Caravaggio killed a man in a street brawl, fled Rome as a fugitive, and spent his final years running from a papal death warrant while producing paintings of such overwhelming spiritual intensity that the Catholic Church kept commissioning him despite his crimes. He painted saints and martyrs using prostitutes and street criminals as models, invented chiaroscuro lighting that changed the course of Western art, and died at thirty-eight under circumstances that remain mysterious.

This episode traces Caravaggio from his apprenticeship in Milan through the Roman paintings that revolutionized art, the murder that made him a fugitive, and the desperate final years producing masterpieces while fleeing across Italy and Malta.

• Caravaggio’s revolutionary technique — using real people from the streets as models for biblical scenes
• The dramatic chiaroscuro lighting that influenced every painter who followed for two centuries
• The murder of Ranuccio Tomassoni and the flight from Rome that defined his final years
• The masterpieces painted as a fugitive and the mysterious death at thirty-eight