annasuperior.blogg.se

The young painter was immediately at home in his new surroundings. The names of the inns may have changed and the whorehouses may be gone, but the narrow streets and alleys of the Campo Marzio have changed remarkably little since Caravaggio and his cronies swaggered along them 4 centuries ago, swords at their sides. Rome at the end of the 16 th century was a very dangerous place indeed, and the city that the young Caravaggio found himself in when he reached Piazza del Popolo for the first time in 1592 was a rough tapestry of bars and brothels, a stomping ground for brigands, pimps and mercenaries where a misspoken word or an unintended slight could mean your life. That an act of violence, rash and brutal, would be the defining moment in Caravaggio's life is not surprising. But the aim of Caravaggio's sword was not as true as that of his brush, and suddenly the city's most renowned painter was a wanted man. Painful, embarrassing and sexually debilitating, Caravaggio intended that the memory of his tangle with the young painter would stay with Ranuccio for the rest of his life. In the highly symbolic and violent world of 17 th century Rome, the logic of such a strike would have been clear to all. In severing Tomassoni's femoral artery, Caravaggio missed his groin by only a fraction.

Indeed, the nature of his fatal thrust tells another story. Caravaggio inflicted upon his rival a mortal blow that left him bleeding out on the court.Ĭaravaggio probably had no intention to kill Ranuccio– he had often been involved in violent tussles before, but always stopped short of doing anything that would ruin his reputation. Others speculate that the bellicose Caravaggio and his young antagonist, Ranuccio Tomassoni, were fighting over the affections of a local prostitute - and that the murdered man was her pimp. Some say a disagreement over a disputed bet spiralled out of control. For the man who landed the fatal blow was none other than Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, brightest star of the Roman art world and already a fully-fledged superstar at the tender age of 35.

While fatal duels were nothing unusual in the violent landscape of 17 th-century Rome, the identity of the protagonists made this confrontation different. They are armed not with rackets but with swords, and one of them is about to die. Rome 1606 – Two men are playing a deadly game on one of the many tennis courts that dot central Rome.

The most original painter of his, and perhaps any generation, Caravaggio's radical approach to what painting could be created shock-waves in the world of art, dramatically ushering in the age of the Baroque. The artistic world of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio is quite literally a world of darkness and light.