WebMuseum: Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1573-1610). Probably the most revolutionary artist of his time, the Italian painter Caravaggio abandoned the rules that had guided a century of artists before him. They had idealized the human and religious experience. He was born Michelangelo Merisi on Sept. 28, 1573, in Caravaggio, Italy. As an adult he would become known by the name of his birthplace. Orphaned at age 11, he was apprenticed to the painter Simone Peterzano of Milan for four years. At some time between 1588 and 1592, Caravaggio went to Rome and worked as an assistant to painters of lesser skill. About 1595 he began to sell his paintings through a dealer. The dealer brought Caravaggio to the attention of Cardinal Francesco del Monte. Through the cardinal, Caravaggio was commissioned, at age 24, to paint for the church of San Luigi dei Francesi.

In its Contarelli Chapel Caravaggio's realistic naturalism first fully appeared in three scenes he created of the life of St. Matthew. The works caused public outcry, however, because of their realistic and dramatic nature. The Calling of Saint Matthew The Inspiration of Saint Matthew 1602; Oil on canvas, 9' 8 1/2" x 6' 2 1/2"; Contarelli Chapel, Church of San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome Despite violent criticism, his reputation increased and Caravaggio began to be envied. He had many encounters with the law during his stay in Rome. He was imprisoned for several assaults and for killing an opponent after a disputed score in a game of court tennis. Caravaggio fled the city and kept moving between hiding places. He reached Naples, probably early in 1607, and painted there for a time, awaiting a pardon by the pope. Here there was a in his painting style. The dark and urgent nature of his paintings at this time must have reflected Caravaggio's desperate state of mind. Early in 1608 Caravaggio went to Malta and was received as a celebrated artist.

Fearful of pursuit, he continued to flee for two more years, but his paintings of this time were among the greatest of his career. After receiving a pardon from the pope, he was wrongfully arrested and imprisoned for two days. A boat that was to take him to Rome left without him, taking his belongings. Misfortune, exhaustion, and illness overtook him as he helplessly watched the boat depart. He collapsed on the beach and died a few days later on July 18, 1610. David and Goliath undated; Oil on canvas; Prado, Madrid Medusa after 1590; Oil on canvas mounted on wood; Uffizi The Fortune Teller c. 1597; Oil on canvas, 37 3/8 x 33 1/2 in; Uffizi, Florence Judith Beheading Holofernes c. 1598; Oil on canvas, 56 3/4 x 76 3/4 in; Galleria Nazionale dell'Arte Antica, Rome The Sacrifice of Isaac 1590-1610; Oil on canvas; Uffizi Supper at Emmaus c.

1600-01; Oil on canvas, 54 3/4 x 76 3/4 in; National Gallery, London The Crucifixion of Saint Peter 1600-01; Oil on canvas, 90 1/2 x 70 in; Cerasi Chapel, Santa Maria del Popola, Rome The Incredulity of Saint Thomas 1601-02; Oil on canvas, 42 1/8 x 57 1/2 in; Neues Palais, Potsdam The Deposition 1604; Pinacoteca Vaticana in Rome The Death of the Virgin 1605-06; Oil on canvas; Louvre ï¿½ 19 Sep 2002, Nicolas Pioch - Top - Up - Info Thanks to the BMW Foundation, the WebMuseum mirrors , partners and contributors for their support.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio | artist | 1571 - 1610 | National Gallery, London £ other Make this a monthly donation [{"Amount":5.0000,"CurrencyCode":"GBP","DonationDate":"2016-08-19T23:36:01","DonorDisplayName":"Fangbin Liu","DonorLocalAmount":5.0000,"DonorLocalCurrencyCode":"GBP","EstimatedTaxReclaim":0.0000,"ImageUrl":"","Message":"I like to donate because I love this great museum and the great masterpieces kept in it."},{"Amount":20.0000,"CurrencyCode":"GBP","DonationDate":"2016-11-16T20:57:11","DonorDisplayName":"Irina ","DonorLocalAmount":20.0000,"DonorLocalCurrencyCode":"GBP","EstimatedTaxReclaim":0.0000,"ImageUrl":"","Message":"One of my favourite museums.

