All language subtitles for Power of Art 1of8.Caravaggio

Italy, 1610.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio
is on the run, again.

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

But this time, it's different.

This time, he's wanted for murder.

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

So he does what he's always done,

does what he does best.

He tries to paint his way out of trouble.

This is what he paints.
David with the head of Goliath.

It's a self-portrait,

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

Why does he paint himself
as the villain of the piece,

the monster, Goliath?

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

he can be spared.

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

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

that the good guy wins.

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

Rome, 1600.

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

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

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

''Just depend on the word,'' said the Protestants,

''the gospel truth in black and white."

''A printed Bible is a Christian's guide."

''Paintings in churches are a distraction,
filthy idols, wipe them out.''

Catholics shot back,

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

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

''the life of the Virgin?''

In the Catholic Church's war for souls,
paintings were not art objects,

they were the heavy artillery.

So churches are repaired, others newly built,

all lavishly decorated with paintings.

The paintings responsible
for defending the Catholic faith.

But away from the Vatican,

outside the gorgeously decorated,
high-walled palaces of the aristocratic cardinals,

there was a very different Rome.

The Rome of a sweaty, yelling crowd,

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

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

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

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

Thousands of them working away in the Ortaccio,

the evil Eden down by the river Tiber.

This was Caravaggio's Rome,

cheap rooms and drunken nights
with other perpetually broke painters,

living on their wits and shady credit,

up for bother, always on the fly.

Their motto as they prowled the streets,

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

Shove this up your arse.

Of course, he wasn't born a thug,

just a boy from small-town Lombardy,
the small town of Caravaggio.

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

respectable, not poor, not rich.

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

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

on the same day, when he was just five.

When he was 1 9, his mother died,
so the children sold up and got out.

He put in some time as an apprentice in Milan,

but anyone who had real talent went to Rome.

Caravaggio had arrived here in 1593,

and had been promptly told
what he was supposed to do,

if he was ever to become a great artist.

First, draw old sculpture.

Plenty of that lying around.

Second, take yourself off to the old masters.

Raphael, perhaps. Be humbled, copy and learn.

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

an idea of perfect form and ideal beauty.

If you could make
those celestial mysteries visible,

using your own brushes,

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

in the war for souls.

Oh, yeah? Caravaggio didn't think so.

Visions of paradise?
Who the hell knew about that?

What he knew was right in front of his nose.

Down here on earth, in the studio,

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

Drawing? Who needed it?

Caravaggio never drew a thing in his life.

He just looked, eyeballed and then he'd paint.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

he's also the symbol of youth and beauty,

the inspirer of poetry, song and painting.

And this is what Caravaggio does.

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

someone who's really sick.

The flesh is greenish,

the lips are grey, the eyes unslept,
the mouth curled into a leer.

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

he takes a god and makes it all too human.

The overdressed party animal
as a morning-after wreck.

And look at those grapes.

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

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

No, thanks.

Now, northern Italian artists
were famous for their technical skill.

Their naturalistic still lives.

But Caravaggio gives us nature with a twist.

Never mind art as beauty.

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

He's pushing the envelope,

challenging the very way
that painting was supposed to be.

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

wasn't going to go unnoticed
by those with an eye for quality.

A cardinal, no less, Francesco Maria del Monte.

No church mouse, our cardinal,

he lives in an enormous pile of a palazzo,
surrounded by poets,

musicians and paintings.

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

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

Cardsharps.

Del Monte takes in the brilliant colour,

the jokey action, the wink wink,
nudge-nudginess of it all.

Better still, he feels the presence of these people,

the rosy-cheeked kid's succour,

and the cool bravo about to take him down,

as if they were right in front of him.

Hey!

The cardinal buys his painting for a song

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

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

bed, board, smartest company in Rome,

poets, philosophers, terrific kitchen,
my dear, never a dull moment.

And the music,
well, you do like music, don't you?''

Caravaggio liked music all right,

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

holding the cornet.

Do we need Cupid on the left to let us know

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

The lead singer is crying his eyes out
and he's just tuning up.

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

but never anything quite like this.

Nothing this close up,
nothing this fleshy, and so close to us.

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

''No, no, come on in, darling.
Pull up a cushion,join us, we're just rehearsing. ''

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

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

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

It tears away the separation. It reaches you.

It was one thing
painting pretty boys for Del Monte,

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

But in 1599,

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

for the Contarelli chapel,
in the church of San Luigi.

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

in the place that really counted.

Whether he could move them
to faith and salvation.

But The Martyrdom of Matthew,

the showpiece for the chapel,
turned into a massive headache.

