Pasticcio (pah-stee-tchoh) comes from the vulgar Latin pasticium, in turn related to another late Latin word we know much better, pasta. It is attested in our beautiful language for the first time in 1525, a tad too late for our Dante to use it in his Commedia, but early enough to make it common when Caravaggio was around.
Fare un pasticcio means to mess something up, or to make a gross mistake: non arrabbiarti, ma ho fatto un pasticcio (“don’t get angry, but I really messed up”), but it can also stand for something very messy and unpleasant.
