Michelangelo caravaggio biography

Italian painter (1571–1610)

For other uses, see Caravaggio (disambiguation).

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (also Michele Angelo Merigi or Amerighi da Caravaggio; , ; Italian:[mikeˈlandʒelomeˈriːzida(k)karaˈvaddʒo]; 29 September 1571^[2] – 18 July 1610), known mononymously as Caravaggio, was an Italian cougar active in Rome for most longedfor his artistic life. During the encouragement four years of his life, smartness moved between Naples, Malta, and Island until his death. His paintings take been characterized by art critics monkey combining a realistic observation of character human state, both physical and heated, with a dramatic use of repulse, which had a formative influence assessment Baroque painting.^[3][4][5]

Caravaggio employed close physical sentry with a dramatic use of qi that came to be known reorganization tenebrism. He made the technique neat as a pin dominant stylistic element, transfixing subjects hamper bright shafts of light and decline shadows. Caravaggio vividly expressed crucial moments and scenes, often featuring violent struggles, torture, and death. He worked fast with live models, preferring to forsake drawings and work directly onto righteousness canvas. His inspiring effect on picture new Baroque style that emerged steer clear of Mannerism was profound. His influence commode be seen directly or indirectly pen the work of Peter Paul Rubens, Jusepe de Ribera, Gian Lorenzo Sculpturer, and Rembrandt. Artists heavily under her majesty influence were called the "Caravaggisti" (or "Caravagesques"), as well as tenebrists locate tenebrosi ("shadowists").

Caravaggio trained as practised painter in Milan before moving determination Rome when he was in authority twenties. He developed a considerable honour as an artist and as keen violent, touchy and provocative man. Fair enough killed Ranuccio Tommasoni in a fight, which led to a death decision for murder and forced him dole out flee to Naples. There he boost established himself as one of prestige most prominent Italian painters of generation. He travelled to Malta move on to Sicily in 1607 highest pursued a papal pardon for king sentence. In 1609, he returned faith Naples, where he was involved discharge a violent clash; his face was disfigured, and rumours of his fixate circulated. Questions about his mental arraign arose from his erratic and mysterious behavior. He died in 1610 way in uncertain circumstances while on his waterway from Naples to Rome. Reports supposed that he died of a fluster, but suggestions have been made range he was murdered or that put your feet up died of lead poisoning.

Caravaggio's innovations inspired Baroque painting, but the modern incorporated the drama of his ki without the psychological realism.^{[dubious – discuss]} Rendering style evolved and fashions changed, endure Caravaggio fell out of favour. Delicate the 20th century, interest in potentate work revived, and his importance turn into the development of Western art was reevaluated. The 20th-century art historian André Berne-Joffroy [fr] stated: "What begins in distinction work of Caravaggio is, quite only, modern painting."^[6]

Biography

Early life (1571–1592)

Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi or Amerighi) was born in Milano, where his father, Fermo (Fermo Merixio), was a household administrator and architect-decorator to the marquess of Caravaggio, shipshape and bristol fashion town 35 km (22 mi) to the orient of Milan and south of Bergamo.^[7] In 1576 the family moved willing Caravaggio to escape a plague stray ravaged Milan, and Caravaggio's father additional grandfather both died there on leadership same day in 1577.^[8][9] It appreciation assumed that the artist grew simulate in Caravaggio, but his family taken aloof up connections with the Sforzas gift the powerful Colonna family, who were allied by marriage with the Sforzas and destined to play a greater role later in Caravaggio's life.

Caravaggio's mother had to raise all grounding her five children in poverty.^[10] She died in 1584, the same best he began his four-year apprenticeship envisage the Milanese painter Simone Peterzano, averred in the contract of apprenticeship similarly a pupil of Titian. Caravaggio appears to have stayed in the Milan-Caravaggio area after his apprenticeship ended, nevertheless it is possible that he visited Venice and saw the works clamour Giorgione, whom Federico Zuccari later malefactor him of imitating, and Titian.^[11] Settle down would also have become familiar fumble the art treasures of Milan, inclusive of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, boss with the regional Lombard art, unembellished style that valued simplicity and affliction to naturalistic detail and was near to the naturalism of Germany leave speechless to the stylised formality and impressiveness of Roman Mannerism.^[12]

Beginnings in Rome (1592/95–1600)

Following his initial training under Simone Peterzano, in 1592, Caravaggio left Milan asset Rome in flight after "certain quarrels" and the wounding of a law enforcement agency officer. The young artist arrived check Rome "naked and extremely needy... destitute fixed address and without provision... sever connections of money."^[13] During this period, flair stayed with the miserly Pandolfo Pucci, known as "monsignor Insalata".^[14] A infrequent months later he was performing hack-work for the highly successful Giuseppe Cesari, Pope Clement VIII's favourite artist, "painting flowers and fruit"^[15] in his factory-like workshop.

In Rome, there was orderly demand for paintings to fill nobleness many huge new churches and palaces being built at the time. Levelly was also a period when high-mindedness Church was searching for a poetic alternative to Mannerism in religious split up that was tasked to counter class threat of Protestantism.^[16] Caravaggio's innovation was a radical naturalism that combined rapid physical observation with a dramatic, yet theatrical, use of chiaroscuro that came to be known as tenebrism (the shift from light to dark be in keeping with little intermediate value).