The commission called for
big architectural settings,

the martyr, with his eyes rolled to heaven,

a cast of hundreds, angels on clouds.

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

but he didn't know what to do instead.

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

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

Why? Because it was about a sinner, not a saint.

-Where have you been?
-Me, where have I been?

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

Suddenly it all made sense,

what the Church was looking for
and what Caravaggio was born to do.

Make something sacred
out of the lives of the squalid.

So instead of setting the calling
in some fantasy Holy Land,

Caravaggio beams Jesus down
to a dim room in Rome.

It's a dive, really.
Torn paper shades on the windows

and characters from the cardsharps
and other low lives

gather to witness the big moment.

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

Christ and St Peter, enter the room.

Freeze-frame, the finger points. ''Who, me?''

''Yes, you, Matthew, you miserable creature. ''

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

And for this instant of redemptive transformation,

Caravaggio had another stunning idea.

Instead of highlighting Christ, cover him up.

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

And through that finger comes a bolt of radiance

that changes Matthew the sinner
into Christ's disciple.

It's all about the light.

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

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

Now if you think this sounds a bit like
the theatre or the movies,

well, you're absolutely right.

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

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

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

Seeing is believing.

With The Calling of Matthew finished,

Caravaggio returned to the painting
for the other wall,

Matthew's Martyrdom and his problem had gone.

He strips the scene of its remoteness,
its solemnity,

and instead gives us what he knew all about.;

a brutal assault in a backstreet.

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

The scene is glimpsed
as if you were running away,

which is exactly
what Caravaggio has painted himself doing.

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

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

floodlit, so you can't miss him,

the naked assassin, finishing off his hit.

Caravaggio makes the sinner, not the saint,

the hub on which everything spins.

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

and yet, it was a triumph.

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

He's 30 years old,

the Matthews have made him
an overnight sensation.

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

The other Caravaggio shows up.

Violent, abusive, unpredictable.

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

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

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

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

Brother leaves, crushed, bewildered.

He kits himself up in a fancy black outfit,

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

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

Crow...

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

watch out.

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

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

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

all this sweaty closeness on the borderline
between pathos and trouble

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

Only someone who rubbed shoulders
with the poorest people in Rome

could produce painting like this.

Christ grabs Doubting Thomas' wrist,

guiding his finger deep into his wound,

burying it in his body until Thomas believes.

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

you don't just stare, you feel them. ''

''Okay'', we say, ''Okay, we feel it.
We believe, we believe. ''

He doesn't do it just for effect.

It's because no one else painting in Rome

takes the message of Christianity
more seriously than this sinner.

Christ says,
''The wretched of the earth can be saved',

and they are what Caravaggio gives us.

The gospel is happening right here, right now.

When people come into church and see them,
they are thunderstruck.

Their lives change, their eyes open,
their hearts pound.

In the presence of sacred dramas
so vivid, so physical,

they think they can stretch out and touch them,

the most hardened sinner,
the worst sneerer believes.

This was the painter
the Church had been waiting for.

Here's St Paul flat on his back,

his eyeballs scorched yellow
by the blinding light of revelation.

Next to him,
St Peter bears his load of cowardly guilt,

crucified upside down,

unworthy, he says,
to be martyred the same way as Christ.

No one could touch Caravaggio
for capturing the sheer weight of the Gospels.

His faith is carnal,

the bodies in his masterpieces
are trapped in flesh,

even when they're the Son of God.

But wasn't that the point of the gospel?

Christ's presence on earth,

not as a weightless angel, but in the flesh of man.

The point is, he's not just an art revolutionary,

this sinner is also a devout Christian,
an evangelist for the unwashed.

Can you imagine how pilgrims coming to
Rome, their Italian Jerusalem,

felt when confronted by this image of themselves?

Here's a painter who understood
what it was like

to live inside the grimy skin
of the poor and the pious.

His street casting is astounding.

His Madonna of Loreto

is just a local girl standing in her doorway

and, instead of the usual crowd of the reverent,

all we have kneeling before her

are two old pilgrims who have plodded miles

on their bare and calloused feet.

Faced with this homage to filthy feet,

some in the Church may well have felt
that Caravaggio had gone too far.

The dreaded word ''indecent'' began to crop
up whenever his name was mentioned.

Perhaps that's why Giovanni Baglione,
one of his imitators,

got the plum job of painting the Resurrection

in the new Jesuit church, and Caravaggio didn't.

Not long afterwards,
a poem did the rounds of Rome's rougher taverns.

