Finally, probably in 1595, he decided to set out on his own and began to sell his pictures through a dealer, Maestro Valentino, who brought Caravaggio's work to the attention of Cardinal Francesco del Monte, a prelate of great influence in the papal court. Carvaggio soon came under the protection of Del Monte and was invited to receive board, lodging, and a pension in the house of the cardinal. Despite spiritual and material deprivations, Caravaggio had painted up to the beginning of Del Monte's patronage about 40 works. These early pictures reveal a fresh, direct, and empirical approach; they were apparently painted directly from life and show almost no trace of the academic Mannerism the prevailing in Rome. The felicitous tone and confident craftsmanship of these early works stand in sharp contrast to the daily quality of Caravaggio's disorderly and dissipated life. Caravaggio's mature manner commenced about 1600 with the commission to decorate the Contarelli Chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome with three scenes of the life of Saint Matthew. Caravaggio's personal life was turbulent. He was often arrested and imprisoned. He fled Rome for Naples in 1606 when charged with murder. There he spent several months executing such works as the Flagellation of Christ (San Domenico Maggiore, Naples), which were crucial to the development of naturalism among the artists of that city. Later that year he traveled to Malta, was made a knight, or cavaliere, of the Maltese order, and executed on of his few portraits, that of his fellow cavaliers Alof de Wignacourt. In October of 1608, Caravaggio was again arrested and, escaping from a Maltese jail, went to Syracuse in Sicily. While in Sicily he painted several monumental canvases. These were multi-figured compositions of great drama achieved through dark tonalities and selective use of lighting. These works were among Caravaggio's last, for the artist died on the beach at Port"Ercole in Tuscany on July 18, 1610, of a fever contracted after a mistake arrest.