La decapitación de san Juan Bautista

In the summer of 1608 Caravaggio was a wanted man who had just been made a knight. He had fled Rome after killing someone in a brawl, reached Malta, and the Knights of St John took him in and admitted him to their order in July of that year. This enormous altarpiece, over five meters wide, was his gift back to them, painted for their cathedral in Valletta, where it still hangs in the oratory it was made for. He gives you the execution at the dead moment after the sword has done its work, the Baptist already down, the jailer pointing to the waiting golden dish. Then there is the thing no other Caravaggio has. In the blood running from the saint's throat he wrote his own name, the only signature he is known to have left on any painting. It reads as f. Michelangelo, the f for fra, brother, the title he had just won as a knight. Within months he had quarreled, been thrown in a cell, and escaped the island.