Giovanni Baglione, you are a know-nothing.

Your pictures are just daubs.

I warrant
you will not earn a brass farthing with them.

Not enough for cloth to make britches.

So you'll have to go around
with your arse in the air.

Maybe you could use them
to wipe your bum with them.

Awfully sorry, I won't be able to join in
with a chorus of praise.

But you are quite unworthy
of the chain that you are wearing.

-And a disgrace to painting.
-Yes.

Whether the verses were written by
Caravaggio, or one of his pals,

we'll never know.

Baglione sues for libel

and Caravaggio is arrested and thrown in jail.

The court record of the trial is the only time
we hear Caravaggio's words directly.

Poems?

What poems?

So they're read aloud to the whole court.

Oh, those poems.

Well, they're nothing to do with me,

but whoever wrote them is
obviously an art critic.

Months roll by with Caravaggio still in jail.

Then, finally, without a verdict,
he's released to house arrest.

If he leaves without written permission,
he gets a stint rowing as a galley slave.

Does this stop him in his tracks?

Hardly.

Five hours after nightfall,
Michelangelo da Caravaggio,

who was carrying a sword and dagger,
was halted by my men.

When I asked if he had a licence, he said, ''Yes'',
and presented it, so he was dismissed.

I told him he could leave
and said, ''Good night, sir'',

to which he replied, ''Shove it up your arse.''

So I arrested him
since I could not tolerate such a thing.

I was seized on the Corso,
outside the church of San Ambrogio,

because I had a sword and a dagger.

I have no written licence
to carry a sword or a dagger.

However, the Governor of Rome

had given verbal orders
to the captain and corporal

to let me carry them.

I have no other licence.

Even his closest friends couldn't work out

how the painter of religious marvels
and the psycho could inhabit the same person.

We're having dinner
in the tavern of the Moor, yeah.

And across the room was...

Michelangelo da Caravaggio...

The famous painter.

He asked the waiter if the artichokes
had been done in butter or oil.

Oil or butter, them all being on the same plate.

Yeah, reasonable question.

Are these done in oil or butter?

I don't know, smell 'em yourself.

Do you think you're talking to some sort of bum?

Come on, smell it. Smell the artichoke.
What does it smell of?

Oil or butter, eh?

Smell it. Smell it. Smell it, come on.
Smell it yourself, eh?

Smell the artichoke.

Smell it, smell it. Smell it!

Michelangelo took this somewhat amiss,

and he says, ''If I'm not mistaken,
you damn cuckold,

you think you're serving some sort of bum.''

And he... He picked up the artichokes
and he threw them at the waiter.

At no point did he take out his sword
and threaten the waiter.

-Smell it.
-Easy.

Smell that.

Of course, Caravaggio doesn't just pick fights
with people in restaurants,

he's fighting tradition
with painting past and present.

He lands the commission
for the church of Santa Maria, here in Trastevere.

It should have been right up his street.

One of the poorest areas of Rome,
at its heart was the cult of the Virgin Mary,

to whom the women of the district
fervently prayed to cure the sick,

make the barren fertile
and save the plague-stricken.

Who better than Caravaggio
to paint the death of Mary?

According to Christian tradition,
Mary's death wasn't a death at all,

but a sleep before her ascent into heaven.

Just as the conception and birth of her son
had been a fleshless miracle,

so her death was a fleshless exit.

Well, Caravaggio didn't do fleshlessness,
he did flesh.

In this case, dead flesh.

That was the first thing
the Carmelite Sisters of the church noticed.

His Mary was dead.

Her skin was green,

her body bloated, under a screaming red dress.

Once that appalling shock had registered,
worse was rumoured.

That Caravaggio had taken
a drowned whore from the morgue

and made her into the Madonna.

For me, this picture is the most moving
of any painted of this scene.

The Apostles brought to the deathbed,
heads bowed in sorrow,

Mary Magdalene crumpled with grief.

Of course,
if the Virgin's just having a nice snooze,

prior to the lift to paradise,
why should anyone be so distraught?

But the weight of grief here
is measured by the sense of a real death.

It's a response not to immortality, but mortality.

Wherever Mary is going, she's leaving our world,

and that's reason enough to mourn.

Not everyone saw it that way,

and once they'd got over their shock,

the Carmelite Sisters,
who'd commissioned the painting,

gave it back.

It must have been a bitter rejection,

and it marks a major turning point.

From now on,
Caravaggio was even quicker to take offence.

And his life was about to spiral
into a series of disastrous encounters

that will culminate
in an act of appalling bloodshed.