Hope to visit again."},{"Amount":5.0000,"CurrencyCode":"GBP","DonationDate":"2016-11-17T08:56:35","DonorDisplayName":"Katja Leyendecker","DonorLocalAmount":5.0000,"DonorLocalCurrencyCode":"GBP","EstimatedTaxReclaim":1.2500,"ImageUrl":"","Message":"I had a most wonderful 3 hours in the gallery's 1600s section! Must return!"},{"Amount":8.3800,"CurrencyCode":"GBP","DonationDate":"2016-09-06T21:24:18","DonorDisplayName":"Andreas","DonorLocalAmount":10.0000,"DonorLocalCurrencyCode":"EUR","EstimatedTaxReclaim":0.0000,"ImageUrl":"","Message":"It is great to visit for free such a prestigious museum.

It's a small sum of money but donated willingly, for culture and for young people"},{"Amount":10.0000,"CurrencyCode":"GBP","DonationDate":"2016-08-02T04:18:28","DonorDisplayName":"Suzanne Burke","DonorLocalAmount":10.0000,"DonorLocalCurrencyCode":"GBP","EstimatedTaxReclaim":0.0000,"ImageUrl":"","Message":"Excellent online information for my students!"},{"Amount":2.0000,"CurrencyCode":"GBP","DonationDate":"2016-10-20T16:29:27","DonorDisplayName":"Joshua Beaumont Houghton Boston","DonorLocalAmount":2.0000,"DonorLocalCurrencyCode":"GBP","EstimatedTaxReclaim":0.0000,"ImageUrl":"","Message":"Thank you for being you!"},{"Amount":2.0000,"CurrencyCode":"GBP","DonationDate":"2016-10-25T09:01:14","DonorDisplayName":"Richard Roberts","DonorLocalAmount":2

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Thank you for being custodians of the national collection"},{"Amount":10.0000,"CurrencyCode":"GBP","DonationDate":"2016-06-21T09:56:01","DonorDisplayName":"Jane DALY","DonorLocalAmount":10.0000,"DonorLocalCurrencyCode":"GBP","EstimatedTaxReclaim":2.5000,"ImageUrl":"","Message":"A national treasure that needs supporting"},{"Amount":20.0000,"CurrencyCode":"GBP","DonationDate":"2016-11-10T19:31:19","DonorDisplayName":"Kate English","DonorLocalAmount":20.0000,"DonorLocalCurrencyCode":"GBP","EstimatedTaxReclaim":5.0000,"ImageUrl":"","Message":"What an amazing institution!

This is to say thank you for your daily guided tours and the free activities you run for children."}] Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio Ottavia Leoni, 'Drawing of the Portrait of Caravaggio' Florence, Biblioteca Marucelliana © Photo Scala, Florence Arrogant, rebellious and a murderer, Caravaggio's short and tempestuous life matched the drama of his works. Characterised by their dramatic, almost theatrical lighting, Caravaggio's paintings were controversial, popular, and hugely influential on succeeding generations of painters all over Europe. Born Michelangelo Merisi, Caravaggio is the name of the artist's home town in Lombardy in northern Italy. In 1592 at the age of 21 he moved to Rome, Italy's artistic centre and an irresistible magnet for young artists keen to study its classical buildings and famous works of art. The first few years were a struggle. He specialised in still lifes of fruits and flowers, and later, half length figures (as in 'The Boy bitten by a Lizard' ) which he sold on the street. In 1595, his luck changed.

An eminent Cardinal, Francesco del Monte, recognised the young painter's talent and took Caravaggio into his household. Through the cardinal's circle of acquaintance, Caravaggio received his first public commissions which were so compelling and so innovative that he became a celebrity almost overnight. Rome Caravaggio was a fast worker - but liked to play as hard as he worked. According to one of his biographers: ''after a fortnight's work he will swagger about for a month or two with his sword at his side and with a servant following him, from one ball-court to the next, ever ready to engage in a fight or argument, with the result that it is most awkward to get along with him''. (The sword was illegal - as with guns today, one had to have licence to carry arms.) Caravaggio was arrested repeatedly for, among other things, slashing the cloak of an adversary, throwing a plate of artichokes at a waiter, scarring a guard, and abusing the police. Caravaggio's technique was as spontaneous as his temper. He painted straight onto the canvas with minimal preparation. Sometimes he abandoned a disappointing composition and painted new work over the top.

Much to the horror of his critics, he used ordinary working people with irregular, rough and characterful faces as models for his saints and showed them in recognisably contemporary surroundings. In many paintings, such as the ' Supper at Emmaus ', he makes his paintings appear to be an extension of real space, deliberately making the viewers feel as if they are taking part in the scene. In 1606 Caravaggio's temper went a step too far. An argument with 'a very polite young man' described variously as over a woman, or a tennis match, escalated into a swordfight. Caravaggio stabbed his rival, and though he probably hadn't intended to kill him, the man died of his wound. Caravaggio chose not to face justice, but leave Rome. He had no doubt that he would quickly obtain a pardon. Malta Caravaggio went to Naples, and then to the island of Malta, an independent sovereignty and home of the Knights of Malta (a religious military order like the Knights Templars). If Caravaggio could become a Knight of Malta, he would be in a better position to seek a papal pardon for the murder.

