Original subtitles

Of all the great artists, Caravaggio seems to speak most intensely to the modern world.

A man whose art seems obsessed with sexuality and sensuality, youth and beauty, fear and violence, loneliness and intense self-awareness.

He lived a brief and tumultuous life, mocking authority, even murdering a man.

He spent four years on the run, a fugitive from justice, but he always painted.

Reimagining the most familiar stories in Western culture, from the Bible,

and bringing religious art to life in painting so powerful and naturalistic,

that some saw them as miracles in themselves.

Caravaggio was born, it's believed, in September 1571, here in Milan.

He was christened Michelangelo Marisi, but later adopted the name Caravaggio,

from the village in which his father owned property, 43 km east of Milan.

His father died at the plague when Caravaggio was a young boy,

and soon after, he became an apprentice to painter Simone Petazano.

When he just turned 20, Caravaggio sold the land he inherited from his father,

and left Milan on the north for good.

There are various unsubstantiated reports that he spent time in prison in Milan,

for assaulting a constable.

The first in the number of crimes with which Caravaggio was implicated throughout his mysterious life.

What's more certain, though, is that when he headed south,

he came to the city, in which he would make his artistic name, Rome.

By the late 16th century, Rome had fallen from grace,

lagging far behind Venice, Naples, Florence, and Milan.

But the Pope, six to the fifth, was seeking to reverse this,

and the city was busy with building projects.

Caravaggio's early years, however, seemed to have been spent in various households and workshops,

carrying out mean and artistic tasks.

One of these workshops was that of Giuseppe Cesare d'Alpino,

the foremost Roman painter of the day.

But the precocious Caravaggio made clear his disregard for the reverence

shown to ancient statues, and to the art of the Renaissance masters,

particularly Michelangelo and Raphael.

One day, it said, when shown some ancient sculptures,

Caravaggio pointed instead to a crowd of people in the street,

declaring them to be superior models for his art.

And it's this proclaimed interest in naturalism,

that's made evident in two paintings,

widely believed to be done by Caravaggio,

while he's still working for Cesare d'Alpino.

The first of which takes a young fruit seller off the streets.

There's a dreamy expression on his face,

and he's sensually delighting in the succulent basket of fruit

that he clasp to himself.

The pictures slightly staged with this raking diagonal lighting

that becomes a trademark of Caravaggio's later work.

But look at how the work's painted, it's beautiful, dexterous.

And it's an exquisitely painted still life of grapes and peaches

that arrests the viewer's eye,

and then draws us into this the second picture,

which is clearly a looting to the Roman god of wine and inspiration,

backers.

But it's also a self-portrait and a self-portrait with a twist,

because if you look at those graying lips,

and the sun can dark eyes,

this is an image of backers and Caravaggio that's ill or sick.

And I think it's subversive, I think what he's saying,

is that ancient or classical Roman culture is sick

and perhaps the future is in naturalism.

Look at the grapes, how they're painted.

They are naturalistic, but at the same time,

they're turning, which amplifies that idea of illness.

The expression on his face is melancholic,

and melancholia in Renaissance and Post-Renace on Italy

is associated with the creative genius.

And when you combine that with this crown that he wears on his head,

it's as if he's saying, I've arrived.

The painting which caught the eye of the Roman art world

and announced the dramatic arrival of a new talent was this one,

called the card shops.

It's a piece of theatre on canvas,

a slightly comic moral fable,

about the gullibility of youth,

with a raffishly clothed man,

and his young accomplice,

fleecing a young aristocrat at cards.

The man peering not so surapticiously at his hand,

and gesturing to his sidekick,

who reaches for the winning card behind his back.

Caravaggio uses the same model for both boys,

both practical and perhaps a reference

to the potential duality in each of us.

Sometime in 1595,

the card shops caught the eye of Cardinal Francesca Maria Del Monte,

the Mediciambassilator of the Papal Court here in Rome,

who lived in the splendid Palazzo Madama,

just around the corner, from the Piazza Navona.

