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Italy. 1610. Michelangelo Merisi de Caravaggio is on the run. Again.

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No stranger to trouble, this artist's tangled with the law most of his life.

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But this time, it's different.

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This time, he's wanted for murder.

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There's a price on his head - alive or dead.

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So he does what he's always done -

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does what he does best.

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He tries to paint his way out of trouble.

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This is what he paints - David with Head of Goliath.

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It's a self-portrait.

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But why doesn't Caravaggio cast himself as the hero, David?

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Why does he paint himself as the villain of the piece, the monster, Goliath?

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Maybe he hopes that by making this guilty plea in paint he can be spared.

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Perhaps by offering his head in a painting he can save himself in real life.

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We like to think, don't we, that the genius is the hero, that the good guy wins,

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but this is Caravaggio. And the genius is the villain.

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[choral music]

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Rome. 1600.

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The center of the greatest propaganda campaign Christendom has ever seen.

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The Catholic Church is under siege from the Protestants of Northern Europe,

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who have a new message for those in need of salvation.

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"Just depend on the Word," said the Protestants, "the gospel truth in black and white.

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A printed bible is a Christian's guide.

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Paintings in churches are a distraction, filthy idols.

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Wipe them out."

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Catholics shot back - what about the millions who can't read?

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Don't they deserve to be saved?

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Shouldn't the poor have a vision of the sacrifice of the savior?

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The life of the virgin?

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In the Catholic churches war for souls paintings were not art objects.

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They were the heavy artillery.

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So churches are repaired, others newly built, all lavishly decorated with paintings,

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the paintings responsible for defending the Catholic faith.

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But away from the Vatican, outside the gorgeously decorated high-walled palaces of the aristocratic cardinals,

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there was a very different Rome.

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The Rome of the sweaty, yelling crowd.

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A hundred thousand of them, jostling in the markets, in the piazzas,

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the Rome of sour wine, old garlic, street urchins,

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shifty part-time soldiers who cut your purse, or your throat, just as soon as look at you.

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The Rome of beggars, buskers, tumblers, quacks and whores,

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thousands of them working away in the ortaggio, the evil Eden,

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down by the River Tiber.

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[no dialog]

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This was Caravaggio's Rome.

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Cheap rooms and drunken nights with other perpetually broke painters.

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Living on their wits and shady credit, art for butter, always on the fly.

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Their motto as they prowled the streets - nec spe nec metu - without hope, without fear.

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Of course, he wasn't born a thug. Just a boy from small town Lombardy.

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The small town of Caravaggio.

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His father looked after the house and the land of a local aristocrat.

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Respectable. Not poor, not rich.

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But plague was the enemy of expectations, even small ones.

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And it killed off Caravaggio's father and his grandpa on the same day, when he was just five.

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When he was 19 his mother died, so the children sold up and got out.

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He put in some time as an apprentice in Milan,

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but anyone who had real talent went to Rome.

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Caravaggio had arrived here in 1593, and had been promptly told what he was supposed to do

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if he was ever to become a great artist.

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First, draw old sculpture. Plenty of that lying around.

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Second, take yourself after the old masters, Raphael perhaps.

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Be humbled. Copy. And learn.

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What you get at the end of it all was the point of art,

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an idea of perfect form and ideal beauty.

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If you could make those celestial mysteries visible using your own brushes,

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then you'd be ready to convey that vision of perfection where it counted,

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in the War for Souls.

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Oh yeah? Caravaggio didn't think so.

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Visions of paradise? Who the hell knew about that?

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What he knew was right in front of his nose, down here on Earth,

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in the studio, the here and now - that would be the point of his art.

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Drawing - who needed it?

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Caravaggio never drew a thing in his life.

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He just looked. Eyeballed. Then he'd paint.

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When someone asked him what he was going to do for models he pointed at the street,

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"Them," he said, and he brought THEM into his studio.

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The rough awkwardness of Caravaggio's Boy with a Basket of Fruit was a long way from the refined beauty of the Renaissance masters.

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From the start, he wasn't going to do things the way they were supposed to be done.

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Here's Caravaggio's response to the slavish copying of the classics.

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His painting of himself as Bacchus, the god of wine.

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Now, bear in mind Bacchus isn't simply the god of binges,

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he's also the symbol of youth and beauty, the inspirer of poetry, song and painting.

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And this is what Caravaggio does.

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Instead of eternal youth, he gives us something like the exact opposite,

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someone who's really sick.

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The flesh is greenish, the lips are gray, the eyes unslept,

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the mouth curled into a leer.

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Instead of taking a human form and making it into a god,

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he takes a god and makes it all too human.

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The overdressed party animal as a morning-after wreck.

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And look at those grapes!

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Yes, he's got the bloom just right, but definitely past their sell-by date,

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and they're offered to us in an oily pour, with filth-rimmed fingernails.

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No thanks.

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Now, Northern Italian artists were famous for their technical skill,

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their naturalistic still lives.

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But Caravaggio gives us nature with a twist.

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Never mind art as beauty,

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he takes a basket of fruit and turns it into a life and death drama.

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He's pushing the envelope, challenging the very way the painting was supposed to be.

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It wasn't for the timid, but painting this sharp wasn't going to go unnoticed

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by those with an eye for quality.

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A cardinal, no less - Francesco Maria del Monte -

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No church mouse, our cardinal.

