March 7, 2011 • 24 mins
Michelangelo da Caravaggio may not be as well-known as Leonardo da Vinci, but this amazing painter has been receiving more and more attention in recent times. Why? Listen in as Deblina and Sarah explore the controversial life of Caravaggio.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Deblane chokerate boarding. And around
this time last year, Katie and I did an episode
(00:20):
on the artist michel Angelo. And it's a given that
michel Angelo, he's one of the most famous artists in history.
But according to the art historian Peter sim michel Angelo
has been surpassed and at least one head to head competition,
um and again at least in terms of what's being
written about him. Nobody's looking at the art show, attendance
(00:41):
or something here. But that raises the question who is
the upstart? Interestingly, it's another michel Angelo, except this one
who's named michel Angelo Maurice and he's better known as
Caravaggio and some who works at the University of Toronto.
He has studied books, catalogs and Scott Lili papers about
(01:01):
the two men published in the last fifty years, everything
kind of in that time range. And over time the
Caravaggio related work did in fact outpaced the writings on Michelangelo,
especially since the mid nineties or so. Yeah, so Caravaggio
is apparently quite popular right now, and um, if the
obsession has been growing for the past fifty years, it's
(01:23):
really reached new heights this year and last year, which
was the four hundredth anniversary of the artist's death. But
so far we've had to art world controversies. This is
in the past year too, art world controversies which have
played out in really dramatic headline fashion. We're going to
just read off a few of these headline counterheadlined selections
(01:46):
for you. One is from the BBC Vatican reveals Caravaggio
painting found in Rome and then later Vatican paper dismissed
his own Caravaggio claims it's a little embarrassing. We have
another one from the BBC Church Bones quote belonged to Caravaggio,
researchers say, but also unearthing doubts about Caravaggio's remains. Yeah,
(02:09):
we're gonna be talking about that one a little bit
more because obviously it's an exhimission of related point for that. UM.
There have also been two big exhibits though on the
artists in the past year and this year as well.
One was of Caravaggio's art at the Scutieri Quirinale, and
the other was of his police trail at the Italian
(02:32):
State Archives. And that's really the catch of this episode
and probably the appeal of Caravaggio in general. He's not
just a compelling figure because he's so masterful an artist,
and he's not just compelling because he has this realist
style that is well before his time. And he's not
(02:52):
just interesting because he almost seems more like a photographer
than a painter who lived centuries ago. He's he's a
really bad guy. He's a bad boy. That's a good
way to describe him. And the documents relating to his
life are police documents and court documents, legal statements, things
(03:12):
like that. He did leave quite a paper trail, and
it does not really paint with pretty picture. Yeah, and
so I guess that new paper Trails will focus on
the most But first we'll go back to the beginning.
He was born in fifteen seventy one, and he was
the son of an architect and a majordomo for the
Marquis of Caravaggio. He was apprentice later at age eleven,
(03:33):
to painter Simone Patrezano in Milan, and it was sometime
in his teens when he was sent off to Rome,
and that's where he settles into this bohemian underworld. He's
really poor and working for painters at that time who
were less able than him. They're less talented. Yeah, definitely struggling.
And these are kind of the lost years as far
as his record goes, which I guess with Caravaggio that's
(03:55):
a good thing, um, But they're not lost years as
far as his work goes. He painted about forty pieces
during this period, including Boy with a Fruit Basket and
the Young Bacchus. Those are probably two of his most
famous works. And finally in fift works like that must
have caught the attention of certain eyes because he sets
(04:16):
out on his own and he's brought to the attention
of Cardinal Francesco Damonte, who was a big shot in
the papal court. So this is his inn into the
more elite world of Rome, and he's soon invited to
live at the cardinals palace and uh, he's got room
and board and all these commissions, and by fifteven he
(04:37):
has a commission to decorate the Contrally Chapel in Rome,
which really puts him into the big league. He's only
twenty four years old, so he put in his his
difficult years early. Yeah, and it's not a really totally
smooth road all the way though. His work for the Chapel,
which included scenes from the life of St. Matthew, they
(04:57):
cost quite a stir at the time, and it's because
these scenes he painted, they weren't idealized in any way.
Matthew basically looks like a laborer off the street, a
common person, not a very pretty saint. Yeah. And from
there on out though, he does stick with these religious
subjects though that's mostly what he's working on. But um,
I mean, like you mentioned, the Matthew thing gives a
(05:19):
pretty good foreshadowing of this. His his work isn't pretty,
it's violent, and it's dark. Stylistically, he supposedly would use
a lantern hung in a dark studio to achieve this
really dramatic lighting effect. I mean, if you've I'm guessing
probably most of you if you're listening to this episode,
you've seen Caravaggio paintings, but they often look like a
(05:41):
photo where there's a big, strong beam of light shining
on the subject from one direction. Um. And another thing
he would do is pick poor models, so maybe St.
Matthew was right off the street. Um. He would use
laborers and and just people he ran into, perhaps even prostitutes,
which obviously it's gonna sometimes caused some trouble for him,
(06:03):
and sometimes his work was consequently rejected by its original commissioner. Yeah.
