5 Famous Artists Who Could Fuck You Up: Tokyo Drift
#2 – Cellini
Why he was famous
Sculptures, all of them nude, most of them of dudes.
Why he could fuck you up
At 16, Cellini was involved in a brawl in Florence. Apparently, punching people in broad daylight wasn’t acceptable in Florence no matter who you were, and Cellini was forced to flee the city to escape prosecution, a trick he no doubt learned from just about every other artist on this list. In Rome, Cellini’s sculptures and flute playing abilities won him the good graces of the Pope. It was during this time that a French douchebag named Charles III led an army to capture Rome and “chastise” the Pope, presumably with a sword to the face. However, the French had failed to realize that the country they were attacking was packed right to the brim with homicidal artists, and they wouldn’t have Paul Gauguin on their side for another 300 years.
It was here that Cellini dramatically put his life on the line in defense of his homeland, like an artistically inclined Italian Jack Bauer. He shot not one but two officers of the advancing army. The first was Prince Philibert de Charlon, a commander who clearly couldn’t have put up much of a fight being as his first name sounds more like a Muppet than a conqueror.
Cellini’s second victim was Charles III, the fucking leader of the advancing army, who he claims to have killed right outside the walls of Rome. For this act of bravery, Cellini was hailed as a hero and granted a pardon for his crimes in Florence, and everyone was so excited that they pretty much forgot about the fact that Charles’ army, deprived of its leader and hungry for loot, went on to sack the bejeezus out of Rome anyway.
Having saved Rome and earned his redemption, Cellini lived the rest of his days in quiet- Nah, just kidding. He actually went on to kill two more people, one of them a Roman police officer and the other a rival goldsmith, before being sent to prison… Ten years later. For embezzlement. It’s cool, though – he escaped.
#1 – Caravaggio
Why he was famous
Dramatically reducing the population of Italy through unbridled, nonstop murder. He also painted, occasionally.
Why he could fuck you up
Many artists are defined by their work while their personal lives exist more as colorful footnotes in their biographies. Not so with Caravaggio; the most reliable record of his life comes in the form of his criminal record, which is several pages long and spans multiple cities. Mention his name to any Art History major – just look for the nearest park bench, they’re probably sleeping on it – and the first thing you’ll hear about is how his life was basically Grand Theft Auto: Renaissance.
Caravaggio was born in Milan in 1571 and was forced to flee at the age of 21 after “certain quarrels,” one of which resulted in the wounding of a police officer. The next time you and your girlfriend quarrel over whether to rent Die Hard or Maid in Manhattan, know that Caravaggio is laughing at you, along with every healthy and uninjured cop in town. By the way, get used to the words “forced to flee,” because you’re going to hear them a lot in the next few paragraphs.
Like Torrigiano and Cellini, Caravaggio fled to Rome, which was apparently a mecca for violent tempered artists on the run from the law. He arrived penniless, but his considerable talent as an artist quickly earned him commissions from wealthy families, almost all of which he spent on alcohol when he wasn’t busy engaging in his favorite hobby: street brawls. Along with his paintings, Caravaggio became famous in Rome for how much he liked to fight, and this was in a time when just about everybody would get drunk and fight for lack of anything better to do. Internet comedy would not be invented for several hundred years.
Caravaggio.
Caravaggio’s rich patrons had done a pretty good job of protecting him from the authorities when he got into trouble with the law, most likely by paying the police a few thousand ducats in order to get Caravaggio released without any of his weapons or power ups. In 1606, though, his luck ran out when he killed a former friend and was outlawed by the papal authorities who controlled Rome. Once again, Caravaggio was forced to flee the city.
He spent a few months in Naples where he painted a few pictures before moving on to the island of Malta, presumably because he’d killed all of his potential clients in Naples. In Malta, Caravaggio did some painting for the Knights of Malta, a group of badass mercenaries who were charged with defending Christianity from Muslims. In return for his work, Caravaggio was knighted and inducted into the Knights of Malta, where he hoped to use the organization’s all-around coolness to earn a pardon from the Pope, or at least drop the name to pick up chicks.
But of course, Caravaggio being Caravaggio, he fucked that plum position up in good time with another of his trademark brawls, during which he smashed through the door of a house and seriously injured a fellow knight. In Caravaggio’s defense, Scrubs was a rerun that night and he had nothing better to do.
The Knights of Malta didn’t take kindly to this, and he spent most of September 1608 in a jail cell in the Knights’ fort. Then, taking a page from The Joker’s book, he decided he was about done being in jail and walked right the hell out of the mercenary army’s impenetrable fortress, first rappelling down a wall and then disappearing from the island. Historians still aren’t sure how he did this, but the general consensus is that he hijacked Da Vinci’s helicopter.
He acquired a six star wanted level soon after.
At that point, things started to get fucked up. Caravaggio spent time in Sicily before fleeing again to Naples, believing that he was being followed by unknown assassins. Most people would write this off as paranoid delusions, but Caravaggio had the last laugh when an attempt was made on his life, which resulted in severe facial disfigurement. To this day, nobody knows who the culprit was, but based on the nature of the crime it sounds a lot like Torrigiano.
Face slashed and eager to flee another city, Caravaggio took a boat north in hopes of staying ahead of the legions of people he’d pissed off over the course of his life.
And then he fucking disappeared.
In July of 1610 word reached Rome that Caravaggio was dead from fever, but no body was ever found, and no one in Italy was willing to accept that the Chuck Norris of the Renaissance would die of something so wussy as fever. Some say he faked his own death and went to work for the U.S. government, but if that were true, Osama bin Laden would've been hanging by his underwear from the Washington Monument on September 12, 2001.
Truman Capps has now exhausted his reserves of pre-written drivel and must return to the creativity mines for Sunday's update.