caravaggio painted his own severed head.

this severed head is caravaggio’s own face. he painted it while he was wanted for murder.

in may 1606 he killed a man in rome. the fight began, they said, over a game of tennis.

he fled rome and was sentenced to death. for four years he kept moving: naples, malta, sicily, and back to naples.

there he painted this: david with the head of goliath. the giant has the painter’s own face.

the letters on david’s sword are thought to stand for “humility kills pride”.

the borghese gallery, which owns it, thinks those words make it a plea for a pardon from the pope, who ruled rome. it ended up with the pope’s nephew, cardinal scipione borghese.

in the summer of 1610, hoping for that pardon, he sailed north.

the story goes that he landed at palo, near rome, and was arrested, mistaken for someone else. by the time he was let go, the boat had sailed on with the paintings he was bringing for the cardinal.

he went after it, up the coast to porto ercole, and died there of a fever. he was thirty-eight.

the severed head made it to rome. he never did.