Sudden death

As Caravaggio, the libertine of Italy’s art world, and the loutish Spanish poet Quevedo aim to settle scores over the course of one brutal tennis match, the old European order edges closer to eruption. Across the ocean, in early 16th-century Mexico, the Aztec Empire is under the fatal grip of Hernn Corts and his Mayan lover. While they scheme and conquer, their domestic comedy will change the course of history, throwing the world – and Rome’s tennis match – into a mind-bending reverie of assassinations, executions, papal dramas, carnal liaisons and artistic revolution.