Caravaggio was a leading Italian painter, active in Rome, Naples, Malta and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. He became famous for the intense and unsettling realism of his large-scale religious works. Also, he is commonly placed in the Baroque school, of which he is considered the first great representative.
Background
Caravaggio was born on September 29, 1571 in Milan, Duchy of Milan, Spanish Empire (present-day Milan, Lombardy, Italy) into the family of Fermo Merixio and Lucia Aratori (Lutia de Oratoribus). Michelangelo Merisi was named Caravaggio after the tiny town of the same name, located not far from the city of Bergamo.
Lucia Aratori (Lutia de Oratoribus), Caravaggio's mother, came from a propertied family. Fermo Merixio, his father, was a household administrator and architect-decorator to the Marchese of the city of Caravaggio.
Education
In 1576, the painter's family left for Caravaggio in order to escape a plague, that ravaged Milan. His father and grandfather both died in 1577. Caravaggio's mother, Lucia Aratori (Lutia de Oratoribus), died in 1584. At that time, the young boy became a student of Simone Peterzano, a mediocre painter of Milan. Caravaggio's contract with Peterzano ran until April 1588. He probably stayed on in Milan for another year, studying the paintings in his native Lombardy. By about 1590, he was in Rome.
Career
It was about 1590, that Caravaggio settled down in Rome, where, during his first year, the painter was desperately poor. For a brief period, he worked for a certain Pandolfo Pucci, whom he called "Mr. Salad" since he said that was all Pucci ever gave him to eat. During his first years in Rome, Caravaggio also worked in the studio of Giuseppe Cavaliere d'Arpino as a painter of fruits and flowers.
From 1600 on, it is easier to follow Caravaggio's career, since his name appears with a certain regularity in the police records. That year, in 1600, he was arrested for a sword fight, in which he wounded a captain of the guards at Castel Sant'Angelo. It seems, however, to have been a good-natured contest between two lovers of the sport, and there was a formal reconciliation in court. In 1603, Caravaggio was sued and jailed for libel for writing sarcastic and offensive verses about the painter and writer Giovanni Baglione. Prominent friends, who, presumably, recognized Caravaggio's great talent, secured his release. In January 1604, he was hailed into court for throwing an artichoke in the face of an insolent waiter and, in November of the same year, he was jailed for stoning the police.
The police records for Rome of 1605 contain entries, regarding a notary, called Pasqualone, who reported, that he had been wounded by Caravaggio in an argument over a girl, named Lena, "who stands in Piazza Navona". Following this incident, Caravaggio fled to Genoa. But in 3 weeks, he was back in Rome, where he and Pasqualone were formally reconciled.
During all these years, Caravaggio was painting daring, revolutionary works unlike anything ever seen before. Such paintings naturally aroused a great deal of controversy. Some attacked them as being vulgar and indecent, but a few critics and connoisseurs praised them highly.
In May 1606, Caravaggio was playing tennis with Ranuccio Tomassoni. There seems to have been an argument over the score, which turned into a brawl and then into a sword fight. Tomassoni was killed, and Caravaggio was badly wounded. Aided by friends, Caravaggio fled Rome. For a brief period, he remained near the papal city, hiding in the Sabine Mountains. From there, he set out for Naples, then under Spanish rule. By May 1607, his friends were already at work in Rome, trying to obtain a pardon so that he could return.
Early in 1608, Caravaggio was on the small Mediterranean island of Malta, then ruled by the Knights of Malta, an aristocratic military order. Because of the portrait he painted of the head of the order, Alof de Wignacourt, Caravaggio was made a knight of Malta, a most unusual honor for a person of his modest background, and received a solid-gold chain and two Turkish slaves. A few months later, he was again involved in a sword fight, this time with his superior officer, and was jailed. In some way, that is still not explained, Caravaggio escaped from prison.
By October 6, 1608, Caravaggio had reached Syracuse in Sicily. From this point on, he was pursued by agents of the Knights of Malta, who sought to avenge what they considered an insult to their order. A hunted man, Caravaggio fled to Messina and then to Palermo. Somehow through it all, he continued to paint. By fall 1609, he was back in Naples, where the Maltese agents trapped him and beat him so badly, that he was disfigured almost beyond recognition. Reports, reaching Rome, said, that he was dead, but he was still alive.
By summer 1610, a papal pardon appeared imminent. For this reason Caravaggio took a boat to Port'Ercole, a small Spanish outpost just north of Rome, where he was arrested in a case of mistaken identity. The Spaniards released him from jail after a few days, but the boat had sailed and with it, so he thought, the painting he carried with him and all his possessions. Raging along the shore under the hot July sun, Caravaggio came down with a fever and passed away on July 18, 1610.