In return for a painting of the Beheading of St John the Baptist, he was granted membership. His social standing in Malta was high - his reward included two slaves and a gold chain. All was going to plan, until his temper got him into trouble again. He got into a fight with another knight and found himself in prison. He escaped, but was expelled from the order. Pardon and death Caravaggio travelled around Sicily and then returned to Naples where he was involved in yet another bar brawl which left him badly disfigured. In the meantime, however, important friends in Rome had successfully petitioned the Pope for a pardon - Caravaggio could return. He loaded his belongings onto a ship but, for some unknown reason, was then arrested and had to buy his way out of jail. By the time he was released, the ship and all his possessions had sailed without him. As he made his way along the coast he fell ill, perhaps with malaria, and a few days later, alone and feverish, he died.

Share this artist Behind the Name: Meaning, origin and history of the name Michelangelo PRONOUNCED: mee-KE-lahn-je-lo [key] Meaning & History From Italian, meaning " MICHAEL angel", referring to the archangel Michael. The Renaissance painter and sculptor Michelangelo Buonarroti, from Florence, was the man who created such great works of art as the statue of David and the mural on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. This name was also borne by the Baroque artist Michelangelo Merisi, better known as Caravaggio. Michelangelo name - Meaning of Michelangelo Michelangelo name - Meaning of Michelangelo Michelangelo name - Meaning of Michelangelo 4.5/5 out of 75 votes. Gender mee-KE-lahn-je-lo, mee-kel-AHN-jeh-lo Michelangelo Meaning From Italian, meaning " Michael angel", referring to the archangel Michael. The Renaissance painter and sculptor Michelangelo Buonarroti, from Florence, was the man who created such great works of art as the statue of David and the mural on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

This name was also borne by the Baroque artist Michelangelo Merisi, better known as Caravaggio. Michelangelo refers to the archangel Michael. Michael is ultimately derived from Hebrew and means "which man is like God?", which is a rhetorical question suggesting a negative answer. As a masculine given name Michael has been popular over centuries and in different spellings all over the world. Recent famous bearers include the basketball player Michael Jordan, as well as the American musician Michael Jackson. Michelangelo name meaning. The meaning, origin, popularity and detailed name information of Michelangelo. Search another name meaning What is the meaning of my name Michelangelo? or the question is: What is the meaning of my name Michelangelo and how does a name influence a person's character? Our first name can say a lot about your fate... What character traits are bound to it? What job will make a success of you? What influence will have your first name in your choices? Welcome in the universe of the names and their meaning. Michelangelo name meaning Feeling a little unlucky lately? Want the secret to being lucky? You have it already - find is in your body.

The secret to improving luck is about perspective, self-belief and erring on the side of optimism. It isn't about winning huge pots of cash - Find Your Lucky is about making the most of the wonderful blessings already surrounding you. FindYourLucky is a tool for help you to do it every day. follow us: Michelangelo: What Is The Meaning Of The Name Michelangelo? Analysis Numerology Origin Information About The Name Michelangelo Gender of the name Michelangelo: Boy Color of the name Michelangelo: Blue&Pink Origin of the name Michelangelo: Hebrew Prononciation Of Michelangelo Here is how to pronounce the name Michelangelo: It seems we can not find flash player or it is old. Please get the latest flash player. The Meaning Of The Name Michelangelo advertisements Definition of Michelangelo: michael + angelo, who is like G-d, angel, messenger Meaning of Michelangelo: From Italian, meaning “MICHAEL angel”, referring to the archangel Michael. The Renaissance painter and sculptor Michelangelo Buonarroti, from Florence, was the man who created such great works of art as the statue of David and the mural on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

This name was also borne by the Baroque artist Michelangelo Merisi, better known as Caravaggio. The Picture Of The Name Michelangelo Consider your name Michelangelo as a picture. How would it look like? This will be funny! Using the meaning of Michelangelo, we prepared this picture. Do not bother the gender. =) Statistics Of The Name Michelangelo advertisements Y Z m (4) + i (9) + c (3) + h (8) + e (5) + l (3) + a (1) + n (5) + g (7) + e (5) + l (3) + o (6) = => 5+9 = 14 => 1+4 = 5 Destiny Number: 5. Here is your name analysis according to your destiny number. Michelangelo Destiny Analysis advertisements You consider yourself very strong. You will often bite off more than you can chew. When this happens, you are too proud to ask for help and exhaust yourself. You can do many things well. You may be an artists politician, doctor, or minister. When you choose the right profession, you will be successful and devoted. You just can’t help winning!

