Violence shaped Caravaggio’s life and his work. He was:

• exiled
• wounded
• hunted

Caravaggio died at 38.

And he still changed art forever.🧵👇 He lost almost his entire family to the plague by age 6. Was orphaned by 10.
And never recovered from it.

Death wasn’t a theme in his paintings

— It was the world he came from.

You know the cross.
You know the lamb.

— But why did a pagan hare become a Christian rabbit?

And somehow… end up delivering eggs?
Let’s unpack that: 🧵👇 For Christians, Easter is the celebration of Christ’s resurrection.

It’s about death defeated

— And life eternal.

Canova didn’t live for fame

He worked seven days a week.
He never married.
He turned marble into legends.

— He even designed his own tomb.

But the story behind the marble is rarely told. Let me show you🧵👇 Canova was born in 1757 in a small Italian village.

He lost his father at 3.

Was raised by his grandfather, a stonecutter.

At 9, he sculpted his first marble.

— By 15, he was already working for Venetian elites. 👇 by 15.

A Van Gogh was stolen in broad daylight during lockdown.

No guards. No crowds. No one to stop them.

Today, over $1 billion in art is still missing.

Here are 20 missing artworks that still haunt …🧵👇 Nativity with St. Francis and St. L Lawrence

Caravaggio

Stolen from Oratory of San Lorenzo, Palermo. October 17, 1969

Likely commissioned by the Sicilian mafia.

One theory claims it was destroyed.

It started in 1505 and ended in 1545.

• Four decades
• Six popes
Michelangelo called it a tragedy

Not the tomb itself…

— But the entire 40-year saga
Let me show you:🧵👇 In 1505, Pope Julius II summoned Michelangelo to Rome

He wanted a monumental tomb Freestanding,

— Over 40 statues

It would stand inside St. Peter’s Basilica

They say marble is cold and hard.

At 23 Bernini made it:

• weep
• tremble
• bleed.

Let me show you what’s really happening in The Rape of Prosérpina🧵👇 Rome, 1621.

Cardinal Scipione Borghese commissions a sculpture from a rising star.

He wants myth. Drama. Power.

Bernini gives him Pluto and Proserpina, frozen in violent motion.
📸:Wiki

Great art refuses to vanish!

- Michelangelo carved it. Nazis stole it.
- Bernini sculpted it. Collectors forgot it.
- Donatello created it. A flood nearly erased it.

But that’s not the end…
— That’s where it begins: 🧵👇 The Madonna of Bruges was taken twice:

- First by the French Revolution
- Then by the Nazis, hidden in a fake Red Cross truck

Both times she came back,

Now she stands in Bruges, untouched by time

Some doors are locked. Some open once every 25 years. Some haven’t moved in 3,000.

But every one holds a story that could shatter your sense of time, faith, or identity.

Let me take you through them. 🧵 The Bernward Doors in Hildesheim were cast in bronze in 1015.

Bishop Bernward ordered their 16 Genesis scenes.

They connect past to present.
They evoke wonder, continuity, and reverence.

— I found this one simply amazing.

This church was built as a weapon.
Not of steel or fire but of beauty.

St. Agnes in Agony was Rome’s answer to the Reformation.

It was designed to move your soul, overwhelm your senses, and lead you back to God.

Let me show you why it still stuns the world.🧵👇 In 1652, Pope Innocent X commissioned a private chapel.

The church was dedicated to Saint Agnes and that was no coincidence.

Piazza Navona, besides being beautiful, was the place where she was killed.

You walk past a church in Italy.
But can you tell what style it carries?

You don’t need a degree in architecture.

Pointed arch = Gothic
Rounded arch = Renaissance
Curved chaos = Baroque

Simple?
Let’s break it down:🧵👇 1 - Gothic came first.

It reaches up.
Pulls your eyes toward heaven.

•The walls stretch
•The windows rise
Everything says: look higher
📸:Abs

Behind each Pieta, a story of heartbreak,

- Some carved for immortality.
-Others poured their grief into stone
-One carved until his final days.
-One painted his plea for salvation.

From Michelangelo to Canova:
-10 you’ve probably never seen 🧵👇 1 - Tilman Riemenschneider

This Pietà was carved during the Protestant Reformation.

The artist was later jailed for joining a peasant uprising.

It’s not made of marble, But of wood.