The Caramel Lites, for example, thought that his death of
the Virgin looked a little too common and also a
little too dead. Yeah. They didn't want her to look
like a normal woman who had just died. They wanted
her to be shooting straight up to heaven. And this
(06:24):
kind of rejection, though, didn't really hurt Caravato's reputation. You
would think that that having your commissions rejected would be
a bad thing, but private buyers were very eager to
snatch up the rejected pieces, and his success really continued
to grow. He was moving and mingling in the highest
circles of Roman society, hanging out with cardinals, hanging out
(06:46):
with princes. So it seemed like he had risen above
that rough and tumble bohemian life that he started out in. Yeah,
but he never really totally left that hard knock life
behind either. It said that he was given to wrath
and riot, and probably the best way to understand him
might be to first look up some images of his
(07:06):
art and then take a look at his police record,
which we're going to get into a little bit right now,
is pretty ridiculous. Yeah, it's kind of crazy actually. May fourth,
for example, he's arrested for carrying a sword without a
permit between two and three am. November nineteen six hundred,
he's sued over beating a man with a stick and
cutting the guy's cape with his sword at a three
(07:27):
am brawl. Then October two, sixteen oh one, he's accused
of attacking a man with a sword and insulting him,
adding insult to injury. April sixteen o four, he was
accused of attacking a waiter over an artichoke related dispute, which,
because I kind of love that one so much, we're
going to talk about it a little more in a
(07:48):
second October nineteenth, sixteen o four, arrested for pelting policemen
with stones. That's never good. May sixteen o five, he's
arrested for carrying a sword and a dagger to this
time without a permit. July sixteen oh five, he's accused
by a Vatican Notary of striking him with a weapon
from behind. So pretty good idea of the kind of
(08:13):
shenanigans that Caravaggio was up to. And um the documents
on view of the archives actually give us a closer
look at some of these incidents. I mentioned the artichoke one.
We have the waiters statement, which it'll let you know
that a lot is based on tone. And it's kind
of hard to tell here what exactly happened, but here
it goes. About seventeen o'clock lunchtime, the accused, together with
(08:35):
two other people, was eating in the Moor's restaurant where
I work as a waiter. I brought them eight cooked artichokes,
four cooked in butter and four fried in oil. The
accused asked me which were cooked in butter and which
fried in oil, and I told him to smell them,
which would easily enable him to tell the difference. That's
where tone is important. He got angry and without saying
(08:56):
anything more, grabbed an earthenware dish and hit me on
the cheek at the level of my mustache, injuring me slightly.
And then he got up and grabbed his friend's sword,
which was lying on the table, intending perhaps to strike
me with it, but I got up and came here
to the police station to make a formal complaint. So
you know a guy who's who's easy to anger, I
(09:17):
guess yeah. He seemed to get riled up pretty easily.
He was even accused of throwing stones at his landlady's
window after she sued him for cutting holes in the
ceiling to make his painting. That's the best part. So
you know, this is this is obnoxious behavior, violent, um,
potentially lethal behavior, and carrying illegal swords around is not
(09:40):
a good way to stay out of trouble. But he
reached a new level May sixteen or six when he
killed a man. He can't really take that back. And um,
the circumstances behind this murder are kind of interesting. Uh.
The deceased was Rernuccio Toomassini, and he was murder on
a tennis court in Rome, And so you've probably heard
(10:04):
that because the location was a tennis court, the dispute
was somehow related to a game of tennis, or some
historians have suggested that it was related to a dispute
over a woman. But either way, something that happened in
the heat of the moment um, you just let your
passions get to you and get into a fight, and
then Renuccio is suddenly dead. But court documents from the
(10:27):
time show that it really looked a lot more like
an organized war, not just this argument that started suddenly. Right.
For one thing, it's not exactly a tennis court where
this happens. It's a Palacorta court in the Campo Marzio area,
which was Caravaggio's neighborhood. Paul Acorta is kind of like tennis,
except there's somehow string involved. We're not really sure how
(10:49):
it works. Like an explanation of Palacorta for any still
practicing sport enthusiasts. Yes, email us. The other thing was
there were eight men who participate hated in this fight,
and they were chosen ahead of time. They weren't just
random onlookers. So, as you said, it wasn't just in
the heat of them homet It wasn't people who got
mad about something that happened to a game and decided
(11:11):
to become part of this. It was planned. Yeah, and
Caravaggio himself was there with three other guys. One was
a captain in the Papal Army again showing he does
have friends in high places. And one of his friends
was also badly injured and arrested after the fact. And
it's during this guy's trial where it comes out that
the fight was probably started over a gambling debt, so
(11:34):
something that they could mull over for a little while
and get their friends together. But Caravaggio is injured in this,
but he escapes. He's not injured bad enough that he's arrested.
