Malta, Syracuse, Messina, Naples, Porto Ercole, July 18th, 1610.
Four years on the run, so many labels on the luggage and hardly a friendly face.
Always on the move, running into the poisonous blue sea,
running under the July sun.
Adrift.
Salt water drips from my fingers, leaving a trail of tiny tears in the burning sand.
The fishermen carry me high on their shoulders.
I can hear you sobbing, Jerusaleme.
Rough hands warm my dying body, snatched from the cold blue sea.
They're rowing me back to the village,
their breath warm on my blue lips.
I am dying in time to the plash of their oars.
If arms as steady as these had embraced me in life...
To think, Jerusaleme, our friendship should end in this room,
this cold white room so far from home.
The stars are the diamonds of the poor.
Rich men hide their diamonds in vaults,
embarrassed to compare them with the riches of the Lord that sparkle in the sky.
The gentleman is conferring a great honour on our family.
Be faithful and honest, like the men of our country.
Poor dumb Jerusaleme, no use as a shepherd.
You looked a true St. John brought from the wilderness.
I taught you the colours and how to grind them.
The blood red cinnabar and verdigris ground in poppy and linseed.
The art of priming and glazing with soft squirrel brushes.
A companion in my loneliness.
Now I am counting the sheep on the hillside above our house.
Pasqualone sometimes counts them with me,
his hand parting my hair like the ripples at the bottom of the ocean.
Far below, my mother waves a white sheet.
"Bedtime, Michele! Michele! Michele!"
Her voice floating like the silver Mass bell in the evening air.
My true love Pasqualone laughs.
"Bedtime, Michele of the shadows."
We turn slowly home, the stones clattering under our feet.
The white sheet is swallowed in the twilight.
"Pasqualone! Pasqualone!" the mountains echo.
Then the darkness comes.
- How much? - 50.
That's steep.
Have you more at home?
It'll cost you.
Oggetto d'arte!
E io sono molto caro.
In plain English, mate, I'm an art object and very, very expensive.
You've had your money's worth.
I built my world as divine mystery,
found the god in the wine, and took him to my heart.
I painted myself as Bacchus and took on his fate, a wild orgiastic dismemberment.
I raise this fragile glass and drink to you, my audience.
Man's character is his fate.
Why did you paint the flesh so green?
I have been ill all summer, Excellency. It's true to life.
- And art? - It isn't art.
I see.
A most interesting idea.
What is your name?
Michelangelo da Caravaggio.
Michelangelo?
Michelangelo!
"No hope, no fear."
The motto is rather extreme...
...and the knife is illegal.
The price of the painting is my knife.
I see.
Show me the painting.
What have you written on the music?
"You know that I love you."
Save to the like.
Believe that nothing is...
...imp... impossible for you.
Think yourself immortal and capable of...
...understanding all.
All arts, all sciences...
...the nature of ev... every living thing.
Mount higher than the highest height.
Descend lower than the lowest depth.
Heraclitus put it differently:
"The way up and the way down are one and the same."
Bruno is repeating an old truth in new language.
That is the task.
Simple, you could say.
But nothing is more difficult than simplicity.
Matter is in life.
God! All these quotes.
I could build the Tower of Babel with them.
Perhaps he'll talk himself to sleep.
...infinite, living atoms floating like dust in a shaft of sunlight.
That, of course, is heresy.
The enemies of Bruno say that ideas like that
will make the fixed stars of Aristotle fall from the heavens...
...and the world wander, turning round on itself...
...like a dizzy boy.
Time to go!
You can break the pose for a moment now.
How's it coming?
It's a piece of cake.
- You're well fixed. - Can't complain.
How long have you been here?
What, in Rome? Four years.
What's that cardinal after?
Him? Fuck all.
A few cheap thrills.
- What else? - You must be joking.
What's his taste in music?
Catholic.
Ranuccio!
You won't get anywhere with him.
You noticed.
Noticed?
- What's his name? - Ranuccio.
He's not been here before, has he?
You're not seeing straight.
- You want the impossible. - Don't you?
- Why don't you paint him? - You think it's that easy?
It wouldn't be the first time.
The wine's free.
Yes.
You really want to pay, don't you?
No, Davide. I don't want to pay.
- Oh, it's true love, then. - Love at first sight.
All right, you've talked me out of it.
Sorry.
Oh, fuck it.
- What have you been up to? - Nothing much.
How is the painting?
The painting?
You want to know?
The painting is on the rocks.
St. Matthew himself couldn't save it.
It's the most successful fucking disaster.
I should have set my easel up in the Colosseum.
What are you doing later?
Coming back with you.
You're paid to be still!
A cold blue doubt, an infinity of uncertainty.
A black tide ripples against arsenic highlights.
The dark is invading.
Esse in anima - to be of violent soul.
Your master eats with sinners.
The healthy don't need a doctor, only the jaundiced sick.
And the gods?
The gods have become diseases.
Thought without image.
Lost in the pigment, trapped in the formless umber wastes.
