Speaker 1: Hello, and happy Saturday, everybody. Back when we were planning
Speaker 1: our live show at the National Gallery of Art, which
Speaker 1: was a few months ago, we were brainstorming ideas about
Speaker 1: art history mysteries and one of the topics that came
Speaker 1: up was Caravaggio and the murder of his rival Renuccio Thomasny. Obviously,
Speaker 1: we went in an entirely different direction from that for
Speaker 1: the show. We went with our mysteries of the color blue.
Speaker 1: But also prior hosts Sarah and Bublina had already done
Speaker 1: a whole episode on Caravaggio back in March, so we
Speaker 1: are sharing it today. Everyone enjoying. Welcome to Stuff You
Speaker 1: Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Sarah Dowdy and I'm Deblane chokerate Boardy And around this
Speaker 1: time last year, Um, Katie and I did an episode
Speaker 1: on the artist michel Angelo. And it's a good been
Speaker 1: that michel Angelo. He's one of the most famous artists
Speaker 1: in history. But according to the art historian Peter Solm,
Speaker 1: michel Angelo has been surpassed and at least one head
Speaker 1: to head competition. Uh and again at least in terms
Speaker 1: of what's being written about him. Nobody's looking at the
Speaker 1: art show attendance or something here. But that raises the
Speaker 1: question who is the upstart? Interestingly, it's another michel Angelo,
Speaker 1: except this one who's named michel Angelo Maurice and he's
Speaker 1: better known as Caravaggio and some who works at the
Speaker 1: University of Toronto. He has studied books, catalogs and scholarly
Speaker 1: papers about the two men published in the last fifty years,
Speaker 1: everything kind of in that time range. And over time
Speaker 1: the Caravaggio related work did in fact outpaced the writings
Speaker 1: on Michelangelo, especially since the mid nineties or so. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Caravaggio is apparently quite popular right now. And um,
Speaker 1: if the obsession has been growing for the past fifty years,
Speaker 1: it's really reached new heights this year and last year,
Speaker 1: which was the anniversary of the artist's death. But so
Speaker 1: far we've had to art world controversies. This is in
Speaker 1: the past year too, art world controversies which have played
Speaker 1: out in really dramatic headline fashion. We're going to just
Speaker 1: read off a few of these headline counterheadlined selections for you.
Speaker 1: One is from the BBC Vatican reveals caravaggio painting found
Speaker 1: in Rome, and then later Vatican paper dismiss his own.
Speaker 1: Caravaggio claims it's a little embarrassing. We have another one
Speaker 1: from the BBC Church Bones quote belonged to Caravaggio, researchers say,
Speaker 1: but also unearthing doubts about Caravaggio's remains. Yeah, we're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about that one a little bit more because
Speaker 1: obviously it's an exhimation of related point. We're going to
Speaker 1: cover that. Um. There have also been two big exhibits
Speaker 1: though on the artists in the past year and this
Speaker 1: year as well. One was of Caravaggio's art at the
Speaker 1: Scuttieri Quirinale and the other was of his police trail
Speaker 1: at the Italian State Archives. And that's really the catch
Speaker 1: of this episode, and probably the appeal of Caravaggio in general.
Speaker 1: He's not just a compelling figure because he's so masterful
Speaker 1: an artist, and he's not just compelling because he has
Speaker 1: this realist style that is well before his time. And
Speaker 1: he's not just interesting because he almost seems more like
Speaker 1: a photographer than a painter who lived centuries ago. He's bad.
Speaker 1: He's a really bad guy. He's a bad boy. That's
Speaker 1: a good way to describe him. And the documents relating
Speaker 1: to his life are police documents and court documents, legal statements,
Speaker 1: things like that. He did leave quite a paper trail,
Speaker 1: and it does not really paint a pretty picture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so I guess that new paper trails will focus
Speaker 1: on the most But first we'll go back to the
Speaker 1: begin inning. He was born in fifteen seventy one and
Speaker 1: he was the son of an architect and a majordomo
Speaker 1: for the Marquis of Caravaggio. He was apprentice later at
Speaker 1: age eleven to painter Simone Patrizano in Milan, and it
Speaker 1: was sometime in his teens when he was sent off
Speaker 1: to Rome, and that's where he settles into this bohemian underworld.