He gets out of Rome. He's terribly concerned about what
will happen to him, and rightly so, because he's condemned
to death in absentia by Pope Paul the fifth. So
(11:56):
the first place he goes is to the estate of
the marquis of Caravaggio's relative so Um, a friend of
his dad's friend. Essentially, from there he goes to Naples
in early sixteen and seven, and he starts painting again.
And just remember, throughout his entire flight he's still painting,
which I think is so interesting. I mean, obviously it's
(12:18):
partly to make a living, but that you would still
have it in you when you're running for your life, right,
and he has to keep moving. He moves on from
Naples to Malta, where he not only keeps painting, but
he's received into the Order of Malta, which is kind
of confusing because it's something that requires papal permission. Yeah,
and the Pope has just condemned him to death. I
think that's interesting. And of course, all the while his
(12:41):
friends back in Rome were working to get a papal dispensation.
That's the only way he could be pardoned. But I
would kind of want those files to be handled in
reverse order, I think, and and get my life spared
before I received into the Order of Malta. But either way,
he's expelled from the Order of Malta not that long after,
(13:01):
and he's jailed. He escapes from jail and goes to
Syracuse in Sicily in October sight, and from there he
goes on to Messina and then to Palermo, all the
while still working. And it's kind of interesting. Art historians
have commented on this work because obviously you're going to
look at at anything done under such for circumstances, but
(13:25):
apparently he really simplifies things and scales it down, but
it's still just as skilled and well executed as ever.
The only way for him. To really get arrest is
to get the pope's pardon at this point, but Caravaggio
has friends in high places, like we mentioned, so they've
been working on this. Seems like a pardon might actually
(13:47):
be on the horizon. Finally, Caravaggio ends up moving to
Naples again, but when he's there, he's attacked at the
door of an inn and horribly disfigured on his face,
and people even get reports that he's dead. By July
sixteen ten though, he's finally well enough to sail again,
so he sails for Rome, but he's arrested along the
way and the boat with all his stuff leaves him
(14:08):
behind while he's in jail, so he's trying to chase
down this boat. He gets as far as Porto Ricole,
where he dies at thirty eight, so he never reaches
the boat, never gets his pardon while he's alive. He
is actually pardoned three days later. After three days later,
so um, yeah, that's that's sad to say the least,
(14:29):
and it's interesting though, but the circumstances around his death
are appropriately controversial too. He's often believed to have died
alone on the beach, which is terribly depressing and probably
seems plausible, right, But his first biographer, Giovanni Biony, sort
of made things even worse. He painted a picture um
(14:51):
saying quote, finally having arrived in a place on the beach,
he was put in bed with a high fever and
having no human help. Within a few days he died
as miserably as he had lived. I think that makes
it worth It makes it seem like, not only does
he die alone on the beach, somebody puts him in
bed and then leaves him and then abandons him. Then
(15:11):
he dies alone, definitely taking it up a notch. But
his death was really not quite that dramatic. Records from
the Archives exhibit show that Caravaggio was found delirious on
the beach, but then he was taken to the hospital
and he died there two days later, presumably not entirely
abandoned by everyone at the hospital. Um. It's still unclear
though what killed him, right, Maybe it was malaria, could
(15:35):
have been not maybe the Knights of Malta, or maybe
even the pope. I mean, during his successful, the very
stressful career on the run, he was kind of afraid
that Papal hitman were after him. Yeah, it was a
concern of Caravaggios at least, But we also have to
address those bones that were supposedly Carrathaggios and identified as
(15:56):
his last summer um. First of all, though, why would
this even be an issue here? You know, presumably an
artist is famous as Caravaccio would have a monument and
a marker set up immediately after his death. But even
though it's pretty hard to believe, after Caravaccio's death, he
faded into obscurity almost immediately. I mean, he had an
(16:18):
influence on later artists, but people pretty much forgot who
he was until he had this big resurgence at the
beginning of the twentieth century. So that's why we knew
he definitely died in Porto Coole, but we didn't know
exactly where he was in Silvio Vincetti, who is the
(16:38):
president of a private organization that seems to go around
and I d the remains of illustrious deceased Italians, which
as Dante announced that his team had identified bones of
Caravaggio from the Porto Coole crypt. Yeah, and you may
be asking how did they do this? So here's a
little bit about their method. They examined eleton's at the crypt,
(17:01):
eliminating ones that didn't fit Caravaggio's specs. Basically, they carbon
dated things down to one skeleton, and then they tested
that sample against the DNA from families who were named
MAURICEI or Mauricio from Caravaggio. So they did this basically
because Carvaggio didn't have any kids of his own, and
the committee couldn't find his actual descendants, his siblings descendants,
(17:24):
I should say, so they kind of had to take
their best guests. Yeah, and that's one thing that makes
people a little uncomfortable with this finding. But the group
also concluded that the presumed Caravaggio skeleton had suffered from
lead poisoning, which would would also add up for an
artist at the time had suffered from syphilis and had
(17:46):
died from sunstroke. But art historians have been really, really
skeptical of this claim, to say the least. The New
York Times article that we mentioned earlier had quote from
quite a few art historians with varying tone of dismissal,
but I included one trim Tamaso Montinari of the University
