Caravaggio

Michelangelo Merisi (b. 1571–d. 1610) was an Italian painter noted for formulating a distinctive style that combined direct observation, a dramatic application of light and shadow, and a plebeian approach to figures, which had a formative influence on Baroque style both south and north of the Alps. He was the firstborn son of Fermo Merisi, a master mason, and Lucia Aratori. Although baptized (and thus born) in Milan, Michelangelo Merisi was generally known as Caravaggio, the town from which his family originated. By 1592, Caravaggio had lost both his parents, and had supposedly completed a four-year apprenticeship with Simone Peterzano in Milan. Caravaggio is first documented in Rome in 1597, but scholars largely agree that the young artist arrived in Rome in the fall of 1592, eager to make a name for himself as an artist. Although the chronology and accounts of Caravaggio’s early years in Rome provided by his biographers are contradictory, it seems that the artist began his career producing secular works with the intention to sell them on the market to potential buyers, rather than by commission. He soon garnered the patronage, lodging, and protection of key Roman collectors and cardinal-patrons, most important among them, Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte. It was during Caravaggio’s years in the Del Monte household (1595–1602) that the artist received his first public commission to decorate the Contarelli Chapel in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi (1599–1602). It was in his public debut that Caravaggio developed his signature style. His use of tenebrism (dramatic contrasts of light and shadow), in particular, distanced his work from the prevailing mannerist and classical style exhibited by Caravaggio’s near contemporaries, the Cavaliere d’Arpino and Annibale Carracci. Although Caravaggio’s biographers suggest that his new, revolutionary style did not please his patrons and the learned public, purportedly resulting in rejected works, Caravaggio completed key public commissions, including the laterals in the Cerasi Chapel, and numerous altarpieces. Even in the cases of supposed rejected altarpieces, these works were appropriated by important Roman patrons, including the Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani. The murder of Ranuccio Tommasoni in 1606, forced the artist into exile in southern Italy, particularly Naples, Sicily, and Malta. Significantly, Caravaggio continued to receive commissions and produced a significant body of work even during his exile until his death in Porto Ercole in 1610, seemingly en route to Rome where a pardon from Pope Paul V was anticipated.

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