Speaker 1: He's really poor and working for painters at that time
Speaker 1: who were less able than him. They're less talented. Yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely struggling. And these are kind of the lost years
Speaker 1: as far as his record goes, which I guess with
Speaker 1: Caravaggio that's a good thing, um, But they're not lost
Speaker 1: years as far as his work goes. He painted about
Speaker 1: forty pieces during this period, including Boy with a Fruit Basket,
Speaker 1: and the Young Bacchus. Those are probably two of his
Speaker 1: most famous works. And finally, in Fi, works like that
Speaker 1: must have caught the attention of certain eyes, because he
Speaker 1: sets out on his own and he's brought to the
Speaker 1: attention of Cardinal Francesco Damante, who was a big shot
Speaker 1: in papal court. So this is his inn into the
Speaker 1: more elite world of Rome, and he's soon invited to
Speaker 1: live at the cardinals palace, and uh, he's got room
Speaker 1: and board and all these commissions. And by seven he
Speaker 1: has a commission to decorate the Contrally Chapel in Rome,
Speaker 1: which really puts him into the big league. He's only
Speaker 1: twenty four years old, so he put in his his
Speaker 1: difficult years early. Yeah. And it's not a really totally
Speaker 1: smooth road all the way though. His work for the chapel,
Speaker 1: which included scenes from the life of Saint Matthew, they
Speaker 1: cost quite a stir at the time, and that's because
Speaker 1: these scenes he painted, they weren't idealized in any way.
Speaker 1: Matthew basically looks like a laborer off the street, a
Speaker 1: common person, not a very pretty saint. Yeah. And from
Speaker 1: there on out, though he does stick with these religious
Speaker 1: subjects though that's mostly what he's working on. But um,
Speaker 1: I mean, like you mentioned, the Matthew thing gives a
Speaker 1: pretty good foreshadowing of this. His His work isn't pretty,
Speaker 1: it's violent, and it's dark. Stylistically, he supposedly would use
Speaker 1: a lantern hung in a dark studio to achieve this
Speaker 1: really dramatic lighting effect. I mean, if you've, I'm guessing
Speaker 1: probably most of you, if you're listening to this episode,
Speaker 1: you've seen Caravaggio paintings, but they often look like a
Speaker 1: photo where there's a big, strong beam of light shining
Speaker 1: on the subject from one direction. Um. And another thing
Speaker 1: he would do is pick poor models, so maybe st.
Speaker 1: Matthew was right off the street. Um. He would use
Speaker 1: laborers and and just people he ran into, perhaps even prostitutes,
Speaker 1: which obviously that's gonna sometimes cause some trouble for him.
Speaker 1: And sometimes his work was consequently rejected by its original commissioners. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Caramel Lights, for example, thought that his death of
Speaker 1: the Virgin looked a little too common and also a
Speaker 1: little too dead. Yeah. They didn't want her to look
Speaker 1: like a normal woman who had just died. They wanted
Speaker 1: her to be shooting straight up to heaven. And this
Speaker 1: kind of rejection, though, didn't really hurt Caravaggio's reputation. You
Speaker 1: would think that that having your commissions rejected would be
Speaker 1: a bad thing, but private buyers were very eager to
Speaker 1: snatch up the rejected pieces, and his success really continued
Speaker 1: to grow. He was moving and mingling in the highest
Speaker 1: circles of Roman society, hanging out with cardinals, hanging out
Speaker 1: with princes. So it seemed like he had risen above
Speaker 1: that rough and tumble bohemian life that he started out in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he never really totally left that hard knock life
Speaker 1: behind either. It said that he was given to wrath
Speaker 1: and riot, and probably the best way to understand him
Speaker 1: might be to first look up some images of his
Speaker 1: art and then take a look at his police record,
Speaker 1: which we're going to get into a little bit right now.
