1/4 Who Killed Caravaggio ? - Secret Lives of the Artists

nearly ten years since we made the film you're about to see and it was a very unusual experience because we went looking for this extraordinary character Caravaggio but we very soon found ourselves in a dark and alien world combing police archives for witness statements from the painters friends his enemies his lovers meeting conspiracy theorists each with his own story to tell but through it all ran this sense that what we were experiencing was very much history in the raw I was completely hooked this is the story of the life and death of one of the greatest painters who ever live Michelangelo Merisi also known as Caravaggio in a wood behind a beach on the coast of Tuscany there's a monument to his memory close to where he's said to have died but it doesn't mark a grave and there are now those who say if it marks anything it's a cover-up a cover-up to a murder Caravaggio was a painter who changed the way we look at the world he lived in violent times and made many enemies but who could have wanted him dead that's what I was here to find out story goes that in July 1610 at the age of just 39 the great painter Caravaggio succumbed to heat stroke and exhaustion somewhere on this beach it was the end of a truly extraordinary life Caravaggio wasn't just the most famous artist of his time he was also a convicted killer he'd murdered a man in Rome six years earlier been sentenced to death and he'd been on the run from the law ever since the course of his adventures he dueled scrapped and horde with the best of them he'd been accused of sodomy he'd somehow managed to escape an attack on his life by a group of armed men all this while creating some of the most profoundly moving spiritual paintings in the history of Western art but what I want to know is where's the body the fact that there's no record of his burial is odd in an age when receiving the last rites meant the difference between heaven and hell people especially great artists didn't just disappear in early 17th century Italy but Caravaggio did early accounts say he died here pato appellee that he was on his way to Rome from Naples to receive a pardon for the murder he'd committed but he got separated from the boat carrying his possessions including several paintings and in a panic chased after it on foot the most puzzling thing about this story is the geography Caravaggio was going north from Naples to Rome - how on earth did he end up coming here 200 kilometres further north to Porto happily if Caravaggio hadn't been a genius there'd be no reason to care but I wonder if the riddle of his death might hold a key to the mystery of his work he's an enigma all right look at him in his first self-portrait as Bacchus god of wine but this Bacchus is sick the gray green lips echoing the bloom on the grapes he holds who's the man behind this teasing disguise Caravaggio painted with light his realism has a strange haunting quality as if everything tells a story but the artists own part in that story is open to interpretation to some he's a homosexual revolutionary to others he's a profoundly misunderstood religious artist some see these peaches as Christian symbols to others they're ripe with sexual suggestion or maybe they're just peaches Caravaggio's work has never been more popular or more controversial new evidence is being discovered all the time but where do you start when you're reopening a 400 year old murder case I had an appointment to meet Giuseppe LaFell she also known as Pina architect and Caravaggio enthusiast who's certain that Caravaggio died here he'd said he had something to show me you know and he did he showed me someone's holiday home which was once a charitable Hospital which he claimed was where Caravaggio actually died he told me how he died salmonella poisoning or typhoid and where he thought he was probably buried now a municipal flower bed where he plans to build a monument to the painter and when you make the monument yes we'll make more people come to Porto Ercole Hey yes it's tuesd it's good for tourism here yes it's me yes Caravaggio is good for business going a good room here one thing he didn't show me a single document which proved that Caravaggio ever set foot here there was he said the register of deaths in the old parish church and although Caravaggio's name wasn't actually in it it contained important evidence he could show me but the church was locked so he didn't if I'm going to take this seventeenth-century murder-mystery seriously I should look for motive means and opportunity and the place for hard evidence is Rome Caravaggio's story is like a film script but it's definitely film noir is the master of light and dark and his lives like that too lit by flashes of information and then nothing it's a whodunit involving unreliable witnesses conspiracy theories suspect evidence and a whole cast of dodgy characters who all seem to have an angle or an axe to grind this wasn't going to be easy when he came to Rome in 1592 age 21 he was yet another lombard painter a northerner an outsider he'd lost his father and grandfather in the plague of 1577 and there are dark hints that he may have been in trouble with the law Caravaggio came here because this was where you made your name as an artist he became famous here and then he had to leave forever when he killed a man called foreigner tomassoni Rome made him and it also undid him welcome to Caravaggio's roll the dream