CARAVAGGIO

Gerianne L. Valdez and Leanne Louise V. Isip (9 Galileo)

 Michelangelo Merisi da
Caravaggio
• September 28, 1571 – July 18 1610
• Italian painter active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and
Sicily from the early 1590s to 1610.
• 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 vividly expressed crucial moments and
scenes, often featuring violent struggles, torture and
death. He worked rapidly, with live models, preferring
to forego drawings and work directly onto the canvas.

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EARLY
LIFE
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Summary:

Caravaggio was born as Michelangelo

Merisi in Italy around 1571. He was
orphaned at age 11 and apprenticed
with a painter in Milan. He moved to
Rome, where his work became
popular for the tenebrism technique he
used, which used shadow to
emphasize lighter areas. His career,
however, was short-lived. Caravaggio
killed a man during a brawl and fled
Rome. He died not long after, on July
18, 1610.
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• The world he arrived in was
violent and, at times, unstable.
His birth came just a week
before the Battle of Lepanto, a
bloody conflict in which
Turkish invaders were driven
out of Christendom
The Battle of Lepanto was a naval engagement that took
place on 7 October 1571 where a fleet of the Holy
League(arranged by Pope Pius V), led by the Venetian
Republic and the Spanish Empire, inflicted a major defeat on
the fleet of the Ottoman Empire in the Gulf of Patras.
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 Not much is known about
Caravaggio's early family life.

His father, Fermo Merisi, was

the steward and architect of the
marquis of Caravaggio.

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Six years old:

the bubonic plague rolled through his life, killing

almost everyone in his family, including his
father.

Orphaned:

Caravaggio took to the streets and fell in with a

group of "painters and swordsmen who lived by
the motto nec spe, nec metu, 'without hope,
without fear.”

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"He almost seems bound to transgress”

"It's almost like he cannot avoid transgressing.

As soon as he's welcomed by authority,
welcomed by the pope, welcomed by the
Knights of Malta, he has to do something to
screw it up. It's almost like a fatal flaw.“

----- Andrew Graham-Dixon, author of the 2011

biography "Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane”

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At the age of 11:
Caravaggio relocated to Milan and began
apprenticing with the painter Simone Peterzano

1588:

a penniless Caravaggio moved to Rome. There, to keep himself fed,

Caravaggio found work assisting other
painters, many of them far less talented than he. But as instability
defined his existence, Caravaggio jumped from one job to the next.

Sometime around 1595:

Caravaggio struck out on his
own and started selling his paintings through a dealer.
His work soon caught the attention of Cardinal Francesco
del Monte, who adored Caravaggio's paintings and quickly
set him up in his own house, with room, board and a pension.
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A prolific painter, Caravaggio was known to
work quickly,
often starting and completing a painting in
just two weeks.
By the time he had come under the
influence of del Monte,
Caravaggio already had 40 works to his
name.

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 11
Boy with a Basket of Fruit
The Young Bacchus
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The Music Party
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 Much of Caravaggio's early work
featured chubby, pretty young boys
done up as angels or lutenists or his
favorite saint, John the Baptist. Many
of the boys in the paintings are naked
or loosely clothed. Caravaggio's only
known assistant was a boy named
Cecco, who appears in a number of
Caravaggio's works and who may
have also been his lover.

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In 1597:

Caravaggio was awarded the commission for the decoration of the Contarelli Chapel
in the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome. It was an important and daunting
assignment, charging the 26-year-old painter with the task of creating three large
paintings depicting separate scenes from St. Matthew's life.

1601:

3 works were finished and showed Caravaggio’s remarkable rage as an artsist

The three resulting works, "St. Matthew and the Angel," "The Calling of St. Matthew,"
and "The Martyrdom of St. Matthew," were finished in 1601, and together showed
Caravaggio's remarkable range as an artist.

But these works also provoked much consternation from the church and public alike.
In his execution of the work, Caravaggio eschewed the traditional worshipful
depictions of the saints and presented St. Matthew in a far more realistic light. His first
version of "St. Matthew and the Angel" caused so much angst among his patrons that
he had to redo it.

