Portrait of Alof de Wignacourt and his Page

Caravaggio painted this in Malta in 1608 while he was on the run for murder. Two years earlier he had killed a man in a brawl in Rome and fled south with a death sentence hanging over him. On Malta he found the Knights of Saint John, a military order that could offer both shelter and, if he pleased them, a knighthood of his own. So he painted their leader, Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt, standing in a full suit of black-and-gold Milanese armour while a young page holds his plumed helmet and looks out at us. Caravaggio was welcomed into the order that July. Within months he brawled again, was thrown in a Maltese cell, escaped, and was expelled in disgrace.