Speaker 1: It is pretty ridiculous. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. Actually,
Speaker 1: May fourth fifteen, for example, he's arrested for carrying a
Speaker 1: sword without a permit between two and three am. November nineteen,
Speaker 1: six hundred, he's sued over beating a man with a
Speaker 1: stick and cutting the guy's cape with his sword at
Speaker 1: a three am brawl then October two, sixteen oh one,
Speaker 1: he's accused of attacking a man with a sword and
Speaker 1: insulting him, adding insult to injury. April sixteen o four,
Speaker 1: he was accused of attacking a waiter over an artichoke
Speaker 1: related dispute, which, because I kind of love that one
Speaker 1: so much, we're going to talk about it a little
Speaker 1: more in a second October nineteenth, sixteen o four, arrested
Speaker 1: for pelting policemen with stones. That's never good. May sixteen
Speaker 1: o five he's arrested for carrying a sword and a
Speaker 1: dagger too, this time without a permit. July sixteen oh
Speaker 1: five he's accused by a Vatican notary of striking him
Speaker 1: with a weapon from behind. So this gives dirty pretty
Speaker 1: good idea of the kind of shenanigans that Caravaggi was
Speaker 1: up to, and um the documents on view of the
Speaker 1: archives actually give us a closer look at some of
Speaker 1: these incidents. I mentioned the artichoke one. We have the
Speaker 1: waiters statement, which it'll let you know that a lot
Speaker 1: is based on tone, and it's kind of hard to
Speaker 1: tell here what exactly happened, but here it goes about
Speaker 1: seventeen o'clock lunchtime, the accused, together with two other people,
Speaker 1: was eating in the Moor's restaurant where I work as
Speaker 1: a waiter. I brought them eight cooked artichokes, four cooked
Speaker 1: in butter and four fried in oil. The accused asked
Speaker 1: me which were cooked in butter and which fried in oil,
Speaker 1: and I told him to smell them, which would easily
Speaker 1: enable him to tell the difference. That's where tone is important.
Speaker 1: He got angry and without saying anything more, grabbed an
Speaker 1: earthenware dish and hit me on the cheek at the
Speaker 1: level of my mustache, injuring me slightly. And then he
Speaker 1: got up and grabbed his friend's sword which was lying
Speaker 1: on the table, intending perhaps to strike me with it.
Speaker 1: But I got up and came here to the police
Speaker 1: station to make a formal complaint. So you a guy
Speaker 1: who's who's easy to anger, I guess yeah. He seemed
Speaker 1: to get riled up pretty easily. He was even accused
Speaker 1: of throwing stones at his landlady's window after she sued
Speaker 1: him for cutting holes in his ceiling to make his painted.
Speaker 1: That's the best part. So you know this is this
Speaker 1: is obnoxious behavior, violent um, potentially lethal behavior, and carrying
Speaker 1: illegal swords around is not a good way to stay
Speaker 1: out of trouble. But he reached a new level May
Speaker 1: sixteen or six when he killed a man. You can't
Speaker 1: really take that back. And um, the circumstances behind this
Speaker 1: murder are kind of interesting. Uh. The deceased was Rernuccio Thomassini,
Speaker 1: and he was murdered on a tennis court in Rome.
Speaker 1: And so you've probably heard that because the location was
Speaker 1: a tennis court, the dispute was somehow related to a
Speaker 1: game of tennis, or some historians have suggested that it
Speaker 1: was related to a dispute over a woman. But either way,
Speaker 1: something that happened in the heat of the moment um.
Speaker 1: You just let your passions get to you and get
Speaker 1: into a fight, and then Rernuccio is suddenly dead. But
Speaker 1: court documents from the time show that it really looked
Speaker 1: a lot more like an organized war, not just this
Speaker 1: argument that started suddenly. Right. For one thing, it's not
Speaker 1: exactly a tennis court where this happens. It's a palacorta
Speaker 1: court in the Campo Marzio area, which was Caravaggio's neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Paul Acorda is kind of like tennis, except there's somehow
Speaker 1: string involved. We're not really sure how it works. Like
Speaker 1: an explanation of Palacorta for any still practicing sport enthusiasts. Yes,
Speaker 1: email us. The other thing was there were eight men
Speaker 1: who participated in this fight, and they were chosen ahead
Speaker 1: of time. They weren't just random onlookers. So as you said,
Speaker 1: it wasn't just in the heat of them moment. It
Speaker 1: wasn't people who got mad about something that happened to
Speaker 1: a game and decided to become part of this. It
Speaker 1: was planned. Caravaggio himself was there with three other guys.