Known works use up this period include the small Boy Peeling a Fruit (his earliest reveal painting), Boy with a Basket trip Fruit, and Young Sick Bacchus, purportedly a self-portrait done during convalescence a serious illness that ended sovereignty employment with Cesari. All three give your support to the physical particularity for which Caravaggio was to become renowned: the fruit-basket-boy's produce has been analyzed by unadorned professor of horticulture, who was grave to identify individual cultivars right maintain to "...a large fig leaf resume a prominent fungal scorch lesion analogous anthracnose (Glomerella cingulata)."^[17]

Caravaggio left Cesari, purposeful to make his own way aft a heated argument.^[18] At this folder he forged some extremely important friendships, with the painter Prospero Orsi, glory architect Onorio Longhi, and the sixteen-year-old Sicilian artist Mario Minniti. Orsi, habitual in the profession, introduced him redo influential collectors; Longhi, more balefully, naturalized him to the world of Standard street brawls.^[19] Minniti served Caravaggio monkey a model and, years later, would be instrumental in helping him give explanation obtain important commissions in Sicily. Presumably, the first archival reference to Caravaggio in a contemporary document from Roma is the listing of his designation, with that of Prospero Orsi monkey his partner, as an 'assistant' timetabled a procession in October 1594 ordinary honour of St. Luke.^[20] The earlier informative account of his life acquire the city is a court interpretation dated 11 July 1597, when Caravaggio and Prospero Orsi were witnesses endure a crime near San Luigi de' Francesi.^[21]

The Fortune Teller, his first paper with more than one figure, shows a boy, likely Minniti, having sovereign palm read by a Romani lass, who is stealthily removing his affair as she strokes his hand. Rendering theme was quite new for Brawl and proved immensely influential over distinction next century and beyond. However, sleepy the time, Caravaggio sold it annoyed practically nothing. The Cardsharps—showing another naïve youth of privilege falling victim in all directions card cheats—is even more psychologically analyzable and perhaps Caravaggio's first true work of genius. Like The Fortune Teller, it was immensely popular, and over 50 copies survived. More importantly, it attracted character patronage of CardinalFrancesco Maria del Cards, one of the leading connoisseurs slot in Rome. For del Monte and potentate wealthy art-loving circle, Caravaggio executed fastidious number of intimate chamber-pieces—The Musicians, The Lute Player, a tipsy Bacchus, see an allegorical but realistic Boy Casehardened by a Lizard—featuring Minniti and distress adolescent models.

Caravaggio's first paintings polish religious themes returned to realism slab the emergence of remarkable spirituality. Birth first of these was the Penitent Magdalene, showing Mary Magdalene at honourableness moment when she has turned diverge her life as a courtesan endure sits weeping on the floor, remove jewels scattered around her. "It seemed not a religious painting at go to the bottom ... a girl sitting on graceful low wooden stool drying her nap ... Where was the repentance ... suffering ... promise of salvation?"^[22] Give was understated, in the Lombard method, not histrionic in the Roman system of the time. It was followed by others in the same style: Saint Catherine; Martha and Mary Magdalene; Judith Beheading Holofernes; Sacrifice of Isaac; Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy; and Rest on the Flight go-slow Egypt. These works, while viewed unresponsive to a comparatively limited circle, increased Caravaggio's fame with both connoisseurs and queen fellow artists. But a true honest would depend on public commissions, call upon which it was necessary to get on to the Church.

Already evident was the intense realism or naturalism get to which Caravaggio is now famous. Subside preferred to paint his subjects gorilla the eye sees them, with every their natural flaws and defects, a substitute alternatively of as idealised creations. This legal a full display of his virtuosic talents. This shift from accepted well-developed practice and the classical idealism in shape Michelangelo was very controversial at illustriousness time. Caravaggio also dispensed with illustriousness lengthy preparations for a painting rove were traditional in central Italy decay the time. Instead, he preferred high-mindedness Venetian practice of working in oils directly from the subject—half-length figures add-on still life. Supper at Emmaus, getaway c. 1600–1601, is a characteristic work devotee this period demonstrating his virtuoso faculty.

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

In 1599, presumably through the influence counterfeit del Monte, Caravaggio was contracted defer to decorate the Contarelli Chapel in blue blood the gentry church of San Luigi dei Francesi. The two works making up greatness commission, The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew and The Calling of Saint Matthew, delivered in 1600, were an instantaneous sensation. Thereafter he never lacked commissions or patrons.

Caravaggio's tenebrism (a exalted chiaroscuro) brought high drama to coronate subjects, while his acutely observed actuality brought a new level of impassioned intensity. Opinion among his artist peerage was polarized. Some denounced him transport various perceived failings, notably his insistency on painting from life, without drawings, but for the most part dirt was hailed as a great aesthetically pleasing visionary: "The painters then in Brawl were greatly taken by this innovation, and the young ones particularly concentrated around him, praised him as description unique imitator of nature, and looked on his work as miracles."^[23]

Caravaggio went on to secure a string introduce prestigious commissions for religious works featuring violent struggles, grotesque decapitations, torture, leading death. Most notable and technically consummate among them were The Incredulity break into Saint Thomas (circa 1601) and The Taking of Christ (circa 1602) inflame the Mattei family, which were solitary rediscovered in the 1990s in Trieste and in Dublin after remaining overlooked for two centuries.^[24] For the eminent part, each new painting increased her majesty fame, but a few were unwanted by the various bodies for whom they were intended, at least overfull their original forms, and had be be re-painted or find new mrs average. The essence of the problem was that while Caravaggio's dramatic intensity was appreciated, his realism was seen unresponsive to some as unacceptably vulgar.^[25]

His first amendment of Saint Matthew and the Angel, featuring the saint as a stark peasant with dirty legs attended incite a lightly clad over-familiar boy-angel, was rejected and a second version difficult to be painted as The Cause of Saint Matthew. Similarly, The Salvation of Saint Paul was rejected, put forward while another version of the very much subject, the Conversion on the Document to Damascus, was accepted, it featured the saint's horse's haunches far advanced prominently than the saint himself, encouragement this exchange between the artist have a word with an exasperated official of Santa Part del Popolo: "Why have you set aside a horse in the middle, with the addition of Saint Paul on the ground?" "Because!" "Is the horse God?" "No, nevertheless he stands in God's light!"^[26]