Achievements
Caravaggio, a notable Italian painter, was considered the first great representative of the Baroque school. Caravaggio's populist portrayals of religious figures were groundbreaking, showing biblical characters in a non-idealized fashion through the addition of signs of age and poverty and the use of contemporary clothing. This served to humanize the divine, making them more accessible to the average viewer.
Whilst the technique of chiaroscuro was not introduced by Caravaggio, he was the first painter to incorporate the technique as a dominant stylistic element, making the shadows darker and using clearly defined rays of light for emphasis and to highlight the narrative of the image. The style became increasingly prevalent in his later work and subsequently became synonymous with his more mature images.
Caravaggio's most important work include "Self-Portrait as Bacchus/Sick Bacchus", "Boy Bitten by a Lizard", "The Musicians (Concert of Youths)", "Medusa" and others.
It's also worth noting, that Caravaggio's decoration of the Contarelli Chapel in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi was an immediate sensation, especially two works, making up the commission - the "Martyrdom of Saint Matthew" and "Calling of Saint Matthew". After that work he never lacked commissions or patrons.
The painter was made a knight of Malta, the most unusual honor for a person of his modest background, and received a solid-gold chain.
The early works of Caravaggio show him in full revolt against both mannerism and classicism. He rejected the elongations and formal curvilinear shapes of the mannerists and ridiculed the concept of the classicists, that the subject of a painting should be idealized and carry a moral message. What Caravaggio shows his viewers in his "Bacchus with a Wine Glass" (circa 1595) is no Roman god, but a pudgy, half-naked boy, draped in a bedsheet, who is identified as Bacchus by the vine leaves in his hair.
Sometimes, the subject is a scene from everyday life. "The Fortune Teller" (circa 1595) shows an elegant young dandy with a sword at his side, having his palm read by a gypsy girl. He looks away with almost ostentatious boredom as she slips the ring off his finger. As in most of Caravaggio's paintings, the figures are hard, sculptural and intensely three-dimensional. The realism is reinforced by the great clarity of detail, for instance, the hilt of the young man's sword and the seams of his glove.
Many of Caravaggio's works have a momentary quality, as if he had isolated a single instance in the midst of flux. In "Boy Bitten by a Lizard" (circa 1593), for example, a wonderfully affected young man with a small girlish mouth and a rose behind one ear squeals with fright as a lizard comes out from behind a flower and bites him on the finger. In these works and others like them, Caravaggio developed a new, totally secular iconography.
When Caravaggio did paint religious subjects and he often did, he employed an immediacy and directness, that had few equals. In the "Calling of St. Matthew" the saint, who was a tax collector in the ancient Roman Empire, is shown in contemporary Italian dress, sitting at a table, counting money. Around him at the table, as if in a gambling den, are a group of young swordsmen of the kind, that viewers associate with Caravaggio.
Caravaggio's paintings of the years 1600-1606 are filled with deep shadows, that absorb and conceal parts of the figures. At the same time, the figures remain solid and powerfully three-dimensional, where the light strikes them. This use of strong dramatic contrasts between light and shade is called tenebrism. In the "Calling" it is especially daring. Christ is far over to the right, almost totally lost in darkness, and all, that emerges into the light, is part of his face and one beckoning hand. They express his words to Matthew, "Arise and follow me."
In many of his works, Caravaggio made the scene look as if it was taking place before the viewers' eyes. In his "Crucifixion of St. Peter", for example, the viewers catch sight of the saint at the moment, when the executioners are just beginning to raise up the cross, to which he has been nailed upside down. His bare feet are thrust toward the viewers so they can see and almost feel the spikes, that cut through them. The aged, but powerful apostle lifts his head up from the cross in defiance.
Scenes, such as these, reflect the drive of the Catholic Counter Reformation to appeal directly to the masses through their emotions. It was chiefly the Jesuits, who directed the Counter Reformation. Their founder, St. Ignatius of Loyola, laid great stress on the immediate perception of religious experience in physical terms. He emphasized this repeatedly in his famous, widely read "Spiritual Exercises". In it, for example, Ignatius urges Catholics to imagine hell and, doing so, to use all their senses: to see the flames, to hear the screams, to smell the smoke, to taste the tears, to feel the fires.
Other paintings by Caravaggio are quiet. In the "Madonna of Loreto" (1604) the Virgin, holding the Christ Child, miraculously appears before two peasants, who have made a pilgrimage to her shrine. As the old man and woman, their gnarled hands clasped in prayer, kneel before the Virgin, their bare, dirty feet stick out toward the viewer. The influence of St. Ignatius can be seen here again, as well as that of St. Philip Neri. While the Jesuits tended to align themselves with the powerful, Philip was especially concerned with the weak. He wished religion to be simple, joyful, easily understood and expressed in the most common and natural terms. Above all, he wanted it to be open to the humble and the poor. Pompousness and lavish display he ridiculed. During Caravaggio's lifetime, the saint's living presence seemed to hang over the city and it can certainly be felt in Caravaggio's art.
