Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are immersing
ourselves in the life of a figure whose biography
is so, I mean, so fraught with genius, violence,
and paradox that he remains one of the most compelling
artists in history. Michelangelo Morisi de Caravaggio.
It's a study in extremes, really. Here's a man
who, in just over a decade, completely changed
the course of Western art. Right. He brought
this raw, unflinching realism and this, uh...
unprecedented dramatic use of light to these
sacred scenes. And yet at the same time, for
nearly half his career, he was a volatile street
fighter. An outlaw, a fugitive with a death sentence
literally hanging over his head. He was by all
accounts a canonical master, a deeply flawed
sinner, and, you know, depending on who you ask,
maybe the single most important influence on
modern painting. He really did. He took the sublime
and just dragged it down into the mud. Yeah,
forcing you to confront holiness in the context
of... well, of common, dirty, intensely human
life. And that tension is exactly why we're still
so fascinated by him. His work influenced the
entire Baroque movement, not just in Italy but
all across Europe. And it was all about that
combination of hyper -realism with his signature
style. Tenebrism. That dramatic psychological
use of shadow. Okay, so let's unpack this. Our
mission today is a deep dive into the sources
that detail his revolutionary style. But, you
know, more importantly, we're tracking the chronology
of his short, wild, and incredibly violent journey.
Right. We want to understand how a life of constant
brawls, feuds, and narrow escapes shaped a body
of work that redefined the sacred. Let's set
the stage then. We're in northern Italy. Michelangelo
Maurici, born in Milan, 1571. And he's known
to history as Caravaggio, which wasn't his surname
at all. No, it was the town. Exactly. The town
about 35 kilometers away where his family had
roots and where his father, Fermo, worked for
the local Marquess. But his childhood was, I
mean... brutally cut short. Brutally. In 1576,
the family fled Milan to escape the plague. And
then in 1577, tragedy just hits them like a truck.
His father and his grandfather die on the very
same day. The same day. It's unbelievable. And
it left his mother struggling to raise five kids
in, you know, real poverty. And you have to think
that this early exposure to instability, to death,
it has to color the raw emotionality you see
in his work later on. Oh, absolutely. That poverty
combined with his regional artistic heritage
is what really shaped him before he ever even
got to Rome. So at 13, he starts an apprenticeship.
A four -year apprenticeship in Milan under Simone
Peterzano. And Peterzano was a pretty big deal,
right? He was. The contract actually describes
him as having been a pupil of Titian, which gave
him a lot of clout. So what did Caravaggio learn
there? He was exposed to the local lumbar art
tradition. And this is a really critical distinction.
Right. Because Rome, at this time, was dominated
by Mannerism, which was this very intellectual,
stylized, almost artificial kind of art. Right.
Very dramatic. Lots of poses. Exactly. Histrionic.
Lombard art, on the other hand, was all about
simplicity, clarity, and this really strong attention
to naturalistic detail. They called it the art
of reality. So he shows up in Rome already armed
with a style that's basically the opposite of
what the capital considered high art. And he
doesn't exactly arrive as some promising young
artist. He basically fled Milan in 1592. Fled.
Why? The contemporary accounts are a little vague.
They mention certain quarrels and wounding a
police officer. So from the very beginning, he's
in trouble with the law. From the very start.
And when he got to Rome, the sources describe
him as being in just dire straits. Naked and
extremely needy. Naked and extremely needy. Without
fixed address and without provision. Short of
money. It's a dramatic entrance for sure. So
how did he survive those first few years? They
must have been brutal. He took the most meager
lodging he could find, staying with this really
stingy prelate named Pendolfo Pucci. Oh, this
is the guy he called Monsignor Insalata. That's
the one. Because Pucci apparently only ever fed
him cold salad. That's incredible. To pay the
bills, he joined the workshop of Giuseppe Cesari,
who was the favorite artist of Pope Clement VIII.
A real factory -like setup. So what was the job
for the great future master Caravaggio in this
prestigious workshop? Hack work. Total hack work.
His specialty was painting flowers and fruit,
just churning out decorative elements for Cesare's
big commissions. Wow, so he's just painting filler.
Pretty much. But that phase was short -lived.
He got seriously ill, left Caesare's place to
recover. But this hack work, the flowers and
fruit, it leads directly to his first defining
style, right? Absolutely. His earliest works
we still recognize, like Boy Peeling a Fruit
and the Young Sick Bacchus. Which is supposed
to be a self -portrait from when he was sick.