Analysis Of The Name Michelangelo Here is the analysis of the name Michelangelo. Letter Your sense of analyzing life is stronger. You are known as a reasonable person. N You have a great common sense and a higher ability in life. You see thing much before they happen. G You need power all the time. You can do everything to satisfy this need and you can be very stubborn too. E You have a very complicated emotional world. You can be sad and happy at the same time and never ever recognise it. L You have the most talented personality. You can be talented in so many different areas like art, sports and education. O You are a very closed person. You like keeping secrets and enjoy your privacy. You do not want to explain yourself to people. Michelangelo Character Analysis of Meaning Here is the characteristics of Michelangelo in details. This name creates an intensity which could affect your stomach or create tension in the solar plexus, stomach, and generative organs. This name has made you rather aggressive, shrewd, and critical and has caused you to be extremely independent. You tend to have too many irons in the fire and fail to complete your undertakings satisfactorily.

You have the analysis, vision, and promotional ability to make progress. Business success could be achieved, to a point, abut your personal life would suffer. You could achieve heights of success in business, but there is also a factor which brings many forced changes and friction with people, which in turn offsets the success you could achieve. The more sensitive types of people find you overpowering at times. It is not easy for you to relax because you feel so much drive. You desire the best in life and appreciate quality in all things. The name of Michelangelo creates an extravagant, ambitious nature with the desire for financial prominence. Can I Name My Baby Michelangelo? Yes you can name your baby Michelangelo! List Of Celebrities With First Name Michelangelo We looked for the celebrities whose first name is Michelangelo and the definitions which contains the name Michelangelo or similar to it. You can find the results below.

Michelangelo: Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo (), was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer of the High Renaissance who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. Michelangelo Antonioni: Michelangelo Antonioni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (29 September 1912 – 30 July 2007), was an Italian film director, screenwriter, editor, and short story writer. Caravaggio: Michelangelo Merisi (or Amerighi) da Caravaggio (; 29 September 1571? – 18 July? 1610) was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1592 (1595?) and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative influence on Baroque painting.

Michelangelo (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles): Michelangelo, Mike or Mikey (which they usually call him), is a fictional character and one of the four protagonists of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics and all related media. David (Michelangelo): David is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture created between 1501 and 1504, by Italian artist Michelangelo. Michelangelo Pistoletto: Michelangelo Pistoletto (born 25 June 1933) is an Italian painter, action and object artist, and art theorist. Michelangelo Signorile: Michelangelo Signorile (; born December 19, 1960) is an American journalist, author and talk radio host. Michelangelo Rampulla: Michelangelo Rampulla (born August 10, 1962 in Patti, Sicily) is a manager and former Italian football goalkeeper. Pietà (Michelangelo): The Pietà (1498–1499) is a world-famous work of Renaissance sculpture by Michelangelo Buonarroti, housed in St.

Michelangelo in Arabic Writing If you want to see your name in Arabic calligraphy below you can find Michelangelo in Arabic letters. ميتشلانجلو Michelangelo in Chinese Characters If you want to see your name in Chinese below you can find Michelangelo in Chinese letters. 米凯兰杰洛 Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio Gallery, Caravaggio Artist Welcome to the Caravaggio Gallery Though not appreciated by the ordinary people of his day, Italian artist, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, known simply as Caravaggio, played an important role in 17th century painting. Caravaggio Paintings Caravaggio was known for realistically capturing moments of human emotion and painting the drama of psychological relationships. He broke with the conventional styles of depicting the saints and used regular everyday people as models and painted them with realistic detail showing the Saints' common humanity. Though he was highly esteemed by other artists of his time, his deviation from the idealized styles of 16th century Mannerism brought much public criticism.

