Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi da (1573-1610)

Italian early baroque painter. He was active in Rome between 1592 and 1606, then in Naples, and finally in Malta. He created a forceful style, using contrasts of light and shade, dramatic foreshortening, and a meticulous attention to detail. His life was as dramatic as his art: he had to leave Rome after killing a man in a brawl.

The son of a mason in the village of Caravaggio near Milan, he had some early training in Milan, but was painting in Rome before he was 20, quickly developing that famous ‘naturalism’ which was in strong contrast to the prevailing Mannerism of Zuccaro and the Cavaliere d'Arpino. Instead of ideal figures, he painted the types he saw and knew, delighting in plebeian traits of character, contemporary dress and carefully delineated still life. Early examples are the Bacchus (Uffizi), the Fortune Teller (Louvre), and the Fruit Basket (Ambrosiana, Milan). The innovation that gave him fame and made him the centre of controversy was not only that he applied this realistic method to religious painting, but also intensified its effect by combining it with a depth and drama of light and shade that he may have adapted from Tintoretto. It appears in his first commission for the Contarelli Chapel of St Luigi dei Francesi, St Matthew and the Angel, the Vocation of St Matthew, and Martyrdom of the Apostle. These and other works in Rome (painted 1600-07), including the Madonna of the Serpent (Borghese Gallery), the Death of the Virgin (Louvre), and the Madonna del Rosario (Vienna), were either refused by his patrons or were the subject of fierce argument.

Involved in numerous brawls, he fled from Rome after killing a man, worked in Naples in 1607, and was received with honour at Malta, where he painted his masterly Decollation of St John in the cathedral at Valetta, and the magnificent portrait of Olaf de Wignacourt, Grand Master of the Order of the Knights of St John (Louvre). Again causing trouble in Malta, he was imprisoned, but escaped, working in Sicily in Syracuse, Messina, and Palermo. He returned to Naples and thence embarked on a boat with the intention of working his way back to Rome and being restored to favour there. By some misunderstanding or ill intention he was left stranded on the malarial coast, where he died. The extent of his influence was extraordinary, both in the propagation of realism and in effects of lighting. His work influenced Rubens, Velázquez, and Rembrandt; the ‘Tenebrosi’ of the Netherlands, for example Honthrost; and in France, Georges de la Tour and Le Valentin. In Italy itself the influence of his art was merged with others, producing the dramatic effects of the baroque style.

A US art historian may have discovered a lost painting by Caravaggio in 1996. The style of the portrait, which is of a boy peeling fruit, is typical of his work, but critics have pointed out that the artist had a number of followers who were adept at imitating him. The historian claims to have discovered two other Caravaggios: Still Life with Fruit on a Ledge in 1991, and Portrait of Cardinal Cesare Baroni in 1994. The art world is divided on the authenticity of all three works.