Caravaggio

Caravaggio is a British drama about the 17th-century Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. The film follows him from a childhood marked by the loss of his parents, through his apprenticeship in Milan and his arrival in papal Rome, where he builds his own workshop and wins the favour of the Church. Success, money and his relationships with men follow, along with political and religious intrigue, envy and crime. Much of the story unfolds as the dying painter looks back on his life, and the film also traces his involvement with Ranuccio and Lena, who model for him and become entangled with him personally.

Derek Jarman directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Suso Cecchi d'Amico, and Sarah Radclyffe produced it for Film4 Productions, the BFI and Channel 4 Television. It was Jarman's third feature, arriving between Jubilee and Aria in his filmography. Nigel Terry plays Caravaggio, with Dexter Fletcher as the young Caravaggio, Sean Bean as Ranuccio, Tilda Swinton as Lena, Garry Cooper as Davide and Spencer Leigh as Jerusaleme, among 28 credited cast members.

The film runs 93 minutes and was released in 1986. On IMDb it holds a critics' rating of 6.3/10 from 11 reviews, while on TMDB it has a rating of 6.1/10 from 164 votes, so the two measures sit close together, with the audience sample far larger than the critics'.