Caravaggio: The Painter Who Killed a Man

The Story of Italy: Rome, Renaissance, and the Birth of Modern Europe — Fexingo History · Oct 7, 2026 · 7m · transcript

We explore the violent life of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, the revolutionary painter who brought raw realism to Baroque art. Unlike his contemporaries in Rome, Caravaggio lived on the streets, fought in taverns, and carried a sword everywhere he went. His masterpiece, The Calling of Saint Matthew, used street people as models for biblical figures, shocking the religious establishment with its gritty authenticity. We trace his flight from Rome after killing Ranuccio Tomassoni in a brawl over a tennis match and a woman, and how this crime defined his later works like Judith Beheading…