And so impressed was the Cardinal,

with Caravaggio's work,

that he asked the painter to join his household.

Whilst Caravaggio was in Del Monte's service,

he was commissioned to paint five major pictures,

the most lyrical and sensual of which was this one.

The musicians, shows a loot player,

a singer, and a callnetto player,

preparing to make music whilst a winged cubid,

plucked at a bunch of grapes.

It's a hedonistic image,

which builds on Caravaggio's early paintings,

but also tries to convey something of the power of music.

The boy with the loot has tears in his eyes,

as if moved by the sounds around him,

and the almost orgasmic look on the face of the Coronetto player

just behind had a haunting and erotic dimension to the painting.

This may be a self-portrait of the painter,

partly angelic, partly mischievous,

and with trouble, just around the corner.

In 1598 Caravaggio was arrested and thrown in prison

for illegally carrying a sword,

but he was quickly released,

because he was in the employment of the influential Cardinal Del Monte.

Subsequently, Del Monte was instrumental in Caravaggio

winning an important commission.

Conveniently enough,

located Slap Bang next to where Caravaggio was living

at the Palazzo Madama.

It was for a pair of paintings to be produced

for the Contorelli Chapel

in this church of Santa Luigi, Defrancazi.

The commission, both physically and in terms of importance,

was by far away the biggest of Caravaggio's career to date.

It came from a French Cardinal Contorelli

who's buried here in the chapel,

who's will decreed that he wanted two scenes

from the life of Matthew the evangelist depicted

on his chapel walls.

And it's a kind of narrative sequence

that Caravaggio produced,

which begins with this picture,

the calling of St. Matthew.

Matthew was a tax collector and a publican,

a wealthy man,

who is confronted by Christ in the tax office,

where Christ sees him and says,

follow me and it's exactly that moment

that Caravaggio tries to bring to life.

In a way, it's a picture of two halves,

with Christ and St. Peter on the right hand side,

dressed in biblical costume.

Christ, point at St. Matthew and the viewer's eye is drawn

from right to left.

And look at the way the light rakes in from the window.

Illuminating the bearded face at St. Matthew,

who pointed himself as if to say,

me, St. Matthew and his wealthy,

and slightly loose friends,

are clad in contemporary Roman costume.

And this is part of the power of the painting.

It's as if these figures have stepped

from out of the Roman back streets,

and into a bar, alone in this case,

it's a tax office,

but actually, it looks almost like a gambling den,

there's something evocative

of Caravaggio's painting of the card shops,

where one figure is looking down at money,

so Matthew has a coin tucked into his hat

as if to amplify their value system.

Ultimately, it's a painting of contrast

between poverty and wealth,

darkness and light,

and St. Matthew divinely illuminated.

It also contrasts the Roman world in which Caravaggio lived

with the biblical one that he wanted to bring to life.

It's a simple story,

but told in a complex, also sophisticated way.

And from this, Caravaggio turns his intention

to something equally dramatic,

but much more garrishly violent.

This work, the martyrdom of St. Matthew,

was actually begun by Caravaggio

before he started work on the calling,

but having finished that work,

he came back to this,

and realized it didn't have quite the impact,

and also the figures were too small,

so he reworked it,

he scaled everything up,

and this is the finished piece.

According to legend,

Matthew was preaching the Christian gospel,

that he'd actually written or recorded

in Ethiopia,

and he came across the fiancé

of King Hurticus,

a woman called Iphaginia,

and he converted her to Christianity,

and in turn, she wouldn't marry the King.

He then sent an assassin

to slay Matthew,

and that's the moment,

that Caravaggio chooses to depict.

And in the narrative,

Matthew is in church, saying mass,

but he's also baptizing these figures,

one of whom rears up to kill him.

Look at the light of the painting.

Rather like the calling,

it comes in from the top left-hand side

of the painting.

We know that in his studio,

Caravaggio hung a strong lamp

to get this theatrical effect.

Also, the figures,

who seem to have been taken directly from

the calling of St. Matthew,

are wearing contemporary clothes,

as is the priest.

