ABSTRACT
Caravaggio stands out in the history of Western art as one of the rare examples of a significant artist whose criminal acts included murder. This chapter considers the issue of crime and art as it relates to three different artists: Caravaggio, the artist as criminal; Artemisia Gentileschi, the victim of a crime; and Constantin Brancusi, for whom art disguised crime. Caravaggio stands out in the history of Western art as one of the rare examples of a significant artist whose criminal acts included murder. Van Mander has captured Caravaggio's shifts from artist to criminal, which expressed his internal conflicts. Artemisia Gentileschi, daughter of the painter Orazio, was a follower of Caravaggio, whom she may have known personally. The caveat that artists project their own images into their work in no way diminishes the validity of the reading in a specific instance. Despite the quasi-geometric qualities of Brancusi's sculptures, they are modeled on recognizable natural forms.
