It must had been decided at a certain point that geniuses need to be complicated people. And when it comes to the Italian artist Caravaggio, that goes double, if not triple.
“Arrogant, rebellious and a murderer, Caravaggio’s short and tempestuous life matched the drama of his works,” said an article written for The National Gallery. Since his paintings revolutionized art with their compelling combination of realistic human anatomy and intense use of light, his life would have had to be pretty controversial to match that. And it seems that yes, it definitely was.
When the artist died at the age of 39 in 1610, some said it was of malaria, others syphilis, still others that he was poisoned by his enemies.
Caravaggio, it seems clear, was particularly passionate about fighting. One chronicler wrote, “After a fortnight’s work he will swagger about for a month or two with a sword at his side and a servant following him, from one ball-court to the next, ever ready to engage in a fight or an argument, so that it is most awkward to get along with him.”
He was arrested for slashing the cloak of an adversary, throwing a plate of artichokes at a waiter, scarring a guard, and abusing the police. This was in addition to the murder charge after he killed another man in a brawl.
As for the artist’s sexuality, he never married and some historians say he preferred men to women. However that may be, DNA results performed recently in Italy indicate that he may have found women desirable at some point, probably when he was a very young man.
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He was born Michelangelo Merisi and took the name of Caravaggio because it was his hometown in Lombardy, northern Italy. He left that town for Rome when he was 21. Four centuries later, two dozen people now living in Caravaggio say they are his descendants.
The artist died in Porto Ercole, near Grosseto in Tuscany. In 2010, researchers found bones that they believed “to almost certainly belong to Caravaggio.” According to an article in The Telegraph, “The researchers have dug up and studied bones found in a Tuscan town where Caravaggio died in 1610. According to results of carbon dating, one set of bones is compatible with Caravaggio’s remains. The bones belonged to a man who died in the same period as the artist at an age between 37 and 45.”
The bones had high levels of lead and other metals associated with painting.
The researchers said at the time that DNA extracted from the bones would be compared with samples from males in Caravaggio, to confirm that the skeleton they’d found was that of the artist. Now, 24 proud residents of the town say that not only is it proven they found the famous Caravaggio in Porto Ercole but it’s been confirmed they are his descendants.
There are still quite a few people living there who have the name “Merisi,” which was the painter’s birth name. Two dozen of them say they were told they are a match with the dead painter. Whether they are direct descendants or descended from close relatives of the artist has not been made clear as of yet. He had two brothers and a sister.
“I was born and raised in the town of Caravaggio, and I – like every other Merisio – am convinced that I am related to the great painter,” says 87-year-old photographer Pepi Merisio.
This news does put a question mark to the assumption of some historians that Caravaggio was gay. His rapturous depictions of beautiful young men have supported that opinion, particularly since he did not paint female nudes.
Art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon wrote, “There is no absolute proof of [his homosexuality], only strong circumstantial evidence and much rumor. The balance of probability suggests that Caravaggio did indeed have sexual relations with men. But he certainly had female lovers. Throughout the years that he spent in Rome, he kept close company with a number of prostitutes.”
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Concluded Graham-Dixon: “The truth is that Caravaggio was as uneasy in his relationships as he was in most other aspects of life.”