10 brutal moments from art history

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Compared to such "masculine" professions as logging or hunting bears, art often seems to be an occupation for sophisticated and exalted people. But in fact, famous painters and sculptors were often very brutal.

1. Caravaggio was a thunderstorm in the streets

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was the real "bad guy" in the art world. During his short but stormy life, he slept with numerous men and women, participated in random fights, attacked a prostitute with a knife and killed a guy due to a card quarrel. He, as modern historians suggest, worked as a pimp and somehow attacked another artist with a sword because he made fun of one of his works. However, nothing beats his Roman street gang. The group of artists and architects who lived under the motto "nec spe, nec metu" ("no hope, no fear") was a very unusual gang. At night they dressed like old-fashioned knights and patrolled the streets of Rome on horseback. Only instead of protecting girls in trouble, they took down prostitutes, quarreled and provoked everyone to a duel, and also tried to kill their rivals. Their leader was an architect named Honorio Longhi, who was perhaps even crazier than Caravaggio himself.

2. Fra Filippo Lippi lived like a porn star

The Florentine Renaissance painter Fra Filippo Lippi was extraordinarily talented. But due to the high competition (some of the greatest artists in history lived during his time), he is less famous today than he really should be. But there was one area where Lippi overshadowed his contemporaries - his love affairs sound like a description of some kind of film from the XXX category. Encyclopedia Britannica calls him "the lord of love affairs." Despite this reputation, in 1456 he was invited to paint a painting at the Santa Margherita Monastery in Prato. Shortly after his arrival, Lippi peeped with a nun named Lucrezia Buti. Legend has it that he asked the abbess to provide him with a nun to pose for him for a painting, and then seduced her. Then (depending on different legends) he either escaped with Lucretia or kidnapped her. Although all of Italy was outraged by the scandal, Lippi was not even condemned, since he was under the auspices of the Medici family.

3. The Massacre of the Futurists in Italy

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Futurist movement was very popular in Italian art, in which war was seen as a positive force for changing society in the right direction. Therefore, when Milan's futurists fell out with their Florentine counterparts, there was only one possible outcome. After Ardengo Soffici wrote an article in 1910, in which he spoke impartially about the Milan futuristic exhibition, the members of the Milan school gathered and went to Florence. There they found the Guibbe Rosse cafe, in which Sofici liked to sit, and began to beat him. But Soffici was not alone in the cafe. When the Florentine futurists realized what was happening, they pounced on the Milanese. The result was one of the most epic brawls in art history. It lasted several hours and ended only after all its participants were arrested. What is most interesting, after such a large-scale fight, the Florentine and Milanese artists became best friends.

4. Thomas Moran lived in the desert when he painted his paintings

Back in 1871, the United States was a largely unexplored place. Whole regions in the west remained terra incognita, so people felt that the West was full of adventure and danger. To dispel this myth, the government sent a group of people to explore these territories. Among them was the landscape painter Thomas Moran, who moved to the United States from England. When the expedition surveyed the area of present-day Yellowstone National Park (famous for its strange craters, geysers and streams of steam escaping from the ground), Moran spent 40 days in this vast desert area, sketching it. Even today, it is difficult for tourists to spend 40 days in Yellowstone, but what can we say about the time when there were not the slightest amenities, and the park was full of wild animals.

5. Michelangelo painted obscene drawings

Perhaps the greatest painter and sculptor in history, Michelangelo was such a genius that even his sketches were considered masterpieces. However, this Renaissance master had his dirty little secrets. At a time when he did not have orders, Michelangelo simply loved to draw … "dirty" pictures. In particular, detailed images and whole odes have been preserved in which he sang the human anus.

6. Ballet lovers and riots

It is not often that the words "ballet" and "riots" can be found in the same sentence. But the ballet audience in the early 20th century was very different from the awe-inspiring crowds that go to premieres today. When the composer Igor Stravinsky gave the premiere of "The Rite of Spring" on May 29, 1913, the Parisian public was so indignant that it literally began to riot. Although today "The Rite of Spring" is considered a classic, at that time the ballet was too bold and experimental. The audience began to boo the production from the moment the curtain rose, and when the dance began, the performers were pelted with rotten vegetables, and a fight broke out in the hall.

7. Rimbaud - arms smuggler

Arthur Rimbaud was for poetry about the same as Caravaggio was for painting. He was left without parents early and was phenomenally vicious in his youth. At 17, he became a homeless beggar on the streets of Paris. At this time, he and the outstanding poet Paul Verlaine began a hot homosexual romance, during which Rimbaud became addicted to drugs. When he was 25 years old, Rimbaud stopped writing and headed to East Africa, where he became an arms smuggler. In 1885, Rimbaud purchased several thousand rifles in Europe, loaded them onto camels and traveled through Ethiopia to sell rifles in what was then Abyssinia. Since then, Rimbaud did not write a word of poetry, but remained in Africa, working first as a mercenary and then as a slave trader.

8. Maxwell Bodeheim - an example of bohemian life

In the first half of the 20th century, the American writer Maxwell Bodeheim was known for his crazy life. In his later years, the formerly great writer became the most bohemian artist in history. In the 1940s, he literally dropped out of society and became a homeless alcoholic. He slept with his wife on park benches and was only sober when he wrote his poetry. He came to literary parties in burlap and drunk as a lord. Before he was a homeless drunkard, Bodenheim was very popular with women. For 2 months, he seduced and abandoned four famous beauties, who then tried to commit suicide. In February 1954, a bohemian madman was shot by his wife's lover.

9. British artists at war

World War I changed Britain more dramatically than even World War II. A number of British artists decided to go to the front to sketch everything they saw. Artist Eric Kennington was sent to the Western Front in France. At that time it was winter and outside the temperature was -20 degrees Celsius. In January 1915, he lost a toe to an infection and nearly lost his leg. Demobilized from the army due to health conditions, he soon returned to the front as an official military artist. Artist Richard Nevinson volunteered for the Red Cross, where he saw hundreds of corpses and mutilated wounded people every day. He soon fell ill with rheumatic fever and was sent to the reserve. There are dozens of similar stories by British artists who risked their lives to sketch pictures of the massacre in Europe.

10. Carlo Gesualdo was a crazy badass

Don Carlo Gesualdo de Venosa was completely crazy. The composer of the late Renaissance was fond of sadomasochism and murder. At the age of 20, he married his 24-year-old cousin Maria d'Avalos, who was allegedly so passionate that two men died while enjoying her. Shortly after the wedding, he found his wife in bed with Fabrizio Carafa, Duke of Andria. In a rage, he killed both of them, mutilated their bodies, and then (this fact is inaccurate) killed his child, suggesting that he thought he might be from the duke. Since Gesualdo was an aristocrat, he escaped punishment. Trying to get out of depression, the composer gathered a whole group of young people in his castle to participate in regular sadomasochistic orgies.

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