In May 1606, Caravaggio’s rackety life caught up with him. He already had a long list of misdemeanours against his name. He had been twice arrested for carrying a sword without a permit; put on trial by the Roman authorities for writing scurrilous verses about a rival, Giovanni Baglione (or “Johnny Bollocks” according to the poems); arrested for affray and assault, in one incident being injured himself (his testimony to the police survives: “I wounded myself with my own sword when I fell down these stairs. I don’t know where it was and there was no one else there”); arrested again for smashing a plate of artichokes in the face of a waiter; for throwing stones and abusing a constable (telling him he could “stick [his sword] up his arse”); and for smearing excrement on the house of the landlady who had had his belongings seized in payment of missed rent. There were more incidents, all meticulously recorded in the Roman archives.
Eventually, however, he overstepped so far that even his lofty clerical patrons, notably cardinals Del Monte and Borghese, could no longer help him. The painter had a long-running animosity with a pimp called Ranuccio Tomassoni that seems to have come to a head with an argument about a woman, either Tomassoni’s wife or Fillide Melandroni, a courtesan and one of Caravaggio’s models: the two men decided to settle matters with a duel. They met at night on a tennis court and in the fight, Caravaggio pierced Tomassoni’s femoral artery. Caravaggio may have been aiming for his opponent’s genitals, to inflict a sexual wound in keeping with the honour culture of the time. Tomassoni bled to death.
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