The 1500s are over!
Ring in the new!
Long live the 1600s!
Uncertainty and doubt. Long live doubt.
Through doubt comes insight.
"Upon my bed at night, I sought him whom my soul loves.
I sought him, but found him not.
I called him, but he gave no answer.
I will rise now and go about the city.
In the streets and the squares, I will seek him whom my soul loves.
I sought him, but found him not."
Come on, then!
Blood brothers.
- You're in love with him! - With his money!
- You're in love with him. - He hasn't fucked me. Yet.
Fucking rent boy. Pay off your fucking gambling debts.
Piss off, will you? It's my business.
- I pay the bills. - You! You pay the bills?
Princess.
He loves me? He loves me not?
He loves you not.
In the wound, the question is answered.
All art is against lived experience.
How can you compare flesh and blood with oil and ground pigment?
The room turns slowly.
I steady myself, staring into the blue void.
Dull metallic flies cluster like rotted grapes to the buzzing iridescent sun.
The sun keeps time to the beat of the old clock deep in the church.
The clock is as old as time itself.
Pasqualone says Old Father Time cut its wheels from a cedar in the garden of Eden.
The flies scatter as my shadow falls across them.
The dead rat grimaces.
"Time stops for no man," says Pasqualone.
The rat played out his life on the cogs of the great wooden clock quite carelessly.
"Time stops for no man, not even the sun," says Pasqualone.
My shadow passes. The flies spiral back.
Pasqualone yawns into the blue sky.
I do adore strawberries.
One feels so wicked eating them out of season.
My dear Francis, you haven't tried pepper?
Pepper!
Expensive, but perfect.
What an extravagant idea.
Sometimes the most incompatible subjects make the best of friends.
I spent the morning at the Vatican.
We're very concerned about the rates of your new loan proposal.
They're extraordinarily high.
As indeed are Michele Caravaggio's fees.
The St. Matthew looks so very well in the gallery.
It was a godsend that the priests of San Luigi hated it so much.
I'm commissioning something quite different this time round --
Profane Love.
The perfect subject for our genius.
♪ Sale llorando ♪
♪ Pobrecita y qué noche ♪
♪ Estará pasando ♪
♪ Qué estará pasando ♪
♪ Por qué la aurora ♪
♪ De día se divierte ♪
♪ De noche llora ♪
♪ Dice mi compañera ♪
♪ Que no la quiero ♪
♪ Cuando la miro ♪
♪ La miro a la cara ♪
♪ Y el sentió pierdo ♪
Michele's invited me to my unveiling.
He's invited yous too.
Both of us?
You heard him.
They're expecting the Pope!
Oh, really?
Yes, really.
In fancy dress.
Well, you won't have to change, will you?
Michele's buying a costume for you.
What more do you want?
Much more than you can imagine.
I've been to one of these parties.
I was picked up by a talent scout, an evil queen called Ambrogia,
and told that if I breathed a word of what I'd seen,
my life would be worth no more than a strand of spaghetti.
At midnight, the Holy Father arrives dressed as a hairy satyr wearing the triple tiara.
A very good evening to you, Your Holiness.
Oh, excellent!
Take your fucking hands off me!
Lena.
Lady Elizabeth, allow me to introduce the hero of the hour - Michelangelo Caravaggio.
You're not related, are you?
Lady Elizabeth is a great admirer of Michelangelo.
Such a sweet man. So clever with his hands.
Ice cream?
Just another party, Johnny. Just another party.
Lena?
Lena!
Lena?
Scipione, may I introduce you to my charming friend Lena?
He's the nephew of our dear Pope.
Mercury invented the arts with an act of theft.
It takes a thief to catch a thief.
Give me your hand.
Come on.
For eternity and a day.
Madonna, Queen of Heaven.
The agony of fashion!
Ugly, isn't it?
Nice frame.
Splendid, keep up the good work.
Virgins are expensive.
Your are my St. John...
...and this is our wilderness.
With the support of his card...
With the connivance of his cardinal,
this second Michelangelo stole the commission for the paintings of St. Matthew.
A conspiracy between church and gutter.
Good.
Those who love art must be alerted to this poison
which seeps into the body of our renaissance like a pernicious drug.
The shadows which permeate his paintings
are no less insidious than those which cloak his ignorance and depravity.
Hmm.
A sad reflection...
...of our time.
Pasqualone yawns into the blue sky.
"Time stops for no man," he says, caressing himself.
I watch the ripples in his trousers.
"Can I put my hand in?"
The words fall over themselves with embarrassment.
Pasqualone sighs and removes his hand without looking at me.
I kneel beside him and reach timidly into the dark.
There are holes in his pocket, my hand slides in.
His cock grows warm in my hand.
Pasqualone says his girl Cecilia holds it harder. "Harder Michele."
The air hisses through the gap in his golden teeth.
Touch mine! Touch mine!
But my mouth is dry and the words refuse to come.
An ice-cold bead of sweat forms and trickles down my back.