(18:09):
of Naples, who said, quote in the four hundredth anniversary
of Caravaggio's death. This committee has concocted a compelling discovery,
thinking it will attract tourists. It's all very depressing. Yikes. Yeah,
so're not very confidence inspiring. No, not at all. So
I guess I'm hoping that we'll find out more in
(18:30):
the four hundred and first anniversary of Caravaggio's death, because
I don't like my my exlamations to be depressing in
up in the air. Yeah, you don't want your exclamations
to be disproved and almost immediately. No, No, I'd like
there to be solid evidence behind them. So that about
wraps it up for this illustrious yet troubled painter. I'm
(18:54):
sure lots of you, especially those of you who frequently
request that we cover more art his story, have favorite
Carcaggio stories, or maybe some of you have even gotten
to go to these exhibits in Rome and you can
tell us a little more about him. Apparently the art
exhibit was lit very dramatically, with a dark room with
(19:15):
spotlights on each canvas, so if you saw that, let
us know how it was. Sounds interesting, um, and I
guess that brings us to listener mail. This one's from
Daniell in Canada, and I'm very sorry if I just
muspronounced your name, She says, I just finished listening to
(19:35):
the podcast on seventeenth century Dutch tulip Mania, and it
made me think of another story about tulips. I live
not far from Ottawa, which is the capital of Canada
and located in Ontario, and one of the things that
Ottawa is known for is their annual Tulip Festival. The
history of the Tulip Festival is that it started as
a way of recognizing Canada's role in liberating the Dutch
during World War Two, and specifically for providing safe harbor
(19:59):
for the Dutch royal family. The Tulip Festival's website does
a much better job of explaining this, and she gives
it to us here. It's www dot Tulip Festival dot
c a. But essentially, during World War Two, the Canadian
government temporarily declared a room at the Ottawa Civic Hospital
to be Dutch territory so that Princess Marguerite could be
born a Dutch citizen on Dutch soil as a thank
(20:21):
you the people of the Netherlands and the new Princess's mother,
Princess Juliana, sent many gifts to Canada, including a hundred
thousand tulip bulbs. The festival is now almost sixty years
old and it's the largest tulip festival in the world,
and the tulip is Ottawa's official flower, which, as the
event site notes, makes Ottawa the tulip capital of North America.
So yeah, I thought that was a really sweet story,
(20:42):
and actually a few people sent it to us. We
got a similar story from Christina and Toronto and John
who also told us about a Tulipmania board game, which
sounds awesome. Um, definitely want to check out. Yeah, I mean,
I love games about commodity. What if the notities involved
were tulips? That would be so much fun. Um. I
(21:04):
just have one more of these Tulip or Holland related
emails to share, and this one is from Yost. Initially,
he emailed to let us know that the Kingdom of
the Netherlands does not consist of the Antilles anymore, since
they were dissolved on October tenth. And I was really
shocked to see that information because after doing the most
(21:29):
of the big research on the tool of episode, I
looked at to make sure I knew exactly what the
Netherlands were, and I looked on the official website of
the Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions, which apparently is
not updated yet. I sent them an email after I
got this this correction, alerting them out of awkward. Yes,
that's a little awkward to do now that you mention it.
(21:51):
But he also shared a really interesting story and I
kind of like it because it has the pronunciation in
it that no one no one can fault us for
for mispronouncing. But here it goes. During the German occupation,
the Allied bombers and accompanying fighters had to fly over
Holland to reach Germany. As a result, a lot of
plans were shot down over Dutch ground. If the pilots
(22:13):
were lucky enough to survive and not get caught by
Germans going to the crash site, they fell into the
hands of the resistance and were smuggled back to England. Obviously,
they were disguised as normal Dutch citizens during their transport.
When German patrols encountered people they felt were not true Dutch,
they would order them to say, shinkafigan, that's my best approximation. Um,
(22:38):
this is the name of a Dutch coastal town. For
non native Dutch speakers, it is almost impossible to make
the truck sound the way a Dutch would, since it
is a sound distinguished to our language. If the persons
would fail the test, Germans knew they were dealing with
British or Americans, and the proper action was taken. So um.
(23:01):
I listened to a few different pronunciations of this word,
and the best I can tell, it's sort of a
combination of the t an s sound from a snake
in an s h like chicaf andingen. But I don't
think I would pass this test unfortunately, So it's good
I was not a pilot flying over Holland in World
(23:21):
War Two. In many ways, in many ways, but um, yeah,
thank you. I mean, I thought that was a really
interesting story, and thanks for sharing it. Yeah, we love
the sun more. We have an email address that you
can send them to its history podcast at how stuff
works dot com. You can also find us on Facebook
and at Twitter at MS industry, and we also have
(23:42):
a blog and Blina and I have been working on
updating it regularly, so in case you went and didn't
see anything posted in the past few months. Um, there's
lots of stuff now brimming with so you can come
check us out and you'll find the blogs by visiting
the house stuff Works homepage at www dot how stuff
(24:03):
works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
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(24:24):
m
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Deblane chokerate boarding. And around
this time last year, Katie and I did an episode
(00:20):
on the artist michel Angelo. And it's a given that
michel Angelo, he's one of the most famous artists in history.
