The Duel

By Pueros

1573-1606

Michelangelo was born in 1573, nine years after his namesake, the painter of the ceiling of the Cistine Chapel and sculptor of ‘David’, had died. He was the son of Fermo Merisi, steward and architect to a Marquis. However, Michelangelo’s surname of Merisi would later be subsumed and it would be his northern Italian birthplace that would later provide him with the name by which he is better known to posterity.

Orphaned at the age of 11, Michelangelo was apprenticed in the same year to the painter Simone Peterzano of Milan. However, in 1592, the talented young man went to Rome, where the bulk of major artistic commissions were to be won, to seek his fortune amongst the eternal city’s large creative community. He was already in possession of the fundamental technical skills of painting and had acquired a style that tried to represent true nature and events, following the approach of the Lombard and Venetian painters as opposed to the idealised Florentine style.

Michelangelo settled into the cosmopolitan Roman society of the Campo Marzio. This decaying neighbourhood of inns, eating houses, temporary shelter and little picture shops suited the young man’s circumstances and temperament. He was frequently virtually without means and his inclinations were always toward anarchy and against tradition.

The first few years were an anguishing period of instability and humiliation. Michelangelo moved from one unsatisfactory job to another, often working as an assistant to artists of much less talent. He earned his living for the most part with hackwork and never stayed more than a few months at any studio. However, finally, in 1595, he decided to set out on his own and began to sell his pictures through a dealer, Maestro Valentino, who brought his work to the attention of Cardinal Francesco del Monte, a prelate of great influence in the Papal court. The young man soon came under the protection of the admiring Del Monte and received board, lodging and remuneration in the Cardinal’s house.

Despite earlier material and spiritual deprivation, Michelangelo had by now painted about 40 works, the subjects being mostly adolescent boys, for which he possessed a taste. His ‘Boy With A Fruit Basket’ of 1593 can today be seen in the Borghese Gallery in Rome. ‘The Young Bacchus’ and ‘The Music Party’ of the same year can be seen in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, respectively.

These early pictures reveal a fresh, direct and experimental approach. They were painted directly from life and show almost no trace of the mannerist style that was then prevalent in Rome. Michelangelo took his young male subjects from the streets and would invariably also require sexual as well as modelling services from them, leading not only to a very disorderly but also to a very dissipated life. However, boys were not his only fancy. The young man also enjoyed young women. In modern parlance, he ‘swung both ways’. It was this latter taste that would also cause his early death.

With the help of Del Monte, Michelangelo obtained, in 1597, his first major commission, the decoration of the Contarelli Chapel in the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome. This work would establish him, at the age of 24, as a ‘pictor celeberrimus’, a ‘celebrated painter’, with a growing number of important protectors and clients. The task was an imposing one, as it called for three large paintings of scenes from the life of St. Matthew, namely ‘St. Matthew and the Angel’, ‘The Calling of St. Matthew’ and ‘The Martyrdom of St. Matthew’. The execution of the triptych would take three years until 1601.

In the paintings, Michelangelo substituted a novel dramatic contemporary realism for the traditional pictorial formulas used in depicting saints and this provoked public astonishment, as well as admonishment in some quarters. In fact, the first version of the canvas that was to go over the altar, ‘St Matthew and the Angel’, was too offensive to the canons of San Luigi dei Francesi. They had never seen such a representation of a saint, depicted with the physical features of a common labourer, and insisted that it be redone. The other two works were no less controversial.

Michelangelo’s three paintings for the Contarelli Chapel not only caused a sensation in Rome but also marked a radical change in his artistic preoccupation. Henceforth, he would devote himself almost entirely to the painting of traditional religious themes, to which, however, he gave a whole new interpretation. He often chose subjects that had a dramatic, violent or macabre emphasis and he proceeded to divest them of their idealised associations, continuing to take his models from the streets.