The seed spurts.
His body tightens. He swallows. "Harder, Michele, harder!"
The violent words fly around me,
like the marble splinters in my father's workshop, stinging my cheek.
Do it.
Do it now.
Do you want to stop for a while?
Lena?
Bring some water.
What's wrong with my Magdalene?
It's my child.
I'm pregnant.
She's pregnant.
Fucking marvellous!
You piss artist.
It's going to cost you.
I hope I wasn't interrupting anything.
You're back!
Not back. Just visiting.
- Whose child is it? - Mine.
What about us?
Well, you have Michele.
I have Scipione.
And the child...
The child...
...shall be rich... beyond avarice.
Your hair streams out, dark as the medusa weed.
Your fingers are cold.
The cold is invading.
Your blood runs slow.
Your life is washed away.
A child's castle drifting in the foam.
My heart misses a beat.
I reach out to you, my Magdalene, drowned in the waters of forgetfulness.
Michele?
No peace for the wicked.
Michele!
Francis!
And God shall wipe away the tears from their eyes.
And there shall be no more death, neither sorrow or crying.
Neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things have passed away.
I'm innocent. He killed her.
I never touched her. Never! She was killed by Scipione Borghese.
- Get your hands off him! He's innocent. - Michele!
Fuck you!
I'm innocent. That bastard murdered her!
That fucking bastard.
Look! Look!
Alone again.
Down into the back of the skull.
Imagining and dreaming, and beyond the edge of the frame, darkness.
The black night invading.
The soot from the candles darkening the varnish, creeping round the empty studio,
wreathing the wounded paintings, smudging out in the twilight.
Sharp knife wounds that stab you in the groin, so you gasp and gulp the air,
tearing your last breath from the stars
as the seed runs into the parched sheets and you fall into the night.
I float on the glassy surface of the still dark lake lamp black in the night,
silent as an echo, a mote in your eyes.
You blink and send me spinning.
Swallowed in the vortex, I shoot through the violent depths.
The unutterable silence of these waters.
A tear forms and drops.
The ripples spread out beyond the farthest horizon.
Beyond matter, scintilla, star...
...I love you more than my eyes.
I've trapped pure spirit in matter...
...and what should have no value, and grow like the lilies of the field...
...is horribly perverted and placed high on the altars of Rome in mockery.
God curse you! You!
Years ago, when we met, I dreamed of paintings I could love.
His cardinal should buy him a vineyard.
Some more wine, Michele?
Lambrusco, Frascati, Lacryma Christi, wines from the Veneto, wines from Sicily.
But, for the discerning, stronger than the sun in July, richer than the Vatican,
we have the establishment's own Vino del Moro.
These fucking artichokes are swimming in rancid oil.
Eminence.
Michele Caravaggio.
The Holy Father and myself are prepared to turn a blind eye to Sodom,
provided you make it worth it by bringing the riffraff back to church,
and placing them in awe of the power of the Holy Father
who is, of course, the sole interpreter of the life of our Lord Jesus here on earth.
And, Michele, I must advise you that these slanders against my personal life must stop.
You address His Holiness as "Your Holiness"
and kiss his ring without touching it when he extends his hand.
Michele Caravaggio... egregio in urbe pictor.
Your Holiness.
I hear you're a bit of a rascal.
One of the family, Scipione, says you paint quick.
The quicker the better -- I have a bloody war on my hands.
Thought so.
The bloody Tomassoni affair, that prostitute in the Tiber.
I know you've been putting it about that my nephew did her in.
Well, if the portrait looks good, you can have him, and good luck to you.
Revolutionary gestures in art can be a great help to us.
Bet you hadn't thought about that, you little bugger.
Keeps the quo in the status.
Never heard of a revolution made with paint brushes.
You're out!
You pulled it off!
Fucking brilliant!
We've tricked the bastards.
What do you mean?
Tricked them?
Michele, are you blind?
I did it for you.
For love!
For what?
Love.
- You murdered her? - For you.
- For us. - You murdered her.
The first light of dawn falls through the open window of my bedroom --
a swallow flies in and swoops, dark as an arrow, along the beam,
landing with its wings spread black as a crucifix on the wall.
"Itys, itys, itys," the swallow whispers.
The golden dust cloud eddies in the rush of air.
I lie, eyes open, facing the ceiling on the great wooden bed
which is the barque that bears me across the ocean of night.
I bury my head in the pillow and dream of my true love Pasqualone.
I am rowing to you on the great dark ocean, you soar dolphin-like out of my sight, laughing.
Dolphins are not caught with smiles but cruelly with hooks, Michele.
One day you will learn to be cruel.
Michele! Wake up!
Cecilia stands in the doorway holding her feather duster on its long bamboo pole.
She leaps cat-like at the swallow,
swishing her broom through the dusty stars like a palm tree in the sirocco.
The spell is broken.
Pasqualone stands at the window smiling.
Pasqualone!
Michele?
♪ Missa Lux et Origo ♪
♪ Amen ♪