But according to the art historian Peter sim michel Angelo
has been surpassed and at least one head to head competition,
um and again at least in terms of what's being
written about him. Nobody's looking at the art show, attendance
(00:41):
or something here. But that raises the question who is
the upstart? Interestingly, it's another michel Angelo, except this one
who's named michel Angelo Maurice and he's better known as
Caravaggio and some who works at the University of Toronto.
He has studied books, catalogs and Scott Lili papers about
(01:01):
the two men published in the last fifty years, everything
kind of in that time range. And over time the
Caravaggio related work did in fact outpaced the writings on Michelangelo,
especially since the mid nineties or so. Yeah, so Caravaggio
is apparently quite popular right now, and um, if the
obsession has been growing for the past fifty years, it's
(01:23):
really reached new heights this year and last year, which
was the four hundredth anniversary of the artist's death. But
so far we've had to art world controversies. This is
in the past year too, art world controversies which have
played out in really dramatic headline fashion. We're going to
just read off a few of these headline counterheadlined selections
(01:46):
for you. One is from the BBC Vatican reveals Caravaggio
painting found in Rome and then later Vatican paper dismissed
his own Caravaggio claims it's a little embarrassing. We have
another one from the BBC Church Bones quote belonged to Caravaggio,
researchers say, but also unearthing doubts about Caravaggio's remains. Yeah,
(02:09):
we're gonna be talking about that one a little bit
more because obviously it's an exhimission of related point for that. UM.
There have also been two big exhibits though on the
artists in the past year and this year as well.
One was of Caravaggio's art at the Scutieri Quirinale, and
the other was of his police trail at the Italian
(02:32):
State Archives. And that's really the catch of this episode
and probably the appeal of Caravaggio in general. He's not
just a compelling figure because he's so masterful an artist,
and he's not just compelling because he has this realist
style that is well before his time. And he's not
(02:52):
just interesting because he almost seems more like a photographer
than a painter who lived centuries ago. He's he's a
really bad guy. He's a bad boy. That's a good
way to describe him. And the documents relating to his
life are police documents and court documents, legal statements, things
(03:12):
like that. He did leave quite a paper trail, and
it does not really paint with pretty picture. Yeah, and
so I guess that new paper Trails will focus on
the most But first we'll go back to the beginning.
He was born in fifteen seventy one, and he was
the son of an architect and a majordomo for the
Marquis of Caravaggio. He was apprentice later at age eleven,
(03:33):
to painter Simone Patrezano in Milan, and it was sometime
in his teens when he was sent off to Rome,
and that's where he settles into this bohemian underworld. He's
really poor and working for painters at that time who
were less able than him. They're less talented. Yeah, definitely struggling.
And these are kind of the lost years as far
as his record goes, which I guess with Caravaggio that's
(03:55):
a good thing, um, But they're not lost years as
far as his work goes. He painted about forty pieces
during this period, including Boy with a Fruit Basket and
the Young Bacchus. Those are probably two of his most
famous works. And finally in fift works like that must
have caught the attention of certain eyes because he sets
(04:16):
out on his own and he's brought to the attention
of Cardinal Francesco Damonte, who was a big shot in
the papal court. So this is his inn into the
more elite world of Rome, and he's soon invited to
live at the cardinals palace and uh, he's got room
and board and all these commissions, and by fifteven he
(04:37):
has a commission to decorate the Contrally Chapel in Rome,
which really puts him into the big league. He's only
twenty four years old, so he put in his his
difficult years early. Yeah, and it's not a really totally
smooth road all the way though. His work for the Chapel,
which included scenes from the life of St. Matthew, they
(04:57):
cost quite a stir at the time, and it's because
these scenes he painted, they weren't idealized in any way.
Matthew basically looks like a laborer off the street, a
common person, not a very pretty saint. Yeah. And from
there on out though, he does stick with these religious
subjects though that's mostly what he's working on. But um,
I mean, like you mentioned, the Matthew thing gives a
(05:19):
pretty good foreshadowing of this. His his work isn't pretty,
it's violent, and it's dark. Stylistically, he supposedly would use
a lantern hung in a dark studio to achieve this
really dramatic lighting effect. I mean, if you've I'm guessing
probably most of you if you're listening to this episode,
you've seen Caravaggio paintings, but they often look like a
(05:41):
photo where there's a big, strong beam of light shining
on the subject from one direction. Um. And another thing
he would do is pick poor models, so maybe St.
Matthew was right off the street. Um. He would use
laborers and and just people he ran into, perhaps even prostitutes,
which obviously it's gonna sometimes caused some trouble for him,
(06:03):
and sometimes his work was consequently rejected by its original commissioner. Yeah.
