Main content
Sorry, this episode is not currently available

Reflections on Caravaggio

400 years after the death of Caravaggio, writer Andrew Graham-Dixon explores the painter's later period, including David with the Head of Goliath and The Beheading of St John.

The Milanese painter, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio has intrigued the modern imagination more than any other old master. Renowned in his own time for the innovative and shocking realism of his paintings, often celebrated nowadays for the tempestuous lifestyle which informed his work, he is remembered as the creator of art that influenced and inspired. 400 years after his death in July 1610 these portraits of the painter offer a series of personal responses to his work, life and legacy.
Tonight's essay is by Andrew Graham-Dixon, critic, broadcaster, and author of a new biography of the artist. He follows Caravaggio in the wake of the death of the pimp Tomassoni, through the wandering years which took him to Malta, where he became a Knight of St John, and then to Sicily, and considers works in this later period, which include David with the Head of Goliath and The Beheading of St John.

Caravaggio left the southern islands to pursue some northern hopes of pardon and redemption, but these only delivered death. Graham-Dixon reveals new evidence of how he died, parted from his paintings, on a journey to Rome, but Caravaggio's influence endured and spread throughout Europe in the decades after his demise.

15 minutes

Last on

Fri 16 Jul 2010 23:00

Broadcast

  • Fri 16 Jul 2010 23:00

Death in Trieste

Death in Trieste

A 1760s murder still informs ideas about aesthetics, a certain sort of sex, and death.

Watch: My Deaf World

Watch: My Deaf World

Five compelling experiences of what it is like to be deaf in 21st-century Britain.

The Book that Changed Me

Five figures from the arts and science introduce books that changed their lives and work.

Download The Essay

Download The Essay

Download all the episodes from the series and listen at your leisure.

Podcast