of the Pope's at the end of the sixteenth century was to make Rome so magnificent that no one could doubt the Catholic faith Pope Clement the eighth was finishing off Sant Peters artists were in demand it was like Hollywood but there was only one studio in town for the church art was a political weapon a Catholic weapon against the forces of the Protestant Reformation in a city teeming with painters it took Caravaggio eight years to establish himself as a real player his big break came when he was commissioned to paint that contour le chapel in san luigi de franchisee the Church of the French Caravaggio's pictures were a sensation at the time and they still are once you've struggled through the crowds and just as long as someone's got 500 lira to put into the slot his big idea was to paint the stories of the Bible as if they were taking place on the Roman streets of his own time this gave his pictures all the impact of early cinema this scene shows Christ's conversion of Sint Matthew the tax collector told in just one sentence in the Bible Jesus saw a man called Matthew at his seat in the Customs House and said to him follow me I love Matthew's face with its expression of who me one minute a chaps minding his business the next he's a disciple but although Caravaggio has made the story believable he hasn't entirely brought it down to earth the evening light painted with such beautiful solemnity is also the light of God opposite in Matthews martyrdom Caravaggio showed he could do high drama and heroic nudity The Killers naked not just for style he's been hiding amongst some innocent Christians stripped for baptism the action is set in a Roman Church so two contemporaries this was a scene of modern-day terrorism a Catholic priest had recently been killed at the altar by a Protestant assassin on a suicide mission so this was realism with a hint of reportage it's also a prophetic picture Caravaggio's included his own self-portrait fleeing as if to say maiya culpa I like so many others wouldn't have done anything to help I too would have fled with the rest of the crowd before long he really would be on the run skulking in the shadows not as a witness fleeing but as a murderer it was hard to live a normal life in 17th century Rome a testosterone-driven town with an overwhelmingly male population of soldiers pilgrims priests and artists serviced by shifting community of [ __ ] trouble was always just around the corner along with the black coat its Biddy the police amazingly their records have survived in the archive VOD start up a city within a city of witness statements and denunciations it's where we find much of our evidence about Caravaggio and about those who might have wanted him dead I was on my way to see Monsignor s Sandro Carradine II his official title in the Vatican is devil's advocate his job to investigate the lives of people up for sainthood Caravaggio is his hobby and he recently unearthed the first known description of the painter an account from a barber-surgeons boy who naturally remembers the details of Caravaggio's hair cristo Batory a one jovi nacho grande de ven do vintage ink we Annie con Poe gababa Negra Grasso token Syria gross a a Akio Negro caiva vestido di Negro non troppo been ignored in a cape or Taba un perro decal set a negra un poco Strich at a cape or talika Pellegrin de Longhi de nancy boy Barbieri kdj que el loco no cheaper que Venuto addict or a cortar SI la barba nella mia Bottega even a a medic r SI una for Keturah era una una homo Violante certo Yepez OD sono molti liquor otter a same brie sempron car a tray molto duro que no chief Achieva offender a noodleman drayage Eva okay pesto's Disick euro so how did you find it if his camara trovato sinfully ando patching up a Gina for novel agenda Cardini isn't exaggerating when he says the episodes are many there are plenty of other glimpses of Caravaggio in action on the streets of Rome between 1598 and 1606 when he left the city forever aggravated assault on a waiter who brought him artichokes cooked in butter instead of olive oil throwing stones at the window of a prostitute who'd refused him sex singing rude songs and playing the guitar at 4:00 in the morning or simply keeping Stumm in the time-honored tradition of all hard man under police interrogation Pistone no taiyou Luffy's vicita visit a Michelangelo Caravaggio victory Crispo say yo me sofrito da solo con la mia spa de caso no casket opor La Strada non so do de CC a-- sh estado nice to know I put every testimony he owned on for so dear a altro as lame excuses go that ranks up there with the dog ate my homework but from these flash points we can build a picture Caravaggio wears black because he thinks of himself as a nobleman but his clothes are in bad shape he doesn't have a nobleman's income he likes to carry a sword a status symbol which in the end would condemn him to a life on the run but why was he so quick to draw his weapon I went to see Alexandre Lapierre who spent many years investigating the violent world of 17th century painters can you explain to me what is it about that society that makes so many apparently small arguments flare up into duels contests honor honor and you have to remember that we are in a in a society where theme your name your family is something extremely

Channel: Art Documentaries

Views: 104,957

Keywords: Who Killed Caravaggio ?, Andrew Graham-Dixon

Id: ZUiVlcPQg-Y

Length: 15min 0sec (900 seconds)

Published: Sat May 03 2014