Eventually, however, Caravaggio’s technique and use of tenebrism influenced the development of the Baroque school of art as well as the paintings of many artists to come including Rubens, Rembrandt, and Velazquez. Caravaggio Biography Caravaggio’s personal life was full of escapades which were as dramatic and tragic as his paintings. Scandal seemed to follow him. With his violent temper and unpredictable disposition he was always ready to engage in a fight or an argument, one of which even led to a man’s death. Here you can learn more about Caravaggio’s life and works by reading a short biography and examining some of his most famous works, including The Cardsharps and The Calling of St. Matthew . Learn about the important people in his life and the legacy that he left to those artists that followed him. Begin here by learning about Caravaggio's Paintings Behind the Name: User Comments for the name Michelangelo -- tigerlilly 5/22/2007 Ok, I would definitely consider this a name for a future son. It sounds brave, and it sounds much better than Michael. But as a middle name though, because immature children would make fun of him.

-- Anonymous User 7/26/2007 -- slight night shiver 4/30/2008 I simply love this name. I already have a plan for my son as he grows with this name. As a small child I'll call him Mickey, then as a teenager I'll call him Mick then he'll probably like Michelangelo by the time he's an adult. I love the relation with Mick Jagger and of course, Michelangelo himself. -- penelopepitstop 9/5/2008 This name sounds too much for a child to live up to. Michelangelo created lovely works of art, and I don't think anyone mowadays can copy them. It also makes me think of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. -- bananarama 9/12/2008 There was another great Michelangelo in Italian art - Michelangelo Merisi better known as 'Caravaggio' from his town of origin.

[noted -ed] -- Anton 3/13/2010 Michelangelo Antonioni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (1912 – 2007) was an Italian film director from Ferrara, Italy. Michelangelo Cerquozzi (1602-1660) was an Italian painter known as 'Michelangelo of the Battles'. -- Anonymous User 10/19/2011 Caravaggio | Italian painter | Britannica.com Italian painter Francisco de Zurbarán Caravaggio, byname of Michelangelo Merisi (born September 29, 1571, Milan or Caravaggio [Italy]—died July 18/19, 1610, Porto Ercole, Tuscany), leading Italian painter of the late 16th and early 17th centuries who became famous for the intense and unsettling realism of his large-scale religious works. The Conversion of St.

Paul (second version), oil on canvas by … SCALA/Art Resource, New York Becoming Caravaggio 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 . Caravaggio’s reputation was clouded, during his own lifetime and in the aftermath of his untimely death, by the turbulent and ultimately tragic circumstances of his personal life. He committed murder and violent assault while at the peak of his success in Rome and consequently spent much of his later career—when he also created many of his most-compelling works—as a fugitive from justice . Since the mid-20th century his violent exploits and volatile character have enhanced his popular appeal as a perceived outsider and rebel against convention. His presumed but unproven homosexual tendencies, which have been inferred both from his paintings and from certain historical documents, have added greater intrigue to his legend . He might be described as the perfect Old Master for an age in love with the idea of celebrity and in thrall to the cult of a doomed self-destructive genius. In truth he was a more subtle, sensitive, and intellectually ambitious artist than the myths that have accumulated around him might suggest. He was also less of a hothead.

Close inspection of the archival information concerning him, his friends, and his enemies—much expanded by late 20th-century research in the archives of Rome, Naples , and Malta —has revealed that even his most apparently impulsive acts were governed by a certain logic, even if it was often the logic of vendetta . He was a violent man, but he lived in violent times, and he was as much sinned against as sinning. Early life and training in Lombardy: 1571–92 Britannica Stories Romanticism Caravaggio left Lombardy in 1592. He would never return to the land of his birth. A series of legal documents from the late 1580s and 1590 record the sale, by Caravaggio, of a few small pieces of land that he had inherited from his family. The precise circumstances surrounding his departure from Milan remain unclear, but marginal notes in a manuscript copy of Giulio Mancini’s early account of Caravaggio’s life suggest that he was involved in some form of violent incident involving the murder of a policeman. So it seems that he began his career as he would end it, as a man in trouble with the law.

Rome: 1592–99 First apprenticeships in Rome: Pucci, Cesari, and Petrigiani Caravaggio traveled to Rome, as many aspiring artists did, in search of work. The newly elected pope, Clement VIII , was determined to transform the city into the visible symbol of a revived and flourishing Catholic faith. New churches were being built and old churches remodeled, with altarpieces and sculptures commissioned in great numbers. At a rough estimate, about 2,000 artists lived and worked in the city, out of a total population of 100,000. They had their own quarter, an area of approximately two square miles between the Piazza del Popolo and the Piazza di Spagna, where they clustered in distinct communities according to their place of origin. Competition between the different groups, and between individual artists, was intense and frequently flared up into feuds and vendettas . Rome was a city of migrants—priests seeking preferment, pilgrims seeking salvation, mercenary soldiers seeking employment—as well as a place where social distinctions were more fluid than in other, more-feudal parts.

