Caravaggio Television Series

Samuel Eli Cohen begins his screenwriting work with research. Before outlining a script or shaping a character arc, he spends extensive time gathering primary and secondary sources that help him understand the world he wants to write about. Caravaggio was one of his major projects in 2024, and the research process for that project taught him how to use archival documents, art historical scholarship, and biography to build a television narrative that feels grounded and lived in.

Caravaggio & Contemporary Art and Research Center in Monte Santa Maria Tiberina, Italy

For the Caravaggio project, Cohen drew on a wide range of archives and research libraries. He worked with materials available through UCLA Special Collections, which provided early modern printed books, facsimiles of legal records, and scholarship on the Roman art world during the Counter Reformation. He also consulted digital collections associated with the Archivio di Stato di Roma, the Vatican Library and Barberini documents, the archives of the Knights of Saint John in Malta, and museum conservation files from institutions such as the Galleria Borghese and Palazzo Barberini. These materials include payment records, court depositions, contracts, and descriptions of commissions. Together they revealed Caravaggio’s world as a network of patrons, rivals, informants, and institutions rather than a set of isolated paintings.

Alongside archival work, Cohen read widely in the major biographies and studies of Caravaggio. Helen Langdon’s biography proved especially influential for character work. Langdon describes Caravaggio as a person whose artistic choices were driven by profound personal crises. Her observation that he possessed a restless clarity helped shape the emotional core of Cohen’s portrayal. Andrew Graham Dixon offers a different interpretation, arguing that Caravaggio’s life was more strategic and controlled. Graham Dixon suggests that the painter understood the power of scandal and confrontation. This alternative perspective led Cohen to develop a protagonist who is not simply destructive but also tactical, aware of how provocation can serve as a form of self defense. These biographies contradict one another in tone and emphasis, and Cohen found that the tension between them produced a richer and more complex foundation for his adaptation.

Stefania Macioce’s edited collection of documents played an essential role in constructing the plot. Her transcriptions of contracts, legal testimony, and letters allowed Cohen to build a verifiable timeline of events that could be adapted into a season structure. John Varriano’s work on Caravaggio’s realism encouraged him to think of the paintings as arguments about the world rather than decorative objects. Walter Friedlaender’s studies highlighted how artistic style can reflect the cultural and religious pressures of a specific period. Although these scholars often disagree about Caravaggio’s motivations and methods, they consistently treat the work as deeply embedded in its social context. This encouraged Cohen to let personal conflict and political conflict overlap in the script.

Several quotations from these authors guided Cohen’s development process. Langdon writes that Caravaggio painted figures who look back at the viewer with the full weight of their experience. Cohen kept this idea visible while outlining the series. Graham Dixon’s description of Caravaggio as both hunted and hunting became a structural principle for the character’s movement through each episode. Varriano’s argument that Caravaggio’s realism was a conscious intellectual experiment shaped the decision to portray the artist as someone with a significant degree of artistic self awareness.

Cohen follows a consistent research method. He reads the historical sources, extracts what can be verified, and creates a timeline of fixed points in the character’s life. These fixed points remain aligned with the historical record. In the spaces between them he imagines the relationships, pressures, and motivations that could have produced the surviving documents. When historians disagree, he treats disagreement as an opportunity rather than an obstacle. One interpretation may shape how a protagonist understands an event, while another can inform how a rival or patron interprets the same moment. This creates a world where characters argue not only through dialogue but also through differing visions of the past.

Although Caravaggio was one of Cohen’s earliest large historical projects, it continues to influence how he approaches new work. He begins by studying the world, not the plot. He allows the archives, the scholarship, and the contradictions within the historical record to guide him toward characters who feel grounded in a specific time and place. His goal is not to recreate history exactly as it happened, but to write stories that respect the complexity of the people who lived it.