In Caravaggio's last works, painted, when he was fleeing from one southern Italian town to another, his style changed. The modeling is softer; the paint is thinner and applied more rapidly; and the shadows are less profound. The expressive content is deeper. All this can be seen in the "Resurrection of Lazarus", painted in 1609 at the very end of the artist's life. In it a small crowd huddles around the dim figure of Christ, which is almost phosphorescent, where the light strikes it. The whole upper half of the picture is left dark and empty to serve as a sounding board, that reverberates the shadowy moments between death and rebirth.
Quotations:
"All works, no matter what or by whom painted, are nothing, but bagatelles and childish trifles unless they are made and painted from life, and there can be nothing better, than to follow nature."
"I bury my head in the pillow and dream of my true love…I am rowing to you on the great, dark ocean."
Personality
Caravaggio was an outspoken and extrovert painter. He was a violent man, with drastic mood swings and a love for drinking and gambling. During his lifetime, Caravaggio was on the run from various authorities, thanks to several violent incidents, which made him very much a wanted man.
Physical Characteristics:
Caravaggio wore black not because it was fashionable, but probably because it enabled him to evade detection in unlit streets at night.
Quotes from others about the person
"So then the painters in Rome were taken with this novelty, and the young ones in particular flocked to him and praised him alone as the unique imitator of nature; looking upon his works as miracles, they vied with each other in following him." - Giovan Pietro Bellori, an Italian painter
"What begins in the work of Caravaggio is, quite simply, modern painting." - André Berne-Joffroy, an art historian
"Caravaggio is the first artist in history, whose paintings seem directly concerned with his own life. Ten years before Shakespeare invented Hamlet, Caravaggio painted Saint Francis in solitary dialogue with a skull. Caravaggio introduced soliloquy into painting at the same time, that Shakespeare perfected it in drama." - John T. Spike, an art historian
"If Caravaggio was alive today today, he would have loved the cinema; his paintings take a cinematic approach. We, filmmakers, became aware of his work in the late 1960's and early 1970's, and he certainly was an influence on us. The best part for us was that in many cases he painted religious subject-matter, but the models were obviously people from the streets; he had prostitutes, playing saints. There's something in Caravaggio, that shows a real street knowledge of the sinner; his sacred paintings are profane." - Martin Scorsese, a film director
"His deviant sexuality, apparent atheism and social transgressions fit the romantic image of the rebel artist, epitomized in Paul Verlaine's "Les Poètes Maudits" of 1884, just as his work seemed to foreshadow that of Delacroix, Courbet and Manet." - Genevieve Warwick, a leading scholar of Renaissance and Early Modern Art
Connections
As far as records show, Caravaggio never married and had no children, this alongside his many sensual portrayals of young men (in conjunction with a lack of erotic female characters in his work) has led to a debate, surrounding his sexuality, and there have been a number of contemporary homoerotic readings of his work. Some art scholars supposed, that Cecco di Caravaggio was his lover.
Father:
Fermo Merixio
Fermo Merixio was a household administrator and architect-decorator to the Marchese of the city of Caravaggio.
Mother:
Lucia Aratori
Partner:
Cecco di Caravaggio
Cecco del Caravaggio is the notname, given to a painter, who worked in Rome in the early decades of the 17th century and was an important early follower of Caravaggio. In the past, art historians have suggested he may have been a Flemish, French or Spanish Caravaggist, but more recently, some have identified the artist with Francesco Boneri (or Buoneri), although this is not universally accepted.
Cecco is also considered to be Caravaggio's lover.
mentor:
Simone Peterzano
Simone Peterzano was an Italian painter of the later Mannerism.
References
Caravaggio
This book brings together more than 50 of Caravaggio's most famous and revolutionary works to explore how and why this artist is now considered the most important painter of the early Baroque period and one of the defining influences of art history, without whom Ribera, Vermeer, Rembrandt, Delacroix, Courbet and Manet could never have painted the way they did.
2000
Caravaggio: A Passionate Life
Based on the latest research, but largely written as an adventure story, the book concentrates on the man and his personality, without neglecting the artist. It vividly recreates his life in early Baroque Italy and as a "monk of war" on Malta.
1998
Beyond Caravaggio
This work represents a fascinating examination of Caravaggio and others, who adopted his dramatic style of painting.