The Caramel Lites, for example, thought that his death of
the Virgin looked a little too common and also a
little too dead. Yeah. They didn't want her to look
like a normal woman who had just died. They wanted
her to be shooting straight up to heaven. And this
(06:24):
kind of rejection, though, didn't really hurt Caravato's reputation. You
would think that that having your commissions rejected would be
a bad thing, but private buyers were very eager to
snatch up the rejected pieces, and his success really continued
to grow. He was moving and mingling in the highest
circles of Roman society, hanging out with cardinals, hanging out
(06:46):
with princes. So it seemed like he had risen above
that rough and tumble bohemian life that he started out in. Yeah,
but he never really totally left that hard knock life
behind either. It said that he was given to wrath
and riot, and probably the best way to understand him
might be to first look up some images of his
(07:06):
art and then take a look at his police record,
which we're going to get into a little bit right now,
is pretty ridiculous. Yeah, it's kind of crazy actually. May fourth,
for example, he's arrested for carrying a sword without a
permit between two and three am. November nineteen six hundred,
he's sued over beating a man with a stick and
cutting the guy's cape with his sword at a three
(07:27):
am brawl. Then October two, sixteen oh one, he's accused
of attacking a man with a sword and insulting him,
adding insult to injury. April sixteen o four, he was
accused of attacking a waiter over an artichoke related dispute, which,
because I kind of love that one so much, we're
going to talk about it a little more in a
(07:48):
second October nineteenth, sixteen o four, arrested for pelting policemen
with stones. That's never good. May sixteen o five, he's
arrested for carrying a sword and a dagger to this
time without a permit. July sixteen oh five, he's accused
by a Vatican Notary of striking him with a weapon
from behind. So pretty good idea of the kind of
(08:13):
shenanigans that Caravaggio was up to. And um the documents
on view of the archives actually give us a closer
look at some of these incidents. I mentioned the artichoke one.
We have the waiters statement, which it'll let you know
that a lot is based on tone. And it's kind
of hard to tell here what exactly happened, but here
it goes. About seventeen o'clock lunchtime, the accused, together with
(08:35):
two other people, was eating in the Moor's restaurant where
I work as a waiter. I brought them eight cooked artichokes,
four cooked in butter and four fried in oil. The
accused asked me which were cooked in butter and which
fried in oil, and I told him to smell them,
which would easily enable him to tell the difference. That's
where tone is important. He got angry and without saying
(08:56):
anything more, grabbed an earthenware dish and hit me on
the cheek at the level of my mustache, injuring me slightly.
And then he got up and grabbed his friend's sword,
which was lying on the table, intending perhaps to strike
me with it, but I got up and came here
to the police station to make a formal complaint. So
you know a guy who's who's easy to anger, I
(09:17):
guess yeah. He seemed to get riled up pretty easily.
He was even accused of throwing stones at his landlady's
window after she sued him for cutting holes in the
ceiling to make his painting. That's the best part. So
you know, this is this is obnoxious behavior, violent, um,
potentially lethal behavior, and carrying illegal swords around is not
(09:40):
a good way to stay out of trouble. But he
reached a new level May sixteen or six when he
killed a man. He can't really take that back. And um,
the circumstances behind this murder are kind of interesting. Uh.
The deceased was Rernuccio Toomassini, and he was murder on
a tennis court in Rome, And so you've probably heard
(10:04):
that because the location was a tennis court, the dispute
was somehow related to a game of tennis, or some
historians have suggested that it was related to a dispute
over a woman. But either way, something that happened in
the heat of the moment um, you just let your
passions get to you and get into a fight, and
then Renuccio is suddenly dead. But court documents from the
(10:27):
time show that it really looked a lot more like
an organized war, not just this argument that started suddenly. Right.
For one thing, it's not exactly a tennis court where
this happens. It's a Palacorta court in the Campo Marzio area,
which was Caravaggio's neighborhood. Paul Acorta is kind of like tennis,
except there's somehow string involved. We're not really sure how
(10:49):
it works. Like an explanation of Palacorta for any still
practicing sport enthusiasts. Yes, email us. The other thing was
there were eight men who participate hated in this fight,
and they were chosen ahead of time. They weren't just
random onlookers. So, as you said, it wasn't just in
the heat of them homet It wasn't people who got
mad about something that happened to a game and decided
(11:11):
to become part of this. It was planned. Yeah, and
Caravaggio himself was there with three other guys. One was
a captain in the Papal Army again showing he does
have friends in high places. And one of his friends
was also badly injured and arrested after the fact. And
it's during this guy's trial where it comes out that
the fight was probably started over a gambling debt, so
(11:34):
something that they could mull over for a little while
and get their friends together. But Caravaggio is injured in this,
but he escapes. He's not injured bad enough that he's arrested.
He gets out of Rome. He's terribly concerned about what
will happen to him, and rightly so, because he's condemned
to death in absentia by Pope Paul the fifth. So
(11:56):
the first place he goes is to the estate of
the marquis of Caravaggio's relative so Um, a friend of
his dad's friend. Essentially, from there he goes to Naples
in early sixteen and seven, and he starts painting again.
