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Italy, 1610.

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Michelangelo Merisi da 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 the 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,

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the monster, Goliath?

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Maybe he hopes
that by making this guilty plea in paint,

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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,

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that the good guy wins.

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But this is Caravaggio,
and the genius is the villain.

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Rome, 1600.

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The centre 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,

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''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, wipe them out.''

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Catholics shot back,

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''What about the millions who can't read,
don't they deserve to be saved?"

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''Shouldn't the poor have a vision
of the sacrifice of the Saviour,"

32
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''the life of the Virgin?''

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In the Catholic Church's 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,

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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,

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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 a sweaty, yelling crowd,

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a hundred thousand of them
jostling in the markets and the piazzas,

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

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shifty part-time soldiers who'd 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 Ortaccio,

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the evil Eden down by the river Tiber.

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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,

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up for bother, always on the fly.

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Their motto as they prowled the streets,

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Nec spe, nec metu, ''Without hope, without fear''.

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Shove this up your arse.

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Of course, he wasn't born a thug,

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just a boy from small-town Lombardy,
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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00:06:51,007 --> 00:06:55,239
But plague was the enemy of expectations,
even small ones,

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and it killed off Caravaggio's father,
and his grandpa

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on the same day, when he was just five.

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When he was 1 9, 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,

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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.

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Plenty of that lying around.

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Second, take yourself off to the old masters.

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Raphael, perhaps. 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,

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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.

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Down here on earth, in the studio,

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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 and then he'd paint.

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When someone asked him
what he was gonna do for models,

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he pointed at the street. ''Them'', he said.

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And he brought ''them'' into his studio.

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The rough awkwardness
of Caravaggio's Boy with a Basket of Fruit

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was a long way from the refined beauty
of the Renaissance masters.

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From the start, he wasn't gonna 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,

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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,

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the lips are grey, the eyes unslept,
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.

106
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Yes, he's got the bloom just right,
but they're definitely past their sell-by date,

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and they're offered to us in an oily paw
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,

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challenging the very way
that painting was supposed to be.

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It wasn't for the timid, but painting this sharp

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wasn't going to go unnoticed
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 pile of a palazzo,
surrounded by poets,

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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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Cardsharps.

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Del Monte takes in the brilliant colour,

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the jokey action, 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's succour,

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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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The cardinal buys his painting for a song

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and then makes Caravaggio
an offer he can't refuse.

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''Why don't you move into the palazzo,

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bed, board, smartest company in Rome,

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poets, philosophers, terrific kitchen,
my dear, 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

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it's love songs that are their thing?
I don't think so.

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The lead singer is crying his eyes out
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,
nothing this fleshy, and so close to us.

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It's like, oh, yes, four youths in a closet.
''Excuse me, so sorry, don't mean to intrude. ''

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''No, no, come on in, darling.
Pull up a cushion,join us, 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
crashes the safety barrier of the frame.

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It tears away the separation. It reaches you.

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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,

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Caravaggio won the commission
to paint two scenes from the life of St Matthew

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for the Contarelli chapel,
in the church of San 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,

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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,

167
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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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00:16:15,767 --> 00:16:20,477
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?
-Me, where have I been?

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I've been here for an hour, come on, sit down.

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Suddenly it all made sense,

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what the Church was looking for
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.
Torn paper shades on the windows

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and characters from the cardsharps
and other low lives

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gather to witness the big moment.

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Half of them don't even notice
when the two mysterious strangers,

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Christ and St Peter, enter the room.

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Freeze-frame, the finger points. ''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,

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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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00:17:56,247 --> 00:18:00,763
And through that finger comes a bolt of radiance

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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
the theatre or the movies,

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well, you're absolutely right.

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

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in this space,
and suddenly find themselves in the presence,

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not of a painting at all, but a real event.

200
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Seeing is believing.

201
00:19:08,847 --> 00:19:11,122
With The Calling of Matthew finished,

202
00:19:11,207 --> 00:19:14,324
Caravaggio returned to the painting
for the other wall,

203
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Matthew's Martyrdom and his problem had gone.

204
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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.;

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a brutal assault in a backstreet.

207
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Terrified, chaotic, hysterical,
the figures spin around, out of control.

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00:19:41,967 --> 00:19:44,959
The scene is glimpsed
as if you were running away,

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which is exactly
what Caravaggio has painted himself doing.

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

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00:20:01,527 --> 00:20:06,282
And in the middle of all this manic action,
there is one fixed point,

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floodlit, so you can't miss him,

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the naked assassin, finishing off his hit.

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Caravaggio makes the sinner, not the saint,

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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.

218
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Caravaggio must have thought,
''What can't I get away with?''

219
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He's 30 years old,

220
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the Matthews have made him
an overnight sensation.

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The church commissions roll in
but it all starts to go to his head.

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The other Caravaggio shows up.

223
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Violent, abusive, unpredictable.

224
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We'll cut off your balls and we'll fry 'em in oil!

225
00:21:31,967 --> 00:21:37,883
And the more successful he is,
the weirder his behaviour gets.