Speaker 1: One was a captain in the Papal army, again showing
Speaker 1: he does have friends in high places. And one of
Speaker 1: his friends was also badly injured and arrested after the fact.
Speaker 1: And it's during this guy's trial where it comes out
Speaker 1: that the fight was probably started over a gambling debt,
Speaker 1: so something that they could mull over for a little
Speaker 1: while and get their friends together. But Caravaggio is injured
Speaker 1: in this, but he escapes. He's not injured bad enough
Speaker 1: that he's arrested. He gets out of Rome. He's terribly
Speaker 1: concerned about what will happen to him, and rightly so,
Speaker 1: because he's condemned to death and absentia by Pope Paul
Speaker 1: the Fifth. So the first place he goes is to
Speaker 1: the estate of the Marquis of Caravaggio's relative so Um,
Speaker 1: a friend of his dad's friend. Essentially. From there it
Speaker 1: goes to Naples in early sixteen and seven, and he
Speaker 1: starts painting again. And just remember, throughout his entire flight,
Speaker 1: he's still painting, which I think is so interesting. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously it's partly to make a living, but that you
Speaker 1: would still have it in you when you're running for
Speaker 1: your life, right, and he has to keep moving. He
Speaker 1: moves on from Naples to Malta, where he not only
Speaker 1: keeps painting, but he's received into the Order of Malta,
Speaker 1: which is kind of confusing because it's something that requires
Speaker 1: papal permission. Yeah, and the Pope has just condemned him
Speaker 1: to death. I think that's interesting. And of course, all
Speaker 1: the while his friends back in Rome we're working to
Speaker 1: get a papal dispensation. That's the only way he could
Speaker 1: be pardoned. But I would kind of want those fouls
Speaker 1: to be handled in reverse order, I think, and and
Speaker 1: get my life spared before I received into the Order
Speaker 1: of Malta. But either way, he's expelled from the Order
Speaker 1: of Malta not that long after, and he's jailed. He
Speaker 1: escapes from jail and goes to Syracuse in Sicily in
Speaker 1: October sixteen eight, and from there he goes on to
Speaker 1: Messina and then to Palermo, all the while still working.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of interesting. Art historians have commented on
Speaker 1: this work because obviously you're going to look at at
Speaker 1: anything done under such for circumstances, but apparently he really
Speaker 1: simplifies things and scales it down, but it's still just
Speaker 1: as skilled and well executed as ever. The only way
Speaker 1: for him to really get arrest is to get the
Speaker 1: Pope's pardon at this point, but Caravaggio has friends in
Speaker 1: high places, like we mentioned, so they've been working on this.
Speaker 1: Seems like a pardon might actually be on the horizon. Finally,
Speaker 1: Caravaggio ends up moving to Naples again, but when he's there,
Speaker 1: he's attacked at the door of an inn and horribly
Speaker 1: disfigured on his face, and people even get reports that
Speaker 1: he's dead. By July six ten, though he's finally well
Speaker 1: enough to sail again, so he sails for Rome, but
Speaker 1: he's arrested along the way and the boat with all
Speaker 1: his stuff leaves him behind while he's in jail, so
Speaker 1: he's trying to chase down this boat. He gets as
Speaker 1: far as Porto Arcole, where he dies at thirty eight,
Speaker 1: so he never reaches the boat, never gets his pardon
Speaker 1: while he's alive. He is actually pardoned three days later.
Speaker 1: After three days later. So yeah, that's that's sad to
Speaker 1: say the least, and it's interesting though, but the circumstances
Speaker 1: around his death are appropriately controversial too. He's often believed
Speaker 1: to have died alone on the beach, which is terribly
Speaker 1: depressing and probably seems plausible right, But his first biographer,
Speaker 1: Giovanni Biony, sort of made things even worse. He panted
Speaker 1: a picture um saying quote, finally having arrived in a
Speaker 1: place on the beach, he was put in bed with
Speaker 1: a high fever and having no human help. Within a
Speaker 1: few days, he died as miserably as he had lived.
