Caravaggio's Masterpieces Across Six Countries: A Guide to the Museums Holding His Most Famous Works

Key facts

• Caravaggio was born in Milan in 1571 and arrived in Rome around 1592, finding patronage under Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte.
• He killed Ranuccio Tomassoni on May 28, 1606, during a brawl at a tennis match and fled Rome that night under a capital sentence.
• His four years of exile took him to Naples, Malta, and Sicily; he received a papal pardon in 1610 but died in July 1610 at Porto Ercole, three days short of it.
• The Contarelli Chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome, holds three Caravaggio paintings including The Calling of Saint Matthew (1600), lit by coin-operated lights.
• Caravaggio's first version of Saint Matthew and the Angel was rejected by clergy, later entered Berlin's Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, and was destroyed in 1945 during World War II.
• Death of the Virgin (c. 1604) was rejected by Carmelite friars, bought on Peter Paul Rubens's advice for the Duke of Mantua, and is now at the Musée du Louvre.
• The Beheading of St John the Baptist (1608) is the only painting Caravaggio signed, done in the painted blood, and his largest work at roughly 3.7 by 5.2 meters, housed in Valletta's Co-Cathedral of St John.
• The Flagellation of Christ (1607) remained in San Domenico Maggiore for about 350 years before moving to Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte in 1972.