All Topics  
Caravaggio

 
Caravaggio

   Email Print
   Bookmark   Link






 

Caravaggio



 
 
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, (29 September 1571 – 18 July 1610) was an Italian
Italian people

The Italian people are a Southern European ethnic group located primarily in Italy and, by virtue of a wide-ranging Italian diaspora, throughout Western Europe, the Americas and Australia....
 artist
Artist

The definition of an artist is wide-ranging and covers a broad spectrum of activities to do with creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art....
 active in Rome
Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
, Naples
Naples

Naples is a city in southern Italy, the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples. The city is known for its rich history, art, culture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,800 years old....
, Malta
Malta

Malta , officially the Republic of Malta , is a densely populated developed country European microstates microstate in the European Union....
 and Sicily
Sicily

Sicily is an Autonomous regions with special statute of Italy. Of all the regions of Italy, Sicily covers the largest land area at 25,708 km? and currently has just over five million inhabitants....
 between 1593 and 1610, considered the first great representative of the Baroque
Baroque

In the the arts, the Baroque was a Western cultural Epoch , starting roughly at the beginning of the 17th century in Rome, Italy. It was exemplified by drama and grandeur in Baroque sculpture, Baroque painting, literature, Baroque dance, and Baroque music....
 school of painting.

Even in his own lifetime Caravaggio was considered enigmatic, fascinating, rebellious and dangerous. He burst upon the Rome art scene in 1600, and thereafter never lacked for commissions or patrons, yet he handled his success atrociously.






Discussion
Ask a question about 'Caravaggio'
Start a new discussion about 'Caravaggio'
Answer questions from other users
Full Discussion Forum



Recent Posts









Encyclopedia


Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, (29 September 1571 – 18 July 1610) was an Italian
Italian people

The Italian people are a Southern European ethnic group located primarily in Italy and, by virtue of a wide-ranging Italian diaspora, throughout Western Europe, the Americas and Australia....
 artist
Artist

The definition of an artist is wide-ranging and covers a broad spectrum of activities to do with creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art....
 active in Rome
Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
, Naples
Naples

Naples is a city in southern Italy, the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples. The city is known for its rich history, art, culture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,800 years old....
, Malta
Malta

Malta , officially the Republic of Malta , is a densely populated developed country European microstates microstate in the European Union....
 and Sicily
Sicily

Sicily is an Autonomous regions with special statute of Italy. Of all the regions of Italy, Sicily covers the largest land area at 25,708 km? and currently has just over five million inhabitants....
 between 1593 and 1610, considered the first great representative of the Baroque
Baroque

In the the arts, the Baroque was a Western cultural Epoch , starting roughly at the beginning of the 17th century in Rome, Italy. It was exemplified by drama and grandeur in Baroque sculpture, Baroque painting, literature, Baroque dance, and Baroque music....
 school of painting.

Even in his own lifetime Caravaggio was considered enigmatic, fascinating, rebellious and dangerous. He burst upon the Rome art scene in 1600, and thereafter never lacked for commissions or patrons, yet he handled his success atrociously. An early published notice on him, dating from 1604 and describing his lifestyle three years previously, tells how "after a fortnight's work he will swagger about for a month or two with a sword at his side and a servant following him, from one ball-court to the next, ever ready to engage in a fight or an argument, so that it is most awkward to get along with him." In 1606 he killed a young man in a brawl and fled from Rome with a price on his head. In Malta
Malta

Malta , officially the Republic of Malta , is a densely populated developed country European microstates microstate in the European Union....
 in 1608 he was involved in another brawl, and yet another in Naples in 1609, possibly a deliberate attempt on his life by unidentified enemies. By the next year, after a relatively brief career, he was dead.

Huge new churches and palazzi were being built in Rome in the decades of the late 16th and early 17th Centuries, and paintings were needed to fill them. The Counter-Reformation
Counter-Reformation

The Counter-Reformation denotes the period of Roman Catholic Church revival from the pontificate of Pope Pius IV in 1560 to the close of the Thirty Years' War, 1648....
 Church searched for authentic religious art with which to counter the threat of Protestantism
Protestantism

Protestantism is a movement within Christianity that originated in the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. It is considered to be one of the three principal traditions of Christianity, together with Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy....
, and for this task the artificial conventions of Mannerism
Mannerism

Mannerism is a Art periods of European art which emerged from the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520. It lasted until about 1580 in Italy, when a more Baroque style began to replace it, but continued into the seventeenth century throughout much of Europe....
, which had ruled art for almost a century, no longer seemed adequate. Caravaggio's novelty was a radical naturalism
Naturalism (art)

Naturalism in art refers to the depiction of realistic objects in a natural setting. The realism movement of the 19th century advocated naturalism in reaction to the stylized and idealized depictions of subjects in Romanticism, but many painters have adopted a similar approach over the centuries....
 which combined close physical observation with a dramatic, even theatrical, approach to chiaroscuro
Chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro is a term in art for a contrast between light and dark. The term is usually applied to bold contrasts affecting a whole composition, but is also more technically used by artists and art historians for the use of effects representing contrasts of light, not necessarily strong, to achieve a sense of volume in modeling three-di...
, the use of light and shadow.

Famous and extremely influential while he lived, Caravaggio was almost entirely forgotten in the centuries after his death, and it was only in the 20th century that his importance to the development of Western art was rediscovered. Despite this, his influence on the new Baroque style that eventually emerged from the ruins of Mannerism, was profound. Andre Berne-Joffroy, Paul Valéry
Paul Valéry

Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Val?ry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. His interests were sufficiently broad that he can be classified as a polymath....
's secretary, said of him: "What begins in the work of Caravaggio is, quite simply, modern painting." And in the years following his death, he was more imitated by other artists than any other master for whom we have record as documented by the art historian Benedict Nicolson
Benedict Nicolson

Benedict Nicolson, Royal Victorian Order was a United Kingdom art historian and author.Nicolson was the elder son of authors Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West and the brother of writer and politician Nigel Nicolson....
. Caravaggio's influence can be seen directly or indirectly in the work of Rubens
Rubens

Rubens is often used to mean Peter Paul Rubens , Flemish artist.Rubens may also refer to:*Paul Rubens , co-lyricist of Florodora*Alma Rubens , American actor...
, Jusepe de Ribera, Bernini, and Rembrandt
Rembrandt

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was a Netherlands Painting and etching. He is generally considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art history and the most important in History of the Netherlands....
, and artists in the following generation heavily under his influence were called the "Caravaggisti" or "Caravagesques", as well as Tenebrists
Tenebrism

Tenebrism, from the Italian language tenebroso , is a style of painting using violent contrasts of light and Darkness. A heightened form of chiaroscuro, it creates the look of figures emerging from the dark....
 or "Tenebrosi" ("shadowists").

Biography

Caravaggio Crucifixion of Peter

Early life (1571–1592)

Caravaggio was born in Milan
Milan

Milan is the second largest city of Italy, located in the plains of Lombardy. It is the capital in the Province of Milan, as well as the Regions of Italy capital of Lombardy....
, where his father, Fermo Merisi, was a household administrator and architect-decorator to the Marchese of Caravaggio. His mother, Lucia Aratori, came from a propertied family of the same district. In 1576 the family moved to Caravaggio in Lombardi to escape a plague which ravaged Milan. Caravaggio's father died there in 1577 and his mother in 1584. It is assumed that the artist grew up in Caravaggio, but his family kept up connections with the Sforza and with the powerful Colonna family, who were allied by marriage with the Sforzas, and destined to play a major role later in Caravaggio's life.

