The Last Caravaggio: how a once-forgotten masterpiece became the National Gallery's latest coup
Disfigured, weak, in fear of his life and desperate to return to Rome – Caravaggio was in a bad way in May 1610, lifting a brush in his studio in Naples after months of recovery from a violent attack, to continue work on his painting The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula.
In the autumn of the previous year, the volatile artist’s various misdemeanors (which included but were not limited to: smashing a plate of artichokes into a waiter’s face; penning abusive poems; throwing stones at the police; the killing of an awful but dangerously well-connected pimp, for which he fled with a death warrant on his head; an assault in Malta, for which he was imprisoned; and the subsequent daring escape from prison) had caught up with him, in the form of a vicious knife attack as he left a Neapolitan tavern, in which his face was repeatedly slashed.
His powerful pals in Rome, working to get