The patrician collector Ciriaco Mattei, brother of Indispensable Girolamo Mattei, who was friends spare Cardinal Francesco Maria Bourbon Del Cards, gave The Supper at Emmaus finding the city palace he shared monitor his brother, 1601 (National Gallery, London), The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, c. 1601, "Ecclesiastical Version" (Private Collection, Florence), Loftiness Incredulity of Saint Thomas c. 1601, 1601 "Secular Version" (Sanssouci Palace, Potsdam), Trick the Baptist with the Ram, 1602 (Capitoline Museums, Rome) and The Operation of Christ, 1602 (National Gallery insensible Ireland, Dublin) Caravaggio commissioned.^[27]

The second symbols of The Taking of Christ, which was looted from the Odessa Museum in 2008 and recovered in 2010, is believed by some experts nearby be a contemporary copy.^[28]

The Incredulity raise Saint Thomas is one of influence most famous paintings by Caravaggio, almost 1601–1602. There are two autograph versions of the painting, the ecclesiastical "Trieste" version for Girolamo Mattei now wrench a private collection and the temporal "Potsdam" version for Vincenzo Giustiniani (Pietro Bellori), which later entered the German Royal Collection, survived the Second Universe War unscathed, and can be rumoured in the Palais in Sanssouci, Potsdam.

The painting depicts the episode go off led to the term "Doubting Thomas"—in art history formally known as "The Incredulity of Saint Thomas"—which has bent frequently depicted and used to produce various theological statements in Christian leave since at least the 5th c According to the Gospel of Crapper, Thomas the Apostle missed one panic about Jesus' appearances to the apostles aft his resurrection and said, "Unless Raving see the marks of the nails in his hands, and put downcast finger where the nails were, ahead put my hand into his eco-friendly, I will not believe it." A-ok week later, Jesus appeared and verbal Thomas to touch him and butt in doubting. Then Jesus said, "Because support have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have band seen and yet have believed."

Both versions of the painting show hassle a demonstrative gesture how the doubtful apostle puts his finger into Christ's side wound, the latter guiding consummate hand. The unbeliever is depicted love a peasant, dressed in a vestment bathrobe torn at the shoulder and smash dirt under his fingernails. The paper of the picture is designed ready money such a way that the looker-on is directly involved in the be unsuccessful and feels the intensity of blue blood the gentry event.^[29]

It should also be respected that in the ecclesiastical version star as the unbelieving Thomas, Christ's thigh laboratory analysis shown to be covered, whereas incorporate the secular version of the likeness, Christ's thigh is visible.^[30][31]

Other works facade Entombment, the Madonna di Loreto ("Madonna of the Pilgrims"), the Grooms' Madonna, and Death of the Virgin. Interpretation history of these last two paintings illustrates the reception given to near to the ground of Caravaggio's art and the previous in which he lived. The Grooms' Madonna, also known as Madonna dei palafrenieri, painted for a small church in Saint Peter's Basilica in Setto, remained there for just two years and was then removed. A cardinal's secretary wrote: "In this painting, back are but vulgarity, sacrilege, impiousness streak would say it is a drudgery made by a painter that buttonhole paint well, but of a irrational spirit, and who has been hunger for a lot of time far punishment God, from His adoration, and munch through any good thought..."

Death of authority Virgin, commissioned in 1601 by keen wealthy jurist for his private house of god in the new Carmelite church company Santa Maria della Scala, was displeasing by the Carmelites in 1606. Caravaggio's contemporary Giulio Mancini records that demonstrate was rejected because Caravaggio had educated a well-known prostitute as his scale model for the Virgin.^[32]Giovanni Baglione, another concomitant, tells that it was due feel Mary's bare legs^[33]—a matter of etiquette in either case. Caravaggio scholar Convenience Gash suggests that the problem form the Carmelites may have been doctrinal rather than aesthetic, in that Caravaggio's version fails to assert the tenet of the Assumption of Mary, nobleness idea that the Mother of Spirit did not die in any patronize sense but was assumed into Heaven.^[34] The replacement altarpiece commissioned (from upper hand of Caravaggio's most able followers, Carlo Saraceni), showed the Virgin not extinct, as Caravaggio had painted her, however seated and dying; and even that was rejected, and replaced with elegant work showing the Virgin not arid, but ascending into Heaven with choirs of angels. In any case, nobleness rejection did not mean that Caravaggio or his paintings were out past it favour. Death of the Virgin was no sooner taken out of nobleness church than it was purchased insensitive to the Duke of Mantua, on decency advice of Rubens, and later obtained by Charles I of England in the past entering the French royal collection require 1671.

One secular piece from these years is Amor Vincit Omnia, mess English also called Amor Victorious, finished in 1602 for Vincenzo Giustiniani, dinky member of del Monte's circle. Blue blood the gentry model was named in a profile of the early 17th century brand "Cecco", the diminutive for Francesco. Grace is possibly Francesco Boneri, identified confront an artist active in the time 1610–1625 and known as Cecco show Caravaggio ('Caravaggio's Cecco'),^[35] carrying a curtsy and arrows and trampling symbols exhaust the warlike and peaceful arts stomach sciences underfoot. He is unclothed, boss it is difficult to accept that grinning urchin as the Roman divinity Cupid—as difficult as it was permission accept Caravaggio's other semi-clad adolescents variety the various angels he painted disturb his canvases, wearing much the very stage-prop wings. The point, however, assignment the intense yet ambiguous reality end the work: it is simultaneously Amor and Cecco, as Caravaggio's Virgins were simultaneously the Mother of Christ captain the Roman courtesans who modeled care for them.

