Caravaggio (1571 - 1610) was an Italian painter whose revolutionary naturalism and dramatic handling of light transformed European art at the turn of the 17th century. [1] Working chiefly in Rome, Naples, Malta and Sicily, he depicted sacred subjects with unprecedented realism and stark chiaroscuro, founding a manner that shaped the Baroque age. [2] His short, turbulent life ended in exile in 1610 after he fled a murder charge, yet his influence on later painters proved profound. [3]
Early life and training
Michelangelo Merisi was born on 29 September 1571, most likely in Milan, then the capital of the Duchy of Milan, and took his professional name from Caravaggio, the Lombard town where his family had roots. [1] Around 1584 he was apprenticed in Milan to Simone Peterzano, a painter who claimed descent from the school of Titian, giving the young artist an early grounding in the Venetian tradition of colour and observation. [2] Orphaned in his teens and left largely to his own devices, he moved to Rome in the early 1590s, arriving poor and at first painting still-life details and minor figures for other masters. [1]
Rome and early success
In Rome Caravaggio won the patronage of Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, who housed him and helped secure commissions. [2] His early canvases, among them sensuous images of youths with fruit and flowers, already showed the sharp observation and immediacy that set him apart from the prevailing Mannerist style. [3] He rejected idealized convention, painting saints and biblical figures with the weathered faces, dirty feet and ordinary bodies of the Roman street, a directness that both dazzled and scandalized his contemporaries. [1]
Major commissions
His reputation was established by his first great public cycle, the scenes from the life of Saint Matthew painted for the Contarelli Chapel in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi around 1599 to 1600. [2] Pictures such as the Calling of Saint Matthew display his signature tenebrism, in which figures emerge from deep shadow into a raking, theatrical light. [3] Over the following years he produced a run of powerful altarpieces whose stark drama and emotional immediacy made him the most talked-about painter in Rome, even as certain works were refused by clergy who judged his realism indecorous. [1]
Exile and final years
Caravaggio's violent temper repeatedly brought him before the courts, and in 1606 he killed a man, Ranuccio Tomassoni, in a brawl and fled Rome with a price on his head. [1] He worked in Naples, then travelled to Malta, where he was received into the Sovereign Military Order of Malta as a knight before a further quarrel led to his imprisonment and expulsion. [2] Continuing to paint in Sicily and Naples while seeking a papal pardon, he died in 1610 at Porto Ercole on the Tuscan coast, aged 38, under circumstances that remain uncertain. [1]
Legacy
Though he left no formal workshop or direct pupils, Caravaggio's dramatic naturalism spread quickly across Europe, giving rise to a generation of imitators known as the Caravaggisti and helping to define the Baroque. [3] Painters including Artemisia Gentileschi, Georges de La Tour, Rubens and Rembrandt absorbed his handling of light, and after long critical neglect he is today regarded as one of the founders of modern European painting. [2]
