Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio didn't just paint scenes of violence and darkness, he lived them. The revolutionary Baroque painter who transformed art history was also a murderer, who spent his final four years creating masterpieces while running from execution.
On May 28, 1606, Caravaggio got into a fight over a tennis match with a man named Ranuccio Tomassoni. Swords were drawn. When it ended, Tomassoni lay dead and Caravaggio had a severe wound to his head. Whether it was self-defense or murder, 16th-century Roman law didn't care. The penalty was death by beheading.
Caravaggio fled Rome with a price on his head. The papal edict declared that anyone could kill him without consequence and bring his head to authorities for a reward. He would never return to Rome alive.
What's extraordinary is that Caravaggio produced some of his greatest works while on the run. He escaped to Naples, then Malta, then Sicily, painting masterpieces at each stop to earn the protection from powerful patrons. Each painting grew darker, more dramatic, and more violent than the last.
In Malta, he painted the beheading of John the Baptist: the only work he ever signed, inscribing his name in the saint's spilled blood. The painting's brutal realism came from a man who knew exactly what execution looked like, who painted it while awaiting the same fate.
Caravaggio had a macabre habit: he painted himself as martyrs and murder victims in his religious works. In David with the head of Goliath (1609–10), the severed head is Caravaggio's self-portrait. In The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew (1599–1600), he painted himself as a bystander witnessing murder. He seemed obsessed with his own death.
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In 1610, Caravaggio received word that the Pope might pardon him. He boarded a boat to Rome, carrying three final paintings as gifts to secure his clemency. But he never arrived.
He died under mysterious circumstances at age 38 on a beach in Porto Ercole. Fever? Murder by bounty hunters? Revenge by Tomassoni's family? No one knows.
His body was lost for 400 years, until DNA testing in 2010 identified remains in a church ossuary as likely Caravaggio's, showing lead poisoning consistent with paint exposure. The paintings he carried that day have never been found.
¡Ay, caramba! In art restoration, good intentions don't always lead to good results.
A local tobacco shopkeeper took it upon herself to add some flair to the trio of 15th-century wooden sculptures using industrial enamel paint.
“I’m not a professional painter” Maria Luisa Menendez
The sculptures had been professionally restored just 15 years before but the parish priest apparently had given his blessing to the amateur.
This 500-year-old sculpture of Saint George was turned into a cartoon character after the church hired a local teacher for the job.
Re-restoring it cost $37,000! The church paid for the re-restoration to “somewhat” its original appearance.
Spanish amateur restoration’s latest victim...
In 2020, an art collector paid $1,200 for a furniture restorer to clean up his copy of The Immaculate Conception of El Escorial.
He Made 2 Attempts. But the restorer only took it from worse to worser.
Initially suspected as vandalism, the alterations were instead the creation of an 81-year-old parishioner.
“They didn’t let me finish” - Cecilia Giménez
Remarkably, this restoration turned into a notorious attraction, ultimately revitalizing the struggling economy of the small Spanish town. The Sanctuary of Mercy Church in Borja had around 46,000 visits between August and December 2012.
Some voices in Spain are now calling for tighter rules for art restoration...
Big news: MuseMuse just got nominated for a Webby Award for Best Art & Culture App—aka the Oscars of the Internet. Among 13,000 entries, we made it into the top 12%.
But here’s the thing: we need your vote. Webby winners are decided by a very official jury of… the internet. That’s you. Your friends. Your barista. Every vote counts.
In the meantime, we’ll keep doing what we do best: helping you explore the world through art.
So thank you art lovers! And thank you to everyone who’s ever wanted more from a museum visit and thought, “There has to be a better way.” There is. It’s called MuseMuse. And apparently, it’s Webby-worthy!
Cheers - MuseMuse
There’s no nice way to put it: in medieval art, babies were pretty damn ugly.
But why?
It’s not because artists hadn’t worked out how to paint them properly – in fact, this was a deliberate stylistic choice… In medieval artwork, one baby popped up a whole lot more than the others: Jesus Christ.
There was a popular notion that Jesus was born “perfectly formed” and remained “unchanged” over time; this led to artists depicting him as a sort of weird little old man – and influenced portrayals of other babies too!
This all changed with the dawn of the Renaissance, and a new emphasis on realism in art.
Plus, as artists began to embrace non-religious subjects, wealthy patrons could commission portraits of their own families – and they didn’t want their own children looking like little old men!
So, ugly babies were out and cute babies were in. Way less disturbing, but nowhere near as fun…
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