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Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) (1571-1610), The Musicians, circa 1595, Italian. Oil on canvas. 92.1 x 118.4 cm. Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (http://www.metmuseum.org), New York, New York; Rogers Fund, 1952 (52.81). Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

His talent was huge, his life brief. He painted like an angel—and brawled like a sailor. He wore a sword and wielded it as easily as a paintbrush. By the time he was 35, his paintings, mainly religious scenes for churches, were known not only in his native Lombardy, but throughout Italy; he was also wanted for murder in Rome after killing his opponent in a game. He fled, first to Naples, then to Malta, but did not interrupt his painting. The final irony came when he was returning to Rome for a pardon and died of malaria in a forsaken swamp just outside Porto Ercole, where the . . . [Full Text of this Article]

M. Therese Southgate, MD