In 1584 he was apprenticed for four years to the Lombard painter Simone Peterzano
Simone Peterzano

Simone Peterzano was an Italy painter of the later Mannerism, native of Bergamo. He is mostly known as the master of Caravaggio.He was a pupil of Titian in Venice, Peterzano debuted in Milan with the counterfa?ade frescoes in San Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore , influenced by Paolo Veronese and Tintoretto....
, described in the contract of apprenticeship as a pupil of Titian
Titian

File:Tizian 090.jpg Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio, born 1473/1490 , died 27 August 1576, better known as Titian , was the leading painter of the 16th-century Venice school of the Italian Renaissance....
. Caravaggio appears to have stayed in the Milan-Caravaggio area after his apprenticeship ended, but it is possible that he visited Venice
Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy, the capital city of the Italian regions Veneto, a population of 271,251 . Together with Padua, Italy, the city is included in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area ....
and saw the works of Giorgione
Giorgione

Giorgione is the familiar name of Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco, an Italy painter, a seminal artist of the High Renaissance in Venice....
, whom Federico Zuccaro
Federico Zuccari

Federico Zuccari, also known as Federigo Zuccaro , was an Italy Mannerism Painting and architect, active both in Italy and abroad....
 later accused him of imitating, and Titian. He would also have become familiar with the art treasures of Milan, including Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italy polymath, being a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, Painting, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer....
's Last Supper
The Last Supper (Leonardo)

The Last Supper is a 15th century mural painting in Milan created by Leonardo da Vinci for his patron List of rulers of Milan Ludovico Sforza and his duchess Beatrice d'Este....
, and with the regional Lombard art, a style which valued simplicity and attention to naturalistic detail and was closer to the naturalism
Naturalism (art)

Naturalism in art refers to the depiction of realistic objects in a natural setting. The realism movement of the 19th century advocated naturalism in reaction to the stylized and idealized depictions of subjects in Romanticism, but many painters have adopted a similar approach over the centuries....
 of Germany than to the stylised formality and grandeur of Roman Mannerism
Mannerism

Mannerism is a Art periods of European art which emerged from the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520. It lasted until about 1580 in Italy, when a more Baroque style began to replace it, but continued into the seventeenth century throughout much of Europe....
.

Rome (1592–1600)

Michelangelo Caravaggio 062
Caravaggio fled Milan for Rome in mid-1592 after "certain quarrels" and the wounding of a police officer. He arrived in Rome "naked and extremely needy ... without fixed address and without provision ... short of money." A few months later he was performing hack-work for the highly successful Giuseppe Cesari
Giuseppe Cesari

Giuseppe Cesari was an Italy Mannerism Painting, also named Il Giuseppino and called Cavali?r d'Arpino, because he was created Cavaliere di Cristo by his patron Pope Clement VIII....
, Pope Clement VIII
Pope Clement VIII

Pope Clement VIII , born Ippolito Aldobrandini, was Pope from January 30, 1592 to March 3, 1605....
's favourite painter, "painting flowers and fruit" in his factory-like workshop. Known works from this period include a small Boy Peeling a Fruit
Boy Peeling Fruit (Caravaggio)

Boy Peeling Fruit is a painting by the Italy Baroque master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio painted circa 1592-1593.This is the earliest known work by Caravaggio, painted soon after his arrival in Rome from his native Milan in mid 1592....
 (his earliest known painting), a Boy with a Basket of Fruit
Boy with a Basket of Fruit (Caravaggio)

Boy with a Basket of Fruit, c.1593, is a painting by Italy Baroque master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, currently in the Galleria Borghese, Rome....
, and the Young Sick Bacchus, supposedly a self-portrait done during convalescence from a serious illness that ended his employment with Cesari. All three demonstrate the physical particularity — one aspect of his realism — for which Caravaggio was to become renowned: the fruit-basket-boy's produce has been analysed by a professor of horticulture, who was able to identify individual cultivars right down to "... a large fig leaf with a prominent fungal scorch lesion resembling anthracnose (Glomerella cingulata)."

Caravaggio left Cesari in January 1594, determined to make his own way. His fortunes were at their lowest ebb, yet it was now that he forged some extremely important friendships, with the painter Prospero Orsi, the architect Onorio Longhi
Onorio Longhi

Onorio Longhi was an Italy architect, the father of Martino Longhi the Younger and the son of Martino Longhi the Elder.Born in Viggi?, Lombardy, Longhi began as assistant for his father, and inherited the latter's commission at his death in 1591....
, and the sixteen year old Sicilian
Sicily

Sicily is an Autonomous regions with special statute of Italy. Of all the regions of Italy, Sicily covers the largest land area at 25,708 km? and currently has just over five million inhabitants....
 artist Mario Minniti
Mario Minniti

Mario Minniti was an Italy artist active in Sicily after 1606.Born in Syracuse, Italy, Sicily, he arrived in Rome in 1593, where he became the friend, collaborator and model of the key Baroque painter Caravaggio ....
. Orsi, established in the profession, introduced him to influential collectors; Longhi, more balefully, introduced him to the world of Roman street-brawls; and Minniti served as a model and, years later, would be instrumental in helping Caravaggio to important commissions in Sicily. The Fortune Teller
The Fortune Teller (Caravaggio)

The Fortune Teller is a painting by Italy Baroque master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. It exists in two versions, both by Caravaggio, the first from 1594 , the second from 1595 in the ....
, his first composition with more than one figure, shows Mario being cheated by a gypsy girl. The theme was quite new for Rome, and proved immensely influential over the next century and beyond. This, however, was in the future: at the time, Caravaggio sold it for practically nothing. The Cardsharps — showing another unsophisticated boy falling the victim of card cheats — is even more psychologically complex, and perhaps Caravaggio's first true masterpiece. Like the Fortune Teller
The Fortune Teller (Caravaggio)

The Fortune Teller is a painting by Italy Baroque master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. It exists in two versions, both by Caravaggio, the first from 1594 , the second from 1595 in the ....
 it was immensely popular, and over 50 copies survive. More importantly, it attracted the patronage of Cardinal
Cardinal (Catholicism)

A cardinal is a senior Ecclesiology official, usually a Bishop , of the Catholic Church. They are collectively known as the College of Cardinals, which as a body elects a new pope....
 Francesco Maria Del Monte
Francesco Maria Del Monte

Francesco Maria Del Monte, full name Francesco Maria House of Bourbon Del Monte was an Italian cardinal of the Catholic Church, diplomat and connoisseur of the arts....
, one of the leading connoisseurs in Rome. For Del Monte and his wealthy art-loving circle Caravaggio executed a number of intimate chamber-pieces — The Musicians
The Musicians (Caravaggio)

The Musicians is a painting by the Italy Baroque master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio . It is held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York....
, The Lute Player
The Lute Player (Caravaggio)

The Lute Player is a composition by the Italy Baroque master Caravaggio. It exists in three versions, one in the Wildenstein Collection, another in the Hermitage Museum, St....
, a tipsy Bacchus
Bacchus (Caravaggio)