226
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His brother, Giovanni Battista, a priest,
comes to see the painter in Del Monte's palace.

227
00:21:44,047 --> 00:21:47,517
''I've got no brother, never had one'',
says Caravaggio.

228
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Brother leaves, crushed, bewildered.

229
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He kits himself up in a fancy black outfit,

230
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but then he wears it until it's in tatters.

231
00:22:11,087 --> 00:22:15,842
Then there's his dog, Crow,
which he teaches to walk on its hind legs.

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Crow...

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

234
00:22:55,007 --> 00:22:56,326
watch out.

235
00:22:56,407 --> 00:23:02,118
Caravaggio and his mates particularly get off
on abusing rivals and imitators.

236
00:23:03,527 --> 00:23:08,555
''We'll fry your balls in oil''
was one of the choice insults recorded in court.

237
00:23:09,767 --> 00:23:13,077
Whether he meant it or not,
all this physical aggression,

238
00:23:13,167 --> 00:23:18,366
all this sweaty closeness on the borderline
between pathos and trouble

239
00:23:18,447 --> 00:23:23,646
carried over into Caravaggio's art,
with shockingly moving results.

240
00:23:30,607 --> 00:23:34,805
Only someone who rubbed shoulders
with the poorest people in Rome

241
00:23:34,887 --> 00:23:38,118
could produce painting like this.

242
00:23:38,207 --> 00:23:41,597
Christ grabs Doubting Thomas' wrist,

243
00:23:41,687 --> 00:23:44,884
guiding his finger deep into his wound,

244
00:23:44,967 --> 00:23:49,802
burying it in his body until Thomas believes.

245
00:23:49,887 --> 00:23:54,119
Caravaggio says,
''You don't just look at my pictures,

246
00:23:54,207 --> 00:23:57,040
you don't just stare, you feel them. ''

247
00:23:57,127 --> 00:24:01,803
''Okay'', we say, ''Okay, we feel it.
We believe, we believe. ''

248
00:24:02,807 --> 00:24:05,367
He doesn't do it just for effect.

249
00:24:05,447 --> 00:24:07,961
It's because no one else painting in Rome

250
00:24:08,047 --> 00:24:14,395
takes the message of Christianity
more seriously than this sinner.

251
00:24:14,487 --> 00:24:18,196
Christ says,
''The wretched of the earth can be saved',

252
00:24:18,287 --> 00:24:21,677
and they are what Caravaggio gives us.

253
00:24:21,767 --> 00:24:26,795
The gospel is happening right here, right now.

254
00:24:29,367 --> 00:24:34,202
When people come into church and see them,
they are thunderstruck.

255
00:24:34,287 --> 00:24:38,883
Their lives change, their eyes open,
their hearts pound.

256
00:24:38,967 --> 00:24:42,403
In the presence of sacred dramas
so vivid, so physical,

257
00:24:42,487 --> 00:24:45,524
they think they can stretch out and touch them,

258
00:24:45,607 --> 00:24:49,600
the most hardened sinner,
the worst sneerer believes.

259
00:24:56,167 --> 00:25:00,399
This was the painter
the Church had been waiting for.

260
00:25:00,487 --> 00:25:02,955
Here's St Paul flat on his back,

261
00:25:03,047 --> 00:25:08,246
his eyeballs scorched yellow
by the blinding light of revelation.

262
00:25:08,327 --> 00:25:12,559
Next to him,
St Peter bears his load of cowardly guilt,

263
00:25:12,647 --> 00:25:14,478
crucified upside down,

264
00:25:14,567 --> 00:25:19,038
unworthy, he says,
to be martyred the same way as Christ.

265
00:25:20,927 --> 00:25:26,877
No one could touch Caravaggio
for capturing the sheer weight of the Gospels.

266
00:25:26,967 --> 00:25:29,322
His faith is carnal,

267
00:25:29,407 --> 00:25:33,685
the bodies in his masterpieces
are trapped in flesh,

268
00:25:33,767 --> 00:25:37,237
even when they're the Son of God.

269
00:25:37,327 --> 00:25:40,000
But wasn't that the point of the gospel?

270
00:25:40,087 --> 00:25:42,157
Christ's presence on earth,

271
00:25:42,247 --> 00:25:46,035
not as a weightless angel, but in the flesh of man.

272
00:25:56,927 --> 00:26:00,442
The point is, he's not just an art revolutionary,

273
00:26:00,527 --> 00:26:05,885
this sinner is also a devout Christian,
an evangelist for the unwashed.

274
00:26:05,967 --> 00:26:10,722
Can you imagine how pilgrims coming to 
Rome, their Italian Jerusalem,

275
00:26:10,807 --> 00:26:14,516
felt when confronted by this image of themselves?

276
00:26:17,207 --> 00:26:20,199
Here's a painter who understood 
what it was like

277
00:26:20,287 --> 00:26:25,725
to live inside the grimy skin
of the poor and the pious.

278
00:26:34,887 --> 00:26:38,596
His street casting is astounding.