Many believe so. And in these early still lifes,
his commitment to particularity, to specifics,
just shocked the Roman elite. They were used
to perfect idealized forms. Caravaggio gave...
gave them flawed, intensely observed reality.
And we have to talk about the detail in Boy with
a Basket of Fruit. I read that a professor of
horticulture actually analyzed the produce in
that painting centuries later. That's right.
And they identified specific cultivars of fruit,
which is already amazing precision. But that's
not the craziest part. Yeah. The most telling
detail was the inclusion of fungal damage. A
glomerulus cingulata lesion, basically, rot on
a large fig leaf. Wait, so actual rot? On purpose?
On purpose. This is extraordinary. Most painters
idealize nature. They remove the imperfections.
Caravaggio explicitly put them in. So why? Why
do that? Is he just showing off his skill, or
is there a bigger statement being made? It's
both, but it's mainly philosophical. He was showing
that beauty and reality are inseparable, even
when reality includes decay. He's elevating the
everyday. Exactly. By refusing to idealize, he's
saying that the mundane, the imperfect, is worthy
of serious art. It was a visual rejection of
everything mannerism stood for. He basically
said, I paint what I see down to the rot. And
that refusal to idealize becomes the engine of
his whole career. It really does. After he recovers,
he starts building his network, which was this
mix of the respectable and the distinctly not
so respectable. So who was in his circle? He
connects with Prospero Orsi, who gets him in
front of collectors. The painter Onorio Longhi,
who was his partner in street brawls. Of course.
And critically, the young Sicilian artist Mario
Minniti, who became his main model for so many
of those beautiful early paintings. And these
relationships helped him get his first real commercial
success, didn't they? With multi -figure pieces.
Yes, like the fortune teller and the hugely successful,
the card sharps. The fortune teller was a totally
new subject for Rome, right? A Romani girl reading
a young man's palm. But while she's distracting
him, she's stealthily slipping the ring off his
finger. It's a snapshot of street life full of
this quiet psychological drama. And the Carshars
just amps that up. An innocent kid being cheated
by these two pros. The detail on the boy's face,
his vulnerability, is just heartbreaking. It
was so popular that over 50 copies of it survived.
But its greatest success was that it attracted
the attention of Cardinal Francesco Maria Del
Monte. And Del Monte was the key. He was the
key. The leading connoisseur, a huge figure in
Rome. His patronage was the rocket fuel Caravaggio
needed. It instantly took him from a poor hack
painter to a protected artist. And Del Monte
gave him a place to live, right. And commission.
Lodgings. And a steady flow of commissions for
these intimate chamber pieces, often featuring
Menetti and other handsome young models. This
is when he paints the musicians and the lute
player. This period also sees his first religious
work, like the Penitent Magdalene. And here he
applies that same Lombard realism to a sacred
figure. It's a profound shift. At the time, depictions
of Mary Magdalene were always these huge histrionic
scenes of suffering or ecstasy. But he strips
all that away. Completely. What you see is just
a girl. She looks exhausted. She's sitting on
the floor, weeping, drying her hair. Her discarded
jewels are scattered next to her. And the critics
complained that... It seemed not a religious
painting at all. And that's the whole point.
By showing her as a real person, caught in this
moment of raw, observable grief, he humanized
the spiritual story. He just rejected all the
accepted formality and replaced it with what
he saw. And that choice was about to ignite controversy
all over Rome. So the moment Caravaggio steps
out of Cardinal Del Monte's private chambers
and onto the public stage, everything changes.
Everything. In 1599, through Del Monte's influence,
he lands the most important commission of his
career. decorating the Contarelli Chapel. This
was the big leagues. Absolutely. And when the
two paintings, The Martyrdom of St. Matthew and
The Calling of St. Matthew, were unveiled in
1600, they caused an immediate sensation. Caravaggio
became a superstar overnight. And what's so fascinating
is how he made them. He worked incredibly fast,
skipping the preparatory drawings, the cartoons.
There were standard practice. He just worked
directly from live models, scoring guides right
onto the canvas with the handle of his brush.
And that was controversial. Hugely. It was seen
as almost vulgar by traditionalists. They thought
the artist should idealize the human form in
their mind first. The art world was completely
polarized. So the younger painters loved him?