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He lives in an enormous palazzo surrounded by poets, musicians and paintings.

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Del Monte of the roving eye is the biggest player on the art market.

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At the art dealer's over the road, the cardinal sees something that takes his fancy,

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Card sharks.

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Del Monte takes in the brilliant color, the joky action,

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the wink-wink nudge-nudginess of it all.

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Better still, he feels the presence of these people,

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the rosy-cheeked kid sucker,

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and the cool bravo about to take him down,

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as if they were right in front of him.

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Hey!

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[laughing]

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The cardinal buys his painting for a song, and then makes Caravaggio an offer he can't refuse.

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"Why don't you move into the palazzo? Smartest company in Rome.

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Poets, philosophers. Terrific kitchen, my dear.

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Never a dull moment.

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And, the music! Well you do like music, don't you?

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Caravaggio liked music, all right.

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And here he is, at the back of this tight little group,

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holding the cornet.

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Do we need Cupid on the left to let us know its love songs are their thing?

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Don't think so.

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The lead singer is crying his eyes out,

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and he's just tuning up.

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Now, there were lots of paintings of young boys with lutes in Baroque Rome,

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but never anything quite like this.

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Nothing this close-up.

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Nothing this fleshy.

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And so close to us!

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It's like - oh yes - four youths in a closet.

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Excuse me, so sorry, don't mean to intrude.

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Oh no, come on in, darling. Pull up a cushion. Join us.

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We're just rehearsing.

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The claustrophobia has a point, and it's not erotic.

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What he's doing is demolishing the safety barrier between the viewer and the painting.

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Caravaggio's art crushes the safety barrier of the frame.

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It tears away the separation.

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It reaches you.

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[choral singing]

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It was one thing painting pretty boys for del Monte.

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It was quite another painting for the great churches of Rome.

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But in 1599, Caravaggio won the commission to paint two scenes from the life of St. Matthew,

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at the Contarelli Chapel in the Church of St. Luigi.

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It would be a test of whether he could make a new kind of art for the public

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in the place that really counted.

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Whether he could move them to faith and salvation.

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But the martyrdom of Matthew, the showpiece for the chapel, turned into a massive headache.

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The commission called for big architectural settings,

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the martyr with his eyes rolled to heaven,

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a cast of hundreds, angels on clouds.

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Now Caravaggio knew he didn't want any part of that.

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But he didn't know what to do instead.

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Blocked, he turned to the scene for the other wall.

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Somehow, when he thought about the calling of Matthew, a light went on.

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Why? Because it was about a sinner. Not a saint.

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"Where have you been?"

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"Me? Where have I been? I've been here for an hour. Come on. Sit down."

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Suddenly it all made sense. What the church was looking for,

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and what Caravaggio was born to do.

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Make something sacred out of the lives of the squalid.

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So instead of setting the calling in some fantasy holy land,

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Caravaggio beams Jesus down to a dim room in Rome.

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It's a dive, really.

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Torn paper shades on the windows.

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Characters from the card shops and other low-lives gathered to witness the big moment.

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Half of them don't even notice when the two mysterious strangers, Christ and St. Peter,

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enter the room.

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Freeze-frame. The finger points.

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"Who, me?"

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"Yes, you, Matthew. You miserable creature.

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We don't need the virtuous for this job. We need scum, like you."

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And for this instant of redemptive transformation, Caravaggio had another stunning idea.

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Instead of highlighting Christ, cover him up.

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The less we see of him, the more we concentrate on that extended finger.

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And through that finger comes a bolt of radiance, that changes Matthew the sinner into Christ's disciple.

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It's all about the light.

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The light that's too pure and too strong for the spiritually short-sighted.

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The old man with the glasses and the cash to receive.

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Now, if you think this sounds a bit like a theatre or the movies, well, you're absolutely right.

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What Caravaggio wanted was for people to come into the darkness, in this space,

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and suddenly find themselves in the presence not of a painting at all,

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but a real event.

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Seeing is believing.

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[no dialog]

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With the Calling of Matthew finished, Caravaggio returned to the painting for the other wall,

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Matthew's martyrdom, and his problem had gone.

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He strips the scene of its remoteness, its solemnity,

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and instead gives us what he knew all about - a brutal assault in a back street.

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Terrified, chaotic, hysterical - the figures spin around out of control.

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The scene is glimpsed as if you were running away, which is exactly what Caravaggio has painted himself doing.

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It's all flicker-flicker, strobe bit, hand held, stuttering and shrieking.

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And in the middle of all this manic action, there is one fixed point.

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Flood-lit, so you can't miss him, the naked assassin, finishing off his hit.

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Caravaggio makes the sinner, not the saint, the hub on which everything spins.

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It's all shockingly mixed up, with the painter as a fleeing coward.

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And yet, it was a triumph.

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Caravaggio must have thought, "What can't I get away with?"


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He's 30 years old. The Matthews have made him an overnight sensation.

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The church commissions roll in.

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But it all starts to go to his head.

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The other Caravaggio shows up.

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Violent, abusive, unpredictable.

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[Shouting and laughing]

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And the more successful he is, the weirder his behavior gets.

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His brother, Giovanni Battista, a priest, comes to see the painter in del Monte's palace.

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"I've got no brother. Never had one," says Caravaggio.

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Brother leaves, crushed, bewildered.