279
00:26:38,687 --> 00:26:40,484
His Madonna of Loreto

280
00:26:40,567 --> 00:26:44,480
is just a local girl standing in her doorway

281
00:26:44,567 --> 00:26:48,082
and, instead of the usual crowd of the reverent,

282
00:26:48,167 --> 00:26:50,476
all we have kneeling before her

283
00:26:50,567 --> 00:26:54,526
are two old pilgrims who have plodded miles

284
00:26:54,607 --> 00:26:57,121
on their bare and calloused feet.

285
00:27:01,687 --> 00:27:04,565
Faced with this homage to filthy feet,

286
00:27:04,647 --> 00:27:08,925
some in the Church may well have felt
that Caravaggio had gone too far.

287
00:27:09,007 --> 00:27:13,842
The dreaded word ''indecent'' began to crop 
up whenever his name was mentioned.

288
00:27:13,927 --> 00:27:17,476
Perhaps that's why Giovanni Baglione,
one of his imitators,

289
00:27:17,567 --> 00:27:20,479
got the plum job of painting the Resurrection

290
00:27:20,567 --> 00:27:24,606
in the new Jesuit church, and Caravaggio didn't.

291
00:27:26,247 --> 00:27:31,401
Not long afterwards,
a poem did the rounds of Rome's rougher taverns.

292
00:27:32,407 --> 00:27:36,559
Giovanni Baglione, you are a know-nothing.

293
00:27:38,287 --> 00:27:41,279
Your pictures are just daubs.

294
00:27:41,367 --> 00:27:46,487
I warrant
you will not earn a brass farthing with them.

295
00:27:48,447 --> 00:27:52,565
Not enough for cloth to make britches.

296
00:27:53,367 --> 00:27:56,723
So you'll have to go around
with your arse in the air.

297
00:27:58,407 --> 00:28:01,365
Maybe you could use them
to wipe your bum with them.

298
00:28:09,007 --> 00:28:13,046
Awfully sorry, I won't be able to join in
with a chorus of praise.

299
00:28:13,127 --> 00:28:18,247
But you are quite unworthy
of the chain that you are wearing.

300
00:28:18,327 --> 00:28:22,240
-And a disgrace to painting.
-Yes.

301
00:28:23,527 --> 00:28:27,805
Whether the verses were written by 
Caravaggio, or one of his pals,

302
00:28:27,887 --> 00:28:29,400
we'll never know.

303
00:28:29,487 --> 00:28:31,921
Baglione sues for libel

304
00:28:32,007 --> 00:28:35,966
and Caravaggio is arrested and thrown in jail.

305
00:28:51,647 --> 00:28:56,675
The court record of the trial is the only time
we hear Caravaggio's words directly.

306
00:28:57,567 --> 00:28:58,761
Poems?

307
00:29:00,287 --> 00:29:01,640
What poems?

308
00:29:02,287 --> 00:29:04,517
So they're read aloud to the whole court.

309
00:29:06,447 --> 00:29:08,483
Oh, those poems.

310
00:29:09,607 --> 00:29:12,405
Well, they're nothing to do with me,

311
00:29:12,487 --> 00:29:15,320
but whoever wrote them is 
obviously an art critic.

312
00:29:26,687 --> 00:29:30,566
Months roll by with Caravaggio still in jail.

313
00:29:33,647 --> 00:29:39,040
Then, finally, without a verdict,
he's released to house arrest.

314
00:29:45,487 --> 00:29:51,801
If he leaves without written permission,
he gets a stint rowing as a galley slave.

315
00:29:53,807 --> 00:29:56,367
Does this stop him in his tracks?

316
00:29:56,447 --> 00:29:57,641
Hardly.

317
00:30:05,687 --> 00:30:10,203
Five hours after nightfall,
Michelangelo da Caravaggio,

318
00:30:10,287 --> 00:30:14,121
who was carrying a sword and dagger,
was halted by my men.

319
00:30:15,327 --> 00:30:21,436
When I asked if he had a licence, he said, ''Yes'',
and presented it, so he was dismissed.

320
00:30:23,167 --> 00:30:26,000
I told him he could leave
and said, ''Good night, sir'',

321
00:30:26,087 --> 00:30:29,397
to which he replied, ''Shove it up your arse.''

322
00:30:30,127 --> 00:30:33,756
So I arrested him
since I could not tolerate such a thing.

323
00:30:43,927 --> 00:30:48,478
I was seized on the Corso,
outside the church of San Ambrogio,

324
00:30:49,687 --> 00:30:52,121
because I had a sword and a dagger.

325
00:30:53,647 --> 00:30:58,562
I have no written licence
to carry a sword or a dagger.

326
00:30:59,967 --> 00:31:03,926
However, the Governor of Rome

327
00:31:04,007 --> 00:31:10,162
had given verbal orders
to the captain and corporal

328
00:31:11,847 --> 00:31:14,042
to let me carry them.

329
00:31:14,487 --> 00:31:18,526
I have no other licence.

330
00:31:25,367 --> 00:31:28,165
Even his closest friends couldn't work out

331
00:31:28,247 --> 00:31:34,482
how the painter of religious marvels
and the psycho could inhabit the same person.

