Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Italian painter
While most other Italian artists of his time slavishly followed the
elegant balletic conventions of late Mannerist painting, Caravaggio
painted the stories of the Bible as visceral and often bloody
dramas. He staged the events of the distant sacred past as if they
were taking place in the present day, often working from live
models whom he depicted in starkly modern dress. He
accentuated the poverty and common humanity of Christ and his
followers, the Apostles, saints, and martyrs, by emphasizing their
ragged clothing and dirty feet. He also developed a highly original
form of chiaroscuro, using extreme contrasts of light and dark to
emphasize details of gesture or facial expression: an outflung arm,
a look of despair or longing. His influence on the course of
Western art has been immense and has not been limited to the
field of painting alone. Caravaggio’s work shaped that of many
later artists, ranging from Rembrandt in Holland and Diego
Velázquez in Spain to Théodore Géricault in France. His dramatic
sense of staging and innovative treatment of light and shade have
also directly inspired many leading figures in the medium of
cinema, including Pier Paolo Pasolini and Martin Scorsese.
Tragic childhood
The artist was the first child of Fermo Merisi and his second wife,
Lucia Aratori. He was born in the autumn of 1571, probably in the
small town of Caravaggio in the diocese of Cremona, after which
he would later come to be named. His Christian name
of Michelangelo suggests that his exact birth date was September
29, the feast day of the Archangel Michael. Despite assertions by
Giulio Mancini, author of one of the earliest biographies of
Caravaggio, that the artist’s father was majordomo and architect to
the powerful Francesco Sforza I, marchese of Caravaggio, the
historical record reveals a more humble truth. Fermo Merisi was
no architect but a simple stonemason who is referred to in
documents of the time as a mastro: a qualified artisan entitled to
run a workshop and hire apprentices. The artist’s family did have
connections with the local nobility but only on Caravaggio’s
mother’s side. His maternal grandfather, Giovan Giacomo Aratori,
was a land surveyor who acted directly as an agent for Francesco
Sforza I, serving as a legal witness for the Sforza family and
collecting rents on their behalf. Aratori’s daughter, Margarita,
Caravaggio’s maternal aunt, was wet nurse to the children of
Francesco Sforza I and his wife, Costanza Colonna, marchesa of
Caravaggio. The Sforza and Colonna were among the most
powerful and influential dynasties in Italy. Caravaggio’s
connections to them would prove vitally important to him in later
life. Costanza Colonna, in particular, would be a constant support
during his most troubled years, giving him refuge and shielding
him from justice when he was a wanted man.
The artist’s early life was divided between his native town of
Caravaggio and the populous city of Milan, where his father had a
workshop. In the summer of 1576, Milan was struck by an
outbreak of bubonic plague. According to the city’s parish census
of that year, the artist, then about five years old, and his family still
resided there. By the autumn of the following year, and probably
before then, they had moved back to Caravaggio to escape the
plague, which had reached epidemic proportions, ultimately
accounting for the lives of one-fifth of the local population. But
they fled in vain. A series of documents in the archives of
Caravaggio records the death, in the second half of 1577, of
Caravaggio’s father, his paternal grandfather and grandmother,
and his uncle, Pietro. By age six, Caravaggio had lost almost every
male member of his family to the plague. His unruly and fiery
temperament and his deep sense of abandonment may well have
their origins in those traumatic events of his early childhood.
Rome: 1592–99
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The artist’s time with Cesari appears to have ended badly, with an
obscure accident involving a kick from a horse that left Caravaggio
in the hospital of Santa Maria della Consolazione. According to
Mancini, at about the start of 1595, after eight months in the
Cesari workshop, he lodged with another priest: “Monsignor Fatin
Petrigiani, who gave him the comfort of a room in which to live.”
At about that time he met Prospero Orsi, a painter of grotesques,
who (according to Bellori) encouraged Caravaggio to strike out on
his own and paint directly for the market. Baglione adds that
Caravaggio painted a number of self-portraits at that time—now
presumed lost—and “a boy bitten by a lizard emerging from
flowers and fruits; you could almost hear the boy scream, and it
was all done meticulously.” The subject is dramatic, as might be
expected of a work intended to pique the interest of Roman
connoisseurs: a young man in a state of undress, picking at a bowl
of fruit, is rudely interrupted by a lizard that bites his finger. It
may have been intended as a parable of the punishments that
attend the lascivious, with the snapping lizard symbolizing the
pains of venereal disease.
Caravaggio: The Cardsharps
The Cardsharps, oil on canvas by Caravaggio, c. 1594; in the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth,
Texas, U.S.
Rome: 1599–1606
The Contarelli Chapel and other
church commissions of Caravaggio
On July 23, 1599, Caravaggio signed a contract to paint two large
paintings for the side walls of the Contarelli Chapel of San Luigi
dei Francesi, the church of the French in Rome. The commission
was secured for him by his patron Cardinal del Monte, whose links
to the Medici meant that he had close connections with the
French community in Rome. Not only was this Caravaggio’s first
major public commission, but it involved working on a far larger
scale than he had previously undertaken: the pictures were each to
be almost 10 feet (3 metres) square. Caravaggio responded to the
challenge with mastery.
A History of Painting
Shortly after that setback, on the evening of May 28, 1606, the
long-smouldering animosity between Ranuccio Tomassoni and
Caravaggio flared up into a formal duel, which took place on the
tennis court of the French ambassador to Rome. Caravaggio
pierced his opponent’s femoral artery with his dueling sword,
causing him to bleed to death in a very short time. The nature of
the injury, close to Tomassoni’s groin, may suggest that
Caravaggio intended to wound his opponent sexually. Wounds
were meaningful in the honour culture of the time, so, for
example, a facial wound might be inflicted to avenge an insult to
reputation, or loss of face, while a genital wounding or attempted
castration might mark a dispute over a woman. Caravaggio and
Tomassoni may still have been competing over Fillide Melandroni,
or perhaps they had argued over Tomassoni’s wife—the presence
of Tomassoni’s two brothers-in-law as seconds gives
some credence to the latter hypothesis. Whatever the cause, the
killing would have a profound effect on the rest of Caravaggio’s
life. He fled Rome in its immediate aftermath. Duels themselves
were against the law, and thus committing murder during a duel
was a grievous offense. He was convicted in absentia
of murder and made subject to a bando capitale, a capital
sentence, which meant that anyone in the Papal States had the
right to kill him with impunity in exchange for a reward. If they
were unable to produce his body, his severed head would suffice.
At the time he was creating those works, the painter was, with the
help of Costanza Colonna, continuing to negotiate for his pardon
with Scipione Borghese. On about July 9, 1610, hopeful that it had
finally been granted, Caravaggio set off for Rome in a felucca, or
skiff, laden with several paintings that he hoped to offer to
Borghese in exchange for arranging his reprieve. His destination
was the port of Palo, a staging post where he might hire a wagon to
complete his journey by land. For reasons that remain
unexplained—papers not in order, or perhaps a disagreement with
the captain of the garrison there—he was arrested and detained at
Palo. His paintings were carried away on the felucca, which
traveled on with its other passenger or passengers to its final
destination of Porto Ercole, a small harbour town on the coast
of Tuscany, some 50 miles (80.5 km) north. Caravaggio paid his
way out of jail and rode post to Porto Ercole. With a change of
horse, he may have covered the distance in a day or a little longer.
But the effort, the heat of the summer, and his parlous state of
health were against him. He made it to Porto Ercole but died soon
after arriving there, probably on July 18 or 19, at the age of 38. He
was buried in an unmarked grave.