with St. Anne (the Grooms' Madonna). By 1610 Caravaggio's life was unravelling. It's always dangerous to interpret an artist's works in terms of his life, but in this case the temptation is overwhelming, and every writer on Caravaggio seems to surrender to it. In 1606 he had fled Rome as an outlaw after killing a man in a street fight; in 1608 he had been thrown into prison in Malta and again escaped; through 1609 he had been pursued across Sicily by his enemies until taking refuge in Naples, where he had been attacked in the street by unknown assailants within days of his arrival. Now he was under the protection of the Colonna family in the city, seeking a pardon that would allow him to return to Rome. The power to grant the pardon lay in the hands of the art-loving Cardinal Borghese, who would expect to be paid in paintings. News that the pardon was imminent arrived in mid-year, and the artist set out by boat with three canvasses. The next news was that he had died "of a fever" in Porto Ercole, a coastal town north of Rome held by Spain. John the Baptist (St John the Baptist Reclining), This Reclining John the Baptist, is an oil painting by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, built in 1610 and is now kept in a private collection in Munich. This painting is one of the seven versions of the Lombard painter has dedicated to the theme of "Saint John", that John the Baptist as a child or as a teenager portrait. The canvas is identifiable with the painting that was at Palazzo Cellammare in Naples, at Costanza Colonna, Marchioness of Caravaggio, along with a work of the same subject (the San Giovanni Battista of the Borghese collection) and a Magdalene, as evidenced by the letter the Apostolic Nuncio in the Kingdom of Naples Deodato Gentile to Cardinal Scipione Caffarelli-Borghese in Rome, on July 29, 1610 (Pacelli 1994, pp. 141–155). The three paintings were commissioned by its Borghese and were on the felucca that was supposed to bring their author from Naples to Rome, just before he died. Also from the letter of 29 July that, when Caravaggio was imprisoned in Palo, the paintings were shown to Naples from Costanza Colonna. Scipione Borghese was able to regain possession of one of the two St. John (the one currently on display at