332
00:31:35,807 --> 00:31:39,561
We're having dinner
in the tavern of the Moor, yeah.

333
00:31:39,647 --> 00:31:41,717
And across the room was...

334
00:31:41,807 --> 00:31:44,082
Michelangelo da Caravaggio...

335
00:31:44,167 --> 00:31:45,486
The famous painter.

336
00:31:45,567 --> 00:31:49,162
He asked the waiter if the artichokes
had been done in butter or oil.

337
00:31:49,247 --> 00:31:52,159
Oil or butter, them all being on the same plate.

338
00:31:52,247 --> 00:31:54,477
Yeah, reasonable question.

339
00:32:05,487 --> 00:32:08,445
Are these done in oil or butter?

340
00:32:12,647 --> 00:32:15,036
I don't know, smell 'em yourself.

341
00:32:21,807 --> 00:32:24,924
Do you think you're talking to some sort of bum?

342
00:32:31,007 --> 00:32:34,124
Come on, smell it. Smell the artichoke.
What does it smell of?

343
00:32:34,207 --> 00:32:36,198
Oil or butter, eh?

344
00:32:36,287 --> 00:32:40,997
Smell it. Smell it. Smell it, come on.
Smell it yourself, eh?

345
00:32:41,087 --> 00:32:43,157
Smell the artichoke.

346
00:32:43,247 --> 00:32:46,045
Smell it, smell it. Smell it!

347
00:32:46,127 --> 00:32:49,915
Michelangelo took this somewhat amiss,

348
00:32:50,007 --> 00:32:53,841
and he says, ''If I'm not mistaken,
you damn cuckold,

349
00:32:53,927 --> 00:32:56,282
you think you're serving some sort of bum.''

350
00:32:56,367 --> 00:33:01,236
And he... He picked up the artichokes
and he threw them at the waiter.

351
00:33:01,767 --> 00:33:05,601
At no point did he take out his sword
and threaten the waiter.

352
00:33:07,407 --> 00:33:08,556
-Smell it.
-Easy.

353
00:33:08,647 --> 00:33:09,636
Smell that.

354
00:33:26,647 --> 00:33:31,482
Of course, Caravaggio doesn't just pick fights
with people in restaurants,

355
00:33:31,567 --> 00:33:36,197
he's fighting tradition
with painting past and present.

356
00:33:39,167 --> 00:33:44,002
He lands the commission
for the church of Santa Maria, here in Trastevere.

357
00:33:44,087 --> 00:33:46,476
It should have been right up his street.

358
00:33:46,567 --> 00:33:51,561
One of the poorest areas of Rome,
at its heart was the cult of the Virgin Mary,

359
00:33:51,647 --> 00:33:55,686
to whom the women of the district
fervently prayed to cure the sick,

360
00:33:55,767 --> 00:33:59,442
make the barren fertile
and save the plague-stricken.

361
00:33:59,527 --> 00:34:03,236
Who better than Caravaggio
to paint the death of Mary?

362
00:34:04,687 --> 00:34:09,477
According to Christian tradition,
Mary's death wasn't a death at all,

363
00:34:09,567 --> 00:34:13,401
but a sleep before her ascent into heaven.

364
00:34:13,487 --> 00:34:18,766
Just as the conception and birth of her son
had been a fleshless miracle,

365
00:34:18,847 --> 00:34:22,044
so her death was a fleshless exit.

366
00:34:23,527 --> 00:34:27,839
Well, Caravaggio didn't do fleshlessness,
he did flesh.

367
00:34:27,927 --> 00:34:30,043
In this case, dead flesh.

368
00:34:33,927 --> 00:34:37,761
That was the first thing
the Carmelite Sisters of the church noticed.

369
00:34:37,847 --> 00:34:39,724
His Mary was dead.

370
00:34:40,967 --> 00:34:42,719
Her skin was green,

371
00:34:42,807 --> 00:34:46,482
her body bloated, under a screaming red dress.

372
00:34:46,567 --> 00:34:51,561
Once that appalling shock had registered,
worse was rumoured.

373
00:34:51,647 --> 00:34:55,606
That Caravaggio had taken
a drowned whore from the morgue

374
00:34:55,687 --> 00:34:57,917
and made her into the Madonna.

375
00:35:01,527 --> 00:35:07,841
For me, this picture is the most moving
of any painted of this scene.

376
00:35:07,927 --> 00:35:12,523
The Apostles brought to the deathbed,
heads bowed in sorrow,

377
00:35:12,607 --> 00:35:15,201
Mary Magdalene crumpled with grief.

378
00:35:23,887 --> 00:35:27,277
Of course,
if the Virgin's just having a nice snooze,

379
00:35:27,367 --> 00:35:31,758
prior to the lift to paradise,
why should anyone be so distraught?

380
00:35:32,727 --> 00:35:38,006
But the weight of grief here
is measured by the sense of a real death.

381
00:35:38,087 --> 00:35:42,956
It's a response not to immortality, but mortality.