They gathered around him, calling his work miracles.
But the establishment, they denounced him for
his refusal to draw, for just painting life,
flaws, and all. Which brings us to the visual
heart of his revolution. Tenebrism. Now we know
Chiaroscuro is light and dark, but tenebrism
is... What? Chiaroscuro on steroids. That's a
good way to put it. It's heightened chiaroscuro.
Tenorism, it literally means shadowism. Okay.
It's not just about light and shadow. It's about
dramatic, almost total darkness serving as a
void. Caravaggio plunged his backgrounds into
overwhelming shadow and then used these brilliant,
focused shafts of light to just transfix his
subjects. It makes the light itself feel supernatural.
Precisely. Historically, that kind of dramatic
shadow was for night scenes. Caravaggio used
it for daytime scenes, for spiritual moments,
making the light feel like the hand of God cutting
through the darkness of the world. This became
the visual engine for the entire Baroque movement.
The Calling of St. Matthew is the perfect example.
Jesus is off to the side. You can barely see
him in this dark tavern, and he's pointing at
Matthew, the tax collector. And look what's missing.
There are no flying angels, no parting clouds,
none of the usual signs of a divine moment. The
conversion is shown only through that single
beam of light slicing across the room, illuminating
their faces. It forces you to focus on the psychological
drama. Matthew's hand points to himself like,
woo me, but his eyes are already starting to
accept the call. It makes the spiritual experience
feel immediate, like it could happen to anyone,
anywhere. Exactly. But this radical choice, this
refusal to idealize, it quickly became a huge
problem for his religious commissioners. The
rejections start piling up. Oh, constantly. His
first version of St. Matthew and the angel for
that same chapel was taken down almost immediately.
Why? Because he painted the saint as a bald peasant
with dirty legs, being sort of clumsily guided
by an angel. He just looked too common, too earthy.
They wanted someone more dignified. And then
there's the famous story about the conversion
on the way to Damascus. A classic. The painting
is dominated by the horse's backside. I mean,
it fills a huge part of the canvas while St.
Paul is on the ground, visually secondary. And
some official gets angry about it. An exasperated
church official asked him, why have you put a
horse in the middle and St. Paul on the ground?
In Caravaggio's reply. Just because. When the
official oppressed him as the horse god, Caravaggio's
response was just brilliant defiance. He said,
no, but he stands in God's light. Wow. So for
him, the reality of the composition, the light,
that was more important than the religious hierarchy.
It trumped everything. But the most famous rejection,
the one that really shows the conflict, was the
death of the Virgin. Commissioned for a Carmelite
church, delivered, and then almost instantly
rejected in 1606. The rejection had a few layers.
His rival, Baglioni, was quick to spread the
rumor that Caravaggio had used a well -known
local prostitute as the model for the Virgin
Mary. Which was already a huge problem. A huge
problem. And on top of that, Baglioni claimed
Mary was detected as swollen with bare legs,
a profound offense to decorum. It suggested real
physical death. Decay. And there was a theological
issue too, right? Yes. The sources suggest the
Carmelites were worried the painting failed to
assert the doctrine. of the assumption of Mary,
the idea that she was taken, body and soul, into
heaven. Caravaggio's Mary is just like, dead.
A real corpse. It was too real, too unvarnished.
It didn't offer that comforting idealism the
church wanted. But here's the thing, that rejection
paradoxically confirms his genius, doesn't it?
Absolutely. The second it was taken down, it
was bought by the Duke of Mantua. On whose advice?
On the advice of none other than Peter Paul Rubens.
Rubens recognized the profound emotional power
of the work, even if the Carmelites couldn't
handle its truth. So even as the church is rejecting
him, the smartest artists are fighting to get
his work. They're flammering for it. We should
also touch on his secular work from this time,
especially Armour, Vincit, Omnia Love Conquers
All. Painted for Vincenzo Giustiniani, the model
was a young man known at the time as Cecco. Probably
Francesco Bonnery, who became an artist himself.
Right. And he's painted as a nude Cupid, but
he looks both like the Roman god and like a mischievous
modern kid. He's grinning right at you, trampling
all the symbols of human achievement, war, music,
science. The reality of it is described as intense
yet ambiguous. And that ambiguity is the point.
