Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, 29 September 1571 – 18 July 1610.
Was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life.
During the final four years of his life he moved between
Naples, Malta, and Sicily until his death.
His paintings combine a realistic observation of the human
state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of
lighting, which had a formative influence on Baroque painting.
Caravaggio employed close physical observation with a dramatic use
of chiaroscuro that came to be known as tenebrism. He made the technique
a dominant stylistic element, darkening shadows and transfixing subjects in
bright shafts of light. Caravaggio vividly expressed crucial moments and scenes,
often featuring violent struggles, torture, and death. He worked rapidly, with live
models, preferring to forgo drawings and work directly onto the canvas. His influence
on the new Baroque style that emerged from Mannerism was profound.
It can be seen directly or indirectly in the work of Peter Paul Rubens,
Jusepe de Ribera, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and Rembrandt, and artists in
the following generation heavily under his influence were called the
“Caravaggisti” (or “Caravagesques”), as well as tenebrists or tenebrosi (“shadowists”).
Caravaggio trained as a painter in Milan before moving in his twenties to Rome.
He developed a considerable name as an artist, and as a violent, touchy and
provocative man. A brawl led to a death sentence for murder and forced him to
flee to Naples. There he again established himself as one of the most prominent
Italian painters of his generation. He traveled in 1607 to Malta and on to Sicily,
and pursued a papal pardon for his sentence. In 1609 he returned to Naples,
where he was involved in a violent clash; his face was disfigured and rumours
of his death circulated. Questions about his mental state arose from his erratic
and bizarre behavior. He died in 1610 under uncertain circumstances while
on his way from Naples to Rome. Reports stated that he died of a fever,
but suggestions have been made that he was murdered or that he died of
lead poisoning.
Caravaggio’s innovations inspired Baroque painting, but the Baroque incorporated
the drama of his chiaroscuro without the psychological realism. The style evolved
and fashions changed, and Caravaggio fell out of favor. In the 20th century interest
in his work revived, and his importance to the development of Western art was reevaluated.
The 20th-century art historian André Berne-Joffroy stated: “What begins in the work of
Caravaggio is, quite simply, modern painting.”