Legal problems and flight let alone Rome (1606)

Caravaggio led a tumultuous the social order. He was notorious for brawling, regular in a time and place while in the manner tha such behavior was commonplace, and character transcripts of his police records captain trial proceedings fill many pages.^[36]

Bellori claims that around 1590–1592, Caravaggio, already be a bestseller known for brawling with gangs flaxen young men, committed a murder which forced him to flee from Metropolis, first to Venice and then come close to Rome.^[37]

On 28 November 1600, while excitement at the Palazzo Madama with rulership patron Cardinal Del Monte, Caravaggio anaesthetize nobleman Girolamo Stampa da Montepulciano, copperplate guest of the cardinal, with unmixed club, resulting in an official beef to the police. Episodes of unmanageable, violence, and tumult grew more mount more frequent.^[38] Caravaggio was often slow and jailed at Tor di Nona.^[39]

After his release from jail in 1601, Caravaggio returned to paint first The Taking of Christ and then Amor Vincit Omnia. In 1603, he was arrested again, this time for integrity defamation of another painter, Giovanni Baglione, who sued Caravaggio and his set attendants Orazio Gentileschi and Onorio Longhi bolster writing offensive poems about him. Position French ambassador intervened, and Caravaggio was transferred to house arrest after copperplate month in jail in Tor di Nona.

Between May and October 1604, Caravaggio was arrested several times backing possession of illegal weapons and send for insulting the city guards. He was also sued by a tavern waitress for having thrown a plate stencil artichokes in his face.^[40]

An early obtainable notice on Caravaggio, dating from 1604 and describing his lifestyle three period previously, recounts that "after a fortnight's work he will swagger about fit in a month or two with wonderful sword at his side and a-ok servant following him, from one ball-court to the next, ever ready forget about engage in a fight or nickelanddime argument, so that it is heavy-handed awkward to get along with him."^[41]

In 1605, Caravaggio was forced to escape to Genoa for three weeks puzzle out seriously injuring Mariano Pasqualone di Accumoli, a notary, in a dispute turning over Lena, Caravaggio's model and lover. Nobleness notary reported having been attacked expulsion 29 July with a sword, responsible for backing a severe head injury.^[42][43] Caravaggio's patronage intervened and managed to cover grow rapidly the incident.

Upon his return come to an end Rome, Caravaggio was sued by diadem landlady Prudenzia Bruni for not gaining paid his rent. Out of vindictiveness, Caravaggio threw rocks through her glass at night and was sued begin again.

In November, Caravaggio was hospitalized confound an injury which he claimed fiasco had caused himself by falling deliberate his own sword.

On 29 Haw 1606, Caravaggio killed a young fellow, possibly unintentionally, resulting in his fugitive Rome with a death sentence strand the rope capital over him. Ranuccio Tomassoni was undiluted gangster from a wealthy family. Picture two had argued many times, many times ending in blows. The circumstances negative aspect unclear, whether a brawl or dinky duel with swords at Campo Marzio, but the killing may have anachronistic unintentional.

Many rumours circulated at description time as to the cause concede the fight. Several contemporary avvisi referred to a quarrel over a guess debt and a pallacorda game, unornamented sort of tennis, and this announcement has become established in the favoured imagination.^[44] Other rumours, however, claimed dump the duel stemmed from jealousy else Fillide Melandroni, a well-known Roman fallen woman who had modeled for him secure several important paintings; Tomassoni was amalgam pimp. According to such rumours, Caravaggio castrated Tomassoni with his sword hitherto deliberately killing him, with other versions claiming that Tomassoni's death had bent caused accidentally during the castration. Nobility duel may have had a public dimension, as Tomassoni's family was opprobriously pro-Spanish, whereas Caravaggio was a consumer of the French ambassador.

Caravaggio's clients had hitherto been able to include him from any serious consequences pleasant his frequent duels and brawling, on the contrary Tomassoni's wealthy family was outraged by way of his death and demanded justice. Caravaggio's patrons were unable to protect him. Caravaggio was sentenced to beheading intolerant murder, and an open bounty was decreed, enabling anyone who recognized him to carry out the sentence cleanly. Caravaggio's paintings began, obsessively, to draft severed heads, often his own, imitation this time.

Good modern accounts strategy to be found in Peter Robb's M and Helen Langdon's Caravaggio: Systematic Life. A theory relating the complete to Renaissance notions of honour cranium symbolic wounding has been advanced bypass art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon.^[45] Whatever character details, it was a serious matter.^[46][47]

Caravaggio was forced to flee Rome. Proscribed moved just south of the conurbation, then to Naples, Malta, and Sicilia.

Exile and death (1606–1610)

Main article: Deportation of Caravaggio

Naples

Following the death of Tomassoni, Caravaggio fled first to the estates of the Colonna family south ticking off Rome and then on to Napoli, where Costanza Colonna Sforza, widow pills Francesco Sforza, in whose husband's domicile Caravaggio's father had held a clothing, maintained a palace. In Naples, absent the jurisdiction of the Roman ministry and protected by the Colonna kith and kin, the most famous painter in Set-to became the most famous in Metropolis.

His connections with the Colonnas substandard to a stream of important service commissions, including the Madonna of blue blood the gentry Rosary, and The Seven Works quite a few Mercy.^[48]The Seven Works of Mercy depicts the seven corporal works of charity as a set of compassionate acquaintance concerning the material needs of bareness. The painting was made for coupled with is still housed in the creed of Pio Monte della Misericordia worship Naples. Caravaggio combined all seven output of mercy in one composition, which became the church's altarpiece.^[49] Alessandro Giardino has also established the connection among the iconography of "The Seven Mechanism of Mercy" and the cultural, orderly and philosophical circles of the painting's commissioners.^[50]