It's hard to accept this, as one critic called
him, grinning urchin as a god, just like it was
hard to accept his peasants as saints. He was
blurring the line between the ideal and the real,
making the myth and the model inseparable. So
as Caravaggio's fame is hitting its peak, his
violent reputation is right there with it. Oh,
absolutely. You can't separate the genius of
the art from the chaos of the life that was fueling
it. The police records fill many pages, as one
source noted. He was a genuine outlaw. He really
was. An early notice from 1604 describes him
perfectly. It says, after a fortnight's work,
he will swagger about for a month or two with
a sword at his side, ever ready to engage in
a fight or an argument. So he lived as aggressively
as his paintings looked. He cultivated that image.
And we should trace this chronology of conflict
because you see this clear escalation of rage
and impunity. It starts with feuds, right? In
1603, he's arrested for defaming his rival, Giovanni
Baglione. And this wasn't just a simple dispute.
Caravaggio and his friends wrote and distributed
these deeply offensive poems about Baglioni.
He ended up in jail for a month. Then the next
year, 1604, things get even worse. More arrests,
illegal weapons, insulting city guards. But the
most absurd and memorable incident involved food.
The famous artichoke incident. Yes, he was sued
by a tavern waiter after he threw a plate of
hot artichokes in the guy's face. Why? What was
the dispute about? He'd asked if they were cooked
in butter or oil. When the waiter was, I guess,
disrespectful in his answer, Caravaggio just
lost it. Over artichokes. It's so petty, but
it shows you that hair -trigger temper he had.
It really does. Then in 1605, the violence gets
serious again. He badly injures a notary, a man
named Mariano Pasqualone. And this was over a
woman, right? A model named Lena. Michelangelo's
girl, as she was called in the deposition. This
was serious enough that he had to flee Rome for
three weeks until his patrons could smooth things
over. He comes back and is right back to it,
sued by his landlady for not paying rent. Prudenzia
Bruni. And his retaliation for her lawsuit was,
well, it was unhinged. He threw a bunch of rocks
through her window at night. Which naturally
led to another lawsuit. He was just living in
constant chaos. Total chaos. But all of this
was just the prelude to the catastrophic event
that changed his life forever? The killing of
Renuccio Tomassoni on May 29, 1606. This was
the point of no return. Tomassoni was not someone
to mess with. He was a gangster from a wealthy,
connected Roman family. The fight, whether it
was a duel or a brawl, happened at Campo Marzio,
and Tomassoni ended up dead. And the reason for
the fight is still debated, isn't it? The official
story, or the clean one, is that it was over
a gambling debt from a game of pellicorda, a
kind of tennis. But there are other more dramatic
rumors. Oh, yeah. Some accounts say it was jealousy
over his model and lover, Felitti Melandroni,
who Tomasone was apparently pimping. And there
was a much more gruesome rumor. That the fight
started after a botched castration attempt. We
don't know the exact provocation, but the result
is clear. Caravaggio wounded Tomassoni, possibly
hitting the femoral artery, and the wound was
fatal. And Caravaggio was wounded himself. Seriously
wounded, but he managed to escape. But this time,
his powerful patrons couldn't protect him. The
Tomassoni family was powerful, and they wanted
justice. And justice came swiftly. He was sentenced
to beheading for murder. But it wasn't a formal
execution. No, it was an open bounty, a bando
capital. This meant anyone in the papal states
could legally kill him on sight and just present
his head to the authorities to collect the reward.
So anyone could just kill him. Legally. Anyone.
He became a marked man. He had to flee Rome immediately.
And the psychological impact of this, of being
a man condemned to lose his head, it shows up
in his art right away. Of severed heads. He becomes
obsessed with them. He starts painting his own
face as the severed head of Goliath or John the
Baptist. It was a continuous, grim self -portrait
of a man living with his own execution warrant.
The final four years of his life are just frantic,
desperate movement across southern Italy and
Malta. But despite all that turmoil, it was an
incredibly productive period. He had to paint
to live and to try and secure the pardon he so
desperately wanted. His first stop was Naples.
Right, safely outside Roman jurisdiction. He's
protected by the Colonna family, and his fame
had preceded him. He became the most famous painter
in Naples pretty much overnight. And he's working
at a furious pace, landing major commissions.
Major ones. The Madonna of the Rosary and the
monumental... The Seven Works of Mercy. The Seven
Works of Mercy is incredible. He depicts all
seven acts of compassion, feeding the hungry,
clothing the naked in one single dramatic scene.
