Michelangelo Merisi, nicknamed Caravaggio, is one of the most amazing and mysterious artists of the era when the Renaissance was replaced by Baroque art. Between these two styles, the work of Caravaggio got lost, letting into mythological and biblical subjects the life of a Roman street with its characteristic types - cheaters, prostitutes, hired killers. To match the contradictory, contrasting creations of the painter was his life, full of wanderings, scandalous incidents and clashes with the law and culminating in a mysterious death on a deserted seashore. The book of the famous connoisseur of Italy, culturologist and translator Alexander Makhov recreates the biography of Caravaggio full of ambiguities and white spots, accompanying it with a detailed analysis of the artist's creations that have come down to us.