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He gets himself up in a fancy black outfit, but then he wears it until it's in tatters.

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Then there's his dog, Crow, which he teaches to walk on its hind legs.

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[laughing]

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If you're another painter and you see this lot coming towards you, watch out.

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Caravaggio and his mates particularly get off on abusing rivals and imitators.

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"We'll fry your balls in oil," was one of the choice insults recorded in court.

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Whether he meant it or not, all this physical aggression,

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all this sweaty closeness on the borderline between pathos and trouble,

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carried over into Caravaggio's art, with shockingly moving results.

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Only someone who rubs shoulders with the poorest people in Rome could produce painting like this.

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Christ grabs Doubting Thomas's wrist, guiding his finger deep into his wound.

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Burying it in his body, until Thomas believes.

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Caravaggio says, "You don't just look at my pictures, you don't just stare,

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You feel them."

240
00:23:57,682 --> 00:24:03,265
"OK," we say. "OK, we feel it. We believe. We believe."

241
00:24:03,265 --> 00:24:06,028
He doesn't do it just for effect.

242
00:24:06,028 --> 00:24:14,897
It's because no one else painting in Rome takes the message of Christianity more seriously than this sinner.

243
00:24:14,897 --> 00:24:18,706
Christ says, "The wretched of the Earth can be saved,"

244
00:24:18,706 --> 00:24:22,130
and they are what Caravaggio gives us.

245
00:24:22,130 --> 00:24:29,573
The gospel is happening right here. Right now.

246
00:24:29,573 --> 00:24:34,424
When people come into church and see them, they are thunderstruck.

247
00:24:34,424 --> 00:24:39,116
Their lives change. Their eyes open, their hearts pound.

248
00:24:39,116 --> 00:24:42,661
In the presence of sacred drama, so vivid, so physical,

249
00:24:42,661 --> 00:24:45,787
they think they can stretch out and touch them.

250
00:24:45,787 --> 00:24:53,654
The most hardened sinner, the worst sneerer, believes.

251
00:24:53,654 --> 00:24:57,029


252
00:24:57,029 --> 00:25:00,815
This was the painter the church had been waiting for.

253
00:25:00,815 --> 00:25:08,698
Here's St. Paul, flat on his back, his eyeballs scorched yellow by the blinding light of revelation.

254
00:25:08,698 --> 00:25:16,355
Next to him, St. Peter bears his load of cowardly guilt, crucified upside down, unworthy, he says,

255
00:25:16,355 --> 00:25:21,236
to be martyred the same way as Christ.

256
00:25:21,236 --> 00:25:27,218
No one could touch Caravaggio for capturing the sheer weight of the gospels.

257
00:25:27,218 --> 00:25:34,050
His faith is carnal. The bodies in his masterpieces are trapped in flesh,

258
00:25:34,050 --> 00:25:37,869
even when they're the son of God.

259
00:25:37,869 --> 00:25:40,352
But wasn't that the point of the gospel?

260
00:25:40,352 --> 00:25:43,059
Christ's presence on Earth.

261
00:25:43,059 --> 00:25:50,097
Not just a weightless angel, but in the flesh of man.

262
00:25:50,097 --> 00:25:57,123


263
00:25:57,123 --> 00:26:00,778
The point is, he's not just an art revolutionary.

264
00:26:00,778 --> 00:26:06,292
This sinner is also a devout Christian, an evangelist for the unwashed.

265
00:26:06,292 --> 00:26:10,278
Can you imagine how pilgrims coming to Rome, their Italian Jerusalem,

266
00:26:10,278 --> 00:26:17,536
felt when confronted by this image of themselves?

267
00:26:17,536 --> 00:26:29,715
Here's a painter who understood what it was like to live inside the grimy skin of the poor and the pious.

268
00:26:29,715 --> 00:26:35,380


269
00:26:35,380 --> 00:26:39,236
His street casting is astounding!

270
00:26:39,236 --> 00:26:44,925
His Madonna of Loreto is just a local girl, standing in her doorway.

271
00:26:44,925 --> 00:26:55,052
And instead of the usual crowd of the reverent, all we have kneeling before her are two old pilgrims who've plodded miles.

272
00:26:55,052 --> 00:27:02,188
on their bare and calloused feet.

273
00:27:02,188 --> 00:27:09,204
Faced with this homage to filthy feet, some in the church may well have felt that Caravaggio had gone too far,

274
00:27:09,204 --> 00:27:14,028
the dreaded word - indecent - began to crop up whenever his name was mentioned.

275
00:27:14,028 --> 00:27:20,720
Perhaps that's why Giovanni Baglione, one of his imitators, got the plum job of painting the resurrection

276
00:27:20,720 --> 00:27:26,600
in the new Jesuit church, and Caravaggio didn't.

277
00:27:26,600 --> 00:27:32,759
Not long afterwards a poem did the rounds of Rome's rougher taverns.

278
00:27:32,759 --> 00:27:41,928
>> Giovanni Baglioni, you are a know-nothing. Your pictures are just dogs.

279
00:27:41,928 --> 00:27:52,438
You will not earn a brass farthing with them.

280
00:27:52,438 --> 00:27:54,817
>> [laughing]

281
00:27:54,817 --> 00:27:57,987
>> So you'll have to go 'round with your arse in the air,

282
00:27:57,987 --> 00:28:07,880
>> [laughing] [Inaudible].