And just remember, throughout his entire flight he's still painting,
which I think is so interesting. I mean, obviously it's
(12:18):
partly to make a living, but that you would still
have it in you when you're running for your life, right,
and he has to keep moving. He moves on from
Naples to Malta, where he not only keeps painting, but
he's received into the Order of Malta, which is kind
of confusing because it's something that requires papal permission. Yeah,
and the Pope has just condemned him to death. I
think that's interesting. And of course, all the while his
(12:41):
friends back in Rome were working to get a papal dispensation.
That's the only way he could be pardoned. But I
would kind of want those files to be handled in
reverse order, I think, and and get my life spared
before I received into the Order of Malta. But either way,
he's expelled from the Order of Malta not that long after,
(13:01):
and he's jailed. He escapes from jail and goes to
Syracuse in Sicily in October sight, and from there he
goes on to Messina and then to Palermo, all the
while still working. And it's kind of interesting. Art historians
have commented on this work because obviously you're going to
look at at anything done under such for circumstances, but
(13:25):
apparently he really simplifies things and scales it down, but
it's still just as skilled and well executed as ever.
The only way for him. To really get arrest is
to get the pope's pardon at this point, but Caravaggio
has friends in high places, like we mentioned, so they've
been working on this. Seems like a pardon might actually
(13:47):
be on the horizon. Finally, Caravaggio ends up moving to
Naples again, but when he's there, he's attacked at the
door of an inn and horribly disfigured on his face,
and people even get reports that he's dead. By July
sixteen ten though, he's finally well enough to sail again,
so he sails for Rome, but he's arrested along the
way and the boat with all his stuff leaves him
(14:08):
behind while he's in jail, so he's trying to chase
down this boat. He gets as far as Porto Ricole,
where he dies at thirty eight, so he never reaches
the boat, never gets his pardon while he's alive. He
is actually pardoned three days later. After three days later,
so um, yeah, that's that's sad to say the least,
(14:29):
and it's interesting though, but the circumstances around his death
are appropriately controversial too. He's often believed to have died
alone on the beach, which is terribly depressing and probably
seems plausible, right, But his first biographer, Giovanni Biony, sort
of made things even worse. He painted a picture um
(14:51):
saying quote, finally having arrived in a place on the beach,
he was put in bed with a high fever and
having no human help. Within a few days he died
as miserably as he had lived. I think that makes
it worth It makes it seem like, not only does
he die alone on the beach, somebody puts him in
bed and then leaves him and then abandons him. Then
(15:11):
he dies alone, definitely taking it up a notch. But
his death was really not quite that dramatic. Records from
the Archives exhibit show that Caravaggio was found delirious on
the beach, but then he was taken to the hospital
and he died there two days later, presumably not entirely
abandoned by everyone at the hospital. Um. It's still unclear
though what killed him, right, Maybe it was malaria, could
(15:35):
have been not maybe the Knights of Malta, or maybe
even the pope. I mean, during his successful, the very
stressful career on the run, he was kind of afraid
that Papal hitman were after him. Yeah, it was a
concern of Caravaggios at least, But we also have to
address those bones that were supposedly Carrathaggios and identified as
(15:56):
his last summer um. First of all, though, why would
this even be an issue here? You know, presumably an
artist is famous as Caravaccio would have a monument and
a marker set up immediately after his death. But even
though it's pretty hard to believe, after Caravaccio's death, he
faded into obscurity almost immediately. I mean, he had an
(16:18):
influence on later artists, but people pretty much forgot who
he was until he had this big resurgence at the
beginning of the twentieth century. So that's why we knew
he definitely died in Porto Coole, but we didn't know
exactly where he was in Silvio Vincetti, who is the
(16:38):
president of a private organization that seems to go around
and I d the remains of illustrious deceased Italians, which
as Dante announced that his team had identified bones of
Caravaggio from the Porto Coole crypt. Yeah, and you may
be asking how did they do this? So here's a
little bit about their method. They examined eleton's at the crypt,
(17:01):
eliminating ones that didn't fit Caravaggio's specs. Basically, they carbon
dated things down to one skeleton, and then they tested
that sample against the DNA from families who were named
MAURICEI or Mauricio from Caravaggio. So they did this basically
because Carvaggio didn't have any kids of his own, and
the committee couldn't find his actual descendants, his siblings descendants,
(17:24):
I should say, so they kind of had to take
their best guests. Yeah, and that's one thing that makes
people a little uncomfortable with this finding. But the group
also concluded that the presumed Caravaggio skeleton had suffered from
lead poisoning, which would would also add up for an
artist at the time had suffered from syphilis and had
(17:46):
died from sunstroke. But art historians have been really, really
skeptical of this claim, to say the least. The New
York Times article that we mentioned earlier had quote from
quite a few art historians with varying tone of dismissal,
but I included one trim Tamaso Montinari of the University
(18:09):
of Naples, who said, quote in the four hundredth anniversary
of Caravaggio's death. This committee has concocted a compelling discovery,