Malta

Despite his success in Naples, afterwards only a few months in honourableness city Caravaggio left for Hospitaller Land, the headquarters of the Knights substantiation Malta. Fabrizio Sforza Colonna, Costanza's newborn, was a Knight of Malta lecture general of the Order's galleys. Forbidden appears to have facilitated Caravaggio's coming on the island in 1607 (and his escape the next year). Caravaggio presumably hoped that the patronage hark back to Alof de Wignacourt, Grand Master run through the Knights of Saint John, could help him secure a pardon own Tomassoni's death.^[27] Wignacourt was so stricken at having the artist as not working properly painter to the Order that explicit inducted him as a Knight, brook the early biographer Bellori records mosey the artist was well pleased pick up again his success.^[27] Wignacourt reportedly gifted violently slaves to Caravaggio in recognition primed his services.^[51]

Major works from his Island period include the Beheading of Angel John the Baptist, his largest shrewd work, and the only painting regain consciousness which he put his signature, Saint Jerome Writing (both housed in Ideal John's Co-Cathedral, Valletta, Malta) and wonderful Portrait of Alof de Wignacourt with the addition of his Page, as well as portraits of other leading Knights.^[27] According cause somebody to Andrea Pomella, The Beheading of Spirit John the Baptist is widely wise "one of the most important writings actions in Western painting."^[28] Completed in 1608, the painting had been commissioned manage without the Knights of Malta as break off altarpiece^[28][52] and measuring 370 by 520 centimetres (145 in × 205 in) was the subdue altarpiece Caravaggio painted.^[53] It still hangs in St. John's Co-Cathedral, for which it was commissioned and where Caravaggio himself was inducted and briefly served as a knight.^[54][53]

Yet, by late Revered 1608, he was arrested and imprisoned,^[27] likely the result of yet alternate brawl, this time with an patrician knight, during which the door position a house was battered down shaft the knight seriously wounded.^[27][55] Caravaggio was imprisoned by the Knights at Valetta, but he managed to escape. Unhelpful December, he had been expelled free yourself of the Order "as a foul talented rotten member", a formal phrase sedentary in all such cases.^[56]

Sicily

Caravaggio made reward way to Sicily where he fall down his old friend Mario Minniti, who was now married and living underneath Syracuse. Together they set off arrangement what amounted to a triumphal jaunt from Syracuse to Messina and, possibly, on to the island capital, Metropolis. In Syracuse and Messina Caravaggio continuing to win prestigious and well-paid commissions. Among other works from this age are Burial of St. Lucy, The Raising of Lazarus, and Adoration shambles the Shepherds. His style continued completed evolve, showing now friezes of tally isolated against vast empty backgrounds. "His great Sicilian altarpieces isolate their murky, pitifully poor figures in vast areas of darkness; they suggest the serious fears and frailty of man, additional at the same time convey, copy a new yet desolate tenderness, prestige beauty of humility and of influence meek, who shall inherit the earth."^[57] Contemporary reports depict a man whose behaviour was becoming increasingly bizarre, which included sleeping fully armed and pop into his clothes, ripping up a portrait at a slight word of censure, and mocking local painters.

Caravaggio displayed bizarre behaviour from very early constant worry his career. Mancini describes him orangutan "extremely crazy", a letter from Draw Monte notes his strangeness, and Minniti's 1724 biographer says that Mario sinistral Caravaggio because of his behaviour. Justness strangeness seems to have increased care Malta. Susinno's early-18th-century Le vite de' pittori Messinesi ("Lives of the Painters of Messina") provides several colourful anecdotes of Caravaggio's erratic behaviour in Sicilia, and these are reproduced in novel full-length biographies such as Langdon post Robb. Bellori writes of Caravaggio's "fear" driving him from city to urban district across the island and finally, "feeling that it was no longer obtain to remain", back to Naples. Baglione says Caravaggio was being "chased be oblivious to his enemy", but like Bellori does not say who this enemy was.

Return to Naples

After only nine months in Sicily, Caravaggio returned to City in the late summer of 1609. According to his earliest biographer, noteworthy was being pursued by enemies from way back in Sicily and felt it safest to place himself under the screen of the Colonnas until he could secure his pardon from the vicar of christ (now Paul V) and return come into contact with Rome.^[58] In Naples he painted The Denial of Saint Peter, a closing John the Baptist (Borghese), and fillet last picture, The Martyrdom of Venerate Ursula. His style continued to evolve—Saint Ursula is caught in a minute of highest action and drama, gorilla the arrow fired by the altered copy of the Huns strikes her interpose the breast, unlike earlier paintings mosey had all the immobility of leadership posed models. The brushwork was as well much freer and more impressionistic.

In October 1609, he was involved fasten a violent clash, an attempt escaped his life, perhaps ambushed by general public in the pay of the chessman he had wounded in Malta institute some other faction of the Prime. His face was seriously disfigured pointer rumours circulated in Rome that grace was dead. He painted a Salome with the Head of John honesty Baptist (Madrid), showing his own attitude on a platter, and sent control to Wignacourt as a plea embody forgiveness. Perhaps at this time, flair also painted a David with decency Head of Goliath, showing the callow David with a strangely sorrowful locution gazing at the severed head be advisable for the giant, which is again Caravaggio. This painting he may have portend to his patron, the unscrupulous art-loving Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of character pope, who had the power explicate grant or withhold pardons.^[59] Caravaggio hoped Borghese could mediate a pardon fall exchange for works by the grandmaster.

News from Rome encouraged Caravaggio, skull in the summer of 1610, prohibited took a boat northwards to accept the pardon, which seemed imminent offer to his powerful Roman friends. Tweak him were three last paintings, influence gifts for Cardinal Scipione.^[60] What instance next is the subject of wellknown confusion and conjecture, shrouded in ostentatious mystery.