And this would have struck a chord

with a contemporary Roman audience,

because a few years before in Rome,

a Protestant fanatic,

attacked a priest,

just at the moment he was holding up the host,

and eventually he was bundled off

to prison, so it played on contemporary phobias.

There are two other key details.

The first, a figure of the angel,

who holds a palm leaf down to St. Matthew,

as if to proclaim that redemption

and eternal life will be his.

The other one, though, is more subtle.

In the distance, as if fleeing from the scene,

wearing a robe, looking over his shoulder,

is Caravaggio.

There's a self-portrait,

and this desire he has for authenticity,

trying to make things seem as lifelike as possible,

is amplified with that gesture.

He's trying to immerse himself in the scene,

and, in effect, paint it from the inside out.

But as Caravaggio's creative life,

got more successful,

his private life seemed to get darker,

and became a kind of low-life opera,

a combination of backstreets and brothels,

of fights, and eventually of murder.

In 1600, Caravaggio was commissioned

by the Pope's treasure of general,

a man called Tiberio Chirassi,

to produce work for his fury chapel,

here in this church of Santa Maria del Popolo,

on the north of the edge of the city,

then is now a busy place where pilgrims flocked

to a city that was reawakening itself spiritually.

And in order to make the work as powerful as possible,

the treasure of general chose

the two rising stars of Roman art,

to do the commission,

Annibali Karachi,

and of course Caravaggio.

And effectively,

the two painters went head-to-head inside the church.

In a way,

Annibali Karachi has a head start,

because he gets the central commission

to paint the altar piece,

and this is his version of the assumption of the Virgin Mary.

Now, his style of art, we may say, is classical Baroque.

That style that is used to promote Roman Catholicism,

where forms are idealised,

simplified to a certain extent,

using light and drama.

But then, flanking them,

and in contrast, is Caravaggio,

who's paintings are much darker, much murkier,

but also equally dramatic,

but using intense realism,

working directly from the model,

to try and bring Christianity and Roman Catholicism to life.

And the two subjects that Caravaggio chooses,

are very close to the city of Rome.

One is the martyrdom of St. Peter,

which took place here in Rome.

The other is the conversion of St. Paul.

And there's a real nice twist,

as to what Caravaggio thinks of Caravaggio in this battle,

as they go head-to-head,

because in the conversion of St. Paul,

there's a giant horse,

whose backside points,

unmistakably straight at Caravaggio's work.

And then, on the opposite wall,

there's a similar treatment to a different subject,

this time the martyrdom or crucifixion of St. Peter.

Well, once again, the image is cropped, we zoom in.

We don't see the background detail of the crowds that gathered

for the execution of St. Peter,

but what we do see is a contemporary Roman workman,

who's just dug the hole in which the cross will be placed,

and then his dirty feet,

and this idea of him about to lift the cross up,

were above a man tug.

And of course, St. Peter is executed upside down,

that's his choice,

because he doesn't want exactly to mirror the suffering

of his savior of Christ.

And the picture has this amazing sense of uncoiling.

It's this idea of moving upwards and round.

There's a sense of what's going to happen next.

It's a wonderful frozen moment.

And once again, the detail and the symbolism is absolutely charged

in the foreground is a rock.

Why? Well, St. Peter is the rock on which the church was built.

And the effect of the painting is not to show St. Peter

as if you'd like the forerunner of people's splendor,

but it locates in once again as a fisherman

who was found by Christ and who then followed him.

It's a much hundler image of St. Peter that we usually get.

But Caravaggio's personal life was less humble and less dignified,

and his fiery temper was frequently getting him into trouble.

In one instance, a fellow painter called Baglioni,

accused Caravaggio of libel,

for writing and circulating scarulous verses,

virulently denigrating Baglioni's art.

Caravaggio was Julie found guilty

and spent two weeks in jail.

In spite of his growing notoriety, Caravaggio got the big commission

in 1605 to produce an altar piece for the old Basilica of St. Peter's in Rome.