283
00:28:07,880 --> 00:28:09,772
[drink pours]

284
00:28:09,833 --> 00:28:14,601
>> Awfully sorry. I won't be able to join in with a chorus of praise,

285
00:28:14,601 --> 00:28:18,923
but you are quite unworthy of the chain that you are wearing,

286
00:28:18,923 --> 00:28:21,793
and a disgrace to painting.

287
00:28:21,793 --> 00:28:24,061
>> Yes.

288
00:28:24,061 --> 00:28:30,512
Whether the verses were written by Caravaggio or one of his pals we'll never know.

289
00:28:30,512 --> 00:28:39,157
Baglioni sues for libel, and Caravaggio is arrested and thrown in jail.

290
00:28:39,157 --> 00:28:51,845


291
00:28:51,845 --> 00:28:57,690
The court record of the trial is the only time we hear Caravaggio's words directly.

292
00:28:57,690 --> 00:29:02,455
>> Poems? What poems?

293
00:29:02,455 --> 00:29:05,836
So they're read aloud to the whole court.

294
00:29:05,836 --> 00:29:10,098
>> [laughing] Oh, those poems!

295
00:29:10,098 --> 00:29:27,267


296
00:29:27,267 --> 00:29:34,037
Months roll by, with Caravaggio still in jail.

297
00:29:34,037 --> 00:29:42,912
Then, finally, without a verdict, he's released to house arrest.

298
00:29:42,912 --> 00:29:46,708


299
00:29:46,708 --> 00:29:54,374
If he leaves without written permission, he gets a stint rowing as a galley slave.

300
00:29:54,374 --> 00:29:56,937
Does this stop him in his tracks?

301
00:29:56,937 --> 00:30:03,105
Hardly.

302
00:30:05,921 --> 00:30:15,566
>> Five hours after nightfall, Michelangelo de Caravaggio, carrying a sword and dagger, was brought in by my men.

303
00:30:15,566 --> 00:30:23,273
When asked if he had a license he said yes, and presented it, so was dismissed.

304
00:30:23,273 --> 00:30:30,302
I told him he could leave and said, "Good night, Sir," to which he replied, "Shove it up your arse."

305
00:30:30,302 --> 00:30:37,271
So arrested him, since I could not tolerate such fee.

306
00:30:37,271 --> 00:30:44,188


307
00:30:44,188 --> 00:30:53,967
>> I was seized on the Corso outside the Church of St. Horatio, because I had a sword and a dagger.

308
00:30:53,967 --> 00:31:00,169
I have no written license to carry a sword or a dagger.

309
00:31:00,169 --> 00:31:12,120
However, the governor of Rome had given verbal orders to the captain and corporal

310
00:31:12,120 --> 00:31:14,736
to let me carry them.

311
00:31:14,736 --> 00:31:21,827
I have no other license.

312
00:31:21,827 --> 00:31:26,020


313
00:31:26,020 --> 00:31:32,685
Even his closest friends couldn't work out how the painter of religious marvels and the psycho

314
00:31:32,685 --> 00:31:36,222
could inhabit the same person.

315
00:31:36,222 --> 00:31:40,667
>> We're having dinner in the tavern of the mall,

316
00:31:40,667 --> 00:31:42,349
>> And across the room was

317
00:31:42,349 --> 00:31:44,575
>> Michelangelo de Caravaggio.

318
00:31:44,575 --> 00:31:46,145
>> The famous painter.

319
00:31:46,145 --> 00:31:49,548
>> He asked the waiter if the artichoke's been done in butter or oil.

320
00:31:49,548 --> 00:31:53,241
>> Being on the same plate.

321
00:31:53,241 --> 00:31:56,748
>> Reasonable question.

322
00:31:56,748 --> 00:32:12,860
>> Are these done in oil or butter?

323
00:32:12,860 --> 00:32:22,333
>> I don't know. Smell it yourself.

324
00:32:22,333 --> 00:32:25,296
>> Do you think you're talking to some sort of bum?

325
00:32:25,296 --> 00:32:26,922
[laughing]

326
00:32:26,922 --> 00:32:32,247
[screaming]

327
00:32:32,247 --> 00:32:42,351
>> Smell the artichoke! What does it smell like? Smell it! Smell it yourself, eh?

328
00:32:42,351 --> 00:32:45,214
Smell the artichoke! Smell it!

329
00:32:45,214 --> 00:32:47,299
Smell it!

330
00:32:47,299 --> 00:32:56,908
>> Michelangelo took this somewhat amiss, and he says, "You've made a mistake, you damn cuckold, you think you're servin' some sort of bum!"

331
00:32:56,908 --> 00:33:02,138
>> And he picked up the artichokes and he threw them at the waiter.

332
00:33:02,138 --> 00:33:07,671
>> At no point did he take out a sword and threaten the waiter.

333
00:33:07,671 --> 00:33:13,125
>> Smell it!

334
00:33:13,125 --> 00:33:24,350
[gates closing]

335
00:33:26,920 --> 00:33:31,831
Of course, Caravaggio doesn't just pick fights with people in restaurants,

336
00:33:31,831 --> 00:33:39,547
He's fighting tradition, with painting past and present.

337
00:33:39,547 --> 00:33:44,345
He lands a commission for the Church of Santa Maria, here in Trastevere.