382
00:35:43,047 --> 00:35:46,926
Wherever Mary is going, she's leaving our world,

383
00:35:47,007 --> 00:35:51,000
and that's reason enough to mourn.

384
00:35:51,727 --> 00:35:54,002
Not everyone saw it that way,

385
00:35:54,087 --> 00:35:56,726
and once they'd got over their shock,

386
00:35:56,807 --> 00:35:59,401
the Carmelite Sisters,
who'd commissioned the painting,

387
00:35:59,487 --> 00:36:00,966
gave it back.

388
00:36:13,167 --> 00:36:16,000
It must have been a bitter rejection,

389
00:36:16,087 --> 00:36:18,999
and it marks a major turning point.

390
00:36:29,647 --> 00:36:33,925
From now on,
Caravaggio was even quicker to take offence.

391
00:36:37,047 --> 00:36:41,757
And his life was about to spiral
into a series of disastrous encounters

392
00:36:41,847 --> 00:36:45,044
that will culminate
in an act of appalling bloodshed.

393
00:36:54,567 --> 00:36:57,240
It all started with a woman.

394
00:36:57,327 --> 00:37:00,956
Her name was Lena,
a real flesh-and-blood Roman beauty,

395
00:37:01,047 --> 00:37:05,245
much the most voluptuous
of all of Caravaggio's models.

396
00:37:05,327 --> 00:37:10,401
She'd also caught the eye of another man,
Mariano Pasqualone.

397
00:37:10,487 --> 00:37:15,277
So Pasqualone goes to see Lena's mama,
says he's in love,

398
00:37:15,367 --> 00:37:19,519
wants to marry her,
wants to make a respectable woman of her,

399
00:37:19,607 --> 00:37:22,599
and oh, by the way, 
does she know what goes on

400
00:37:22,687 --> 00:37:27,158
in those long modelling sessions
in Caravaggio's studio?

401
00:37:27,247 --> 00:37:30,603
Mama goes to see the painter.

402
00:37:30,687 --> 00:37:34,043
It doesn't take much to imagine
what happens next.

403
00:37:34,127 --> 00:37:37,881
Honour besmirched, Caravaggio explodes in fury,

404
00:37:37,967 --> 00:37:40,720
wants to challenge Pasqualone to a duel

405
00:37:40,807 --> 00:37:43,685
but the coward won't wear a sword by day.

406
00:37:43,767 --> 00:37:47,157
There is a huge shouting match on the Corso.

407
00:37:48,127 --> 00:37:53,918
That night in the Piazza Navona,
Pasqualone is attacked from behind.

408
00:37:54,007 --> 00:37:59,035
Blood, screams, victim miraculously still alive,

409
00:37:59,127 --> 00:38:02,164
assailant flees into the darkness.

410
00:38:02,247 --> 00:38:05,523
No one is in any doubt who it is.

411
00:38:18,967 --> 00:38:24,724
By late May, 1606,
he's just a homicide waiting to happen.

412
00:38:31,207 --> 00:38:35,519
It all falls into place
on one of those hot, sleepless nights.

413
00:38:51,527 --> 00:38:57,523
Caravaggio has a blown-fuse shouting match
with Ranuccio Tomassoni.

414
00:38:57,607 --> 00:39:00,246
It wasn't good to rumble with Tomassoni.

415
00:39:00,327 --> 00:39:03,876
A local heavy, he was also a famous swordsman.

416
00:39:04,847 --> 00:39:07,998
It was probably a row about a girl.

417
00:39:08,087 --> 00:39:12,444
Tomassoni, after all,
pimped many girls in this quarter.

418
00:39:14,567 --> 00:39:19,516
But Caravaggio didn't like anyone much
who threw their weight around.

419
00:39:20,447 --> 00:39:26,886
So a duel is arranged down by the tennis 
courts on Via della Scrofa.

420
00:40:17,887 --> 00:40:18,876
Come on!

421
00:41:58,327 --> 00:42:02,923
And you think, well, it was
always gonna turn out badly, wasn't it?

422
00:42:06,647 --> 00:42:10,765
Tomassoni's taken to his house
where he makes his final confession

423
00:42:10,847 --> 00:42:12,439
and bleeds to death.

424
00:42:19,367 --> 00:42:24,157
Wanted for murder, Caravaggio goes on the run.

425
00:42:24,247 --> 00:42:28,638
In his absence he's sentenced to 
abunde capitale.

426
00:42:28,727 --> 00:42:31,878
There's a price on his head, literally.

427
00:42:31,967 --> 00:42:35,676
Show up with his head in a basket
and you get the reward.

428
00:43:15,807 --> 00:43:21,325
Once again, his network of patrons and 
admirers rallies round to keep him afloat.

429
00:43:21,407 --> 00:43:25,525
Throughout the summer of 1606,
they help him hide out

430
00:43:25,607 --> 00:43:30,840
and, in return, sick and sober by what 
he's done, Caravaggio makes paintings.

431
00:43:38,167 --> 00:43:43,924
Paintings that help him on his way,
far beyond the jurisdiction of the Papal State.

