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too much of a hardship for a young man during the Roman summer, we know from the Venetian ambassador’s dispatches that there was a severe famine in 1593, which began in April and lasted until the harvest. Normally, he could have expected to live on the food doled out to the homeless by religious orders, but because of the shortage of grain this must have been drastically curtailed. He was lucky not to die from starvation.
    Fortunately, Monsignor Pandolfo Pucci, an eminent cleric on the staff of St. Peter’s, lent him a room. Caravaggio had to pay for it by some kind of work, which he later recalled with a touch of bitterness as “demeaning services,” perhaps those of a scullion in the monsignor’s kitchen. All he got to eat was a salad in the evenings that, he said with a laugh afterward, “had to do for breakfast, dinner and supper.” But, even if Pucci’s hospitality was scarcely lavish, it enabled Caravaggio to survive.
    The monsignor was steward to a sister of the late Pope Sixtus, whose family, the Peretti, were closely related to the Sforza Colonna. It is more than likely that Caravaggio had written to the Marchesa Costanza, begging for help, and that she had asked Pucci to take him in.
    He found time and working space to copy some devotional pictures, which the miserly Pucci admired enough to buy and eventually took back with him to his hometown of Recanati. During this period, Caravaggio also painted the
Youth Bitten by a Green Lizard
, now at Florence, together with a
Boy Peeling a Green Citrus Fruit
, a portrait of the keeper of an inn where he had once stayed, and another long-vanished portrait of which there is no description.
    After several months, he managed to leave Pucci, whom he sardonically called “Monsignor Salad,” having been hired by Lorenzo Siciliano, who was a hack painter and dealer in cheap daubs. Lorenzo’s speciality was mass-producing rough portrait heads, and Caravaggio, so poor that he went almost naked, turned out three heads a day for a few pence each. If any survive, they have not been identified. However, employment at Lorenzo’s workshop had one consolation. Another young painter was working there, Mario Minniti from Palermo, who was as poor as Caravaggio. They made friends and lived together for the next few years.
    There is no firm evidence for Caravaggio’s movements during his early years in Rome, but it looks as if he left Lorenzo’s to work for Antiveduto Grammatica, a portrait painter of about his own age who afterward had a modest success with religious themes. At the time, like Lorenzo, Antiveduto went in for mass production. Bellori believed that Caravaggio lived in Antiveduto’s house, painting half figures for him. Ironically, in later years, Antiveduto copied his former assistant’s mature style, especially the violence. Some of his paintings have been mistaken for lost works by Caravaggio.
    Caravaggio moved farther up in the world as an assistant to Giuseppe Cesari, better known as the Cavaliere d’Arpino, one of Rome’s most fashionable painters and about to become Pope Clement’s favorite artist. Hespecialized in historical and religious scenes, and, at their best, his paintings were graceful and hauntingly mysterious. It cannot have been easy working for him; he was vain and haughty. Caravaggio probably spent no more than six months in his workshop. During this time, he painted self-portraits with the help of a mirror. One of these, an odd, sickly little
Bacchus
(the
Bacchino Malato)
, sits hunched and half naked at a table, holding up a bunch of grapes. His skin is yellowish, his face ugly, with thick lips and would-be mocking eyes. Another painting from this period is the
Boy with a Basket of Fruit
, which has had many highly imaginative interpretations. Some think it depicts autumn, or the sense of taste. Others consider it an allegory of Christ as Love; still others believe it contains a homosexual message. In Bernard Berenson’s whimsical view,