Caravaggio ‘Obbediente’

Abstract

‘IT BEFITS GREAT leaders to prove their benevolence by advancing men not only on account of their noble birth but also on account of their art and science whatever it may be so that human talent in hope of reward and honour may apply itself to praiseworthy studies with all its might’. It was within the context of such a humanist manifesto that Chivalric Orders began to embrace artists within their fold and set the fashion for artist-knights. This extract from an oration written in Malta in July 1608 to justify Caravaggio’s entry into the Order of St John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta as a knight of Magistral Obedience provides the background to the complicated story of how the artist’s great talents were honoured. Incredibly, the oration was written exactly two years after Caravaggio had murdered Ranuccio Tommasoni in Rome. It is clear, however, that the power of Caravaggio’s brush and the celebration of his virtuosity was more important than his dissolute lifestyle, despite the fact that the oration was written in a Catholic frontier country renowned, not for the artistic patronage of its rulers, but for the military austerity of its leader, the French Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt (Fig.12).