Bacchus is a painting by Italy Baroque master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio . It is held in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.The painting shows a youthful Dionysus reclining in classical fashion with grapes and vine leaves in his hair, fingering the drawstring of his loosely-draped robe....
, an allegorical but realistic Boy Bitten by a Lizard
Boy Bitten by a Lizard (Caravaggio)

Boy Bitten by a Lizard is a painting by the Italy Baroque painter Caravaggio. It exists in two versions, both believed to be authentic, one in the Collezione Longhi in Florence, the other in the National Gallery, London, London....
 — featuring Minniti and other adolescent models. The homoerotic ambience of Caravaggio's treatment of these works has been the centre of dispute among scholars and biographers since it was first raised in the later half of the 20th century, the critic Robert Hughes
Robert Hughes (critic)

Robert Studley Forrest Hughes Order of Australia is an Australian-born art critic, writer and documentary film maker who has resided in New York since 1970....
 memorably described Caravaggio's boys as "overripe, peachy bits of rough trade, with yearning mouths and hair like black ice cream,"

The realism returned with Caravaggio's first paintings on religious themes, and the emergence of remarkable spirituality. The first of these was the Penitent Magdalene
Penitent Magdalene (Caravaggio)

Penitent Magdalene, also known as Mary Magdalene, is a painting by the Italy Baroque master Caravaggio, circa 1597. It is housed in the Doria Pamphilj Gallery of Rome....
, showing Mary Magdalene
Mary Magdalene

Saint Mary Magdalene or Mary Magdalene is described, both in the canonical New Testament and in the New Testament apocrypha, as a devoted Disciple of Jesus....
 at the moment when she has turned from her life as a courtesan and sits weeping on the floor, her jewels scattered around her. "It seemed not a religious painting at all ... a girl sitting on a low wooden stool drying her hair ... Where was the repentance ... suffering ... promise of salvation?" It was understated, in the Lombard manner, not histrionic in the Roman manner of the time. It was followed by others in the same style: Saint Catherine
Saint Catherine (Caravaggio)

Saint Catherine of Alexandria is an oil painting by the Italy Baroque master Michelangelo Merisi. It is part of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection of Madrid....
, Martha and Mary Magdalene
Martha and Mary Magdalene (Caravaggio)

Martha and Mary Magdalene is a painting by the Italy Baroque master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. It is held in the Detroit Institute of Arts....
, Judith Beheading Holofernes
Judith Beheading Holofernes (Caravaggio)

Judith Beheading Holofernes , completed in 1599 in art, is an early religious painting by the Italy painter Caravaggio. It is housed in the gallery of Palazzo Barberini, in Rome....
, a Sacrifice of Isaac
Sacrifice of Isaac (Caravaggio)

The Sacrifice of Isaac is the title of two paintings by the Italy master Caravaggio ....
, a Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy
Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy (Caravaggio)

Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy is a painting by the Italy Baroque master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. It is held in the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut....
, and a Rest on the Flight into Egypt
Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Caravaggio)

Rest on the Flight into Egypt is a painting by the Italy Baroque master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, in the Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome....
. The works, while viewed by a comparatively limited circle, increased Caravaggio's fame with both connoisseurs and his fellow-artists. But a true reputation would depend on public commissions, and for these it was necessary to look to the Church.

Already evident was the intense realism or naturalism for which Caravaggio is now famous. He preferred to paint his subjects as the eye sees them, with all their natural flaws and defects instead of as idealised creations. This allowed a full display of Caravaggio's virtusoic talents. This shift from accepted standard practice and the classical idealism of Michelangelo was very controversial at the time. Not only was his realism a noteworthy feature of his paintings during this period, he turned away from the lengthy preparations traditional in central Italy at the time. Instead, he preferred the Venetian practice of working in oils directly from the subject - half-length figures and still life. One of the characteristic paintings by Caravaggio at this time which gives a good demonstration his virtuoso talent was his work, Supper at Emmaus from c.1600-1601.

Calling of St Matthew

"Most famous painter in Rome" (1600–1606)


In 1599, presumably through the influence of Del Monte, Caravaggio contracted to decorate the Contarelli Chapel
Contarelli Chapel

The Contarelli Chapel, within the church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, is famous for housing three paintings on the theme of Saint Matthew the Evangelist by the Baroque master Caravaggio....
 in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi
San Luigi dei Francesi

San Luigi dei Francesi is a Churches of Rome Rome, not far from Piazza Navona.The church was designed by Giacomo della Porta and built by Domenico Fontana between 1518 and 1589: the works could be completed through the personal intervention of Catherine de' Medici, who donated it some possessions in the area....
. The two works making up the commission, the Martyrdom of Saint Matthew
The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew (Caravaggio)

The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew is a painting by the Italian master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. It is located in the Contarelli Chapel of the church of the French congregation San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, where it hangs opposite The Calling of St Matthew and beside the altarpiece The Inspiration of Saint Matthew, both b...
 and Calling of Saint Matthew
The Calling of St Matthew (Caravaggio)

The Calling of Saint Matthew is a masterpiece by Caravaggio completed in 1599-1600 for the Contarelli Chapel in the church of the French congregation, San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome....
, delivered in 1600, were an immediate sensation. Caravaggio's tenebrism
Tenebrism

Tenebrism, from the Italian language tenebroso , is a style of painting using violent contrasts of light and Darkness. A heightened form of chiaroscuro, it creates the look of figures emerging from the dark....
 (a heightened chiaroscuro
Chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro is a term in art for a contrast between light and dark. The term is usually applied to bold contrasts affecting a whole composition, but is also more technically used by artists and art historians for the use of effects representing contrasts of light, not necessarily strong, to achieve a sense of volume in modeling three-di...
) brought high drama to his subjects, while his acutely observed realism brought a new level of emotional intensity. Opinion among Caravaggio's artist peers was polarized. Some denounced him for various perceived failings, notably his insistence on painting from life, without drawings, but for the most part he was hailed as a great artistic visionary: "The painters then in Rome were greatly taken by this novelty, and the young ones particularly gathered around him, praised him as the unique imitator of nature, and looked on his work as miracles."

Caravaggio went on to secure a string of prestigious commissions for religious works featuring violent struggles, grotesque decapitations, torture and death. For the most part each new painting increased his fame, but a few were rejected by the various bodies for whom they were intended, at least in their original forms, and had to be re-painted or find new buyers. The essence of the problem was that while Caravaggio's dramatic intensity was appreciated, his realism was seen by some as unacceptably vulgar. His first version of Saint Matthew and the Angel
Saint Matthew and the Angel (Caravaggio)

Saint Matthew and the Angel is a painting from the Italian master Caravaggio , completed for the Contarelli Chapel in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome....
, featured the saint as a bald peasant with dirty legs attended by a lightly-clad over-familiar boy-angel, was rejected and a second version had to be painted as The Inspiration of Saint Matthew. Similarly, The Conversion of Saint Paul
The Conversion of Saint Paul (Caravaggio)

The Conversion of Saint Paul , by the Italy painter Caravaggio, is housed in the Odescalchi Balbi Collection of Rome. It is one of at least two paintings by Caravaggio of the same subject....
 was rejected, and while another version of the same subject, the Conversion on the Way to Damascus
Conversion on the Way to Damascus

The Conversion on the Way to Damascus is a masterpiece by Caravaggio, painted in 1601 for the Cerasi Chapel of the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, in Rome....
, was accepted, it featured the saint's horse's haunches far more prominently than the saint himself, prompting this exchange between the artist and an exasperated official of Santa Maria del Popolo
Santa Maria del Popolo