338
00:33:44,345 --> 00:33:46,818
It should have been right up his street.

339
00:33:46,818 --> 00:33:49,327
One of the poorest areas of Rome.

340
00:33:49,327 --> 00:33:52,078
At its heart was the Coat of the Virgin Mary,

341
00:33:52,078 --> 00:33:55,281
to whom the women of the district fervently prayed

342
00:33:55,281 --> 00:33:59,862
to cure the sick, make the barren fertile, and save the plague-stricken.

343
00:33:59,862 --> 00:34:05,011
Who better than Caravaggio to paint the death of Mary?

344
00:34:05,011 --> 00:34:09,915
According to Christian tradition, Mary's death wasn't a death at all,

345
00:34:09,915 --> 00:34:13,649
but a sleep before her ascent to heaven.

346
00:34:13,649 --> 00:34:19,055
Just as the conception and birth of her son had been a fleshless miracle,

347
00:34:19,055 --> 00:34:23,733
so her death was a fleshless exit.

348
00:34:23,733 --> 00:34:26,957
Well, Caravaggio didn't do fleshlessness.

349
00:34:26,957 --> 00:34:28,521
He did flesh.

350
00:34:28,521 --> 00:34:34,401
In this case, dead flesh.

351
00:34:34,401 --> 00:34:38,122
That was the first thing the Carmelite sisters of the church noticed.

352
00:34:38,122 --> 00:34:41,724
His Mary was dead.

353
00:34:41,724 --> 00:34:46,876
Her skin was green, her body bloated under a screaming red dress.

354
00:34:46,876 --> 00:34:52,039
Once that appalling shock had registered, worse was rumored.

355
00:34:52,039 --> 00:34:55,966
That Caravaggio had taken a drowned whore from the morgue

356
00:34:55,966 --> 00:35:01,714
and made her into the Madonna.

357
00:35:01,714 --> 00:35:08,355
For me, this picture is the most moving of any painted of this scene.

358
00:35:08,355 --> 00:35:12,887
The apostles brought to the death bed, heads bowed in sorrow.

359
00:35:12,887 --> 00:35:24,388
Mary Magdalene crumpled with grief.

360
00:35:24,388 --> 00:35:29,876
Of course, if the virgin's just having a nice snooze prior to the lift to paradise,

361
00:35:29,876 --> 00:35:33,131
why should anyone be so distraught?

362
00:35:33,131 --> 00:35:38,380
But the weight of grief here is measured by the sense of a real death.

363
00:35:38,380 --> 00:35:43,711
It's a response not to immortality, but mortality.

364
00:35:43,711 --> 00:35:47,458
Wherever Mary is going, she's leaving our world,

365
00:35:47,458 --> 00:35:52,100
and that's reason enough to mourn.

366
00:35:52,100 --> 00:35:57,022
Not everyone saw it that way, and once they got over their shock,

367
00:35:57,022 --> 00:36:05,156
the Carmelite sisters who commissioned the painting gave it back.

368
00:36:05,156 --> 00:36:13,612
[heavy breathing]

369
00:36:13,612 --> 00:36:27,301
It must have been a bitter rejection, and it marks a major turning point.

370
00:36:30,055 --> 00:36:37,450
From now on, Caravaggio was even quicker to take offense,

371
00:36:37,450 --> 00:36:42,608
and his life was about to spiral into a series of disastrous encounters

372
00:36:42,608 --> 00:36:50,539
that would culminate in an act of appalling bloodshed.

373
00:36:50,539 --> 00:36:54,937


374
00:36:54,937 --> 00:37:01,334
It all started with a woman. Her name was Lena, a real flesh-and-blood Roman beauty.

375
00:37:01,334 --> 00:37:05,713
Much the most voluptuous of all of Caravaggio's models.

376
00:37:05,713 --> 00:37:10,771
She'd also caught the eye of another man, Mariano Pasqualone.

377
00:37:10,771 --> 00:37:14,082
So Pasqualone goes to see Lena's mama,

378
00:37:14,082 --> 00:37:17,033
says he's in love, wants to marry her,

379
00:37:17,033 --> 00:37:21,443
wants to make a respectable woman of her, and oh - by the way -

380
00:37:21,443 --> 00:37:27,586
does she know what goes on in those long modeling sessions in Caravaggio's studio?

381
00:37:27,586 --> 00:37:30,885
Mama goes to see the painter.

382
00:37:30,885 --> 00:37:34,563
Doesn't take much to imagine what happens next.

383
00:37:34,563 --> 00:37:41,092
Honor besmirched, Caravaggio explodes in fury, wants to challenge Pasqualone to a duel,

384
00:37:41,092 --> 00:37:44,120
but the coward won't wear a sword by day.

385
00:37:44,120 --> 00:37:48,402
There is a huge shouting match on the Corso.

386
00:37:48,402 --> 00:37:54,567
That night, in the Piazza Novone, Pasqualone is attacked from behind.

387
00:37:54,567 --> 00:38:02,527
Blood, screams. Victim miraculously still alive. Assailant flees into the darkness.

388
00:38:02,527 --> 00:38:09,189
No one is in any doubt who it is.

389
00:38:09,189 --> 00:38:19,364


390
00:38:19,364 --> 00:38:28,583
By late May 1606, he's just a homicide waiting to happen.