When did the West lose its soul?

We traded cathedrals for concrete boxes.
Beauty for duct-taped bananas.
God for spectacle.

Was Luther’s Reformation the spark?

Not the whole fire…
—but maybe the match that lit the fuse. See my theory: 🧵👇 Whenever I post a beautiful church, I see the same questions:

– Why don’t we build like this anymore?
– Are we still capable of making something so beautiful?
– Why aren’t there more artists like Michelangelo?

Love didn’t kill her.
— Rome did.

Cleopatra chose venom over chains,
outsmarted generals, and wrote her own ending.

She wasn’t a mistress, she was a threat.

Let me show you the queen they tried to hide. 🧵👇 2 - She was 18 and her brother was 10.
They crowned them co-rulers

— Then forced them to marry.

But power divided them.
He turned the palace against her.

She fled into exile.

They burned Giordano Bruno alive.

They could've done the same to Galileo.

But instead, they forced him to kneel...
To deny his truth... To whisper a legend:

"Eppur si muove" — "And yet, it moves." Here's the story of that whisper. 🧵👇 1 - Rome, 1633. Galileo Galilei is 69.
He’s the greatest astronomer alive.

He’s been summoned to stand trial before the Vatican’s Holy Office.

His crime? Believing Earth moves around the Sun.

The Nazis stormed Paris—only to find the Louvre stripped bare.

Göring exploded: “Bring the treasures back!”

But one Frenchman had already vanished with 3,600 masterpieces.
— Mona Lisa included.

Here’s the wild story they never told you 🧵👇 1 - June 1940:
German troops marched victoriously into Paris

But inside the Louvre, the Nazis found nothing but empty frames.

One officer muttered: “It’s like they knew we were coming.”

He was betrayed by his brother. The scandal almost destroyed him.

A fever nearly killed him.

Bernini rose as a prodigy and fell in disgrace.
And then he carved his way back, not to glory.

— but to God! 🧵👇 Born in Naples in 1598, raised in Rome by a sculptor father.

He learned to draw before he could write.

At 8, he carved faces that angels would envym.
He stunned everyone, even the Pope, with The Goat Amalthea. 📸:Wiki

He saw Jesus—and believed instantly.

He saw Hell with his own eyes—And pleaded for the souls trapped inside.

He was skinned alive—Yet never cursed God.

This is the Apostle they rarely tell you about… 🧵👇 His name was Bartholomew.

Jesus called him
“a true Israelite, in whom there is no deceit.”

He recognized the Messiah not through miracles

— but at first glance. 📸:Abs

The most misunderstood sculpture Michelangelo ever made…
wasn’t for the Church nor glory.

It was for himself.

At 72, with no commissions and no applause—he carved his own face into stone.

And then he tried to destroy it.

There’s more to this Pietà than anyone tells you. 🧵 1 - This is the Florentine Pietà—also called The Deposition.

Michelangelo never meant it to be public.

There’s no commission behind it.
No Church request. No patron.

Was made to decorate his own tomb in Santa Maria Maggiore. 🎥:Abs

Bernini was 24. David, maybe 20.

Like 1 Samuel 17:48 says: “David ran quickly toward the battle line.”

So did Bernini. He carved himself into that sprint. The face on the statue?

It’s his.

You can’t imagine what comes next 🧵👇 Bernini was not the first to sculpt David.

Before him, the masters:

Donatello made him soft and poetic.
Michelangelo made him a god.

What if the most beautiful sculpture in the world is actually a warning from God?

What if Apollo and Daphne isn’t just myth?

Look past the beauty.
Under the leaves, something more than marble is at stake.

Let me show you: 🧵👇 Bernini was only 24 when he carved Apollo and Daphne from a single block of marble.

He captured the moment Daphne escapes Apollo by turning into a tree.

But this isn’t just mythology it’s a reflection of a deeper Catholic fear:
Desire pursued too far becomes damnation. 📸:Abs

They’re not just doors.

They’re masterpieces forged in rivalry, faith, and power struggles that changed Italian history.

Here are the 10 doors that you should be familiar with. 🧵👇 Main Door of Milan Cathedral – Milan
Ludovico Pogliaghi, 1906. Carved to glorify the Virgin.

Damaged during WWII shrapnel marks still visible.

— Even Hitler marched past it under occupation. 📸:Abs