Few artists blurred the lines between sanctity and sin like Caravaggio. A new documentary retraces his tempestuous life and exceptional talent that shocks and stuns centuries on.
By Kusumita Das
How many artists can we name who are remembered as both a murderer and a master of light? Caravaggio perhaps stands alone in that paradox. A man whose life unfolded in chaos and bloodshed, yet whose paintings redefined the sacred image. Four hundred years on, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio remains one of art history’s most unsettling figures—a rebel who upended Renaissance idealism with his brutal realism, riding on an uncanny command of light.
In their forthcoming documentary for the Exhibition on Screen series, co-directors David Bickerstaff and Phil Grabsky attempt to give this enigmatic figure a voice. Caravaggio, the film, imagines the master speaking for himself, weaving drama from historical documents, academic insight and a staged performance by British actor Jack Bannell. “We thought of it like a one-man play with Caravaggio as the central character. There’s so little that is known about him, which gave us this void of fiction, a chance to explore his inner life while grounding it in research,” Bickerstaff explains.
Five years in the making, the film began with Grabsky—who had previously explored Monet through the artist’s letters in his award-winning film I, Claude Monet (2017)—wanting to tell the story of Caravaggio, which survives only in police reports and archival fragments. With so little to draw on, the project became a slow excavation. Bickerstaff joined in its fourth year and together with Grabsky, helped shape the narrative, blending fact with imaginative reconstruction. The film opens with Caravaggio on a boat to Rome—seeking a pardon for a murder he had committed years earlier—after time spent in exile. “We thought, why not have him reflect on his own life, on that journey?” says Bickerstaff. “We wanted the audience to be on the boat with him. He’s talking to himself and to us, while constantly wrestling with his choices, his temper and his paranoia.”
Caravaggio—born Michelangelo Merisi in 1571, in the northern Italian town that would lend him his name—emerged from tragedy. He lost both his parents during childhood, within a few years of each other, and the young Michelangelo was left to navigate the harsh streets of Milan and later Rome, where he apprenticed under minor artists. Early hardships honed a streetwise edge that defined both his life and work. His violent streak was notorious—brawls, assaults, and eventually a murder in 1606 forced him into exile from Rome. Yet, even outside the city, be it in Naples, Sicily or Malta, his genius attracted patrons, including churches and private collectors who recognised his rare talent.
It was Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, a prominent collector, who gave Caravaggio his big break in 1599 when he was contracted to paint two large paintings for the side walls of the Contarelli Chapel of San Luigi dei Francesi, the church of the French in Rome. Through the cardinal’s wealthy circle, he gained access to private and public commissions that allowed him to develop a style radical for its time. These were the kinds of paintings the Catholic Church sought during the CounterReformation period—also known as Catholic Revival— which demanded vivid and emotionally charged works that served as a visual counter to Protestant austerity. Caravaggio painted from life, casting ordinary Romans—beggars, servants, prostitutes—as saints and biblical figures. His Mary Magdalene could have been a woman he passed on the street, his apostles, real men with dirt under their fingernails. To some, such realism was vulgar, to others, it was revelatory. He was equally at ease with talking to a bishop and a prostitute, Bickerstaff notes. “He moved in both worlds.”
The film’s selection of paintings follows a loosely chronological arc, tracing Caravaggio’s artistic evolution—from still lifes and youthful scenes to his larger, more ambitious Biblical commissions. “The first time you see his paintings is when he gets to Rome. So, you don’t quite understand his artistic journey— where did he learn to paint like that, directly on the surface, without preparatory sketches that usually hint at a painter’s development?” Bickerstaff recalls encountering his first Caravaggio while filming Michelangelo, inside the church of Sant’Agostino in Rome—for which Michelangelo’s painting, ‘The Entombment’, was once commissioned but left unfinished. Over a century later, Caravaggio’s ‘Madonna di Loreto’ went on to claim a place in the same church. “I started to get intrigued by his works. It’s very difficult to see the brushstrokes on his paintings, a little like Vermeer. This allows you to get immersed in the storytelling, rather than the technique,” he says.
At the heart of Caravaggio’s oeuvre is his use of light—he didn’t just use light; he seemed to summon it to do his bidding. Working in the era of mannerism, already charged with psychological drama, he painted figures in chiaroscuro, invoking an almost cinematic intensity that prefigured photography by centuries. In ‘The Calling of Saint Matthew’, Christ emerges from darkness, a mere suggestion of a halo over his head, pointing to a bewildered Matthew. The figures seem to step off the canvas, hyperreal and immediate. Ideal for the Roman Catholic Church in the throes of the Reformation, these paintings were accessible, emotionally gripping and doctrinally sound. Yet, Caravaggio’s work was never purely didactic—it carried a ferocious intensity and an almost voyeuristic realism.
His fame grew alongside his notoriety. By the turn of the 17th century, he was fielding commissions from churches and private patrons alike. His grisly, psychologically charged scenes appealed to those with a taste for the macabre. His life mirrored this intensity, as repeated arrests for misdemeanours and assaults punctuated his career, culminating in a fatal duel with Ranuccio Tomassoni, the pimp of one of his models, which forced Caravaggio to flee from Rome. But even when he got to Naples, and later Malta and Sicily, he continued to paint with relentless vigour, producing works of staggering scale and ambition, including ‘The Seven Acts of Mercy’ and ‘The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist’—towering examples of Baroque drama. “You can see in his work the confidence, the cleverness, the way he constructs a composition. He’s always thinking ahead about narrative, drama and how light will guide your eye,” Bickerstaff says.
Filmed in Rome and Naples, on streets and in churches, interspersed with high-resolution images of the paintings themselves, Caravaggio highlights details invisible to the casual observer. Bickerstaff notes, “You don’t have to go to a museum to see his works. They exist in the spaces for which they were intended— churches, altars, streets. We wanted the film to have that sense of intimacy, of stepping into his world.” Even the scenes filmed in Bristol, with the boat tossing in the rain, were designed to echo Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro, evoking the restless momentum of fleeing one city after another, from Naples to Malta and back, in search of redemption.
Caravaggio died in 1610 at the age of 38 under circumstances still debated—murder, wounds or illness. His body was never definitively found, adding to the myth. And yet, in less than two decades, he transformed the course of Western painting, pulling the divine out of its gilded ether into raw human forms. His use of light and anatomy of emotion inspired generations, from Artemisia Gentileschi to Rembrandt, Diego Velázquez, and even contemporary filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, who cites Caravaggio as a key influence on his cinematography.
The Italian master’s works are still finding new audiences. Earlier this year, India saw its first Caravaggio: ‘Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy’ was exhibited at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in Delhi in May. The painting, which was believed to be lost for centuries and only rediscovered in 2014, is now on view at Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai, till 2nd November.
Caravaggio, Bickerstaff emphasises, is ultimately an invitation. “To look past the myth of the ‘bad boy’ and engage with the art itself. Yes, he had a temper and didn’t suffer fools, but he also had to fight for his corner. His fury, his ambition, his self-conflict—it’s all there in his work, still challenging, moving and shocking us, 400 years on.”
This article was originally published in the November 2025 issue of ON Stage.
