Quote:
|
Originally Posted by fernando
Thank you shayde78, for sharing pictures of such fascinating paintings, that you have uploaded with immense quality.
I follow Udo's words in that this artist painted with incomparable expertise; yet he was owner of a disturbed mind. It seems as his skills competed between his brush and his sword. He did not die painting but in result of a fight  . |
The artist, whose real name was Michelangelo Merisi, died a tormented man indeed. According to one account he was on the lam trying to escape a murder charge arising from the brawl that you reference. It wasn't the first time, in an earlier case he had beaten the rap thanks to intervention by well-placed friends in the Church.
This guy was nobody's angel -- tavern brawler, heavy drinker, with a sexual appetite on both sides of the aisle. (For the tender and erotic side of his creative nature, see his "Boy with a Basket of Fruit" which was exhibited at the Getty Center in LA a few years ago - 180 degrees from the works depicted on this thread.) Goes to show that the line between genius and madness is thin indeed. His command of light and shadow took Western art in a new direction and eventually went far beyond painting into the realm of motion pictures in our era.