Letters confirm Caravaggio died at Porto Ercole

FLORENCE, ITALY – Two 17th-century letters discovered in the small hill town of Urbino, in the Marche region, add weight to arguments that Caravaggio died in the Tuscan port town of Porto Ercole, researchers disclosed Thursday.

The missives dated July 28 and July 31, 1610, informed the Duke of Urbino that Caravaggio had died at Porto Ercole while on the road to Rome.

The artist had fled the Eternal City four years earlier after a murder conviction, and was on his way back because the pope had just pardoned him. “On July 28 we had news of the death of Michel Angelo Caravaggio, celebrated painter and most excellent in colouring and portraying from nature,” recited one letter.

An early published notice on him, dating from 1604 and describing his lifestyle three years previously, recounts that “after a fortnight’s work he will swagger about for a month or two with a sword at his side and a servant following him, from one ball-court to the next, ever ready to engage in a fight or an argument, so that it is most awkward to get along with him.”

In 1606 he killed a young man in a brawl and fled from Rome with a price on his head. He was involved in a brawl in Malta in 1608, and another in Naples in 1609, possibly a deliberate attempt on his life by unidentified enemies. This encounter left him severely injured. A year later, at the age of 38, he died under mysterious circumstances in Porto Ercole in Tuscany, reportedly from a fever while on his way to Rome to receive a pardon.