This Day in History: In the first assassination attempt against a President of the United States happened on this day in 1835. Richard Lawrence attempted to shoot president Andrew Jackson on this day, but failed and was subdued by a crowd, including several congressmen as well as Jackson himself.
Richard Lawrence was an English-American house painter, and historians have speculated that exposure to the toxic chemicals in the paints that he used may have contributed to his mental illness, which manifested itself in his thirties, and he later became violent to his siblings. At trial, Lawrence was found not guilty by reason of insanity and spent the remainder of his life in insane asylums.
Lawrence was not the only painter known for his violence. "The Baroque artist Caravaggio is famous for gruesome paintings like 'Judith Beheading Holofernes.' Yet it wasn’t only his paintings that were brutal and violent. In the early 17th century, Caravaggio went to trial at least 11 times for things like writing libelous poems, throwing a plate of artichokes at a waiter and assaulting people with swords. He eventually fled Rome to escape punishment for killing a man and died in exile under mysterious circumstances." Source
16th century painter Benvenuto Cellini "killed repeatedly without remorse and without being punished. He stabbed his brother's murderer to death with a long twisted dagger that he drove downward through the man's shoulder. He also killed a rival goldsmith and shot an innkeeper dead – and recounts all these crimes in his autobiography. He escaped being executed because he was so admired as an artist. In those days, geniuses really could get away with murder." Source
Victorian era painter Richard Dadd stabbed his father to death because he thought he was the devil. He spent the rest of his life in prisons and mental institutions where he painted fantastic fairy scenes of bizarre detail and intensity.
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