391
00:38:30,983 --> 00:38:35,721
[sword clanking]

392
00:38:35,721 --> 00:38:46,329


393
00:38:46,329 --> 00:38:54,377
[powerful music]

394
00:38:54,377 --> 00:39:46,196
[heavy breathing]

395
00:39:46,196 --> 00:39:55,350
[screaming]

396
00:39:55,350 --> 00:40:16,457


397
00:40:16,457 --> 00:40:24,696
And you think, well, it was always going to turn out badly, wasn't it?

398
00:40:24,696 --> 00:40:34,305
Tomassoni's taken to his house, where he makes his final confession, and bleeds to death.

399
00:40:34,305 --> 00:40:37,437


400
00:40:37,437 --> 00:40:42,292
Wanted for murder, Caravaggio goes on the run.

401
00:40:42,292 --> 00:40:46,795
In his absence he is sentenced to abande capitale.

402
00:40:46,795 --> 00:40:50,073
There's a price on his head. Literally.

403
00:40:50,073 --> 00:40:57,062
Show up with his head in a basket and you get the reward.

404
00:41:00,355 --> 00:41:07,599
[rippling water]

405
00:41:07,599 --> 00:41:33,923


406
00:41:33,923 --> 00:41:39,799
Once again his network of patrons and admirers rallies round to keep him afloat.

407
00:41:39,799 --> 00:41:43,708
Throughout the summer of 1606 they help him hide out,

408
00:41:43,708 --> 00:41:54,273
and in return, sick and sober by what he's done, Caravaggio makes paintings.

409
00:41:54,273 --> 00:41:56,841


410
00:41:56,841 --> 00:42:05,678
Paintings that help him on his way far beyond the jurisdiction of the papal state.

411
00:42:05,678 --> 00:42:13,540
Somewhere the police and bounty hunters won't find him.

412
00:42:16,493 --> 00:42:20,374
Naples.

413
00:42:20,374 --> 00:42:25,731
Here, in a city where cutting your throat is nothing to get worked up about

414
00:42:25,731 --> 00:42:28,525
Caravaggio is a celebrity.

415
00:42:28,525 --> 00:42:33,094
But his paintings are full of pity, tenderness, and mercy.

416
00:42:33,094 --> 00:42:44,746
Hardly surprising, since as a murderer he knows his immortal soul is in grave danger.

417
00:42:57,194 --> 00:43:04,330
A year goes by since the murder and escape from Rome.

418
00:43:04,330 --> 00:43:09,491
The Neapolitans can't get enough of him.

419
00:43:09,491 --> 00:43:13,165
Caravaggio is doing great work, and guess what?

420
00:43:13,165 --> 00:43:18,616
No fights.

421
00:43:21,416 --> 00:43:28,716
So why does he suddenly leave, and end up in Malta, of all places?

422
00:43:31,332 --> 00:43:35,327
Not to be a crusader against the Turks, that's for sure.

423
00:43:35,327 --> 00:43:46,323
But there was one thing that Malta, the Christian island in the Muslim Mediterranean, could give him which Naples couldn't -

424
00:43:46,323 --> 00:43:52,886
Status. Respect. A knighthood.

425
00:43:52,886 --> 00:43:57,134
One of his patrons makes the right noises, and introduces Caravaggio

426
00:43:57,134 --> 00:44:00,911
to the Holy Order of the Knights of St. John.

427
00:44:00,911 --> 00:44:05,002
One of most rich and powerful organizations in Europe.

428
00:44:05,002 --> 00:44:09,041
Becoming a knight would mean not only honor and respect,

429
00:44:09,041 --> 00:44:13,775
but also a chance to wipe the bloody slate of his past clean.

430
00:44:13,775 --> 00:44:19,641
Now, normally being a convicted murderer would be an insurmountable obstacle to admission.

431
00:44:19,641 --> 00:44:22,127
Not for Caravaggio.

432
00:44:22,127 --> 00:44:29,560
On 14 July 1608 the robe with the Maltese Cross is put around the fugitive's shoulders,

433
00:44:29,560 --> 00:44:38,676
and he is officially proclaimed one of the greatest of painters, living or dead.

434
00:44:38,676 --> 00:44:46,468
[choral singing]

435
00:44:48,776 --> 00:44:58,560
In exchange for all this, Caravaggio undertook a painting for the knights' cathedral.

436
00:45:00,914 --> 00:45:05,787
You have to imagine this place filled with robes and incense,

437
00:45:05,787 --> 00:45:11,932
and echoing with deep, dark anthems.

438
00:45:11,932 --> 00:45:17,731


439
00:45:17,731 --> 00:45:23,212
The beheading of John the Baptist is the biggest thing Caravaggio had ever done.

440
00:45:23,212 --> 00:45:28,399
Seventeen feet long, filling the entire eastern wall of the oratory.

441
00:45:28,399 --> 00:45:31,511
It's movie screen-sized.

442
00:45:31,511 --> 00:45:41,896
He wanted the knights to feel it not as a painting, but as a living drama going on right in front of them.

443
00:45:44,312 --> 00:45:47,591
No wonder it sends a shiver through us, this thing.

444
00:45:47,591 --> 00:45:49,854
This infamous butchery.

445
00:45:49,854 --> 00:45:55,992
Taking place in a grim prison yard, where the body of John the Baptist has been dragged

446
00:45:55,992 --> 00:46:01,615
to have his head hacked off.

