In the second episode of Ripley, the Netflix adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Talented Mr Ripley, would-be artist Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) takes the grifter Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott) to see The Seven Acts of Mercy by Caravaggio. “He painted it when he was 36, a year after he murdered a man in Rome,” Dickie tells Tom. “Colourful life. And death.”
Caravaggio died in 1610 after a life of destructive celebrity hell-raising that Johnny Depp could only dream of. The great Italian painter left behind works of savage beauty suffused with violence and uncertainty, a trail of bloody destruction, a long police record and an enduring mystery. More than four centuries later, the cause of Caravaggio’s death is still disputed.
Was he
