Art News

Italian Researchers Think they Have Found Caravaggio’s Bones

ROME (AP).- Italian researchers believe they have found the remains of Caravaggio, but 400 years later some of the mysteries surrounding the death of the artist may never be solved. After a year of digging and analyzing centuries-old bones, the researchers said Wednesday they have identified a set of bones they believe to be Caravaggio’s, though they admit they can never be 100 percent certain. They think Caravaggio may have died from sunstroke while weakened by syphilis and other ailments. The bones — a fragment of the frontal part of the skull, two jaw pieces, a femur and a fragment of the sacrum, or the bone at the base of the spine — were displayed on Wednesday in Ravenna, a northern Italian city where most of the analyses have been carried out. Kept inside a rectangular case, they rested on a silk red cushion.