9. Lifestyle
Whilst he was accumulating critical acclaim, Caravaggio was also leading a private life of scandal and ill-repute. A description of Caravaggio’s lifestyle in 1601 (when The Death of the Virgin was commissioned) by his contemporary and fellow-artist, Floris Claes van Dijk, recalls that ‘after a fortnight’s work he will swagger about for a month or two with a sword at his side and a servant following him, from one ball-court to the next, ever ready to engage in a fight or an argument, so that it is most awkward to get along with him’. His was a life of chiaroscuro.
One of Caravaggio’s defining characteristics was his short temper. In one memorable incident of 1604, he was dining at the Tavern of the Blackamoor in Rome. When he was brought a plate of artichokes, Caravaggio asked the waiter if they were cooked in oil or butter. The waiter replied that he should find out by smelling them, and Caravaggio took it as an insult against his provincial sense of taste, smashed the plate on the waiter’s head, and threatened him with a sword. He also called the man a becco fottuto (‘f****d-over cuckold’), and was later prosecuted by his victim.
Brawling was common in late-16th and early-17th-century Rome, so it says something of Caravaggio’s behaviour that he was notorious for his love of fighting. Between 1600 and 1606, he was recorded in police records 14 times, in 6 instances of which he was arrested. Caravaggio was also often stopped for carrying a sword or dagger without permission, from which charge he would defend himself by naming a prominent patron or acquaintance who had given him permission. Violence was a way of life: he threatened to beat-up both artists copying his style, and his landlady when the rent was due.