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Caravaggio led a tumultuous life, dying at the age of 38 after killing a person in a brawl.
Some scholars argue that Caravaggio was murdered, and others that he died of lead poisoning from oil paints. His likely remains, containing high lead levels, were found in 2010. Was poisoning the cause of his violent behavior?
... it is possible that Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio never was the tragic hero of popular imagination: a misunderstood and unrecognized genius, starving in a garret, harshly treated by fate and victim of his own mercurial temperament. The smart lad who left Lombardy for Rome in 1592 was already a skilled painter; he was going where the money was, and did rather well for himself. During those early years working with different masters, toiling away in studio and workshop, getting on with the drudgery of copying the works of others, or finishing the boring bits of commissioned paintings, he learned how to exploit the scene.
(https://artuk.org/discover/stories/caravaggio-fury-food-and-fine-art) undefined