Santa Maria del Popolo is a notable Augustinian church located in Rome.It stands to the north side of the Piazza del Popolo, one of the most famous squares of the city, between the ancient Porta Flaminia and the Pincio park....
: "Why have you put a horse in the middle, and Saint Paul
Paul of Tarsus

Saint Paul, also called Paul the Apostle, the Apostle Paul or Paul of Tarsus , was a Hellenistic Judaism, who called himself the "Apostle to the Gentiles", and was, together with Saint Peter and James the Just, the most notable of early Christian missionaries....
 on the ground?" "Because!" "Is the horse God?" "No, but he stands in God's light!"
Michelangelo Caravaggio 069
Other works included Entombment
The Entombment of Christ (Caravaggio)

The Entombment of Christ is a painting by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. It was painted for Santa Maria in Vallicella, a church built for the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri, and adjacent to the buildings of the order....
, the Madonna di Loreto
Madonna di Loreto (Caravaggio)

The Madonna di Loreto is a famous painting by the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio, located in the Cavalletti Chapel of the church of Sant'Agostino , near the Piazza Navona in Rome....
 (Madonna of the Pilgrims), the Grooms' Madonna
Madonna and Child with St. Anne (Dei Palafrenieri) (Caravaggio)

The Madonna and Child with St. Anne is one of the mature religious work of the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio, painted in 1605-1606 for an altar of the papal grooms ....
, and the Death of the Virgin
Death of the Virgin (Caravaggio)

The Death of the Virgin is a painting completed by the Italy Baroque master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. It is a near contemporary with the Madonna and Child with St....
. The history of these last two paintings illustrate the reception given to some of Caravaggio's art, and the times in which he lived. The Grooms' Madonna
Madonna and Child with St. Anne (Dei Palafrenieri) (Caravaggio)

The Madonna and Child with St. Anne is one of the mature religious work of the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio, painted in 1605-1606 for an altar of the papal grooms ....
, also known as Madonna dei palafrenieri
Madonna and Child with St. Anne (Dei Palafrenieri) (Caravaggio)

The Madonna and Child with St. Anne is one of the mature religious work of the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio, painted in 1605-1606 for an altar of the papal grooms ....
, painted for a small altar in Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome, remained there for just two days, and was then taken off. A cardinal's secretary wrote: "In this painting there are but vulgarity, sacrilege, impiousness and disgust...One would say it is a work made by a painter that can paint well, but of a dark spirit, and who has been for a lot of time far from God, from His adoration, and from any good thought..." The Death of the Virgin
Death of the Virgin (Caravaggio)

The Death of the Virgin is a painting completed by the Italy Baroque master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. It is a near contemporary with the Madonna and Child with St....
, then, commissioned in 1601 by a wealthy jurist for his private chapel in the new Carmelite church of Santa Maria della Scala, was rejected by the Carmelites in 1606. Caravaggio's contemporary Giulio Mancini
Giulio Mancini

Giulio Mancini was a noted physician, art collector and writer on a range of subjects.A native of Siena, he came to Rome in 1592 and quickly made a brilliant medical career, becoming personal physician to pope Urban VIII in 1623....
 records that it was rejected because Caravaggio had used a well-known prostitute as his model for the Virgin; Giovanni Baglione
Giovanni Baglione

Giovanni Baglione was an Italian early baroque painter and art historian....
, another contemporary, tells us it was due to Mary's bare legs —a matter of decorum in either case. Caravaggio scholar John Gash suggests that the problem for the Carmelites may have been theological rather than aesthetic, in that Caravaggio's version fails to assert the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary
Assumption of Mary

The Roman Catholic Church teaches as Dogma that the Mary , "having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory." This means that Mary was transported into Heaven with her body and soul united....
, the idea that the Mother of God did not die in any ordinary sense but was assumed into Heaven. The replacement altarpiece commissioned (from one of Caravaggio's most able followers, Carlo Saraceni
Carlo Saraceni

Carlo Saraceni was an Italy early-Baroque painter, whose reputation as a "first-class painter of the second rank" was improved with the publication of a modern monograph in 1968....
), showed the Virgin not dead, as Caravaggio had painted her, but seated and dying; and even this was rejected, and replaced with a work which showed the Virgin not dying, but ascending into Heaven with choirs of angels. In any case, the rejection did not mean that Caravaggio or his paintings were out of favour. The Death of the Virgin was no sooner taken out of the church than it was purchased by the Duke of Mantua, on the advice of Rubens
Peter Paul Rubens

Peter Paul Rubens was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality....
, and later acquired by Charles I of England
Charles I of England

Charles I was List of English monarchs, List of monarchs of Scotland and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his capital punishment on 30 January 1649....
 before entering the French royal collection in 1671.

Amor Victorious
One secular piece from these years is Amor Victorious, painted in 1602 for Vincenzo Giustiniani
Vincenzo Giustiniani

Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani was an aristocratic Italian banker, art collector and intellectual of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, known today largely for the Giustiniani art collection, assembled at Palazzo Giustiniani, by the Pantheon, Rome, and at the family palazzo at Bassano by Vincenzo and his brother Benedetto, and for his p...
, a member of Del Monte's circle. The model was named in a memoir of the early 17th century as "Cecco", the diminutive for Francesco. He is possibly Francesco Boneri, identified with an artist active in the period 1610-1625 and known as Cecco del Caravaggio
Cecco del Caravaggio

Cecco del Caravaggio , is the name used for a Baroque artist working in Rome in the early decades of the 17th century, an important early follower of Caravaggio....
 ('Caravaggio's Cecco'), carrying a bow and arrows and trampling symbols of the warlike and peaceful arts and sciences underfoot. He is unclothed, and it is difficult to accept this grinning urchin as the Roman god Cupid
Cupid

In Roman mythology, Cupid is the god of eroticism love and beauty. He is also known by another one of his Latin names, Amor . He is the son of goddess Aphrodite....
 – as difficult as it was to accept Caravaggio's other semi-clad adolescents as the various angels he painted in his canvases, wearing much the same stage-prop wings. The point, however, is the intense yet ambiguous reality of the work: it is simultaneously Cupid and Cecco, as Caravaggio's Virgins were simultaneously the Mother of Christ and the Roman courtesans who modeled for them.
Alof Louvre

Exile and death (1606–1610)


Caravaggio led a tumultuous life. He was notorious for brawling, even in a time and place when such behavior was commonplace, and the transcripts of his police records and trial proceedings fill several pages. On 29 May 1606, he killed, possibly unintentionally, a young man named Ranuccio Tomassoni. Previously his high-placed patrons had protected him from the consequences of his escapades, but this time they could do nothing. Caravaggio, outlawed, fled to Naples
Naples

Naples is a city in southern Italy, the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples. The city is known for its rich history, art, culture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,800 years old....
. There, outside the jurisdiction of the Roman authorities and protected by the Colonna family, the most famous painter in Rome became the most famous in Naples. His connections with the Colonnas led to a stream of important church commissions, including the Madonna of the Rosary
Madonna of the Rosary (Caravaggio)

The Madonna of the Rosary is a painting finished in 1607 by the Italy Baroque painter Caravaggio. It is housed in the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna....
, and The Seven Works of Mercy
The Seven Works of Mercy (Caravaggio)

The Seven Works of Mercy is an oil painting by Italy painter Caravaggio, circa 1607. It is housed in the church of Pio Monte della Misericordia in Naples....
.

