One of his appearances in Rome’s criminal records is in a testimony by a waiter at the Moor restaurant who had the misfortune to serve Caravaggio and his mates a plate of artichokes, half of them fried in oil and half in butter. Caravaggio asked which were which, and the waiter told him to smell them. Caravaggio leapt up, hit him with an earthenware dish and drew his ever-ready sword, but one of his friends restrained him from killing the waiter. Was he, perhaps, worried about eating too much butter? Or did he, on the contrary, want the butter-fried artichokes all to himself as part of his supposed diet of saturated fats?
“Caravaggio and the art of dieting” at www.theguardian.com