432
00:43:47,687 --> 00:43:52,397
Somewhere the police
and bounty hunters won't find him.

433
00:43:58,167 --> 00:43:59,361
Naples.

434
00:44:03,087 --> 00:44:07,478
Here, in a city where cutting the odd throat
is nothing to get worked up about,

435
00:44:07,567 --> 00:44:10,286
Caravaggio is a celebrity.

436
00:44:10,367 --> 00:44:14,997
But his paintings are full of pity,
tenderness and mercy.

437
00:44:15,087 --> 00:44:21,242
Hardly surprising, since as a murderer,
he knows his immortal soul is in grave danger.

438
00:44:38,927 --> 00:44:42,840
A year goes by since the murder
and escape from Rome.

439
00:44:46,247 --> 00:44:48,920
The Neapolitans can't get enough of him.

440
00:44:51,127 --> 00:44:56,201
Caravaggio's doing great work and guess what?
No fights.

441
00:45:03,287 --> 00:45:07,917
So why does he suddenly leave
and end up in Malta of all places?

442
00:45:13,207 --> 00:45:17,120
Not to be a crusader against the Turks,
that's for sure.

443
00:45:17,207 --> 00:45:21,883
But there was one thing that Malta,
the Christian island in the Muslim Mediterranean,

444
00:45:21,967 --> 00:45:24,765
could give him, which Naples couldn't.

445
00:45:28,087 --> 00:45:33,719
Status, respect and knighthood.

446
00:45:34,567 --> 00:45:39,243
One of his patrons makes the right noises
and introduces Caravaggio

447
00:45:39,327 --> 00:45:42,637
to the holy order of the Knights of St John.

448
00:45:42,727 --> 00:45:46,925
One of the most rich
and powerful organisations in Europe.

449
00:45:47,007 --> 00:45:50,716
Becoming a knight would mean
not only honour and respect,

450
00:45:50,807 --> 00:45:55,597
but also a chance
to wipe the bloody slate of his past clean.

451
00:45:55,687 --> 00:45:58,247
Now, normally being a convicted murderer

452
00:45:58,327 --> 00:46:01,637
would be
an insurmountable obstacle to admission.

453
00:46:01,727 --> 00:46:03,843
Not for Caravaggio.

454
00:46:03,927 --> 00:46:06,839
On the 14th of July, 1608,

455
00:46:06,927 --> 00:46:11,443
the robe with the Maltese cross
is put around the fugitive's shoulders

456
00:46:11,527 --> 00:46:17,238
and he is officially proclaimed
one of the greatest of painters, living or dead.

457
00:46:30,487 --> 00:46:32,762
In exchange for all this,

458
00:46:32,847 --> 00:46:36,522
Caravaggio undertook a painting
for the Knights' cathedral.

459
00:46:42,687 --> 00:46:47,283
You have to imagine this place
filled with robes and incense

460
00:46:47,367 --> 00:46:50,325
and echoing with deep dark anthems.

461
00:46:59,527 --> 00:47:05,079
The Beheading of John the Baptist
is the biggest thing Caravaggio had ever done.

462
00:47:05,167 --> 00:47:10,195
Seventeen feet long,
filling the entire eastern wall of the oratory,

463
00:47:10,287 --> 00:47:12,198
it's movie screen-sized.

464
00:47:13,207 --> 00:47:16,324
He wanted the Knights to feel it, not as a painting,

465
00:47:16,407 --> 00:47:19,877
but as a living drama
going on right in front of them.

466
00:47:26,167 --> 00:47:31,525
No wonder it sends a shiver through us,
this thing, this infamous butchery,

467
00:47:31,607 --> 00:47:34,599
taking place in a grim prison yard,

468
00:47:34,687 --> 00:47:37,804
where the body of John the Baptist
has been dragged

469
00:47:37,887 --> 00:47:40,037
to have his head hacked off.

470
00:47:44,847 --> 00:47:48,078
It's a scene of remorseless cruelty

471
00:47:48,167 --> 00:47:53,082
that tears your insides out
and turns art upside down.

472
00:47:54,047 --> 00:47:56,925
Art is supposed to bring us beauty,

473
00:47:57,007 --> 00:47:59,362
but just look at that semicircle of figures

474
00:47:59,447 --> 00:48:03,326
and you will see
something has gone terribly wrong.

475
00:48:05,887 --> 00:48:08,117
That perfect lily-white arm

476
00:48:08,207 --> 00:48:12,962
carries the golden bowl
into which the Baptist's head will drop.

477
00:48:15,807 --> 00:48:19,322
The solemn soldier, the embodiment of authority,

478
00:48:19,407 --> 00:48:21,921
is giving the order for an atrocity.

479
00:48:24,007 --> 00:48:28,956
That perfect nude
is a cold-blooded hit man with a knife.

480
00:48:30,767 --> 00:48:33,600
The action seems to go on forever,

481
00:48:33,687 --> 00:48:38,966
until, like that anguished old woman,
all you can do is scream.

482
00:48:40,767 --> 00:48:44,442
Caravaggio gives us death twice over.