Despite his success in Naples, after only a few months in the city Caravaggio left for Malta
Malta

Malta , officially the Republic of Malta , is a densely populated developed country European microstates microstate in the European Union....
, the headquarters of the Knights of Malta, presumably hoping that the patronage of Alof de Wignacourt
Alof de Wignacourt

Fra Alof de Wignacourt was Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller of John the Apostle from 1601 to 1622. He was of the Tongue of France. His reign was notable for the construction of a number of coastal fortifications , and of the aqueduct that brought water from the plateau above Rabat, Malta to Valletta....
, Grand Master of the Knights, could help him secure a pardon for Tomassoni's death. De Wignacourt proved so impressed at having the famous artist as official painter to the Order that he inducted him as a knight, and the early biographer Bellori records that the artist was well pleased with his success. Major works from his Malta period include a huge Beheading of Saint John the Baptist
The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist (Caravaggio)

The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist is a painting finished in 1608 by the Italy Baroque painter Caravaggio. It is housed in the St. John's Co-Cathedral of Valletta, Malta....
 (the only painting to which he put his signature) and a Portrait of Alof de Wignacourt and his Page
Portrait of Alof de Wignacourt and his Page (Caravaggio)

Portrait of Alof de Wignacourt with his Page is a painting by the Italy master Caravaggio, in the Louvre of Paris.Alof de Wignacourt joined the Order of the Knights of Saint John in 1564, aged seventeen, and distinguished himself the next year at the Siege of Malta , when the Turks took possession of most of the island....
, as well as portraits of other leading knights. Yet by late August 1608 he was arrested and imprisoned. The circumstances surrounding this abrupt change of fortune have long been a matter of speculation, but recent investigation has revealed it to have been the result of yet another brawl, during which the door of a house was battered down and a knight seriously wounded. By December he had been expelled from the Order "as a foul and rotten member."

Michelangelo Caravaggio 006
Before the expulsion Caravaggio had escaped to Sicily
Sicily

Sicily is an Autonomous regions with special statute of Italy. Of all the regions of Italy, Sicily covers the largest land area at 25,708 km? and currently has just over five million inhabitants....
 and the company of his old friend Mario Minniti, who was now married and living in Syracuse
Syracuse, Italy

Syracuse is a historic city in southern Italy, the Capital of the province of Syracuse. The city is noted for its rich Greek history, culture, amphitheatres, architecture and association to Archimedes, playing an important role in ancient times as one of the top powers of the Mediterranean world; it is over 2,700 years old....
. Together they set off on what amounted to a triumphal tour from Syracuse to Messina and on to the island capital, Palermo
Palermo

Palermo is a historic city in southern Italy, the Capital of the autonomous region Sicily and the province of Palermo. The city is noted for its rich history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old....
. In each city Caravaggio continued to win prestigious and well-paid commissions. Among other works from this period are a Burial of St. Lucy
Burial of St. Lucy (Caravaggio)

Burial of Saint Lucy is a painting by the Italy artist Caravaggio. It is located in the Museo Bellomo of Syracuse, Italy, Sicily.Saint Lucy was a local saint of Syracuse, Italy, who had been denounced as a Christian by her former suitor and had died in 304 from the tortures inflicted by local pagan authorities....
, a The Raising of Lazarus
The Raising of Lazarus - Messina (Caravaggio)

The Raising of Lazarus, c. 1609, in the Museo Regionale, Messina, is a painting by the Italy artist Caravaggio .In August 1608 Caravaggio fled from Malta, where he had been imprisoned for an unknown crime, and took refuge in Sicily with his friend, the artist Mario Minniti....
, and an Adoration of the Shepherds
Adoration of the Shepherds (Caravaggio)

The Adoration of the Shepherds is a 1609 painting by the Italy artist Caravaggio.While in Messina, Caravaggio was contracted to paint four scenes of the Passion ....
. His style continued to evolve, showing now friezes of figures isolated against vast empty backgrounds. "His great Sicilian altarpieces isolate their shadowy, pitifully poor figures in vast areas of darkness; they suggest the desperate fears and frailty of man, and at the same time convey, with a new yet desolate tenderness, the beauty of humility and of the meek, who shall inherit the earth." Contemporary reports depict a man whose behaviour was becoming increasingly bizarre, sleeping fully armed and in his clothes, ripping up a painting at a slight word of criticism, mocking the local painters.

After only nine months in Sicily Caravaggio returned to Naples. According to his earliest biographer he was being pursued by enemies while in Sicily and felt it safest to place himself under the protection of the Colonnas until he could secure his pardon from the pope (now Paul V) and return to Rome. In Naples he painted The Denial of Saint Peter
The Denial of Saint Peter (Caravaggio)

The Denial of Saint Peter is a painting finished around 1610 by the Italy painter Caravaggio. It is housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City....
, a final John the Baptist (Borghese)
John the Baptist (Caravaggio)

John the Baptist was the subject of at least eight paintings by the Italy Baroque artist Caravaggio .The story of John the Baptist is told in the Gospels....
, and, his last picture, The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula
The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula (Caravaggio)

The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula , is a painting by the Italy artist Caravaggio . It is owned by the Intesa Sanpaolo Bank.The holy Saint Ursula, accompanied by eleven thousand virgins, was captured by the Huns....
. His style continued to evolve — Saint Ursula
Saint Ursula

Saint Ursula is a Great Britain Christian saint. Her feast day in the Roman Catholic Church is October 21. Because of the lack of sure information about the anonymous group of holy virgins who on some uncertain date were killed at Cologne, their commemoration was omitted from the Roman Catholic calendar of saints for universal liturgical ce...
 is caught in a moment of highest action and drama, as the arrow fired by the king of the Huns
Huns

The Huns were a confederation of Central Asian Eurasian nomads or semi-nomads, who had established an empire in Eurasia. The Huns may have stimulated the Migration Period, a contributing factor in the collapse of the Roman Empire....
 strikes her in the breast, unlike earlier paintings which had all the immobility of the posed models. The brushwork was much freer and more impressionistic. Had Caravaggio lived, something new would have come.
Caravaggio Denial
In Naples an attempt was made on his life, by persons unknown. At first it was reported in Rome that the "famous artist" Caravaggio was dead, but then it was learned that he was alive, but seriously disfigured in the face. He painted a Salome with the Head of John the Baptist (Madrid)
Salome with the Head of John the Baptist (Madrid) (Caravaggio)

Salome with the Head of John the Baptist , c. 1609, is a painting by the Italy master Caravaggio in the Palacio Real, Madrid.The early Caravaggio biographer Giovanni Bellori, writing in 1672, records the artist sending a Salome with the Head of John the Baptist from Naples to the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, Fra Alof de Wig...
, showing his own head on a platter, and sent it to de Wignacourt as a plea for forgiveness. Perhaps at this time he painted also a David with the Head of Goliath
David with the Head of Goliath (Caravaggio)

David with the Head of Goliath is a painting finished around 1609-1610 by the Italy Baroque painter Caravaggio. It is housed in the Galleria Borghese, Rome....
, showing the young David with a strangely sorrowful expression gazing on the severed head of the giant, which is again Caravaggio's. This painting he may have sent to the unscrupulous art-loving cardinal-nephew Scipione Borghese
Scipione Borghese

Cardinal Scipione Borghese was an Italy Renaissance prelate, art collector and member of the noble Borghese family....
, who had the power to grant or withhold pardons.

