is no excuse for not visiting the cathedral to see them both for yourself.
St Jerome Writing
The Beheading of John the Baptist
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