483
00:48:44,527 --> 00:48:46,324
The death of John the Baptist

484
00:48:46,407 --> 00:48:51,117
and the death of our most cherished illusion
about art,

485
00:48:51,207 --> 00:48:54,882
that it can make us finer, more humane.

486
00:48:54,967 --> 00:48:57,527
''Dream on'', says Caravaggio.

487
00:48:57,607 --> 00:49:00,041
In the face of this barbaric power,

488
00:49:00,127 --> 00:49:04,439
all we can ever be are impotent spectators,

489
00:49:04,527 --> 00:49:07,678
just like those prisoners in the grim darkness,

490
00:49:07,767 --> 00:49:10,235
screwing their necks to get a look.

491
00:49:14,207 --> 00:49:18,758
It's this ruthless honesty
that makes this such a modern work.

492
00:49:19,687 --> 00:49:25,045
Art without any vision of consolation
or redemption.

493
00:49:28,127 --> 00:49:30,357
It's a chilling scene.

494
00:49:30,447 --> 00:49:35,157
For me, it's about the most powerful 
statement an artist could possibly make

495
00:49:35,247 --> 00:49:37,044
about the human condition.

496
00:49:37,127 --> 00:49:40,483
About the brutality of state murder.

497
00:49:40,567 --> 00:49:43,240
But it's also autobiography.

498
00:49:43,327 --> 00:49:49,357
Caravaggio has signed this picture,
writing his name in the blood of John the Baptist.

499
00:49:50,287 --> 00:49:52,437
Only a guilt-stricken killer

500
00:49:52,527 --> 00:49:57,555
could possibly feel this desperately
about wanting the violence to stop.

501
00:49:58,527 --> 00:50:02,042
Only Caravaggio could want so badly

502
00:50:02,127 --> 00:50:05,802
for the blood of the martyr
to wash away his crime.

503
00:50:42,527 --> 00:50:46,122
Now it would be nice, wouldn't it,
if that was the end of the story?

504
00:50:46,207 --> 00:50:49,916
Outlaw painter
redeemed by knockout masterpiece,

505
00:50:50,007 --> 00:50:52,805
art changed forever, sinner saved.

506
00:50:52,887 --> 00:50:57,324
But in Caravaggio's case,
salvation doesn't come that easily.

507
00:50:57,407 --> 00:51:02,197
The painter who wants violence to stop
can't even control his own.

508
00:51:06,727 --> 00:51:10,800
Barely a month after he's been admitted
to the Order of St John,

509
00:51:10,887 --> 00:51:15,403
Caravaggio's imprisoned
for assaulting a brother Knight.

510
00:51:15,487 --> 00:51:20,607
But, incredibly, he manages to escape
from his underground cell,

511
00:51:20,687 --> 00:51:25,477
over the castle walls and into a boat,
which takes him to Sicily.

512
00:51:31,887 --> 00:51:37,564
He returns to the safety of Naples,
but it's here his enemies finally catch up with him.

513
00:51:37,647 --> 00:51:40,036
He's jumped, leaving an inn.

514
00:51:40,127 --> 00:51:44,405
His face and head slashed and gashed so badly,
he's left for dead.

515
00:51:57,527 --> 00:51:58,801
But he doesn't die

516
00:51:58,887 --> 00:52:02,675
and in this, his darkest moment,
recovering from his beating,

517
00:52:02,767 --> 00:52:04,997
news reaches him from Rome.

518
00:52:05,087 --> 00:52:10,207
The Pope's nephew, Scipione Borghese,
is arranging a pardon.

519
00:52:10,287 --> 00:52:15,805
So Caravaggio sets about repaying him
the only way he can.

520
00:52:15,887 --> 00:52:18,720
The only way he's ever got anywhere.

521
00:52:27,927 --> 00:52:32,557
It's a self-portrait unlike any painted before.

522
00:52:33,647 --> 00:52:37,196
Usually, when artists looked in the mirror,
they liked what they saw,

523
00:52:37,287 --> 00:52:40,245
and what they saw were men, young or old,

524
00:52:40,327 --> 00:52:43,125
whose features were ennobled by their calling

525
00:52:43,207 --> 00:52:46,677
to bring virtue, beauty and grace into the world.

526
00:52:47,447 --> 00:52:49,642
Now, look at Caravaggio.

527
00:52:52,447 --> 00:52:59,125
A decapitated head, he's Goliath,
a bloody grotesque, a monster.

528
00:53:01,047 --> 00:53:06,167
In The Beheading of John the Baptist,
evil was done by other people.

529
00:53:06,247 --> 00:53:10,206
Here it's Caravaggio
who's the embodiment of wickedness.

530
00:53:11,767 --> 00:53:17,285
In this victory of virtue over evil,
David is supposed to be the centre of attention.

531
00:53:17,367 --> 00:53:20,359
But have you ever seen a less jubilant victor?