Speaker 1: I think that makes it worse. It makes it seem like,
Speaker 1: not only does he die alone on the beach, somebody
Speaker 1: puts him in bed and then leaves him and then
Speaker 1: abandons him. Then he dies alone, definitely taking it up
Speaker 1: a notch, but his death was really not quite that dramatic.
Speaker 1: Records from the archives exhibit show that Caravaggio was found
Speaker 1: delirious on the beach, but then he was taken to
Speaker 1: the hospital and he died there two days later, presumably
Speaker 1: not entirely abandoned by everyone at the hospital. Um. It's
Speaker 1: still unclear though what killed him, right, Maybe it was malaria,
Speaker 1: could have been that, maybe the Knights of Malta, or
Speaker 1: maybe even the Pope. I mean, during his successful, though
Speaker 1: very stressful career on the run, he was kind of
Speaker 1: afraid that papal hit men were after him. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a concern of Caravaggios at least, But we also
Speaker 1: have to address those bones that were supposedly Caravaggios and
Speaker 1: identified as his last summer um. First of all, though,
Speaker 1: why would this even be an issue here? You know,
Speaker 1: presumably an artist as famous as Caravaggio would have a
Speaker 1: monument and a marker set up immediately after his death.
Speaker 1: But even though it's pretty hard to believe, after Caravaggio's death,
Speaker 1: he faded into obscurity almost immediately. I mean, he had
Speaker 1: an influence on later artists, but people pretty much forgot
Speaker 1: who he was until he had this big resurgence at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the twentieth century. So that's why we
Speaker 1: knew he definitely died in Porto Coole, but we didn't
Speaker 1: know exactly where he was in Silvio Vincetti, who is
Speaker 1: the president of a private organization that seems to go
Speaker 1: around and I d the remains of illustrious deceased Italians,
Speaker 1: which as Dante announced that his team had identified bones
Speaker 1: of Caravaggio from the Porto Coole crypt. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: may be asking how did they do this? So here's
Speaker 1: a little bit about their method. They examined skeletons at
Speaker 1: the crypt, eliminating ones that didn't fit Caravaggio's specs. Basically,
Speaker 1: they carbon dated things down to one skeleton, and then
Speaker 1: they tested that sample against the DNA from families who
Speaker 1: were named MAURICEI or Mauricio from Caravaggio. So they did
Speaker 1: this basically because Carvaggio didn't have any kids of his own,
Speaker 1: and the committee couldn't find his actual descendants, his siblings descendants,
Speaker 1: I should say, So they kind of had to take
Speaker 1: their best guests. Yeah, and that's one thing that makes
Speaker 1: people a little uncomfortable with this spinding. But the group
Speaker 1: also concluded that the presumed Caravaggio skeleton had suffered from
Speaker 1: lead poisoning, which would would also add up for an
Speaker 1: artist at the time had suffered from syphilis and had
Speaker 1: died from sunstroke. But art historians have been really, really
Speaker 1: skeptical of this claim, to say the least. The New
Speaker 1: York Times article that we mentioned earlier had quotes from
Speaker 1: quite a few art historians with varying tone of dismissal,
Speaker 1: but I included one trim tomas So Montinari of the
Speaker 1: University of Naples, who said, quote in the four hundredth
Speaker 1: anniversary of Caravaggio's death, this committee has concocted a compelling discovery,
Speaker 1: thinking it will attract tourists. It's all very depressing threeis yeah,
Speaker 1: so not very confidence inspiring. No, not at all. So
Speaker 1: I guess I'm hoping that we'll find out more in
Speaker 1: the four hundred and first anniversary of caravaggias death, because
Speaker 1: I don't like my my exclimations to be depressing in
Speaker 1: up in the air, Thank you so much for joining
Speaker 1: us today for this Saturday classic. If you have heard
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