Because the church was being rebuilt,

Caravaggio's work only hung in the Vatican for a few days,

but it was more than long enough to provoke discussion.

The subject matter shows the Virgin Mary and Christ,

stamping on the head of the serpent, the sign,

symbol of the original sin.

And there's a rather interesting and slightly comical,

theological debate that had raged through the 16th century,

with the Protestant saying it was Jesus,

who stamped on the serpent's head,

and the Catholic saying it was Mary,

and a paper ball in 1569 from the Pope proclaimed

that in fact it was Mary with Jesus' help.

And that's what Caravaggio shows.

And he also adds Mary's mother to the scene,

and then he gets this wonderful contrast of age

of the young beautiful woman and the aging woman.

On the evening of the 28th of May,

1666, the Roman sky was illuminated

with a firework display to celebrate

the first anniversary of the crowning of the Pope.

But what went down in history of that night

had nothing to do with the papacy,

because Caravaggio ended up killing a man

called renewedcio Tomasoni.

Some people have speculated it was a fight

over something as mundane as a tennis match.

But we do know that the two of them had quarrel a few days earlier,

and that Tomasoni was a high-class Pimp of sorts,

one of whose girls or prostitutes

was sometimes used as a model by Caravaggio,

so perhaps it was a quarrel over a girl.

Anyway, Tomasoni was definitely killed by Caravaggio's sword,

and the story spread through newspapers

and the Roman Great Vine like wildfire,

so much so that a capital sentence was passed on Caravaggio,

which meant that anyone bringing him dead or alive

his body or simply his head to justice with receiver award,

and so, not surprisingly,

the pain to very quickly decided to leave town.

And he came here to Naples,

a city not under direct people control,

and a city known to have harbored the odd fugitive

from Roman justice.

One of the numerous churches built in Naples

at the beginning of the 17th century

was this one, the Madonna Della Misericordia,

built by seven young nobleman

as part of an institution that included a hospital,

to 10 the sick.

The church itself was built between 1600 and 166,

and all it was needed was an altar piece,

and it just so happened that the most celebrated

Italian painter of the day was in the city,

and so Caravaggio got the commission.

This is a rare example where the chaos of the street

is transformed into a vision on the wall in a church,

in a painting that's complicated,

chaotic and pulsating.

It's called either the Madonna Della Misericordia

or the Madonna of Mercy, or the seven acts of mercy.

At the top is the Madonna and child presiding over everything

with an angel who gestures down to this vision on earth,

but actually it's a vision taken from the back streets of Naples.

The seven nobleman who established this place

wanted to practice the seven acts of Mercy,

which, according to Matthew, were giving food to the hungry,

giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked,

visiting and tending the sick, visiting those imprisoned,

taking in strangers and giving suck at a pilgrims,

and this was added in the Middle Ages, burying the dead,

and all of those ideas, all of those acts,

are incorporated by Caravaggio in the scene below.

Nearest to us, there's a crippled beggar who is naked,

above him and clad in the luxurious outfit

of a contemporary neopolitan nobleman,

is a man who's about to give his cape to the man.

To his right, there's a pudgy-looking face,

chubby hands, of someone who's been identified

as a neopolitan in keeper.

Behind them, you can see a figure carrying a dead body,

illuminated by a man with a candle.

A most curious level, there's this young girl

who offers her breast to an old man who's clearly imprisoned.

Now, the origins of this story go back to Roman literature

to a story of charity involving an old man called Simon,

who is starving in prison, and who in the end is visited by his daughter,

who offers a father, her milk,

and that is amazingly depicted by Caravaggio,

right down to the detail of droplets of milk on the old man's beard.

It's a highly unnerving image, certainly to our eyes,

but it also symbolizes an extraordinary act of charity.

But I think salvation is a long way off in this picture.

It seems to me a painting charged with fear

and proclaiming the idea that death can strike it any minute,

which if you think about Caravaggio's circumstances

with a death threat hanging over him,

I think it makes it a very personal painting.

But nevertheless, it's one that established his reputation

in the neopolitan art world.