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16
The Calling of St Matthew
Depiction by Caravaggio
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The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew
Saint Matthew and the Angel
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Saint Matthew
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and the Angel
 For Caravaggio, however, the commission provided an exciting new direction for his
painting, one in which he could lift traditional religious scenes and cast them with his
own dark interpretation. His biblical scenes became populated with the prostitutes,
beggars and thieves whom he had encountered on the streets of Rome

In addition to some financial relief, the Contarelli Chapel commission also provided
Caravaggio a wealth of exposure and work. His paintings from the next few years
included "The Crucifixion of St. Peter," "The Conversion of St. Paul," "The
Deposition of Christ" and his famous "Death of the Virgin." The latter, with its
depiction of the Virgin Mary with a swollen belly and bared legs, packed so much of
Caravaggio's style that it was turned away by the Carmelites and eventually landed in
the hands of the Duke of Mantua.

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The Crucifixion of St. Peter
The Conversion of St. Paul
The Deposition of Christ
Death of the Virgin
Controversy, though, only fueled Caravaggio's success. And as that success
grew, so did the painter's own personal turmoil. He could be a violent man, with
drastic mood swings and a love for drinking and gambling.

1603:

A frequent fighter, Caravaggio eventually served a short prison sentence,

following another painter's complaint that Caravaggio had attacked him. But the
next few years only saw Caravaggio's temper becoming hotter.

1604:

His litany of assaults included throwing a plate of artichokes at a waiter

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1605:

attacking Roman guards with stones.

Wrote one observer:

"After a fortnight's work he will swagger about for a month or two with a sword at
his side and a servant following him, from one ballcourt to the next, ever ready to
engage in a fight or an argument.
1606:

His violence finally erupted with force, when he killed a well-known Roman pimp
named Ranuccio Tomassoni.

Historians have long speculated about what was at the root of the crime. Some
have suggested that it was over an unpaid debt, while others have claimed that it
was the result of an argument over a game of tennis.

More recently, historians, including Andrew Graham-Dixon, have pointed to

Caravaggio's lust for Tomassoni's wife, Lavinia.“

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Immediately following the murder:

Caravaggio fled Rome and sought refuge in a host of other locations: Naples,
Malta and Sicily, among others. But even as he fled from punishment for his
crime, fame followed Caravaggio. In Malta, he was received into the Order of
Malta as a Knight of Justice, an award that he was soon stripped of when the
Order learned of the crime he had committed.

However, even as he fled, Caravaggio continued to work. In Naples, he

painted "Madonna of the Rosary" for a fellow painter, and later "The Seven
Works of Mercy" for the church of Pio Chapel of Monte della Misericordia.
In Malta, he created "Beheading of St. John the Baptist" for the cathedral
in Valletta. In Messina, his work included "The Resurrection of Lazarus"
and "The Adoration of the Shepherds," while in Palermo he painted the
"Adoration with St. Francis and St. Lawrence.“

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Madonna of the Rosary
The Seven Works of Mercy
for the church of Pio Chapel of Monte della Misericordia.
In Malta
Beheading of St. John the Baptist
The Resurrection of Lazarus
The Adoration of the Shepherds
Adoration with St. Francis and St. Lawrence
 One of Caravaggio's more shocking paintings from this
period is "Resurrection," in which the painter revealed a
less saintly, more bedraggled Jesus Christ escaping
from his tomb in the middle of the night.

This scene was no doubt inspired by events in

Caravaggio's own life.

By this time, Caravaggio had become a nervous wreck,

always on the run and in constant fear for his life, so
much so that he slept with his clothes on and with a
dagger at his side.

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Resurrection
July 1608:

he attacked Fra Giovanni Rodomonte Roero, one of the most senior knights in the Order of
St. John in Malta. Caravaggio was arrested and jailed for the assault but managed to escape
just one month later.

According to Andrew Graham-Dixon's research, Roero did not put the attack behind him.

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1609

Roero followed Caravaggio to Naples and assaulted the painter outside a

tavern, disfiguring his face. The attack had a profound impact on
Caravaggio's mental and physical state.

His vision and brushwork suffered from the assault, as evidenced by two of
his later paintings, "The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula" and "The Denial of
Saint Peter.“

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The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula
The Denial of Saint Peter
1610:

Caravaggio began to make his way back to Rome. In order to avoid

punishment for murder, Caravaggio's only salvation could come from the
pope, who had the power to pardon him. Most likely informed that friends
were working on his behalf to secure his pardon.

