Free Caravaggio: A Passionate Life by Desmond Seward

day by the new colors he was introducing; not as sweet as hitherto, much fewer, dark and powerful, almost as dark and powerful as the blackness he used to throw figures into relief,” Bellori records.
    He went so far with this method that he avoided exposing his subjects to the slightest ray of sunlight, but instead placed them in thedarkness of a closed room, hanging a lamp high up which shone down on the main part of the body in such a way as to leave the rest in shadow, so that it created a truly striking contrast between light and dark. The Roman painters of those days were much intrigued by this innovation, especially the younger ones, who came flocking round him with their congratulations on being “the only imitator of nature.”
    An important consequence of Caravaggio’s revolutionary use of artificial light—candles and oil lamps—seems to have escaped notice. It meant that, unlike other painters, he did not have to depend on daylight and was able to work whenever he wanted. Neither the weather nor the time of day made any difference to him. If he wished, he could paint throughout the night. Yet the really important commissions at Rome continued to elude him because of his inability to produce frescoes. Perhaps to demonstrate that his protégé could produce something better than a fresco, the cardinal asked him to paint a mural in oils on the ceiling of his laboratory, his “alchemy room,” in the
casino
, or little house, he owned in the Ludovisi Gardens. The result was “Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto … with the globe in their midst… placed so that they can be seen from below … painted in oils on the vault.” This painting, rediscovered in 1969 and identified from Bellori’s description, is still intact in del Monte’s long-forgotten alchemy room at the Villa Buoncompagni Ludovisi.

XIII
    The Year of Murders, 1599
    T he year 1599, during which Caravaggio’s fame and prosperity became assured, was one of high drama at Rome. First, the city suffered a natural disaster. Next, the authorities discovered a tragic murder committed by a noble family. The killing of Count Cenci by his children enthralled the entire city, and the horror of their execution is almost certainly reflected in Caravaggio’s painting. The Romans were always thrilled by murders among the nobility, eagerly attending their executions. It is most unlikely that Caravaggio was absent from the huge crowds that watched the Cenci die, since his patron, Cardinal del Monte, had been asked by Grand Duke Ferdinand to try to secure a reprieve for them. For months, the Palazzo Madama must have talked of nothing but the Cenci case.
    Romans have never been strangers to winter rain. Even so, when the Tiber suddenly burst its banks on Christmas Eve 1598, they were caught off guard. By Christmas morning, much of the city was flooded and strewn with debris, with several low-lying districts under water that was still rising. The inhabitants of many of the houses around the Castel Sant’ Angelo and in Trastevere took refuge on their roofs. There were no Christmas services in the churches, not even in St. Peter’s, and Pope Clement wept unceasingly.Nor was there any flour or bread, since all the flour sacks in the city’s cellars had been spoiled. When the water went down two days later, fifteen hundred bodies were found in the streets, some washed in from the countryside. Early in the new year, the rain returned, heavier than before, while, because of warm winds in the mountains, melting snow flowed into the Tiber. On 8 January 1599, the river burst its banks again, and everybody fled to the high ground. Even the pope left the Vatican to take refuge in the Quirinal. But at last the waters receded, the debris was cleared, and normal life resumed.
    On the day before the second flood, a young noblewoman, Beatrice Cenci, had been arrested with her stepmother, Lucrezia, and taken to the dungeons of the Castel Sant’ Angelo. Her brothers, Giacomo and