It's a structural masterpiece, and it's still
in the church it was commissioned for today.
But he didn't stay long. In 1607, he moved to
Malta. And that was a strategic move, wasn't
it? Very strategic. He was hoping the Grand Master
of the Knights of Malta. Alof de Wignacourt could
use his influence to get him a papal pardon.
And Wignacourt was impressed enough to make him
a knight of Malta. He was inducted in 1608, and
sources say Caravaggio was incredibly proud of
this. It gave him status and protection. And
his time in Malta produced some of his greatest
work. Some of his darkest, too, like the Beheading
of St. John the Baptist. Which is legendary.
It's his largest canvas, and it's the only painting
he ever signed. And the way he signed it is just
morbidly perfect. He wrote his name, F. Michelangelo,
for Fra Michelangelo, in the spilled blood of
the Baptist on the pavement. Wow. But that status,
that protection, it didn't last. Not at all.
By August 1608, just a few months later, he was
arrested and imprisoned after another brawl,
this time with an aristocratic knight. The irony
is just astounding. Isn't it? He sought refuge
with the knights and immediately violated their
code. He escaped from prison, we don't know how,
and was formally expelled from the order. And
the official statement called him... A foul and
rotten member. So from Malta, he flees to Sicily.
Where he's reunited with his old friend, Mario
Minniti, the boy model from his early days. And
Minniti helps him get new commissions. And this
is where we see his late style really emerge.
Definitely. Works like The Raising of Lazarus
feature these isolated figures set against vast,
empty backgrounds. It's an unnerving style. The
figures seem almost overwhelmed by the space
around them. It suggests this deep sense of desolation
and paranoia. And his personal behavior reflected
that. Reports from Sicily describe him as increasingly
erratic. sleeping fully armed and clothed, reacting
violently to even minor criticism. He was clearly
under immense psychological stress. He returns
to Naples in late 1609, still hoping for that
pardon. But his enemies were closing in. Shortly
after he got back, he was ambushed. likely by
men seeking revenge, either for the knight in
Malta or hired by the Tomassoni family. He was
severely injured, his face disfigured. And this
is when rumors started circulating in Rome that
he was dead. Right. And during this final, desperate
period while he was healing, he used his art
as a direct political appeal. He literally painted
his pleas for forgiveness. These are the self
-portraits as severed heads. The two most powerful
examples. He painted Salome with the head of
John the Baptist, with his own sorrowful face
on the platter, and sent it to Winnicourt in
Malta, begging for the knight's forgiveness.
And the other one, David with the head of Goliath.
Goliath's head is another chilling self -portrait.
He sent that one to Cardinal Scipione Borghese,
the Pope's powerful nephew. The sword David holds
is inscribed H .S. Humility Conquers Pride. So
he's literally painting his own head on a platter,
presenting himself as the vanquished monster,
just begging for mercy. Exactly. And it seemed
to be working. News arrived that the pardon was
imminent. So in the summer of 1610, Caravaggio
gets on a boat to travel north towards Rome to
receive it. But he never made it. He never made
it. The story of his death in Porto Ercole is
still steeped in mystery. We know he died there
of a fever on July 18th. But for centuries, the
cause was debated. Malaria, syphilis, even lead
poisoning from his paints. Modern forensics have
narrowed it down quite a bit. Research from 2018
concluded he most likely died from sepsis caused
by Staphylococcus aureus, probably from the wounds
he got in that Naples brawl. But what about the
rumors of assassination? Did the Tomassoni family
finally get their revenge? Well, Vatican documents
released in 2002 strongly support that theory.
They suggest the Tomassoni family did, in fact,
hunt him down and have him killed just days before
his official pardon was likely to be sealed.
Before we wrap up his legacy, we have to touch
on the debate around his personal life. specifically
his sexuality. It's a major part of the scholarship.
He never married, had no known children, and
scholars point to his early private works for
Cardinal Del Monte. Right. Art historian Howard
Hibbard noted he never painted a single female
nude in his entire career. But those early chamber
pieces are full of these full -lipped, languorous
boys, models like Manitti and Cecco, who often
look very sensual, very solicitous. It suggests
a clear erotic interest in the male form. And
this wasn't just an academic discussion after
his death. This was a dangerous topic in his
own time. It was life -threatening. During that
1603 libel trial, it was alleged that the offensive
pamphlets against Baglione were distributed by
a bardossa, a term for a boy prostitute, who
was supposedly shared by Caravaggio and his friend.