447
00:46:03,246 --> 00:46:12,294
It's a scene of remorseless cruelty that tears your insides out and turns art upside down.

448
00:46:12,294 --> 00:46:17,766
Art is supposed to bring us beauty, but just look at that semicircle of figures,

449
00:46:17,766 --> 00:46:24,195
and you'll see something has gone terribly wrong.

450
00:46:24,195 --> 00:46:33,907
That perfect lily-white arm carries the golden bowl into which the Baptist's head will drop.

451
00:46:33,907 --> 00:46:37,798
The solemn soldier, the embodiment of authority,

452
00:46:37,798 --> 00:46:42,349
is giving the order for an atrocity.

453
00:46:42,349 --> 00:46:48,951
That perfect nude is a cold-blooded hit man with a knife.

454
00:46:48,951 --> 00:46:51,848
The action seems to go on forever.

455
00:46:51,848 --> 00:46:54,735
Until, like that anguished old woman,

456
00:46:54,735 --> 00:46:59,131
all you can do is scream.

457
00:46:59,131 --> 00:47:02,637
Caravaggio gives us death, twice over.

458
00:47:02,637 --> 00:47:09,315
The death of John the Baptist, and the death of our most cherished illusion about art,

459
00:47:09,315 --> 00:47:13,245
that it can make us finer, more humane.

460
00:47:13,245 --> 00:47:15,832
"Dream on," says Caravaggio.

461
00:47:15,832 --> 00:47:25,986
In the face of this barbaric power, all we can ever be are impotent spectators, just like those prisoners in the grim darkness,

462
00:47:25,986 --> 00:47:32,421
screwing their necks to get a look.

463
00:47:32,421 --> 00:47:37,833
It's this ruthless honesty that makes this such a modern work.

464
00:47:37,833 --> 00:47:46,255
Art without any vision of consolation or redemption.

465
00:47:46,255 --> 00:47:48,582
It's a chilling scene.

466
00:47:48,582 --> 00:47:53,311
For me, it's about the most powerful statement an artist could possibly make

467
00:47:53,311 --> 00:47:55,513
about the human condition.

468
00:47:55,513 --> 00:47:58,946
About the brutality of state murder.

469
00:47:58,946 --> 00:48:01,698
But it's also autobiography.

470
00:48:01,698 --> 00:48:08,318
Caravaggio has signed this picture, writing his name in the blood of John the Baptist.

471
00:48:08,318 --> 00:48:16,881
Only a guilt-stricken killer could possibly feel this desperately about wanting the violence to stop.

472
00:48:16,881 --> 00:48:26,972
Only Caravaggio could want so badly for the blood of the martyr to wash away his crime.

473
00:48:26,972 --> 00:48:32,882
[saintly singing]

474
00:48:35,267 --> 00:49:00,392


475
00:49:00,392 --> 00:49:04,297
Now it would be nice, wouldn't it, if that was the end of the story?

476
00:49:04,297 --> 00:49:08,165
Outlaw painter redeemed by knockout masterpiece.

477
00:49:08,165 --> 00:49:11,004
Art changed forever. Sinner saved.

478
00:49:11,004 --> 00:49:15,552
But in Caravaggio's case, salvation doesn't come that easily.

479
00:49:15,552 --> 00:49:23,046
The painter who wants violence to stop can't even control his own.

480
00:49:25,062 --> 00:49:33,808
Barely a month after he's been admitted to the Order of St. John, Caravaggio's imprisoned for assaulting a brother knight.

481
00:49:33,808 --> 00:49:38,886
But, incredibly, he manages to escape from his underground cell,

482
00:49:38,886 --> 00:49:41,798
over the castle walls, and into a boat

483
00:49:41,798 --> 00:49:49,414
which takes him to Sicily.

484
00:49:49,968 --> 00:49:55,990
He returns to the safety of Naples, and it's here his enemies finally catch up with him.

485
00:49:55,990 --> 00:49:58,403
He's jumped, leaving an inn,

486
00:49:58,403 --> 00:50:04,743
his face and head slashed and gashed so badly, he's left for dead.

487
00:50:04,743 --> 00:50:15,860


488
00:50:15,860 --> 00:50:20,986
But he doesn't die, and in this, his darkest moment, recovering from his beating,

489
00:50:20,986 --> 00:50:23,384
news reaches him from Rome.

490
00:50:23,384 --> 00:50:28,613
The pope's nephew, Scipione Borghese, is arranging a pardon.

491
00:50:28,613 --> 00:50:34,131
So Caravaggio sets about repaying him, the only way he can,

492
00:50:34,131 --> 00:50:40,390
the only way he's ever got anywhere.

493
00:50:46,082 --> 00:50:51,826
It's a self-portrait, unlike any painted before.

494
00:50:51,826 --> 00:50:55,617
Usually when artists looked in the mirror they liked what they saw,

495
00:50:55,617 --> 00:51:01,299
and what they saw were men, young or old, whose features were ennobled by their calling,

496
00:51:01,299 --> 00:51:05,749
to bring virtue, beauty and grace into the world.

497
00:51:05,749 --> 00:51:10,627
Now, look at Caravaggio.

498
00:51:10,627 --> 00:51:14,615
A decapitated head. He's Goliath.