In the summer of 1610 he took a boat northwards to receive the pardon, which seemed imminent thanks to his powerful Roman friends. With him were three last paintings, gifts for Cardinal Scipione. What happened next is the subject of much confusion and conjecture. The bare facts are that on 28 July an anonymous avviso (private newsletter) from Rome to the ducal court of Urbino reported that Caravaggio was dead. Three days later another avviso said that he had died of fever. These were the earliest, brief accounts of his death, which later underwent much elaboration. No body was found. A poet friend of the artist later gave 18 July as the date of death, and a recent researcher claims to have discovered a death notice showing that the artist died on that day of a fever in Porto Ercole, near Grosseto
Grosseto

Grosseto is a town and comune in the central Italy region of Tuscany, the capital of the Province of Grosseto. The city lies at 14 km from the Tyrrhenian Sea, in the Maremma, at the centre of an alluvional plain, at the Ombrone river....
 in Tuscany
Tuscany

Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of and a population of about 3.6 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence.Tuscany is known for its landscapes and its artistic legacy....
.

As an artist

Takingofchrist

The birth of Baroque

Caravaggio "put the oscuro (shadows) into chiaroscuro
Chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro is a term in art for a contrast between light and dark. The term is usually applied to bold contrasts affecting a whole composition, but is also more technically used by artists and art historians for the use of effects representing contrasts of light, not necessarily strong, to achieve a sense of volume in modeling three-di...
." Chiaroscuro was practiced long before he came on the scene, but it was Caravaggio who made the technique definitive, darkening the shadows and transfixing the subject in a blinding shaft of light. With this came the acute observation of physical and psychological reality which formed the ground both for his immense popularity and for his frequent problems with his religious commissions. He worked at great speed, from live models, scoring basic guides directly onto the canvas with the end of the brush handle. The approach was anathema to the skilled artists of his day, who decried his refusal to work from drawings and to idealise his figures. Yet the models were basic to his realism. Some have been identified, including Mario Minniti
Mario Minniti

Mario Minniti was an Italy artist active in Sicily after 1606.Born in Syracuse, Italy, Sicily, he arrived in Rome in 1593, where he became the friend, collaborator and model of the key Baroque painter Caravaggio ....
 and Francesco Boneri, both fellow artists, Mario appearing as various figures in the early secular works, the young Francesco as a succession of angels, Baptists and Davids in the later canvasses. His female models include Fillide Melandroni
Portrait of a Courtesan (Caravaggio)

Portrait of a Courtesan was a painting by the Baroque master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Painted between 1597 and 1599, it was destroyed in Berlin in 1945 and is known only from photographs....
, Anna Bianchini
Martha and Mary Magdalene (Caravaggio)

Martha and Mary Magdalene is a painting by the Italy Baroque master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. It is held in the Detroit Institute of Arts....
, and Maddalena Antognetti (the "Lena" mentioned in court documents of the "artichoke" case as Caravaggio's concubine), all well-known prostitutes, who appear as female religious figures including the Virgin and various saints. Caravaggio himself appears in several paintings, his final self-portrait being as the witness on the far right to the Martyrdom of Saint Ursula
The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula (Caravaggio)

The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula , is a painting by the Italy artist Caravaggio . It is owned by the Intesa Sanpaolo Bank.The holy Saint Ursula, accompanied by eleven thousand virgins, was captured by the Huns....
.

Caravaggio
Caravaggio had a noteworthy ability to express in one scene of unsurpassed vividness the passing of a crucial moment. The Supper at Emmaus
Supper at Emmaus (London) (Caravaggio)

The Supper at Emmaus is a painting by the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio, executed in 1601. Originally painted for the Roman nobleman Ciriaco Mattei, and later purchased by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, it is now in the National Gallery, London in London....
 depicts the recognition of Christ by his disciples: a moment before he is a fellow traveler, mourning the passing of the Messiah, as he never ceases to be to the inn-keeper's eyes, the second after, he is the Saviour. In The Calling of St Matthew
The Calling of St Matthew (Caravaggio)

The Calling of Saint Matthew is a masterpiece by Caravaggio completed in 1599-1600 for the Contarelli Chapel in the church of the French congregation, San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome....
, the hand of the Saint points to himself as if he were saying "who, me?", while his eyes, fixed upon the figure of Christ, have already said, "Yes, I will follow you". With The Resurrection of Lazarus, he goes a step further, giving us a glimpse of the actual physical process of resurrection. The body of Lazarus is still in the throes of rigor mortis, but his hand, facing and recognizing that of Christ, is alive. Other major Baroque artists would travel the same path, for example Bernini, fascinated with themes from Ovid's Metamorphoses
Metamorphoses (poem)

The Metamorphoses by the Ancient Rome poet Ovid is a Narrative poetry in fifteen books that describes the Creation myth and history of the world....
.

The Caravaggisti

Judith Beheading Holofernes By Caravaggio
The installation of the St. Matthew paintings in the Contarelli Chapel had an immediate impact among the younger artists in Rome, and Caravaggism became the cutting edge for every ambitious young painter. The first Caravaggisti included Giovanni Baglione
Giovanni Baglione

Giovanni Baglione was an Italian early baroque painter and art historian....
 (although his Caravaggio phase was short-lived) and Orazio Gentileschi
Orazio Gentileschi

Orazio Lomi Gentileschi was an Italy Baroque painter, one of more important painters influenced by Caravaggio . He was the father of the painter Artemisia Gentileschi....
. In the next generation there were Carlo Saraceni
Carlo Saraceni

Carlo Saraceni was an Italy early-Baroque painter, whose reputation as a "first-class painter of the second rank" was improved with the publication of a modern monograph in 1968....
, Bartolomeo Manfredi
Bartolomeo Manfredi

Bartolomeo Manfredi was an Italy painter, a leading member of the Caravaggisti of the early 16th century.Manfredi was born in Ostiano, near Cremona....
 and Orazio Borgianni
Orazio Borgianni

Orazio Borgianni was an Italy painter and etcher of the Mannerism and early-baroque periods. He was the stepbrother of the sculptor and architect Giulio Lasso....
. Gentileschi, despite being considerably older, was the only one of these artists to live much beyond 1620, and ended up as court painter to Charles I in England. His daughter Artemisia Gentileschi
Artemisia Gentileschi

Artemisia Gentileschi was an Italy Early Baroque painter, today considered one of the most accomplished painters in the generation influenced by Michelangelo Merisi ....
 was also close to Caravaggio, and one of the most gifted of the movement. Yet in Rome and in Italy it was not Caravaggio, but the influence of Annibale Carracci
Annibale Carracci

Annibale Carracci was an Italian Baroque Painting....
, blending elements from the High Renaissance
High Renaissance

The High Renaissance, in the history of art, denotes the culmination of the art of the Italian Renaissance between 1450 and 1527. Because Pope Julius II patronized many artists during this time, the movement was centered in Rome; it had previously been centered in Florence....
 and Lombard realism, which ultimately triumphed.

