'So Malta may bask in the glory of Caravaggio's works'

Caravaggio was a great artist but he was also a troublemaker who loved "tavern life" and the brawls that were associated with it, a new book says.

The book, Caravaggio: Art And Knighthood In Malta, written by Keith Sciberras and David Stone, has just been published by Midsea Books.

The two authors have been researching Caravaggio for several years. Dr Sciberras is a lecturer in history of art at the University of Malta and Prof. Stone is an associate professor of art history at the University of Delaware, in the United States.

Dozens of books have been written about Caravaggio. Is there really need for more? Dr Sciberras says this is the era of the "Caravaggio craze".

"In the 1970s and 1980s it was Rembrandt. In the early 1990s it was the Post-Impressionists. Now it's Caravaggio. But the thing with Caravaggio is that his life and the social context he lived in were never really researched in depth before. And having lived a life on the move, or on the run, piecing his life together makes research more difficult. Yet, he spent 15 months in Malta, which is the longest period of time at a stretch he spent in any one place after he committed murder in Rome exactly 400 years ago," Dr Sciberras said.

Caravaggio was "re-discovered" in Italy in the 1940s and a huge exhibition was set up in Milan in 1954 that was a big crowd puller. A number of other works started being attributed to him, but later sifting of these works ruled many of them out. The Beheading of St John, held in Malta, is the only signed painting by this great master.

"He was a realist painter, which was rather new for his time. His paintings had the power to shock and that must have made him talk of the town at his time. There were no films or TV screens at the time, and his realistic portraits and renditions were awe-inspiring. His painting of the beheading must have had the same stunning effect that recent videos of beheadings on TV had on many of us," Dr Sciberras said.

In April 1606, Caravaggio was fleeing justice after killing a man in a duel in Rome.

"It appears he had been wounded in the duel and after he recovered he resumed painting in October, when he resurfaced in Naples. Naples was then under Spanish domain and, because he was protected as the most famous artist at the time, he was not handed back to the Pope. It is evident that as an artist he wanted to be back in Rome.

"Why he came to Malta, which was further south from Rome, and was governed by the Knights who were strong allies of the Pope, still remains to be discovered. But it is clear that some negotiations with the artist had been going on before he came to Malta as he arrived on a galley belonging to the Order of St John and, soon after his arrival, Grandmaster Wignacourt was striving to get him a papal pardon.

"It is evident the Grandmaster was trying to establish an intimate relationship with Caravaggio as he succeeded in investing him as a knight, for which he needed permission from the Pope.

"But even here Caravaggio had a fast track and precisely a year to the date after his arrival in Malta he was made a knight. In declaring him so, the Grandmaster stated that he was being knighted 'so that our Island of Malta may at last glory in the works of this great master'," Dr Sciberras said.

But even knighthood did not keep Caravaggio away from the tavern way of life he should have been avoiding for barely four weeks after being knighted, he was involved in a brawl in which a knight was seriously injured. Caravaggio was arrested and ended up at Fort St Angelo in Vittoriosa.

He was detained two days before his painting of the beheading was due to be inaugurated.

A month later, he escaped from Fort St Angelo by scaling down a rope and a boat took him to Sicily. In many ways, this resembles the clandestine sea travel between the two islands we see today.

"The escape led to a procedure to divest him of knighthood and this symbolically took place at St John's in front of the only Caravaggio painting we know he had signed.

Ironically, the signature carries the letter F in front of his surname.

Probably this stood for Fra, as Caravaggio was obviously proud of his knighthood just as a graduate student would be on graduation day," Dr Sciberras said.

The signature is in St John's blood, making it more significant, especially considering who St John was for the knights, he added.

Dr Sciberras feels that the "Caravaggio craze" is still to reach its peak. He himself is working on another book about him while a number of activities are planned next year by the Caravaggio Foundation and the History of Art programme of the University of Malta during which Valletta will be turned into a Caravaggio city.

"Malta has two very important paintings by this great master and we do well to boast about them. Cultural activities and tourism should centre around them.

"As Wignacourt wrote when he knighted Caravaggio, the island of Malta should bask in the glory of the works of this great master," Dr Sciberras said.