Caravaggio - Act 3
Table Read
Manifest Media / TABLE READ
4.0 • 440 Ratings
🗓️ 24 February 2026
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The cage breaks open. Caravaggio breaks with it.
Chained in a torture chamber beneath the fortress, Caravaggio faces the Grand Master one last time. Faith against flesh. Obedience against desire. What follows is an escape down a fortress wall, a boat in the dark, and a fugitive painter running not toward freedom but toward the only thing he has left.
Act Three is the fall. Brutal. Beautiful. Inevitable.
Sicily. Caravaggio paints like a man on fire. In Syracuse, a burial. In Messina, a nativity. Each canvas more desperate than the last. Each one a confession he cannot say out loud. The genius is still there. The man holding the brush is disappearing.
Back in Rome, the news arrives. Lena. The woman whose face launched his greatest work. Gone. Caravaggio learns what it costs to leave someone behind in a city that devours the unprotected.
Cardinal Del Monte makes his final play. A pardon. A real one. Signed by the Pope himself. But the pardon needs a delivery and Caravaggio needs to stay alive long enough to receive it.
Naples. A prison cell. Malaria. Chains. The Grand Master finds him one last time. Two men who could never say what they meant finally say it. It is too late for both of them.
Then a swamp. Bandits. A boiling sun. A beach. A boy. Two nuns. And the Tyrrhenian coast, where the greatest painter of his generation reaches for the light one final time.
The pardon arrives. The man does not.
Act Three is reckoning. Loss. Grace. The moment the fuse runs out.
What you see in the art, you will find in the artist. What you see in the artist, you will find in the man.
Cast
Dennis Kleinman · Narrator
Craig Parker · Caravaggio
Dan Lauria · Cardinal Del Monte
Bruce Davison · Alof de Wignacourt
Shaan Sharma · Stefano della Croce
Catherine Lidstone · Lena
Sarah Elmaleh · Maria
Brendan Bradley · Annibale Carracci
Noah James · Ranuccio Tomassoni
Josh Sterling · Ottavio Tomassoni
Zeke Alton · Giovan Tomassoni
Nick Monteleone · Mancini
Matt Curtin · Toppa
Bjorn Johnson · Pope Paul V
Ray Abruzzo · Pope Clement VIII
Written by Richard Vetere
Executive Produced by Jack Levy, Shaan Sharma, and Mark Knell
Table Read is a Manifest Media production.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Karavaggio paints Vinikor's portrait during the day, |
| 0:06.0 | but at night he's locked in his room where he sketches the face of a woman. |
| 0:10.0 | She is Lena. |
| 0:12.0 | He flashes back to when he met her in the Garden of Evil |
| 0:15.0 | and became enthralled by her. |
| 0:17.0 | They became lovers. |
| 0:19.0 | He dreams of returning to Rome and remembers killing Renuccio, |
| 0:23.2 | warned by Cardinal Del Monte, that the Pope has issued a warrant for his arrest. |
| 0:28.6 | During this time, Del Monte does all he can to secure a safe passage for Caravaggio back to Rome. |
| 0:35.4 | Caravaggio fights in a battle with the knights against the Turks and is awarded for his |
| 0:39.8 | bravery, but then when drunk, he makes a pass at Stefano, Vinyakor's right-hand man, and is tortured |
| 0:46.8 | for this criminal indiscretion. With help from a young boy, Karavaggio escapes the tower of the |
| 0:52.9 | letter and makes his way to Sicily. With |
| 0:56.1 | his nights, Vinya Cor chases after him seeking vengeance. Cut to exterior, boat, Terranian |
| 1:04.3 | Sea, Day. Karavaggio, lying face up in the boat, wakes as the sun falls across his face. |
| 1:11.6 | Cut to exterior, beach outside of Syracuse day. |
| 1:16.6 | The boat carrying Karavaggio sits on the beach. |
| 1:20.6 | Karavaggio is weak as the fisherman help him to stand. |
| 1:23.6 | He places a foot on the beach. |
| 1:26.6 | A fisherman hands him a wooded stick that he can use to help him walk. |
| 1:32.3 | Where are we? |
| 1:36.3 | Oh, did we not have a fisherman? Okay. Uh, Noah, would you take that then? |
... |
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