All right, welcome back to ArtHoles everybody. My name is Michael Anthony, aka alleged testicular poet and international man of mystery,

Greg Rhodolante, and this is the podcast about art and art history with someone who is thrilled to be getting out of 1600s Italy

This has been such an unbelievably weird and fantastic story, but it's time to move on. we have other artists to explore and mostly

useless knowledge to gain I do have a couple thoughts of the next artist in

series but I'll save that for the end right now we have a story to finish

so Caravaggio escaped a heavily garrisoned prison and the brother of the

order of St John who found the cell, the 11 foot underground featureless rock wall cell empty that's a really awkward thing to need to tell your boss and I feel like don't shoot the messenger was a concept they hadn't really figured out yet especially given blame the Jews was still something that they were

applying to almost everything.

I also don't imagine that Wignacor was the type of Grand Master or person for that matter

who took bad news with understanding and a plume.

We don't know the details of when the escape happened, mostly because it's a secret prison

break and nobody was going to admit being involved.

But let's talk about the logistics of what would have needed to have happened

for Caravaggio to successfully escape and get off the island.

First, and probably most obviously, it had to be late at night when most of the

nights would have been asleep, otherwise Caravaggio would have been immediately discovered.

He would have had to have found a way to climb the 11-foot stone walls of the Gueva, get the heavy door open,

and then make his way to the ramparts, the interior castle walls.

He then would have to climb his way up the interior side of the ramparts of Castle San Angelo, a substantial military fort, and then find a way to lower himself down the 200 foot sheer face of the walls to the open sea.

And if you look at pictures of San Angelo online, you can see it sort of stuck at the end of a

peninsula.

That meant the Caravaggio would have had to swim to a more remote section because he couldn't just hop on a boat in the middle of a busy harbor.

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