Sailing from Naples, he was arrested in Palo, where his boat had made a
stop.

July 18, 1610:

Upon his release, he resumed his journey and eventually arrived at

Port'Ercole, where he died just a few days later.

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For many years the exact cause of Caravaggio's death
had been shrouded in mystery.

2010:

a team of scientists who studied Caravaggio's remains

discovered that his bones contained high levels of
lead—levels high enough, they suspect, to have driven
the painter mad. Lead poisoning is also suspected of
having killed Francisco Goya and Vincent van Gogh.

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Even though Caravaggio was shunned after his death,
he eventually came to be recognized as one of the
founding fathers of modern painting. His work greatly
influenced so many future masters, from Diego
Velazquez to Rembrandt. In Rome, in 2010, an
exhibition of his work that marked the 400th anniversary
of his death attracted more than 580,000 visitors.

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Caravaggio
as an
Artist
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The Birth of Baroque
• Caravaggio "put the oscuro (shadows) into
chiaroscuro." Chiaroscuro was practiced
long before he came on the scene, but it was
Caravaggio who made the technique a
dominant stylistic element, darkening the
shadows and transfixing the subject in a
blinding shaft of light.
• Chiaroscuro, in art, is the use of strong
contrasts between light and dark, usually
bold contrasts affecting a whole
composition.

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Caravaggio's
application of the
chiaroscuro
technique shows
through on the faces
and armour
notwithstanding the
lack of a visible shaft
of light. The figure
on the extreme right
is a self-portrait.

The Taking of Christ, 1602, 47

The Birth of Baroque
• He worked at great speed, from live models,
scoring basic guides directly onto the canvas
with the end of the brush handle; very few of
Caravaggio's drawings appear to have
survived, and it is likely that he preferred to
work directly on the canvas. The approach
was anathema to the skilled artists of his
day, who decried his refusal to work from
drawings and to idealise his figures. Yet the
models were basic to his realism.

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The Birth of Baroque
• Caravaggio had a noteworthy ability to express in one scene
of unsurpassed vividness the passing of a crucial moment.
• The Supper at Emmaus depicts the recognition of Christ
by his disciples: a moment before he is a fellow traveller,
mourning the passing of the Messiah, as he never ceases to
be to the inn-keeper's eyes; the second after, he is the
Saviour.
• In The Calling of St. Matthew, the hand of the Saint
points to himself as if he were saying "who, me?", while his
eyes, fixed upon the figure of Christ, have already said, "Yes,
I will follow you".
• With The Resurrection of Lazarus, he goes a step
further, giving us a glimpse of the actual physical process of
resurrection. The body of Lazarus is still in the throes of
rigor mortis, but his hand, facing and recognizing that of
Christ, is alive. 49
The Supper at Emmaus (right) and The Resurrection of Lazarus
(left)

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The Calling of St. Matthew 51
 The Caravaggisti
• The installation of the St. Matthew paintings in the Contarelli Chapel had
an immediate impact among the younger artists in Rome, and
Caravaggism became the cutting edge for every ambitious young painter.
• The first Caravaggisti included Orazio Gentileschi and Giovanni Baglione.
Baglione's Caravaggio phase was short-lived; Caravaggio later accused
him of plagiarism and the two were involved in a long feud.
• In the next generation of Caravaggisti there were Carlo Saraceni,
Bartolomeo Manfredi and Orazio Borgianni. Gentileschi, despite being
considerably older, was the only one of these artists to live much beyond
1620. His daughter Artemisia Gentileschi was also close to Caravaggio,
and one of the most gifted of the movement.
• Caravaggio's brief stay in Naples produced a notable school of Neapolitan
Caravaggisti, including Battistello Caracciolo and Carlo Sellitto.
• The Caravaggisti movement there ended with a terrible outbreak of
plague in 1656, but the Spanish connection – Naples was a possession of
Spain – was instrumental in forming the important Spanish branch of his
influence.

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 The Caravaggisti
• A group of Catholic artists from Utrecht, the "Utrecht Caravaggisti",
travelled to Rome as students in the first years of the 17th century and
were profoundly influenced by the work of Caravaggio, as Bellori
describes. On their return to the north this trend had a short-lived but
influential flowering in the 1620s among painters like Hendrick ter
Brugghen, Gerrit van Honthorst, Andries Both and Dirck van Baburen.

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