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I get that they're ginning up excitement with "Caravaggio's last painting was a murder scene!", but it's a bit of a schtick. As pointed out in TFA it was a commission, and so not exactly a "personal" painting. Furthermore, at the time of his death, Caravaggio was headed back towards Rome, with a pardon all but assured. He wouldn't have been painting Saint Ursula under a premonition of death.

If you want to see what was on his mind a few years earlier, when he really was in fear for his life, look at some of what he painted then: a Judith Beheading Holofernes; two Salomes With the Head of John the Baptist; a Beheading of John the Baptist (the only painting he ever signed - in the blood dripping from the evangelist's neck!); and, most memorably, David Holding the Head of Goliath, in which Caravaggio gives the severed head his own features. How metal is that?




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