Wednesday 14 July 2010

How Caravaggio saw in the dark

Telegraph.co.uk (July 13, 2010) - The Italian master was a scoundrel and a killer, but did he also use a machine to help him 'cheat’ as he created his paintings? Martin Gayford sheds new light on a 400-year-old mystery.

On July 18, 1610, a man named Michelangelo Merisi died on the southern coast of Tuscany. Recently, a team of Italian forensic investigators made the international news by claiming to have discovered his bones. By all accounts, he died miserably – the latest, not very plausible suggestion, being that lead poisoning had something to do with it. Murder has also been suspected. The earliest accounts describe a fatal attack of impatience, causing him to pursue on foot along the scorching coast a boat that was carrying his baggage away. Whatever the cause, the deceased was the great artist better known to posterity as Caravaggio. He was 38 years old. [...]

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