thinking it will attract tourists. It's all very depressing. Yikes. Yeah,
so're not very confidence inspiring. No, not at all. So
I guess I'm hoping that we'll find out more in
(18:30):
the four hundred and first anniversary of Caravaggio's death, because
I don't like my my exlamations to be depressing in
up in the air. Yeah, you don't want your exclamations
to be disproved and almost immediately. No, No, I'd like
there to be solid evidence behind them. So that about
wraps it up for this illustrious yet troubled painter. I'm
(18:54):
sure lots of you, especially those of you who frequently
request that we cover more art his story, have favorite
Carcaggio stories, or maybe some of you have even gotten
to go to these exhibits in Rome and you can
tell us a little more about him. Apparently the art
exhibit was lit very dramatically, with a dark room with
(19:15):
spotlights on each canvas, so if you saw that, let
us know how it was. Sounds interesting, um, and I
guess that brings us to listener mail. This one's from
Daniell in Canada, and I'm very sorry if I just
muspronounced your name, She says, I just finished listening to
(19:35):
the podcast on seventeenth century Dutch tulip Mania, and it
made me think of another story about tulips. I live
not far from Ottawa, which is the capital of Canada
and located in Ontario, and one of the things that
Ottawa is known for is their annual Tulip Festival. The
history of the Tulip Festival is that it started as
a way of recognizing Canada's role in liberating the Dutch
during World War Two, and specifically for providing safe harbor
(19:59):
for the Dutch royal family. The Tulip Festival's website does
a much better job of explaining this, and she gives
it to us here. It's www dot Tulip Festival dot
c a. But essentially, during World War Two, the Canadian
government temporarily declared a room at the Ottawa Civic Hospital
to be Dutch territory so that Princess Marguerite could be
born a Dutch citizen on Dutch soil as a thank
(20:21):
you the people of the Netherlands and the new Princess's mother,
Princess Juliana, sent many gifts to Canada, including a hundred
thousand tulip bulbs. The festival is now almost sixty years
old and it's the largest tulip festival in the world,
and the tulip is Ottawa's official flower, which, as the
event site notes, makes Ottawa the tulip capital of North America.
So yeah, I thought that was a really sweet story,
(20:42):
and actually a few people sent it to us. We
got a similar story from Christina and Toronto and John
who also told us about a Tulipmania board game, which
sounds awesome. Um, definitely want to check out. Yeah, I mean,
I love games about commodity. What if the notities involved
were tulips? That would be so much fun. Um. I
(21:04):
just have one more of these Tulip or Holland related
emails to share, and this one is from Yost. Initially,
he emailed to let us know that the Kingdom of
the Netherlands does not consist of the Antilles anymore, since
they were dissolved on October tenth. And I was really
shocked to see that information because after doing the most
(21:29):
of the big research on the tool of episode, I
looked at to make sure I knew exactly what the
Netherlands were, and I looked on the official website of
the Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions, which apparently is
not updated yet. I sent them an email after I
got this this correction, alerting them out of awkward. Yes,
that's a little awkward to do now that you mention it.
(21:51):
But he also shared a really interesting story and I
kind of like it because it has the pronunciation in
it that no one no one can fault us for
for mispronouncing. But here it goes. During the German occupation,
the Allied bombers and accompanying fighters had to fly over
Holland to reach Germany. As a result, a lot of
plans were shot down over Dutch ground. If the pilots
(22:13):
were lucky enough to survive and not get caught by
Germans going to the crash site, they fell into the
hands of the resistance and were smuggled back to England. Obviously,
they were disguised as normal Dutch citizens during their transport.
When German patrols encountered people they felt were not true Dutch,
they would order them to say, shinkafigan, that's my best approximation. Um,
(22:38):
this is the name of a Dutch coastal town. For
non native Dutch speakers, it is almost impossible to make
the truck sound the way a Dutch would, since it
is a sound distinguished to our language. If the persons
would fail the test, Germans knew they were dealing with
British or Americans, and the proper action was taken. So um.
(23:01):
I listened to a few different pronunciations of this word,
and the best I can tell, it's sort of a
combination of the t an s sound from a snake
in an s h like chicaf andingen. But I don't
think I would pass this test unfortunately, So it's good
I was not a pilot flying over Holland in World
(23:21):
War Two. In many ways, in many ways, but um, yeah,
thank you. I mean, I thought that was a really
interesting story, and thanks for sharing it. Yeah, we love
the sun more. We have an email address that you
can send them to its history podcast at how stuff
works dot com. You can also find us on Facebook
and at Twitter at MS industry, and we also have
(23:42):
a blog and Blina and I have been working on
updating it regularly, so in case you went and didn't
see anything posted in the past few months. Um, there's
lots of stuff now brimming with so you can come
check us out and you'll find the blogs by visiting
the house stuff Works homepage at www dot how stuff
(24:03):
works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To learn
more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in
the upper right corner of our homepage. The how stuff
Works iPhone app has a rise. Download it today on iTunes,
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