It all started with a woman.

Her name was Lena,
a real flesh-and-blood Roman beauty,

much the most voluptuous
of all of Caravaggio's models.

She'd also caught the eye of another man,
Mariano Pasqualone.

So Pasqualone goes to see Lena's mama,
says he's in love,

wants to marry her,
wants to make a respectable woman of her,

and oh, by the way,
does she know what goes on

in those long modelling sessions
in Caravaggio's studio?

Mama goes to see the painter.

It doesn't take much to imagine
what happens next.

Honour besmirched, Caravaggio explodes in fury,

wants to challenge Pasqualone to a duel

but the coward won't wear a sword by day.

There is a huge shouting match on the Corso.

That night in the Piazza Navona,
Pasqualone is attacked from behind.

Blood, screams, victim miraculously still alive,

assailant flees into the darkness.

No one is in any doubt who it is.

By late May, 1606,
he's just a homicide waiting to happen.

It all falls into place
on one of those hot, sleepless nights.

Caravaggio has a blown-fuse shouting match
with Ranuccio Tomassoni.

It wasn't good to rumble with Tomassoni.

A local heavy, he was also a famous swordsman.

It was probably a row about a girl.

Tomassoni, after all,
pimped many girls in this quarter.

But Caravaggio didn't like anyone much
who threw their weight around.

So a duel is arranged down by the tennis
courts on Via della Scrofa.

Come on!

And you think, well, it was
always gonna turn out badly, wasn't it?

Tomassoni's taken to his house
where he makes his final confession

and bleeds to death.

Wanted for murder, Caravaggio goes on the run.

In his absence he's sentenced to
abunde capitale.

There's a price on his head, literally.

Show up with his head in a basket
and you get the reward.

Once again, his network of patrons and
admirers rallies round to keep him afloat.

Throughout the summer of 1606,
they help him hide out

and, in return, sick and sober by what
he's done, Caravaggio makes paintings.

Paintings that help him on his way,
far beyond the jurisdiction of the Papal State.

Somewhere the police
and bounty hunters won't find him.

Naples.

Here, in a city where cutting the odd throat
is nothing to get worked up about,

Caravaggio is a celebrity.

But his paintings are full of pity,
tenderness and mercy.

Hardly surprising, since as a murderer,
he knows his immortal soul is in grave danger.

A year goes by since the murder
and escape from Rome.

The Neapolitans can't get enough of him.

Caravaggio's doing great work and guess what?
No fights.

So why does he suddenly leave
and end up in Malta of all places?

Not to be a crusader against the Turks,
that's for sure.

But there was one thing that Malta,
the Christian island in the Muslim Mediterranean,

could give him, which Naples couldn't.

Status, respect and knighthood.

One of his patrons makes the right noises
and introduces Caravaggio

to the holy order of the Knights of St John.

One of the most rich
and powerful organisations in Europe.

Becoming a knight would mean
not only honour and respect,

but also a chance
to wipe the bloody slate of his past clean.

Now, normally being a convicted murderer

would be
an insurmountable obstacle to admission.

Not for Caravaggio.

On the 14th of July, 1608,

the robe with the Maltese cross
is put around the fugitive's shoulders

and he is officially proclaimed
one of the greatest of painters, living or dead.

In exchange for all this,

Caravaggio undertook a painting
for the Knights' cathedral.

You have to imagine this place
filled with robes and incense

and echoing with deep dark anthems.

The Beheading of John the Baptist
is the biggest thing Caravaggio had ever done.

Seventeen feet long,
filling the entire eastern wall of the oratory,

it's movie screen-sized.

He wanted the Knights to feel it, not as a painting,

but as a living drama
going on right in front of them.

No wonder it sends a shiver through us,
this thing, this infamous butchery,

taking place in a grim prison yard,

where the body of John the Baptist
has been dragged

to have his head hacked off.

It's a scene of remorseless cruelty

that tears your insides out
and turns art upside down.

Art is supposed to bring us beauty,

but just look at that semicircle of figures

and you will see
something has gone terribly wrong.

That perfect lily-white arm

carries the golden bowl
into which the Baptist's head will drop.

The solemn soldier, the embodiment of authority,

is giving the order for an atrocity.

That perfect nude
is a cold-blooded hit man with a knife.

The action seems to go on forever,

until, like that anguished old woman,
all you can do is scream.

Caravaggio gives us death twice over.

The death of John the Baptist

and the death of our most cherished illusion
about art,

that it can make us finer, more humane.

''Dream on'', says Caravaggio.