Numerous commissions came as a result of this work,

and also amongst young neopolitan painters,

some of whom actually produced work in this church,

Caravaggio's direct influence was immense.

In spite of a growing success in Naples,

he was no near-againing a papal pardon,

and so Caravaggio travelled to Malta

to seek the help of the Knights of St. John.

There he painted an impressive full-length portrait

of the Grand Master, the French Nobleman, Al-Ofter Vignacor.

This so impressed Vignacor that he secured the Pope's approval

for Caravaggio to become a Knight of St. John,

as well as strong hints from the papacy

that it might offer clemency to the artist.

But just when everything seemed to be going well again

in Caravaggio's life, surprisingly,

it was a problem. He was imprisoned.

We don't exactly know why the suspicion is

that he had a fight with another Knight.

What we do know, though, is that he was incarcerated

in the castle dungeon,

and then, presumably, with the help of powerful friends,

he managed to escape, scale down the walls

into a boat at the bottom,

and then headed out to sea.

From Malta, Caravaggio headed to Sicily,

and the Spanish jurisdiction but still close enough to Malta,

the Caravaggio to feel threatened by the Knights.

And accounts of his year on the island,

say that he became increasingly crazy and deranged,

often sleeping fully clothed,

and with a dagger under his pillow,

a fugitive on the run.

Partly out of a need to earn a living,

and perhaps partly out of a moral or religious compulsion.

Caravaggio completed a number of commissions for Sicilian patrons,

including the raising of Lazarus,

for the Order of the Ministers of the Sick in Messina.

The work is typical of Caravaggio's late style,

with an almost overwhelming darkness.

Although there may be a danger of overreeding

what is a conventional subject for Christian art,

the idea of painting an image of Lazarus,

the man who came back from the dead,

must have had a strong resonance for the artist.

An October 1600-9 Caravaggio fled Sicily, presumably,

because his various pursuers he felt were about to catch up with him.

And he returned here to Naples,

but almost immediately he was beat-nup and left for dead.

So he moved to the edge of the city,

to the home of the Kalonna family,

where his lifelong protector, the Marquis de Caravaggio,

was in town on business,

but also beginning to broker a deal with the Pope to pardon the painter.

Caravaggio's desire for a pardon

is oddly enough evident in this work,

which shows David with the head of Goliath.

It's a artwork in every sense.

The young boy, having killed the giant with his slingshot,

and then cut his head off,

is showing holding the head with the hair visible

through the fingers,

and blood dripping down,

seemingly off the edge of the canvas.

But what gives this work a real twist

is the fact that Goliath is deemed to be a self-portrait

by Caravaggio.

So how does all this fit together?

Well, remember Caravaggio has had a death sentence

metaphorically hanging over his own head

for the previous four years,

and the theory is that this work

was painted in order to placate a former patron,

skipy-only-born gaysie,

who is the Pope's nephew.

And what in effect Caravaggio is saying is,

I've sinned, my crime is horrendous,

but rather than to capitate me literally,

I'd give you my painted head

in the hope that in the end, Mercy will prevail.

It seems that Mercy was about to prevail

because in July, 1610, Caravaggio

was on his way back to Rome by boat,

when it stopped just down the coast at Palo.

Here though, as we're so often the case in his life,

events become shrouded in mystery.

Caravaggio was arrested, perhaps even mistakenly,

because he was released two days later,

by which time the boat had continued northward

with his paintings and possessions on board.

Caravaggio pursued the boat as far as Puerto Eccoli,

where it seems he died of a fever,

maybe malaria, at the age of 38.

His death went unrecorded,

and there is no known place of burial.

His death has fueled conspiracy theorists ever since,

with everyone from the nights of Malta,

to four runners of the Sicilian Mafia deemed responsible.

The truth is probably an act of the god,

whom he venerated and feared in many of his greatest paintings.

There may be no trace of Caravaggio's actual body,

but he left a body of work

that has had perhaps more influence on Western painting

over the last 400 years than any other single artist.