Caravaggio's brief stay in Naples produced a notable school of Neapolitan Caravaggisti, including Battistello Caracciolo
Battistello Caracciolo

Giovanni Battista Caracciolo , was an Italy artist and important Naples follower of Caravaggio.Caracciolo was born in Naples. His initial training was with Francesco Imparato....
 and Carlo Sellitto
Carlo Sellitto

Carlo Sellitto was an Italy painter of the Baroque period.One of the most gifted followers of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio , Sellitto played an important role in the spread of Caravaggism to Naples and in the development away from Late Mannerism to a greater naturalism....
. The Caravaggisti movement there ended with a terrible outbreak of plague in 1656, but the Spanish connection – Naples was a possession of Spain – was instrumental in forming the important Spanish branch of his influence.

A group of Catholic artists from Utrecht
Utrecht (city)

Utrecht city and municipality is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands province of Utrecht . It is located in the North-Eastern end of the Randstad, and is the fourth largest city of the Netherlands, with a population of 300,030....
, the "Utrecht Caravaggisti"
Utrecht School

Utrecht Caravaggism refers to those Baroque artists, all distinctly influenced by the art of Caravaggio, who were active mostly in the Netherlands city of Utrecht during the early part of the seventeenth century....
, travelled to Rome as students in the first years of the 17th century and were profoundly influenced by the work of Caravaggio, as Bellori describes. On their return to the north this trend had a short-lived but influential flowering in the 1620s among painters like Hendrick ter Brugghen
Hendrick ter Brugghen

Hendrick Jansz ter Brugghen, or Terbrugghen, was a Netherlands painter, and a leading member of the Dutch followers of Caravaggio — the so-called Dutch Caravaggio#The Caravaggisti....
, Gerrit van Honthorst, Andries Both
Andries Both

Andries Both Dutch genre painting, one of the bamboccianti, and brother of Jan Dirksz Both.Both was the son of a glass painter, and studied under Abraham Bloemaert....
 and Dirck van Baburen
Dirck van Baburen

Dirck Jaspersz. van Baburen was a Netherlands Painting associated with the Utrecht School....
. In the following generation the effects of Caravaggio, although attenuated, are to be seen in the work of Rubens
Peter Paul Rubens

Peter Paul Rubens was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality....
 (who purchased one of his paintings for the Gonzaga of Mantua and painted a copy of the Entombment of Christ
The Entombment of Christ (Caravaggio)

The Entombment of Christ is a painting by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. It was painted for Santa Maria in Vallicella, a church built for the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri, and adjacent to the buildings of the order....
), Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Velázquez
Diego Velázquez

Diego Rodr?guez de Silva y Vel?zquez was a Spain painting who was the leading artist in the Noble court of King Philip IV of Spain. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary baroque period, important as a portrait painting....
, the last of whom presumably saw his work during his various sojourns in Italy.

Death and rebirth of a reputation

Michelangelo Caravaggio 052
Caravaggio's fame scarcely survived his death. His innovations inspired the Baroque, but the Baroque took the drama of his chiaroscuro without the psychological realism. While he directly influenced the style of the artists mentioned above, and, at a distance, the Frenchmen Georges de La Tour
Georges de La Tour

Georges de La Tour was a Painting, who spent most of his working life in the Duchy of Lorraine, which became part of France the year before his death....
 and Simon Vouet
Simon Vouet

Simon Vouet was a France painter and draftsman, who helped introduce the Italian Baroque style to France.A French contemporary, lacking the term "Baroque", said, "In his time the art of painting began to be practiced here in a nobler and more beautiful way than ever before," and the allegory of "Riches" demonstrates a new heroic sen...
, and the Spaniard Giuseppe Ribera, within a few decades his works were being ascribed to less scandalous artists, or simply overlooked. The Baroque, to which he contributed so much, had evolved, and fashions had changed, but perhaps more pertinently Caravaggio never established a workshop as the Carracci's did, and thus had no school to spread his techniques. Nor did he ever set out his underlying philosophical approach to art, the psychological realism which can only be deduced from his surviving work. Thus his reputation was doubly vulnerable to the critical demolition-jobs done by two of his earliest biographers, Giovanni Baglione
Giovanni Baglione

Giovanni Baglione was an Italian early baroque painter and art historian....
, a rival painter with a personal vendetta, and the influential 17th century critic Giovan Bellori, who had not known him but was under the influence of the French Classicist Poussin
Poussin

Poussin refers to:*Nicolas Poussin*Poussin *Th?odore Poussin...
, who had not known him either but hated his work.

In the 1920s art critic Roberto Longhi
Fondazione Roberto Longhi

Fondazione Roberto Longhi, Via Benedetto Fortini, Florence, is an institute established by Italy scholar Roberto Longhi, who in 1971 left his library, photo library and collection of art "for the benefit of future generations"....
 brought Caravaggio's name once more to the foreground, and placed him in the European tradition: "Ribera, Vermeer, La Tour and Rembrandt could never have existed without him. And the art of Delacroix
Delacroix

Delacroix derives from de la Croix . It may refer to:In people:* Charles-Fran?ois Delacroix, French ambassador to the Netherlands* Eug?ne Delacroix, a French Romantic artist...
, Courbet
Courbet

Courbet may refer to*Gustave Courbet, French painter*Am?d?e Courbet, French admiral*French battleship Courbet *Courbet , French frigate...
 and Manet
Manet

Manet is ?douard Manet, a 19th-century French painter.MANET is a mobile ad hoc network, a self-configuring mobile wireless network....
 would have been utterly different". The influential Bernard Berenson
Bernard Berenson

Bernard Berenson was an USA art historian specializing in the Renaissance. He was a major figure in establishing the market for paintings by the "Old Masters"....
 agreed: "With the exception of Michelangelo
Michelangelo

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance Painting, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer....
, no other Italian painter exercised so great an influence."

Legacy


Michelangelo Caravaggio 021
Many large museums of art, for example those in Detroit and New York
New York

The State of New York is a U.S. state in the Mid-Atlantic States and Northeastern United States regions of the United States and is the nation's List of U.S....
, contain rooms where dozens of paintings by as many artists display the characteristic look of the work of Caravaggio — nighttime setting, dramatic lighting, ordinary people used as models, honest description from nature. In modern times, painters like the Norwegian Odd Nerdrum
Odd Nerdrum

'Odd Nerdrum' , in Sweden, is a Norway figurative painting. The style and themes in Nerdrum's work, based on anecdote and narrative place him in direct conflict with the abstract art and conceptual art considered acceptable in much of his native Norway....
 and the Hungarian Tibor Csernus make no secret of their attempts to emulate and update him, and the contemporary American artist Doug Ohlson pays homage to Caravaggio's influence on his own work. Filmmaker Derek Jarman
Derek Jarman

Derek Jarman was an England film director, stage designer, artist, and writer....
 turned to the Caravaggio legend when creating his movie Caravaggio
Caravaggio (film)

Caravaggio is a Cinema of the United Kingdom film directed by Derek Jarman. The film is a fictionalized re-telling of the life of Baroque painter Michelangelo Merisi....
; and Dutch art forger Han van Meegeren
Han van Meegeren

Han van Meegeren , born Henricus Antonius van Meegeren, was a Dutch Painting and portraitist, and is considered to be one of the most ingenious art forgers of the 20th century....
 used genuine Caravaggios when creating his ersatz Old Masters.