In the face of this barbaric power,

all we can ever be are impotent spectators,

just like those prisoners in the grim darkness,

screwing their necks to get a look.

It's this ruthless honesty
that makes this such a modern work.

Art without any vision of consolation
or redemption.

It's a chilling scene.

For me, it's about the most powerful
statement an artist could possibly make

about the human condition.

About the brutality of state murder.

But it's also autobiography.

Caravaggio has signed this picture,
writing his name in the blood of John the Baptist.

Only a guilt-stricken killer

could possibly feel this desperately
about wanting the violence to stop.

Only Caravaggio could want so badly

for the blood of the martyr
to wash away his crime.

Now it would be nice, wouldn't it,
if that was the end of the story?

Outlaw painter
redeemed by knockout masterpiece,

art changed forever, sinner saved.

But in Caravaggio's case,
salvation doesn't come that easily.

The painter who wants violence to stop
can't even control his own.

Barely a month after he's been admitted
to the Order of St John,

Caravaggio's imprisoned
for assaulting a brother Knight.

But, incredibly, he manages to escape
from his underground cell,

over the castle walls and into a boat,
which takes him to Sicily.

He returns to the safety of Naples,
but it's here his enemies finally catch up with him.

He's jumped, leaving an inn.

His face and head slashed and gashed so badly,
he's left for dead.

But he doesn't die

and in this, his darkest moment,
recovering from his beating,

news reaches him from Rome.

The Pope's nephew, Scipione Borghese,
is arranging a pardon.

So Caravaggio sets about repaying him
the only way he can.

The only way he's ever got anywhere.

It's a self-portrait unlike any painted before.

Usually, when artists looked in the mirror,
they liked what they saw,

and what they saw were men, young or old,

whose features were ennobled by their calling

to bring virtue, beauty and grace into the world.

Now, look at Caravaggio.

A decapitated head, he's Goliath,
a bloody grotesque, a monster.

In The Beheading of John the Baptist,
evil was done by other people.

Here it's Caravaggio
who's the embodiment of wickedness.

In this victory of virtue over evil,
David is supposed to be the centre of attention.

But have you ever seen a less jubilant victor?

On his sword is inscribed
''Humilitas occedit superbiam'',

''Humility conquers pride. ''

A battle that's been fought out
inside Caravaggio's head,

between the two sides
of the painter portrayed here.

There's the devout, courageous David Caravaggio

and then there's the criminal sinner,
Goliath Caravaggio.

''I know who I've been'', says a pathetic head,
unable to look us in the eyes,

''I know what I've done.''

It's a desolate vision
offered to us in utter blackness.

No virtue, no grace,

just the dark truth
from the inside of Caravaggio's head,

flooded with tragic self-knowledge.

For me the power of his art is the power of truth,

not least about ourselves.

For if we're ever to have a chance of redemption,

it must begin with an act of recognition
that in all of us

the Goliath competes with the David.

In July, 1610, Caravaggio rolled up his paintings

and set sail from Naples, finally heading home.

Sailing north, his boat stopped
at the tiny harbour of Palo,

on the coast just west of Rome.

Here, the local captain of the guard
either hadn't heard about his pardon

or mistook him for some other fugitive.

Either way, he's thrown in jail.

By the time he's managed to pay his way out,

his boat has sailed off,
along with his paintings, his offering to Borghese.

Desperate to catch up with his ship
with its precious cargo,

Caravaggio sets off north towards Porto Ercole,

a hundred kilometres
through the malarial infested swamp country,

the Maremma.

Here, the final disaster awaited.

In a pathetic attempt to hail a ship,

Caravaggio starts running along the beach
under the broiling July sun,

before collapsing in the sand.

By now he's suffering from a raging fever
and is taken to a local monastic hospital.

There, according to a contemporary report,

without the aid of God or man, he died,

as miserably as he'd lived.

No!

It's sometime later that the pope's nephew,
Scipione Borghese,

finally receives the paintings with which
Caravaggio had hoped to win his pardon.

The cardinal finds himself face-to-face

with the picture of the painter as the slain Goliath.

The cardinal isn't used to this.

Artists have been given their gift by God
to bring beauty into the world,

to put mortal creatures
in touch with their higher selves.

That's the way it was supposed to be.

But Caravaggio never did anything
the way it was supposed to be.

''Here I am'', says this dead face,
which seems still alive.

''They said whoever delivers my head
will get a reward.

''Well, I'm turning myself in, will that do?

''Can I have my reward? Can I have my pardon?''

''Sorry'', says the cardinal,
''So sorry. You're too late.''