After the completion of the Contarelli Chapel commission, though not yet 30, Michelangelo overshadowed all his contemporaries as a painter. As a result, there was a swarm of ecclesiastical and private orders for his works. ‘The Crucifixion of St. Peter’ (1601) and ‘The Conversion of St. Paul’, both in the Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome, ‘The Deposition of Christ’ (1602-04), now in the Vatican Museum, Rome, and the ‘Death of the Virgin’ (1605-06), now in the Louvre, Paris, are among his monumental works produced at this time. However, some of these paintings provoked violent reaction and enemies.

Nevertheless, criticism did not cloud Michelangelo’s success. His reputation and income increased and he began to be envied. However, although he moved in the society of cardinals and princes, the young man’s spirit was essentially unchanged, still given to wrath and riot.

Michelangelo had many encounters with the law. In 1600, a fellow artist accused him of assault and, in the following year, he wounded a soldier. In 1603, he was imprisoned on the complaint of another painter and released only through the intercession of the French ambassador. In April 1604, he was accused of throwing a plate of artichokes in the face of a waiter and, in October of the same year, he was arrested for throwing stones at the Roman Guards.

In May 1605, Michelangelo was seized for misuse of arms and, in July, he had to flee Rome for a time because he had wounded a man in a fight over a woman. However, it was the events of 28th-29th May 1606 that was to change his life and subsequently bring his career to a premature end.

Rome, 28th May 1606

The bearded Michelangelo possessed a voracious sexual appetite. Already, earlier in the day, he had sodomised one of his young male models. The boy had been posing as a naked cherub but was, in fact, no angel.

Michelangelo was now enjoying his other fancy, his taste for young pretty flesh of the other gender. The beautiful young woman was in her early twenties and possessed long flowing brown hair, similarly coloured sensuous eyes and a wondrously lithe body, crowned by magnificent curvaceous firm breasts. However, it was the female’s small neat patch of brown pubic hair and the jewels that it tried to hide that secured most of her male paramour’s manual, oral and now penile attentions.

Michelangelo had already brought his lover to a couple of multiple orgasms and was now intent on at least one of his own. However, this desire was to remain unfulfilled on this occasion, as the young woman’s husband suddenly entered the bedroom, having returned home unexpectedly early.

Ranuccio Tomassoni had been one of Michelangelo’s drinking companions for several years, relishing the reflected fame such association had brought. Ranuccio was not a pleasant character, being one of the nastier members of one of Rome’s foremost criminal families, basically a forerunner of such an organisation as the Mafia. However, such qualities had only stimulated his anarchic so-called friend to accept the dangerous challenge of seducing his wife, their secret illicit liaisons having now taken place regularly for over three months.

Naturally, Ranuccio did not take kindly to finding Michelangelo in bed with his spouse and the result was a violent struggle, ended only when the screaming woman called for servants to separate the combatants. However, it was subsequently agreed to resume hostilities the following day in a more formal context and setting. Custom of the time dictated that vengeful satisfaction and restoration of honour could only be secured through a duel.

Rome, 29th May 1606

The chosen venue for the early-morning duel was an indoor tennis court. The place still exists but is no longer a sporting venue for an early version of the racket and ball game. Instead, the building is far more representative of modern times, being a back-street garage.

The adversaries arrived at dawn with two seconds apiece, the elderly custodian of the facility having being bribed to allow access and use. Michelangelo and Ranuccio then began to ready themselves with the help of their friends. The particular form of preparation in which both now indulged would be considered unusual for such a duel at another place or time or for one entered into for another reason in 17th century Rome, as the two men, both in their early 30s, disrobed. However, at this period in Italy, the practice was not uncommon when the fight was over a woman, as the combatants would not be trying to kill, a potentially capital offence, but to castrate.

The naked men were eventually presented by their seconds with their ornately handled rapiers, long thin blades honed to acute razor-like sharpness. However, because of the non-fatal intent of the duel, neither was issued with the customary dagger that would normally occupy their less-skilled hand, ready to deliver a deathblow if the more distant defence provided by their swords was breached.

The naked Michelangelo and Ranuccio faced each other, ready for the duel to commence, signalled by the lowering of another rapier held by one of the seconds. No-one made any comment about the fact that both of the men’s endangered genitals sported erections.