Only about 80 works by Caravaggio survive. One, The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew
The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew

The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew is a painting by the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio. It takes its theme from a passage in the Gospel of Matthew describing the moment when Jesus called the two brothers Saint Peter ? later known as Peter ? and Saint Andrew, to be his disciples:...
, was recently authenticated and restored. It had been in storage in Hampton Court, mislabeled as a copy. At least a couple of his paintings have been or may have been lost in recent times. Richard Francis Burton
Richard Francis Burton

Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton Order of St Michael and St George Royal Geographic Society was an English explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, ethnologist, linguistics, poet, hypnotism, fencing and diplomat....
 writes of a "picture of St. Rosario (in the museum of the Grand Duke of Tuscany), showing a circle of thirty men turpiter ligati" which is not known to have survived. Furthermore, the rejected version of The Inspiration of St. Matthew painting intended for the Contarelli Chapel
Contarelli Chapel

The Contarelli Chapel, within the church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, is famous for housing three paintings on the theme of Saint Matthew the Evangelist by the Baroque master Caravaggio....
 in San Luigi dei Francesi
San Luigi dei Francesi

San Luigi dei Francesi is a Churches of Rome Rome, not far from Piazza Navona.The church was designed by Giacomo della Porta and built by Domenico Fontana between 1518 and 1589: the works could be completed through the personal intervention of Catherine de' Medici, who donated it some possessions in the area....
 in Rome
Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
 was destroyed during the bombing of Dresden
Bombing of Dresden in World War II

The Bombing of Dresden by the British Royal Air Force and United States Army Air Force between 13 February and 15 February 1945, 12 weeks before the German Instrument of Surrender of the Armed Forces of Nazi Germany, remains one of the most controversial Allied actions of the World War II....
, though there are black and white photographs of the work.

In recent years art critics and academics have debated the inference of homoeroticism
Homoeroticism

Homoeroticism refers to the representation of same-sex love and desire, most especially as it is depicted or manifested in the visual arts and literature....
 within Caravaggio's art alongside questions of his own sexuality
Sexuality

Sexuality may refer to:*Sexuality or sex*Sexuality or gender identity*Sexuality or sexual orientation*Animal sexuality or animal sexual behaviour...
. No consensus has been reached and any evidence is circumstantial and open to interpretation. Caravaggio may, or may not, have tailored some of his earlier commissions to an openly homosexual subculture in Rome
Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
 that was personified in the figure Cardinal Del Monte. Despite this, interest has grown in Caravaggio as a 'gay
Gay

The term gay was originally used, until well into the mid-20th century, primarily to refer to feelings of being "carefree," "happy," or "bright and showy"; it had also come to acquire some connotations of "immorality" as early as 1637....
 icon' in recent years. Advocates include the American poet Thom Gunn
Thom Gunn

Thom Gunn was an Anglo-American poet. He was born Thomson William Gunn in Gravesend, Kent, Kent, the son of Bert Gunn. In his youth, he attended University College School in Hampstead, London....
 who refers to the sensuousness of paintings in his poem, In Santa Maria del Popolo, as well as the British director Derek Jarman
Derek Jarman

Derek Jarman was an England film director, stage designer, artist, and writer....
 in his experimental film
Caravaggio (film)

Caravaggio is a Cinema of the United Kingdom film directed by Derek Jarman. The film is a fictionalized re-telling of the life of Baroque painter Michelangelo Merisi....
.

Chronology of major works


See also

  • History of painting
    History of painting

    The history of painting reaches back in time to artifacts from pre-historic humans, and spans all cultures, that represents a continuous, though disrupted, tradition from Antiquity....
  • Western painting
    Western painting

    The history of Western painting represents a continuous, though disrupted, tradition from classical antiquity. Until the mid 19th century it was primarily concerned with Representational art and Classical antiquity modes of production, after which time more Modern art, Abstract art and Conceptual art forms gained favor....


Footnotes


Primary sources

The main primary sources for Caravaggio's life are:
  • Giulio Mancini's comments on Caravggio in Considerazioni sulla pittura, c.1617-1621
  • Giovanni Baglione's Le vite de' pittori, 1642
  • Giovanni Pietro Bellori's Le Vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti moderni, 1672
All have been reprinted in Howard Hibbard's "Caravaggio" and in the appendices to Catherine Puglisi's "Caravaggio", while Baglione's biography is available online (see External links section).

Secondary sources

  • John Denison Champlin and Charles Callahan Perkins, Ed. Cyclopedia of Painters and Paintings
  • Charles Scribner's Sons, New York (1885), p. 241 (available at the Harvard's Fogg Museum Library and scanned on Google Books)
  • John Spike
    John Spike

    John Thomas Spike is an American art historian, author, and consultant, specializing in the Italian Renaissance and Baroque periods. He is also a prominent contemporary art critic and past director of the Florence Biennale....
    , with assistance from Michèle Kahn Spike
    Michèle Kahn Spike

    Mich?le Kahn Spike is an American lawyer, historian, and prominent lay figure in the Episcopal Church in the United States of America church. Since the late 1980s she has lived in Florence, Italy together with her husband, noted art historian John Spike....
    , Caravaggio with Catalogue of Paintings on CD-ROM, Abbeville Press, New York (2001) ISBN 978-0-7892-0639-8
  • Pietro Koch, Caravaggio - The Painter of Blood and Darkness, Gunther Edition, (Rome - 2004)
  • John Gash, Caravaggio, Chaucer Press, (2004) ISBN 1904449220)
  • Rosa Giorgi, Caravaggio: Master of light and dark - his life in paintings, Dorling Kindersley (1999) ISBN 978-0-7894-4138-6
  • Howard Hibbard, Caravaggio (1983) ISBN 978-0-06-433322-1
  • Harris, Ann Sutherland. Seventeenth-century Art & Architecture, Laurence King Publishing (2004), ISBN 1856694151.
  • Helen Langdon, Caravaggio: A Life, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999 (original UK edition 1998) ISBN 978-0-374-11894-5
  • Gilles Lambert, Caravaggio, Taschen, (2000) ISBN 978-3-8228-6305-3
  • Alfred Moir, The Italian Followers of Caravaggio, Harvard University Press (1967) (ISBN not available)
  • Catherine Puglisi, Caravaggio, Phaidon (1998) ISBN 978-0-7148-3966-0
  • Peter Robb
    Peter Robb

    Peter Robb is an Australian author. Robb spent his formative years in both Australia and New Zealand, and between 1978 and 1992 he spent most of his time in Naples and southern Italy, interspersed with sojourns in Brazil....
    , M
    M (book)

    M is the title of a book by Australian author Peter Robb about the Italy painter Caravaggio. First published in 1998 in Australia by Duffy & Snellgrove, the book provoked controversy on its being published in Britain in 2000....
    , Duffy & Snellgrove, 2003 amended edition (original edition 1998) ISBN 978-1-876631-79-6
  • Maurizio Calvesi, Caravaggio, Art Dossier 1986, Giunti Editori (1986) (ISBN not available)
  • Walter Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1955
  • Michael Kitson
    Michael Kitson

    Michael William Lely Kitson was an England art history....
    , The Complete Paintings of Caravaggio (London, Abrams, 1967, new edition Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1969 and 1986, ISBN 978-0297761082)


External links

Biography


Articles and essays
  • Rembrandt with Caravaggio.


Art works
  • 175 works by Caravaggio


Podcasts


Music