499
00:51:14,615 --> 00:51:19,413
A bloody grotesque. A monster.

500
00:51:19,413 --> 00:51:24,454
In the beheading of John the Baptist, evil was done by other people.

501
00:51:24,454 --> 00:51:30,063
Here it's Caravaggio who's the embodiment of wickedness.

502
00:51:30,063 --> 00:51:35,528
In this victory of virtue over evil, David is supposed to be the center of attention,

503
00:51:35,528 --> 00:51:40,013
but have you ever seen a less jubilant victor?

504
00:51:40,013 --> 00:51:47,045
On his sword is inscribed, "humilitas occidit superbiam", humility conquers pride.

505
00:51:47,045 --> 00:51:56,503
A battle that's been fought out inside Caravaggio's head, between the two sides of the painter portrayed here.

506
00:51:56,503 --> 00:51:59,853
There's the devout, courageous David Caravaggio,

507
00:51:59,853 --> 00:52:03,981
and then there's the criminal sinner, Goliath Caravaggio.

508
00:52:03,981 --> 00:52:09,148
"I know who I've been," says the pathetic head, unable to look us in the eyes,

509
00:52:09,148 --> 00:52:16,072
"I know what I've done." It's a desolate vision, offered to us in utter blackness,

510
00:52:16,072 --> 00:52:22,454
no virtue, no grace. Just the dark truth from the inside of Caravaggio's head,

511
00:52:22,454 --> 00:52:27,295
flooded with tragic self-knowledge.

512
00:52:29,157 --> 00:52:45,096


513
00:52:45,096 --> 00:52:49,068
For me, the power of his art is the power of truth,

514
00:52:49,068 --> 00:52:51,626
not least about ourselves.

515
00:52:51,626 --> 00:52:54,948
For if we're ever to have a chance of redemption,

516
00:52:54,948 --> 00:53:05,283
it must begin with an act of recognition that in all of us the Goliath competes with the David.

517
00:53:05,283 --> 00:53:11,393
In July 1610, Caravaggio rolled up his paintings and set sail from Naples,

518
00:53:11,393 --> 00:53:18,369
finally heading home.

519
00:53:18,369 --> 00:53:29,589
Sailing north, his boat stopped at the tiny harbor of Parlo, on the coast just west of Rome.

520
00:53:29,589 --> 00:53:33,936
Here, the local captain of the guard either hadn't heard about his pardon

521
00:53:33,936 --> 00:53:36,755
or mistook him for some other fugitive.

522
00:53:36,755 --> 00:53:40,006
Either way, he's thrown in jail.

523
00:53:40,006 --> 00:53:46,457
By the time he's managed to pay his way out, his boat has sailed off, along with his paintings,

524
00:53:46,457 --> 00:53:53,809
his offering to Borghese.

525
00:53:56,425 --> 00:53:59,921
Desperate to catch up with his ship with its precious cargo,

526
00:53:59,921 --> 00:54:11,926
Caravaggio sets off north towards Porto Ercole, 100 km through the malarial infested swamp country, the Miramar.

527
00:54:16,773 --> 00:54:21,630
[trudging footsteps]

528
00:54:21,630 --> 00:54:36,628


529
00:54:36,628 --> 00:54:40,209
Here, the final disaster awaited.

530
00:54:40,209 --> 00:54:47,734
In pathetic attempt to hail a ship, Caravaggio starts running along the beach under the broiling July sun

531
00:54:47,734 --> 00:54:50,734
before collapsing in the sand.

532
00:54:50,734 --> 00:54:57,082
By now he's suffering from a raging fever, and is taken to a local monastic hospital.

533
00:54:57,082 --> 00:55:03,418
There, according to a contemporary report, without the aid of God or man,

534
00:55:03,418 --> 00:55:09,677
he died, as miserably as he'd lived.

535
00:55:11,893 --> 00:55:53,027


536
00:55:53,027 --> 00:55:56,648
>> No!!!!!

537
00:55:57,725 --> 00:56:04,169
It's sometime later that the pope's nephew, Scipione Borghese, finally receives the paintings

538
00:56:04,169 --> 00:56:08,406
with which Caravaggio had hoped to win his pardon.

539
00:56:08,406 --> 00:56:12,486
The cardinal finds himself face to face with the picture of the painter

540
00:56:12,486 --> 00:56:15,547
as the slain Goliath.

541
00:56:15,547 --> 00:56:17,874
The cardinal isn't used to this.

542
00:56:17,874 --> 00:56:22,660
Artists had been given their gift by God to bring beauty into the world,

543
00:56:22,660 --> 00:56:26,403
to put mortal creatures in touch with their higher selves.

544
00:56:26,403 --> 00:56:29,170
That's the way it was supposed to be.

545
00:56:29,170 --> 00:56:33,309
But Caravaggio never did anything the way it was supposed to be.

546
00:56:33,309 --> 00:56:37,918
"Here I am," says this dead face which seems still alive,

547
00:56:37,918 --> 00:56:44,342
"They said whoever delivers my head will get a reward. Well, I'm turning myself in.

548
00:56:44,342 --> 00:56:47,571
Will that do? Can I have my reward?

549
00:56:47,571 --> 00:56:49,974
Can I have my pardon?"

550
00:56:49,974 --> 00:56:56,126
"Sorry," says the cardinal. "So sorry. You're too late."