11. Murder
Caravaggio’s penchant for heavy drinking, sword-wielding, and brawling was bound to end in tears. One of his many enemies in Rome’s seedy underworld was Ranuccio Tomassoni, and the pair’s rivalry culminated in a duel in 1605, that saw Tomassoni slain by Caravaggio. Traditionally, it was held that the pair had been playing a tennis match, inevitably started arguing, and fought a duel to settle their differences that resulted in Tomassoni sustaining a fatal wound and bleeding to death. Caravaggio sustained a head injury from one of Tomassoni’s companions, but fled before he could be further injured (or arrested).
Evidence unearthed by Andrew Graham-Dixon in the Vatican archive, however, suggests that the fight actually took place over a female prostitute, Fillide Melandroni, whom both men wished to hire for the night. Tomassoni, a pimp, was actually killed in a botched attempt at castration. Street fights in Rome in the early 17th century were something of an art, and ‘if a man insulted a man’s woman he would get his penis cut off’. The surgeon who treated Tomassoni suggested that he was knocked to the floor during the duel and then injured in the femoral artery, which supports Graham-Dixon’s theory.
Either way, after killing Tomassoni, Caravaggio did not stick around. Having fled Rome, Caravaggio was convicted of murder in absentia and sentenced to bando capital, meaning that anyone from the Papal States could kill him with impunity and be rewarded upon production of his body or severed head. Caravaggio initially hid in Naples, where his childhood connections from Caravaggio town, the eminent Colonna family, gave him protection. He also painted David with the Head of Goliath, which he sent to Cardinal Scipione Borghese, possibly in hope of pardon. After all, Goliath’s severed head was modelled on Caravaggio himself…