Caravaggio possessed a very irascible and roving disposition. At the
height of his popularity at Rome, he got into a quarrel with one of his
own young friends, in a tennis-court, and struck him dead with a racket,
having been severely wounded himself in the affray. He fled to Naples,
where he executed some of his finest pictures, but he soon got weary of
his residence there, and went to Malta. Here his superb picture of the
Grand Master obtained for him the Cross of Malta, a rich gold chain,
placed on his neck by the Grand Master's own hands, and two slaves to
attend him. All these honors did not prevent the new knight from falling
back into old habits. "_Il suo torbido ingegno_," says Bellori, plunged
him into new difficulties; he fought and wounded a noble cavalier, was
thrown into prison, from which he escaped almost by a miracle, and fled
to Syracuse, where he obtained the favor of the Syracusans by painting a
splendid picture of the Santa Morte, for the church of S. Lucia. In
apprehension of being taken by the Knights of Malta, he soon fled to
Messina, thence to Palermo, and returned to Naples, where hopes were
held out to him of the Pope's pardon. Here he got into a quarrel with
some military men in a public house, was wounded, and took refuge on
board a felucca, about to sail for Rome. Stopping at a small port on the
way, he was arrested by a Spanish guard, by mistake, for another person;
when released, he found the felucca gone, and in it all his property.
Traversing the burning shore, under an almost vertical sun, he was
seized with a brain fever, and continued to wander through the Pontine
Marshes till he arrived at Porto Ercoli, when he expired, aged forty
years.