(6 Apr 2010) HEADLINE: 400 year-old cold case about mysterious death
CAPTION: A team of investigators in Italy is trying to figure out how one of Italy''s greatest artists, Caravaggio, died 400 years ago. (April 6)
Academics and scientists in Italy are trying to solve the mystery of how one of Italy''s greatest artists died 400 years ago.
Michelangelo Merisi, -known as Caravaggio-died a mysterious death at age 39 while fleeing from the law.
He led a turbulent life of great artistic successes combined with love affairs with prostitutes, street fights, murder and dramatic escapes.
A team led by Italy''s National Committee for Caravaggio has brought together historians and scientists in an effort to find Caravaggio''s bones, analyze the DNA and discover how he died.
The first step is the hunt for the bones.
Speologist Antonio Moretti has to dig through a huge pile of skeletons in a crypt near the port town where Caravaggio died.
SOUNDBITE ANTONIO MORETTI, SPEOLOGIST, UNIVERSITY OF L''AQUILA
"I am doing the dirty work that of the speologist who goes down and choose among all these bones….
The timing for this project could not be better. 400 years after Caravaggio''s death there has been an upswell in his popularity, with some experts saying he has overtaken Italy''s most renowned artistic genius Michelangelo.
Caravaggio''s powerful paintings showing violence, tragedy and desperation seem a direct reflection of his life.
The project director is Silvano Vinceti, a passionate history detective. He explains the beginning of the end for Caravaggio was a tennis match in a Roman street that went wrong.
.SOUNDBITE SILVANO VINCETI, Director, National Committee for Caravaggio
"That game-- for historic reasons that are not very clear-- ended up in a fight. ….. Caravaggio killed Rannuccio Tommassoni. From that moment his life changes….. He escaped Rome….Pope V Borghese sentences him to death for murder and even his art changes, the play of light that dominated his paintings becomes more limited,….the darkness, the night expands in his painting."
In the painting "David with the head of Goliath", painted during the last year of his life, the anguished, bleeding head of Goliath is often described as a self-portrait of the artist as he imagined himself decapitated.
Caravaggio Rome escaped to Malta where his recklessness got him into trouble again so he feld Malta and began a voyage up the Italian …
STANDUP-- bridge
Most art historians agree that Caravaggio collapsed on this Tuscan beach and died 2 days later but they don''t know if it was malaria, syphils or lead poisoning that killed Italy most tempestuous artistic genius. Now the investigators involved in this project are hoping to discover the answer to this mystery.
The bones from the crypt in Porto Ercole are being transferred to laboratories . A team of scientists has already identified nine male skeletons that match Caravaggio''s age, sex, and year of death…but they still have to match the DNA with that of his alleged descendants.
The committee was hoping to make the first announcement of their results by the end of April. It is not clear if they will have identified Caravaggio''s body by then, but they are convinced they are getting close.
Trisha Thomas, Associated Press, Porto Ercole
The Associated Press.
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