Via di Pallacorda: The Killing of Ranuccio Tomassoni
Why is it significant?
Stop in this short street and read its name on the marble plaque at the corner: Via di Pallacorda. Pallacorda was an early form of tennis, played with a ball hit over a cord stretched across a court, and around 1600 there was a court for it in this neighbourhood.
Key Facts
| Place | Via di Pallacorda: The Killing of Ranuccio Tomassoni |
|---|---|
| Address | Via di Pallacorda, 00186 Roma RM, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.90240, 12.47570 |
| Part of Walk | Caravaggio's Rome: Masterpieces, Brawls and a Killing |
| Generated | Generated |
Stop in this short street and read its name on the marble plaque at the corner: Via di Pallacorda. Pallacorda was an early form of tennis, played with a ball hit over a cord stretched across a court, and around 1600 there was a court for it in this neighbourhood. On the evening of Sunday, 28 May 1606, the most famous painter in Rome killed a man near here.
The victim was Ranuccio Tomassoni, from a family of soldiers from Terni with powerful protectors and a firm grip on this district. The two men had history. Gossip at the time spoke of a bet on a tennis match; others talked of a debt, or of a woman, perhaps the courtesan Fillide Melandroni, who had posed for Caravaggio. Many historians now think it was a planned fight between two small armed groups, settled with swords.
Swords came out. Caravaggio was wounded in the head. Tomassoni went down with a deep wound high in the thigh and bled to death. One modern biographer has suggested that Caravaggio was trying to mutilate him, the kind of humiliation reserved for a rival in love... but that is a reading, not a fact, and the truth of that evening is lost.
Caravaggio fled the same night, first to the estates of the Colonna family in the hills south of Rome, then to Naples. He never saw this city again. Condemned to death in his absence, he spent his last four years running: Naples, Malta, Sicily, Naples again. In Malta he was made a knight, then thrown into prison and expelled. In Naples he was ambushed and his face was badly slashed.
And yet those are the years of his darkest and greatest paintings, huge canvases full of silence and shadow. It is hard to reconcile the man with the sword in this street with the tenderness of what you are about to see. Cross Via della Scrofa and walk south-west to the broad steps of the church of Sant'Agostino.