28 November 1600
Beats a cardinal's guest with a club
While living at the Palazzo Madama with Cardinal del Monte, Caravaggio beat the cardinal's guest, the nobleman Girolamo Stampa da Montepulciano, with a club, prompting an official complaint to the police. Brawls and arrests, with spells in the Tor di Nona jail, grew ever more frequent.
1601
A studio of his own, and pupils
Caravaggio rented a studio of his own, where his celebrated pupils Bartolomeo Manfredi, Mario de' Fiori and Leonello Spada painted their pictures.
1602
Cecco, model and companion
The model for “Amor Vincit Omnia”, painted in 1602 for Vincenzo Giustiniani, was 'Cecco' — possibly Francesco Boneri, later known as the painter Cecco del Caravaggio. He lived with Caravaggio in Rome and stayed with him even after the flight of 1606; the two may have been lovers.
14 June 1602
Commission for “The Death of the Virgin”
He received the commission for a painting for Santa Maria della Scala in Trastevere; the model for the Virgin is said to have been a prostitute drowned in the Tiber, or else the artist's mistress. Other accounts date the commission to 1601.
1603
Sued for libel by Giovanni Baglione
The painter Giovanni Baglione sued Caravaggio and his followers Orazio Gentileschi and Onorio Longhi over offensive verses about him. Caravaggio spent a month in the Tor di Nona jail before the French ambassador intervened and he was moved to house arrest.
1604
An early printed notice on Caravaggio
An early published notice on Caravaggio, describing his lifestyle three years earlier, says that 'after a fortnight's work he will swagger about for a month or two with a sword at his side and a servant following him, from one ball-court to the next, ever ready to engage in a fight or an argument'.