The second’s sword was lowered and combat was engaged. Soon, the loud metallic clashing of blade striking blade resounded round the cavernous tennis court, as each duellist tried to overcome his opponent’s defences to strike the blow or blows that would not kill his adversary’s body but rather his manhood.

Italians in this macho period frequently practised swordsmanship, often with the help of instructors, and Michelangelo and Ranuccio were no exception. The former, through his regular scrapes, and the latter, through his profession, had also acquired some practical expertise of the skill and the pair were a match for each other.

The potentially deadly, at least for their sexual organs, sparring between Michelangelo and Ranuccio went on for several minutes, with the manhood of both somehow narrowly surviving decent attempts to parry defences to strike emasculating blows. The painter had suffered two particularly worrying attacks. One swipe of his opponent’s rapier would surely have sliced off his hard cock if his attempt at avoidance, involving a little jump, had not caused the horizontal member to rise briefly to the vertical. Another sword thrust had also scraped the underside of his scrotum, causing droplets of blood to drip onto the tennis court floor.

These escapes enraged the easily riled Michelangelo and he threw all caution to the wind and started to fight incautiously like a madman. The result was another narrow miss by Ranuccio, which opened a wound on the upper inside leg of the painter. However, the latter was to secure terrible revenge, as his fury induced his demented actions to pierce at last his adversary’s defences and a vicious thrust of the head of his sword firmly struck flesh.

Unfortunately for both duellists, Michelangelo’s blow did not strike the intended target but rather penetrated deeply into Ranuccio’s lower abdomen. The latter’s eyes opened in anguished astonishment as the hit landed, before beginning to glaze over as his body started to fall to the floor.

Ranuccio’s two seconds ran to their friend’s aid but it soon became clear that the wound, created by a highly reckless if not dishonourable blow, was fatal. All hell then broke loose, as the men tried to attack Michelangelo but he was assisted by his own supporters, who helped the still-naked painter to escape not only the scene but also later Rome itself.

1606-1610

The Pope himself, encouraged by Ranuccio’s criminal but highly influential Tomassoni family, helped by the many enemies Michelangelo had acquired over the years, not least amongst Church traditionalists, now declared the painter to be a murderous fugitive, someone whom anyone could decapitate on the spot for a hefty reward. The thought of such a fate caused the artist later to portray his own head as that of the eponymous saint when he executed ‘The Beheading of St. John the Baptist’ for the Knights of St. John in Malta in 1608.

Michelangelo’s years of exile from Rome were adventurous and, despite the fear of capture by Papal agents or members of the Tomassoni clan, artistically fruitful. He spent much of 1607 in Naples and 1608 in Malta and Sicily.

Michelangelo’s desperate flight could only be ended by Papal pardon and he was aware that there had been intercessions on his behalf in Rome when he again moved north to Naples in October 1609. However, there, Tomassoni henchmen finally caught up with him at the door of one of the typically notorious seedy harbourside inns the painter frequented.

Michelangelo was attacked and wounded so badly that rumours reached Rome that the ‘celebrated painter’ was dead. However, after a long convalescence, he sailed in July 1610 from Naples to Rome to receive confirmation of his pardon but he was mistakenly arrested en-route when his boat made a stop at Palo.

On his release after a couple of days’ awful incarceration, the ailing Michelangelo discovered that his boat had already sailed ahead, taking his belongings. Setting out to overtake the vessel, he arrived at Porto Escole, a Spanish possession within the Papal States. However, here, he collapsed on the beach and died a few days later on the 18th of July 1610, of pneumonia caused by residual after-effects of the wounds incurred during the Neapolitan assault. A document granting him clemency arrived from the Pope three days later.

The artist's burial place is unknown, which is a pity given that few painters in history have exercised as extraordinary an influence as this tempestuous and short-lived man. Michelangelo Merisi, known to posterity as Caravaggio, was destined to turn a large part of European art away from the ideal viewpoint of the Renaissance to the concept that simple reality was of primary importance.

THE END

of

‘THE DUEL’

by Pueros