
History
This painting hangs in St. John’s co-cathedral in La Valetta, Malta, which in Caravaggio’s time was under control of the old crusading order, the Knights Hospitalers of St. John, and was their chapter house. The knights ruled Malta (whose inhabitants were mostly knights, a handful of European traders, and the local Maltese population) by a strict military code, and the grand master was the final authority of the island, against which there was no appeal. In this time, around 1607, the Knights enjoyed a new renown, for their victory over the Turks in 1565, which prevented an Ottoman invasion of western Europe. They christened the western part of the island La Valetta, after the name of the French Grand Master La Valette, who had engineered the defense against the Turks. It was considered very prestigious to be a knight, and many noble families placed children in the order (who were often ill-suited to it).

There are some artists whom we know quite a bit about because they wrote their lives (such as Michaelangelo Buonarotti), or because others wrote a good deal about them (Such as Versari in his Le Vite degli artisti), or because they were dodgy characters who were always in court, such as the goldsmith Cellini or Rembrandt. Of the third class is Caravaggio. His violent temper and difficulties with other artists frequently got him into legal trouble. In 1606, he killed another ruffian in a duel, Ranuccio Tomassoni, by the Tennis Courts on the via della Scroffa (today, a mechanic’s shop) which, ironically, was on the same street as St. Luigi of the French, where his St. Matthew series had made him famous. Now he was to become infamous, as dueling was illegal in the Papal States, and Caravaggio, having fled, was given the sentence in absentia of abunde capitale, authorizing anyone to kill him on behalf of the state (The Pope) and then claim their reward by bringing in his head. Caravaggio had fled first to Naples, where patrons kept him afloat, then to Sicily, and at last to Malta. At first he had attempted to buy his reconciliation from Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the nephew of Pope Paul V and administrator of Papal Justice, by painting for him. He had done this in the past to get out of trouble, and tried again with his famous David and Goliath depicting his self-portrait as the decapitated monstrous Goliath, with the obvious implication that Borghese could have his head in paint if he could but keep it in life. This particular painting is incorrectly dated to the end of Caravaggio’s life (as in Simon Schama’s otherwise powerful documentary, The Power of Art, where he overlooks the fact that the David and Goliath enters the Borghese collection in 1606, the same year as the duel, not 1611 when he died. It made for great drama, but it simply wasn’t historically accurate).
Tomassoni’s family, however, was too strong for him to grant a pardon. With that having failed, it was now presented to him that he could gain a pardon by becoming a knight of Malta. This was a tricky business because a convicted murderer did not normally get considered for entrance into the Knights, and approval would have to come from the Pope.
As soon as Wignacourt heard about Caravaggio’s arrival and intentions, he was delighted. He saw immediately the solution to his problems. He would at last have a painter, and one who was considered the greatest at that, and he would be able to keep him. That was the trick really, he understood well that Caravaggio wanted a pardon so he could return to Rome, as well as the prestige that being a Knight of Malta would give him, and Wignacourt knew that once Caravaggio became a knight, he could not leave without his permission. Problem solved. At least it appeared that way. Events would prove otherwise, as we shall note later.
Caravaggio buttered up Wignacourt with two excellent portraits, (one above, the other is St. Jerome writing) which the latter was pleased with. He also painted portraits for other Knights and royal patrons of other knights (like the Sleeping Cupid, or the Annunciation for the Duke of Lorraine). The prudent Grandmaster petitioned Pope Paul V (whose name is on the front of St. Peter’s) for a pardon for Caravaggio, but he took care not mention the name of who it was, and this was received in May of 1608. The last test Wignacourt laid before Caravaggio was to paint the altar piece of the St. John for what is today the Co-Cathedral, at that time the Knights’ Chapter house in La Valletta, depicting the Church’s titular saint John the Baptist, which was to be ready before the feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, when it would be unveiled.
The Painting
The figures are life-sized, to give the knights the sense that this is a real life drama happening before them. Oil painting became the supreme art in the late 15th century after painters like Van Eyck in the Netherlands were able to accomplish what oils had not to that point, make the dead come to life. What Caravaggio does, is not merely make the pictures look lifelike, but to act life-like as well, with a strength and intensity that had not been seen before in European art.
The beheading of John the Baptist, as we noted is very dark. It is certainly the masterpiece of Caravaggio’s later period, and it is the only one to be signed by him in name. It depicts, of course, St. John, his executioner, a soldier, Salome with a golden platter to receive the head of St. John the Baptist and an old woman. The interpretation of the old woman differs amongst art historians. Some think it is actually Herodias, the wife that Herod Antipas had forced his brother to divorce so he could marry her. This interpretation is interesting, and we will take it up later. The other is that she is a bystander who sees the horror of the act, and thus represents us, standing inside the painting and yet outside too, demolishing the barrier between the painting’s space, and our space.
There is a lot to look at here. The space creates a paradox, like a sudden silence in a noisy place, which seems louder than the previous noise by its contrast. The space fills the painting, though it is empty, with foreboding, and horror. This is the point of the two prisoners in the corner who are doing their utmost to have a look. The atmosphere is so terrible, that men of that sort are attracted to it, so that they might see the dirty work carried on.

