http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVW8GCnr9-I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md4HB96MY-U
These two examples of music... quite appropriate to the season... rank among the greatest musical achievements of the Renaissance. Gesualdo pushed the limits of traditional tonality to the breaking point... and then pulled back... achieving an unsettling sense of harmony.
Gesualdo the man, on the other hand, was a violent and brutal individual:
In 1586 Gesualdo married his first cousin, Donna Maria d'Avalos, the daughter of the Marquis of Pescara. Two years later she began a love affair with Fabrizio Carafa, the Duke of Andria. Evidently, she was able to keep it secret from her husband for almost two years, even though the existence of the affair was well-known elsewhere. Finally, on October 16, 1590, at the Palazzo San Severo in Naples, when Gesualdo had allegedly gone away on a hunting trip, the two lovers took insufficient precaution at last (Gesualdo had arranged with his servants to have keys to the locks of his palace copied in wood so that he could gain entrance if it were locked). Gesualdo returned to the palace, caught them in flagrante delicto and murdered them both in their bed. Afterward, he left their mutilated bodies in front of the palace for all to see. Being a nobleman he was immune to prosecution, but not to revenge, so he fled to his castle at Venosa where he would be safe from any of the relatives of either his wife or her lover.
Details on the murders are not lacking, as the depositions of witnesses to the magistrates have survived in full. While they disagree on some details, they agree on the principal points, and it is apparent that Gesualdo had help from his servants, who may have done most of the killing; however, Gesualdo certainly stabbed Maria multiple times, shouting as he did, "she's not dead yet!" The Duke of Andria was found slaughtered by numerous deep sword wounds, as well as by a shot through the head. When he was found, he was dressed in women's clothing (specifically, Maria's night dress). His own clothing was found piled up by the bedside, unbloodied.
The murders were widely publicized, including in verse by poets such as Tasso and an entire flock of Neapolitan poets, eager to capitalize on the sensation. The salacious details of the murders were broadcast in print, but nothing was done to apprehend the Prince of Venosa. The police report from the scene makes for shocking reading even after more than four hundred years.
Accounts on events after the murders differ. According to some sources, Gesualdo also murdered his second son by Maria, who was an infant, after looking into his eyes and doubting his paternity (according to a 19th century source he "swung the infant around in his cradle until the breath left his body"); another source indicates that he murdered his father-in-law as well, after the man had come seeking revenge. Gesualdo had employed a company of men-at-arms to ward off just such an event. However, contemporary documentation from official sources for either of these alleged murders is lacking.
By 1594, Gesualdo had arranged for another marriage, this time to Leonora d'Este, the niece of Duke Alfonso II... The relationship between Gesualdo and his new wife was not good; she accused him of abuse, and the Este family attempted to obtain a divorce. She spent more and more time away from the isolated estate. Gesualdo wrote many angry letters to Modena where she often went to stay with her brother.
Late in life he suffered from depression. Whether or not it was related to the guilt over his multiple murders is difficult to prove, but the evidence is suggestive. According to Campanella, writing in Lyon in 1635, Gesualdo had himself beaten daily by his servants, keeping a special servant whose duty it was to beat him "at stool", and he engaged in a relentless, and fruitless, correspondence with Cardinal Borromeo to obtain relics, i.e., skeletal remains, of his uncle Carlo, with which he hoped to obtain healing for his mental disorder and possibly absolution for his crimes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Gesualdo
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, known commonly as Caravaggio, was one of the greatest and most influential artists in the whole of Western art history. He can virtually be credited with giving birth to the Baroque era... rejecting the artifice and extreme stylization of Mannerism, and returning to the naturalism of the Renaissance, yet infusing this with an unheard-of drama:
Caravaggio began his career pandering homoerotic images of "pretty boys" to high-ranking clergy:
Caravaggio was involved in an endless string of street brawls, gambling, and excessive drinking. He had a long police record that included numerous fights, the battering down of a door of a private home, the wounding of a police officer, the serious wounding of a knight, and the killing of one Ranuccio Tomassoni... reportedly as part of a duel over a dispute at a tennis match. His violent behavior led to his been repeatedly banished from one city-state to the next and the repeated loss of influential patrons. Toward the end of his life, at least one assassination was made, leaving him disfigured, and the high lead content in the bones presumed to be of the artist suggest he may have been the victim of poisoning... although lead was a major component in oil paint and an artist who was not careful could certainly ingest toxic levels.
In both instances I am able to embrace the artist's achievements... the art... while condemning the artist as an individual. The reality is that many other artists in any field of artistic endeavor were less than ideal human beings. Beethoven and Michelangelo could be jerks. Picasso was a real a**hole. Rimbaud and Verlaine were both idiots. But this in no way affects my appreciation of their art.