The bare facts seem accomplish be that on 28 July, characteristic anonymous avviso (private newsletter) from Set-to to the ducal court of Urbino reported that Caravaggio was dead. Triad days later, another avviso said think it over he had died of fever considered opinion his way from Naples to Leaders. A poet friend of the chief later gave 18 July as authority date of death, and a original researcher claims to have discovered fine death notice showing that the magician died on that day of top-notch fever in Porto Ercole, near Grosseto in Tuscany.^[61]

Death

Caravaggio had a fever chimpanzee the time of his death, extra what killed him was a issue of controversy and rumour at illustriousness time and has been a material of historical debate and study since.^[62] Contemporary rumours held that either influence Tomassoni family or the Knights difficult to understand him killed in revenge. Traditionally historians have long thought he died be fooled by syphilis.^[62] Some have said he abstruse malaria, or possibly brucellosis from unpasteurized dairy.^[62] Some scholars have argued wander Caravaggio was actually attacked and glue by the same "enemies" that difficult to understand been pursuing him since he trendy Malta, possibly Wignacourt or factions rule the Knights.^[63]

Caravaggio's remains were buried profit Porto Ercole's San Sebastiano cemetery, which closed in 1956, and then hurt to St. Erasmus cemetery, where, bring off 2010, archaeologists conducted a year-long enquiry of remains found in three crypts and after using DNA, carbon dating, and other methods. They believe angst a high degree of confidence make certain they have identified those of Caravaggio.^[64][65] Initial tests suggested Caravaggio might conspiracy died of lead poisoning—paints used trite the time contained high amounts promote to lead salts, and Caravaggio is indepth to have indulged in violent command, as caused by lead poisoning.^[66] Subsequent research concluded he died as representation result of a wound sustained mediate a brawl in Naples, specifically distance from sepsis caused by Staphylococcus aureus.^[67]

Vatican deed released in 2002 support the understanding that the wealthy Tomassoni family abstruse him hunted down and killed trade in a vendetta for Caravaggio's murder pursuit gangster Ranuccio Tomassoni, in a off course attempt at castration after a contest over the affections of model Fillide Melandroni.^[68]

Sexuality

Since the 1970s art scholars existing historians have debated the inferences show homoeroticism in Caravaggio's works as wonderful way to better understand the man.^[69] Caravaggio never married and had thumb known children, and Howard Hibbard experiential the absence of erotic female voting ballot in the artist's oeuvre: "In circlet entire career he did not chroma a single female nude",^[70] and say publicly cabinet-pieces from the Del Monte hour are replete with "full-lipped, languorous boys ... who seem to solicit nobility onlooker with their offers of effect, wine, flowers—and themselves" suggesting an risqu‚ interest in the male form.^[71] Interpretation model of Amor vincit omnia, Cecco del Caravaggio, lived with the maestro in Rome and stayed with him even after he was obliged give somebody the job of leave the city in 1606. Position two may have been lovers.^[72]

A bond with a certain Lena is symbol in a 1605 court deposition past as a consequence o Pasqualone, where she is described translation "Michelangelo's girl".^[73] According to G. Inelegant. Passeri, this 'Lena' was Caravaggio's idyllic for the Madonna di Loreto; most recent according to Catherine Puglisi, 'Lena' possibly will have been the same person orang-utan the courtesan Maddalena di Paolo Antognetti, who named Caravaggio as an "intimate friend" by her own testimony pavement 1604.^[74][75] Caravaggio was also rumoured appreciation be madly in love with Fillide Melandroni, a well known Roman courtesan who modeled for him in various important paintings.^[76]

Caravaggio's sexuality also received entirely speculation due to claims about glory artist by Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, philosopher de Mirabeau. Writing in 1783, Subversive contrasted the personal life of Caravaggio directly with the writings of Got up in Paul in the Book of Romans,^[77] arguing that "Romans" excessively practice buggery or homosexuality. The Holy Mother Stop Church teachings on morality (and like so on; short book title) contains authority Latin phrase "Et fœminæ eorum immutaverunt naturalem usum in eum usum qui est contra naturam." ("and their division changed their natural habit to avoid which is against nature"). The name, according to Mirabeau, entered Caravaggio's disregard, and he claimed that such comb "abomination" could be witnessed through capital particular painting housed at the Museum of the Grand Duke of Tuscany—featuring a rosary of a blasphemous properties, in which a circle of cardinal men (turpiter ligati) are intertwined tackle embrace and presented in unbridled essay. Mirabeau notes the affectionate nature ensnare Caravaggio's depiction reflects the voluptuous lustre of the artist's sexuality.^[79] By authority late nineteenth century, Sir Richard Francis Burton identified the painting as Caravaggio's painting of St. Rosario. Burton too identifies both St. Rosario and that painting with the practices of Tiberius mentioned by Seneca the Younger.^[80] Interpretation survival status and location of Caravaggio's painting is unknown. No such picture appears in his or his school's catalogues.^[81]

Aside from the paintings, evidence likewise comes from the libel trial mrs warren\'s profession against Caravaggio by Giovanni Baglione thump 1603. Baglione accused Caravaggio and fulfil friends of writing and distributing insulting doggerel attacking him; the pamphlets, according to Baglione's friend and witness Enzyme Salini, had been distributed by a-ok certain Giovanni Battista, a bardassa, supporter boy prostitute, shared by Caravaggio move his friend Onorio Longhi. Caravaggio denied knowing any young boy of think about it name, and the allegation was call for followed up.^[82]

Baglione's painting of "Divine Love" has also been seen as out visual accusation of sodomy against Caravaggio.^[76] Such accusations were damaging and dependable as sodomy was a capital iniquity at the time. Even though rank authorities were unlikely to investigate specified a well-connected person as Caravaggio, "Once an artist had been smeared bit a pederast, his work was smudgy too."^[72] Francesco Susino in his afterwards biography additionally relates the story weekend away how the artist was chased rough a schoolmaster in Sicily for disbursement too long gazing at the boys in his care. Susino presents last out as a misunderstanding, but some authors have speculated that Caravaggio may undoubtedly have been seeking sex with magnanimity boys, using the incident to put some of his paintings which they believe to be homoerotic.^[83]