532
00:53:21,687 --> 00:53:26,044
On his sword is inscribed
''Humilitas occedit superbiam'',

533
00:53:26,127 --> 00:53:28,561
''Humility conquers pride. ''

534
00:53:28,647 --> 00:53:32,640
A battle that's been fought out
inside Caravaggio's head,

535
00:53:32,727 --> 00:53:36,083
between the two sides
of the painter portrayed here.

536
00:53:38,287 --> 00:53:41,643
There's the devout, courageous David Caravaggio

537
00:53:41,727 --> 00:53:45,959
and then there's the criminal sinner,
Goliath Caravaggio.

538
00:53:46,047 --> 00:53:50,882
''I know who I've been'', says a pathetic head,
unable to look us in the eyes,

539
00:53:50,967 --> 00:53:53,435
''I know what I've done.''

540
00:53:53,527 --> 00:53:57,725
It's a desolate vision
offered to us in utter blackness.

541
00:53:57,807 --> 00:54:00,275
No virtue, no grace,

542
00:54:00,367 --> 00:54:04,326
just the dark truth
from the inside of Caravaggio's head,

543
00:54:04,407 --> 00:54:07,001
flooded with tragic self-knowledge.

544
00:54:27,007 --> 00:54:30,716
For me the power of his art is the power of truth,

545
00:54:30,807 --> 00:54:33,367
not least about ourselves.

546
00:54:33,447 --> 00:54:36,757
For if we're ever to have a chance of redemption,

547
00:54:36,847 --> 00:54:40,078
it must begin with an act of recognition
that in all of us

548
00:54:40,167 --> 00:54:42,681
the Goliath competes with the David.

549
00:54:46,727 --> 00:54:50,959
In July, 1610, Caravaggio rolled up his paintings

550
00:54:51,047 --> 00:54:55,199
and set sail from Naples, finally heading home.

551
00:55:00,127 --> 00:55:04,484
Sailing north, his boat stopped
at the tiny harbour of Palo,

552
00:55:04,567 --> 00:55:06,842
on the coast just west of Rome.

553
00:55:11,287 --> 00:55:15,724
Here, the local captain of the guard
either hadn't heard about his pardon

554
00:55:15,807 --> 00:55:18,367
or mistook him for some other fugitive.

555
00:55:18,447 --> 00:55:21,644
Either way, he's thrown in jail.

556
00:55:21,727 --> 00:55:24,525
By the time he's managed to pay his way out,

557
00:55:24,607 --> 00:55:30,284
his boat has sailed off,
along with his paintings, his offering to Borghese.

558
00:55:38,167 --> 00:55:41,637
Desperate to catch up with his ship
with its precious cargo,

559
00:55:41,727 --> 00:55:45,436
Caravaggio sets off north towards Porto Ercole,

560
00:55:45,527 --> 00:55:49,520
a hundred kilometres
through the malarial infested swamp country,

561
00:55:49,607 --> 00:55:50,676
the Maremma.

562
00:56:18,487 --> 00:56:21,877
Here, the final disaster awaited.

563
00:56:21,967 --> 00:56:24,606
In a pathetic attempt to hail a ship,

564
00:56:24,687 --> 00:56:29,397
Caravaggio starts running along the beach
under the broiling July sun,

565
00:56:29,487 --> 00:56:31,717
before collapsing in the sand.

566
00:56:32,527 --> 00:56:38,238
By now he's suffering from a raging fever
and is taken to a local monastic hospital.

567
00:56:38,927 --> 00:56:42,078
There, according to a contemporary report,

568
00:56:42,167 --> 00:56:46,285
without the aid of God or man, he died,

569
00:56:46,367 --> 00:56:48,437
as miserably as he'd lived.

570
00:57:34,887 --> 00:57:36,559
No!

571
00:57:39,327 --> 00:57:43,718
It's sometime later that the pope's nephew,
Scipione Borghese,

572
00:57:43,807 --> 00:57:49,439
finally receives the paintings with which
Caravaggio had hoped to win his pardon.

573
00:57:50,287 --> 00:57:52,596
The cardinal finds himself face-to-face

574
00:57:52,687 --> 00:57:56,043
with the picture of the painter as the slain Goliath.

575
00:57:57,287 --> 00:57:59,437
The cardinal isn't used to this.

576
00:57:59,527 --> 00:58:04,442
Artists have been given their gift by God
to bring beauty into the world,

577
00:58:04,527 --> 00:58:08,122
to put mortal creatures
in touch with their higher selves.

578
00:58:08,207 --> 00:58:10,926
That's the way it was supposed to be.

579
00:58:11,007 --> 00:58:15,159
But Caravaggio never did anything
the way it was supposed to be.

580
00:58:15,247 --> 00:58:19,763
''Here I am'', says this dead face,
which seems still alive.

581
00:58:19,847 --> 00:58:23,123
''They said whoever delivers my head
will get a reward.

582
00:58:23,207 --> 00:58:27,598
''Well, I'm turning myself in, will that do?

583
00:58:27,687 --> 00:58:30,645
''Can I have my reward? Can I have my pardon?''

584
00:58:31,847 --> 00:58:36,523
''Sorry'', says the cardinal,
''So sorry. You're too late.''