Many rumors circulated at the time as to the cause of the duel. Several contemporary avvisi referred to a quarrel over a gambling debt and a pallacorda game, a sort of tennis; and this explanation has become established in the popular imagination. Other rumors, however, claimed that the duel stemmed from jealousy over Fillide Melandroni, a well known Roman prostitute who had modeled for him in several important paintings; Tommasoni was her pimp. According to such rumors, Caravaggio castrated Tommasoni with his sword before deliberately killing him, with other versions claiming that Tommasoni’s death was caused accidentally during the castration. The duel may have had a political dimension, as Tommasoni’s family was notoriously pro-Spanish, while Caravaggio was a client of the French ambassador.
Caravaggio’s patrons had hitherto been able to shield him from any serious consequences of his frequent duels and brawling, but Tommasoni’s wealthy family was outraged by his death and demanded justice. Caravaggio’s patrons were unable to protect him. Caravaggio was sentenced to beheading for murder, and an open bounty was decreed enabling anyone who recognized him to legally carry the sentence out. Caravaggio’s paintings began to obsessively depict severed heads, often his own, at this time. Caravaggio was forced to flee Rome. He moved just south of the city, then to Naples, Malta, and Sicily. Good modern accounts are to be found in Peter Robb’s M and Helen Langdon’s Caravaggio: A Life. A theory relating the death
to Renaissance notions of honour and symbolic wounding has been advanced by art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon. Whatever the details, it was a serious matter. Previously, his high-placed patrons had protected him from the consequences of his escapades, but this time they could do nothing. Caravaggio, outlawed, fled to Naples.
Following the death of Tomassoni, Caravaggio fled first to the estates of the Colonna family south
of Rome, then on to Naples, where Costanza Colonna Sforza, widow of Francesco Sforza, in whose
husband’s household Caravaggio’s father had held a position, maintained a palace. In Naples, outside
the jurisdiction of the Roman authorities and protected by the Colonna family, the most famous painter
in Rome became the most famous in Naples.
His connections with the Colonnas led to a stream of important church commissions, including the Madonna
of the Rosary, and The Seven Works of Mercy. The Seven Works of Mercy depicts the seven corporal works
of mercy as a set of compassionate acts concerning the material needs of others. The painting was made
for, and is still housed in, the church of Pio Monte della Misericordia in Naples. Caravaggio combined all seven
works of mercy in one composition, which became the church’s altarpiece. Alessandro Giardino has also established
the connection between the iconography of “The Seven Works of Mercy” and the cultural, scientific and philosophical
circles of the painting’s commissioners.