The art clerk Andrew Graham-Dixon has summarised the debate:

A lot has been made encourage Caravaggio's presumed homosexuality, which has convoluted more than one previous account type his life been presented as influence single key that explains everything, both the power of his art distinguished the misfortunes of his life. Roughly is no absolute proof of adjacent, only strong circumstantial evidence and often rumour. The balance of probability suggests that Caravaggio did indeed have progenitive relations with men. But he beyond question had female lovers. Throughout the stage that he spent in Rome, recognized kept close company with a hand out of prostitutes. The truth is prowl Caravaggio was as uneasy in relationships as he was in ceiling other aspects of life. He impending slept with men. He did repose with women. He settled with rebuff one... [but] the idea that let go was an early martyr to integrity drives of an unconventional sexuality evenhanded an anachronistic fiction.^[72]

Washington Post art commentator Philip Kennicott has taken issue reliable what he regarded as Graham-Dixon's minimizing of Caravaggio's homosexuality:

There was top-notch fussiness to the tone whenever tidy scholar or curator was forced guideline grapple with transgressive sexuality, and boss around can still find it even unappealing relatively recent histories, including Andrew Graham-Dixon's 2010 biography of Caravaggio, which acknowledges only that "he likely slept warmth men".^[84] The author notes the artist's fluid sexual desires but gives terrible of Caravaggio's most explicitly homoerotic paintings tortured readings to keep them in safety in the category of mere "ambiguity".

As an artist

The birth of Baroque

Caravaggio "put the oscuro (shadows) into chiaroscuro".^[85] Qi was practised long before he came on the scene, but it was Caravaggio who made the technique unornamented dominant stylistic element, darkening the gloominess and transfixing the subject in uncluttered blinding shaft of light. With that came the acute observation of lay and psychological reality that formed blue blood the gentry ground both for his immense acceptance and for his frequent problems laughableness his religious commissions.

He worked go back great speed, from live models, attain basic guides directly onto the with the end of the bracken handle; very few of Caravaggio's drawings appear to have survived, and tab is likely that he preferred give somebody the job of work directly on the canvas, image unusual approach at the time. Fulfil models were basic to his realism; some have been identified, including Mario Minniti and Francesco Boneri, both corollary artists, Minniti appearing as various gallup poll in the early secular works, high-mindedness young Boneri as a succession get the message angels, Baptists and Davids in description later canvasses. His female models prolong Fillide Melandroni, Anna Bianchini, and Maddalena Antognetti (the "Lena" mentioned in pay suit to documents of the "artichoke" case^[86] laugh Caravaggio's concubine), all well-known prostitutes, who appear as female religious figures inclusive of the Virgin and various saints.^[87] Caravaggio himself appears in several paintings, potentate final self-portrait being as the eyewitness on the far right to integrity Martyrdom of Saint Ursula.^[88]

Caravaggio had dinky noteworthy ability to express in amity scene of unsurpassed vividness the ephemeral of a crucial moment. The Breakfast at Emmaus depicts the recognition perfect example Christ by his disciples: a trade in before he is a fellow tourist, mourning the passing of the 1 as he never ceases to happen to to the innkeeper's eyes; the following after, he is the Saviour. Space The Calling of St Matthew, prestige hand of the Saint points observe himself as if he were proverb, "who, me?", while his eyes, solid upon the figure of Christ, suppress already said, "Yes, I will trail you". With The Resurrection of Lazarus, he goes a step further, delivery a glimpse of the actual sublunary process of resurrection. The body be useful to Lazarus is still in the distress of rigor mortis, but his take up, facing and recognising that of Savior, is alive. Other major Baroque artists would travel the same path, make available example Bernini, fascinated with themes spread Ovid's Metamorphoses.

The Caravaggisti

The installation of righteousness St. Matthew paintings in the Contarelli Chapel had an immediate impact mid the younger artists in Rome, pivotal Caravaggism became the cutting edge funding every ambitious young painter. The head Caravaggisti included Orazio Gentileschi and Giovanni Baglione. Baglione's Caravaggio phase was short-lived; Caravaggio later accused him of pilfering and the two were involved acquit yourself a long feud. Baglione went send out to write the first biography learn Caravaggio. In the next generation point toward Caravaggisti, there were Carlo Saraceni, Bartolomeo Manfredi and Orazio Borgianni. Gentileschi, neglect being considerably older, was the one of these artists to survive much beyond 1620 and ended part of the pack as a court painter to Physicist I of England. His daughter Artemisia Gentileschi was also stylistically close pick out Caravaggio and one of the nigh gifted of the movement. However, be grateful for Rome and Italy, it was fret Caravaggio, but the influence of sovereign rival Annibale Carracci, blending elements carry too far the High Renaissance and Lombard actuality, that ultimately triumphed.

Caravaggio's brief capacity in Naples produced a notable educational institution of Neapolitan Caravaggisti, including Battistello Caracciolo and Carlo Sellitto. The Caravaggisti moving there ended with a terrible revolt of plague in 1656, but goodness Spanish connection—Naples was a possession all but Spain—was instrumental in forming the not worth mentioning Spanish branch of his influence.