-Caravaggio
Barberini Palace Museum, Rome





Epilogue
It would make a fantastic story if that was how it all went, but tragically it did not. At first it turned out well, Caravaggio was made a knight of Malta, and declared the greatest of all painters. He now had prestige as a knight, and the 17th century would witness artists receiving marks of status, such as Valezquez, who was made a knight of Santiago, Boromini would become a knight of the Holy Cross, Rubens would be knighted both by Philip IV of Spain and Charles I of England, Bernini who was made a Papal knight. Though it is not recorded, we can safely assume that at this point Caravaggio discovered that he would not be able to return to Rome as soon as he had hoped. This disappointment would fester, and within a month of his being a Knight of St. John, he and some other knights assaulted a high ranking knight, and in the code of manhood of the day defaced his door, as well as kicking in the door of a musician. For a long time this detail was not known, and numerous wild theories about Caravaggio’s crime circulated amongst researches, ranging from acts of sodomy to some form of satanic worship. We now know it was none of this, that it had entirely to do with assaulting a brother knight, thanks to Maltese historian Keith Scribberas, who in 2002 took the step of X-raying some old documents which had been smeared with pitch to hide their contents. (Caravaggio, Dixon, pg. 387) The Knight was Brother Giovanni Rodomonte Roero, an administrator of the Knight’s Justice, and we can be certain that he is the one who assaulted Caravaggio in Naples, which left him badly disfigured, and ultimately led to his death. For unknown reasons Caravaggio and 6 other knights made the assault, which also included a pistol. It could be Caravaggio figured out he would not be allowed to leave Malta, and his irritation had concord with the grievances of these other knights who had issue with this particular Justice.
Nevertheless, the assault proved embarrassing for Wignacourt, as on 29 August he unveiled the painting for the feast of the beheading of St. John the Baptist. Caravaggio, who had painted it, was thrown in prison, the guva, a deep underground prison which was thought to have been filled in by the British, but was discovered to still be there in all its terror in the 1970s. High ranking as well as low ranking knights were in jail, one of the assailants was even a deacon and had to be laicized. At the same time, the broken door of the Maltese choirmaster was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and the musicians went on strike over pay, and other matters. Thus neither was there a solemn Mass or a Solemn Vespers, on the patronal feast of the Knights of St. John. The whole event was a disaster for Wignacourt, guaranteeing he would not be merciful. No one had ever escaped from the guva, but that was no obstacle for Caravaggio. It would have been all but impossible without the aid of someone else, involving as it did scaling high walls, lowering himself into the harbor and finding a boat. His escape, no matter how it happened, made him a fugitive from the Knight’s justice, and they formally expelled him from the order. He fled to Sicily where he painted a number of paintings, and was an instant celebrity wherever he went, and then back to Naples, where he was beaten and left for dead, almost certainly by Roero. Not long after, he would attempt to go to Rome with the promise of a pardon from the Pope’s nephew, Scipione Borghese, but he died on the way there, which we will take up in a discussion of another of Caravaggio’s paintings.