This podcast details true crime cases.

It contains adult themes and may contain descriptions of violence.

This episode contains explicit language.

It is not intended for children.

Listener discretion is advised.

Thank you for joining me for today's episode of Once Upon a Crime.

We're in the series Artful Crimes, where I detail crimes committed by and against artists.

Last time I told you about the life and death of Van Gogh, how he was plagued by mental illness,

and how it caused him so many troubles throughout his life.

This time I'll share the life of an artist, who although he was the creator of some of the most beautiful and haunting religious images ever painted, behaved very badly indeed, even committing murder.

From what we know, however, he was not mentally ill, but perhaps just a bad seed with a bad attitude, a product of his violent environment, or a man damaged

by the trauma of his early life. This is Chapter 2, Caravaggio, the bad boy of Rome.

Michelangelo Marisa de Caravaggio was born September 29th, 1572, in Caravaggio, Italy,

a small town that was a two-hour ride east of Milan.

His parents were Fermo Marisi, a stonemason, and Lucia Aratori.

His mother had some connections to nobility in Italy, but the family was decidedly middle-class.

His mother's connections would serve Caravaggio well later in his life, when he needed financial

help and a place to hide out. Caravaggio was born just after the end of the high renaissance

period in Italy, but he was not named Michelangelo after the famed

artist and sculptor Michel Baino Bwarnaradi, but after the archangel Michael, whose feast day he was

born on. His mother thought naming her son after one of the most powerful and loved of God's angels

would help keep him safe and holy. Safe perhaps.

...