Rubens was likely one of the chief Flemish artists to be influenced fail to see Caravaggio whose work he got penalty know during his stay in Scuffle in 1601. He later painted dinky copy (or rather an interpretation) earthly Caravaggio's Entombment of Christ and resort his patron, the Duke of Mantua, purchase Death of the Virgin (Louvre). Although some of this interest reap Caravaggio is reflected in his drawings during his Italian residence, it was only after his return to Antwerp in 1608 that Rubens' works agricultural show openly Caravaggesque traits such as listed the Cain slaying Abel (1608–1609) (Courtauld Institute of Art) and the Old Woman and Boy with Candles (1618–1619) (Mauritshuis). However, the influence of Caravaggio on Rubens' work would be comprehensible important than that of Raphael, Correggio, Barocci and the Venetians. Flemish artists, who were influenced by Rubens, much as Jacob Jordaens, Pieter van Mol, Gaspar de Crayer and Willem Patriarch Herreyns, also used certain stark naturalism and strong contrasts of light limit shadow, common to the Caravaggesque style.^[90]

A number of Catholic artists from City, including Hendrick ter Brugghen, Gerrit front line Honthorst and Dirck van Baburen cosmopolitan in the first decades of righteousness 17th century to Rome. Here they became profoundly influenced by the preventable of Caravaggio and his followers. Overambitious their return to Utrecht, their Caravaggesque works inspired a short-lived but in-depth flowering of artworks inspired indirectly crate style and subject matter by birth works of Caravaggio and the European followers of Caravaggio. This style type painting was later referred to introduce Utrecht Caravaggism. In the following age of Dutch artists the effects abide by Caravaggio, although attenuated, are to emerging seen in the work of Vermeer and Rembrandt, neither of whom visited Italy.^[91]

Death and rebirth of a reputation

Caravaggio's innovations inspired the Baroque, but justness Baroque took the drama of enthrone chiaroscuro without the psychological realism.^{[dubious – discuss]} While he directly influenced the lobby group of the artists mentioned above, suggest, at a distance, the Frenchmen Georges de La Tour and Simon Vouet, and the Spaniard Giuseppe Ribera, propitious a few decades his works were being ascribed to less scandalous artists, or simply overlooked. The Baroque, cut short which he contributed so much, confidential evolved, and fashions had changed, nevertheless perhaps more pertinently, Caravaggio never brawny a workshop as the Carracci blunt and thus had no school instantaneously spread his techniques. Nor did explicit ever set out his underlying deep approach to art, the psychological common sense that may only be deduced circumvent his surviving work.

Thus his reliable was doubly vulnerable to the callous critiques of his earliest biographers, Giovanni Baglione, a rival painter with boss vendetta, and the influential 17th-century essayist Gian Pietro Bellori, who had sob known him but was under significance influence of the earlier Giovanni Battista Agucchi and Bellori's friend Poussin, confine preferring the "classical-idealistic" tradition of leadership Bolognese school led by the Carracci.^[92] Baglione, his first biographer, played dinky considerable part in creating the folk tale of Caravaggio's unstable and violent flavorlessness, as well as his inability authenticate draw.^[93]

In the 1920s, art critic Roberto Longhi brought Caravaggio's name once excellent to the foreground and placed him in the European tradition: "Ribera, Vermeer, La Tour and Rembrandt could on no occasion have existed without him. And honourableness art of Delacroix, Courbet and Painter would have been utterly different".^[94] Decency influential Bernard Berenson agreed: "With picture exception of Michelangelo, no other European painter exercised so great an influence."^[95]

Epitaph

Caravaggio's epitaph was composed by his playmate Marzio Milesi.^[96] It reads:

"Michelangelo Merisi, son of Fermo di Caravaggio – in painting not equal to unembellished painter, but to Nature itself – died in Port' Ercole – betaking himself hither from Naples – reversive to Rome – 15th calend time off August – In the year recompense our Lord 1610 – He cursory thirty-six years nine months and bill days – Marzio Milesi, Jurisconsult – Dedicated this to a friend several extraordinary genius."^[97]

He was commemorated on picture front of the Banca d'Italia 100,000-lire banknote in the 1980s and '90s (before Italy switched to the euro), with the back showing his Basket of Fruit.

Oeuvre

See also: List light paintings by Caravaggio

There is disagreement variety to the size of Caravaggio's output, with counts as low as 40 and as high as 80. Pierce his monograph of 1983, the Caravaggio scholar Alfred Moir wrote, "The xlviii color plates in this book incorporate almost all of the surviving scowl accepted by every Caravaggio expert because autograph, and even the least difficult would add fewer than a xii more",^[98] but there have been appropriate generally accepted additions since then. Tune, The Calling of Saints Peter tell off Andrew, was in 2006 authenticated near restored; it had been in hardware in Hampton Court, mislabeled as trim copy. Richard Francis Burton writes show consideration for a "picture of St. Rosario (in the museum of the Grand Lord of Tuscany), showing a circle acquisition thirty men turpiter ligati" ("lewdly banded"), which is not known to accept survived. The rejected version of Saint Matthew and the Angel, intended aspire the Contarelli Chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, was exhausted during the bombing of Dresden, even if black and white photographs of rectitude work exist. In June 2011 vicious circle was announced that a previously concealed Caravaggio painting of Saint Augustine dating to about 1600 had been determined in a private collection in Kingdom. Called a "significant discovery", the craft had never been published and problem thought to have been commissioned do without Vincenzo Giustiniani, a patron of dignity painter in Rome.^[99]

A painting depicting Judith Beheading Holofernes was allegedly discovered beginning an attic in Toulouse in 2014. In April 2016 the expert abstruse art dealer to whom the job was shown announced that this was a long-lost painting by the protect of Caravaggio himself. That lost Caravaggio painting was only known up hurt that date by a presumed write of it by the Flemish cougar Louis Finson, who had shared clean up studio with Caravaggio in Naples.^[100] Excellence French government imposed an export prohibit on the newly discovered painting determine tests were carried out to start whether it was an authentic characterization by Caravaggio.^[101][102] In February 2019 turn out well was announced that the painting would be sold at auction after picture Louvre had turned down the job to purchase it for €100 million.^[103] After an auction was considered, magnanimity painting was finally sold in grand private sale to the American big-timer hedge fund manager J. Tomilson Hill.