And in Rome at that time, sodomy was a capital
crime. Punishable by burning. It wasn't just
gossip. It was a weapon his rivals like Baglione
used against him. But the sources also confirm
he did have relationships with women, right?
Prostitutes who modeled for him. Like Lena and
Felitti Melandroni, the art historian Andy Graham
Dixon probably summarizes it best. He suggests
Caravaggio was unsettled in his relationships,
that he likely slept with men, but certainly
had female lovers. Unconventional for sure, and
that only added to the controversy around him.
Regardless of his private life, his artistic
impact was seismic. He created an entirely new
school of art, Caravaggism. The St. Matthew paintings
caused a sensation that just ripped through Europe.
Young painters flocked to his style. They recognized
that this dramatic use of light and dark was
the cutting edge. So who are the key figures
who first adopted this style? In Italy, you have
Orazio Gentileschi, but then guys like Bartolomeo
Manfredi took his style of low -life scenes and
built an entire career on it. And the influence
spread internationally. Very quickly. Very quickly.
In Spain, Giuseppe de Berra adopted that gritty
realism, the dirty feet, the unwashed hands.
In France, Georges de La Tour captured that mysterious
single -source lighting. And in the Netherlands.
The Utrecht Caravaggisti brought this style north,
and their work eventually influenced masters
like Vermeer and Rembrandt, who used light to
define emotion in a way that would have been
unthinkable before Caravaggio. So his influence
was foundational, but paradoxically, his actual...
sexual reputation in Rome faded almost immediately
after he died. It did. His style was superseded
by the more classical idealism of his rival,
Annabelle Caracci. Why did it fade so fast when
the influence was so widespread? The main reason
is that Caravaggio never had a proper workshop.
He didn't have devoted pupils to carry on his
techniques. Without a school, his legacy was
vulnerable to his critics, like Bellori and Baglioni,
who worked hard to diminish him. He was overlooked
for centuries. The huge modern reappraisal really
only began in the 20th century. Thanks largely
to the art critic Roberto Longhi in the 1920s.
Longhi famously said that Ribera, Vermeer, Latour,
and Rembrandt could never have existed without
him. That really cemented his status as a pillar
of the entire Western tradition. And today, he's
the ultimate antihero superstar. He's in movies,
TV shows like Ripley. His work is irresistible
on the art market. And the authentication debates
are just wild. That Judith beheading Holofernes
found in a French attic, sold privately after
the Louvre turned it down. Art historians are
still fighting over whether it's real. And the
Madrid AK homo, which might be a lost original
worth hundreds of millions. And of course, the
infamous theft of his nativity in 1969 by the
Sicilian mafia. It's valued at $20 million and
is still missing. It just cements this bizarre
connection he has to the criminal underworld,
even centuries after his death. The controversy,
from the life to the art to the theft, it just
proves that Caravaggio isn't just an artist.
He's a cultural phenomenon. We began with the
apprentice fleeing Milan, and we end with the
fugitive dying in Porto Ercole. possibly assassinated,
just days before he was going to be pardoned.
The central tension of his life is just inescapable.
I mean, he painted the most profound religious
convulsions and the most tender deaths, all while
living in this cycle of relentless violence and
flight. He changed the course of Western painting
in just 18 years of work. He ushered in the Baroque
era by prioritizing raw reality, all through
the dramatic instrument of light. And he died
trying to get that pardon, sending those self
-portraits of his own severed head to the patrons
who held the keys to his freedom. His friend,
the poet Marcio Malesi, wrote his epitaph, which
claims he was in painting not equal to a painter,
but to nature itself. And that phrase just captures
everything. He refused to idealize. He showed
us saints with dirty feet and a Virgin Mary who
was recognizably human, flawed, and dead. His
work was both deeply profound and, to his contemporaries,
borderline sacrilegious. So is, as you reflect
on the... the ultimate price of genius and the
paradox of his life, will leave you to ponder
this. Was Caravaggio's refusal to idealize his
sacred subjects, showing them as common, earthy,
and flawed, a revolutionary form of artistic
honesty that honored the humanity of Christ's
followers? Or was it, as his critics argued,
an act of profound spiritual defiance against
the decorum of the church?