Many hoping for fame and fortune in that opportunistic environment pretended to a higher social status than their birth merited and behaved according to a debased version of the old chivalric codes of honour, whereby the slightest perceived insult or injury was met with force. Caravaggio’s many fights and disagreements with others fit into that wider pattern of violence, so it would be wrong to see his behaviour, however apparently erratic, as freakish or exceptional. To judge by the different accounts provided by his first biographers—Giovanni Baglione and the aforementioned Bellori and Mancini, all writing within living memory of Caravaggio—the artist’s early years in Rome were unsettled. At the start he lodged with a jobbing painter from Sicily named Lorenzo Siciliano, in whose workshop, says Bellori, “Caravaggio painted heads for a groat apiece and produced three a day.” Mancini reports that during that period Caravaggio also lodged with a beneficed priest of St.

Peter’s named Pandolfo Pucci, whose hospitality left much to be desired: “He was given nothing but salad to eat in the evening.…After a few months he left…calling his benefactor and master ‘Monsignor Salad.’ ” Caravaggio next spent some time in the studio of a minor Sienese painter called Antiveduto Grammatica. Then he moved to the workshop of Giuseppe Cesari, also known as Cavaliere d’Arpino , who was one of the most-prominent artists in Rome during the 1590s. Cesari was responsible for a number of monumental altarpieces and decorative schemes but employed Caravaggio merely to paint decorative borders or embellishments to his work: pictures of “flowers and fruit.” According to Bellori, Caravaggio resented the restriction to such lowly subject matter: “As he was working at these things against his will and feeling great regret to see himself kept from figures, he welcomed the opportunity offered by Prospero.” Two pictures by Caravaggio survive with a provenance that links them to the Cesari workshop: Boy with a Basket of Fruit and Self-Portrait as Bacchus (also called Sick Bacchus).

Both were expropriated from Cesari by Scipione Borghese, the papal nephew, in the early 1600s and have remained in the Borghese collection ever since. They are subtle and bittersweet works, the first perhaps inspired by the divine longing of the Bridegroom in the Song of Songs, the second by the ancient association between art and the Roman god of wine and creative abandon. Given that each remained with Cesari after Caravaggio’s departure, it is possible that they had been painted as demonstration pieces: proof to his master that he could indeed paint more-ambitious subjects than flowers and fruit alone. 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.

The patronage of Cardinal del Monte Caravaggio struggled to make ends meet throughout the mid-1590s, so he approached several picture dealers in Rome. He struck up a working relationship with Costantino Spata, who had a shop in the piazza bordering the church of San Luigi dei Francesi. It was through Spata that Caravaggio came to the attention of his most-important early patron, Francesco Cardinal Maria del Monte, who lived in the nearby Palazzo Madama. Between them, the painter and his dealer concocted a plan to attract the notice of del Monte, a prominent collector who regularly passed Spata’s shop. Caravaggio painted two pictures of a novel and unfamiliar kind, depicting scurrilous scenes drawn from the milieu of low everyday life: The Cardsharps and The Gypsy Fortune Teller. In each, a young man is being tricked out of his fortune by a colourful rogue, or pair of rogues. In a sense, the pictures allegorically enact Caravaggio’s own stratagem in painting them, namely that of ensnaring a wealthy man.

The trick worked: not only did del Monte purchase both works, but he gave Caravaggio board and lodging, encouraged his development as a painter, and secured him numerous commissions. The Cardsharps, oil on canvas by Caravaggio, c. 1594; in the … Fine Art Images/Heritage-Images Del Monte was a music lover as well as an afficionado of painting. Not only was he protector of the Sistine Chapel Choir, but he was also at the forefront of the late Renaissance shift from medieval polyphony to monody . He favoured the single melodic line sung by the solo voice, as well as new forms of musical theatre: developments that would eventually lead to the aria and the opera . Caravaggio’s The Musicians of 1595–96, an unusual depiction of musicians rehearsing, which once hung in del Monte’s music room in the Palazzo Madama, encapsulates the moody experimental character of the cardinal’s musical patronage. Four boys tune their instruments or leaf through their scores to prepare for their performance: they are awaiting, by implication , the animating presence of del Monte himself.

Caravaggio painted a number of other pictures on musical themes during his early years under the cardinal’s protection. He also painted Boy with a Basket of Fruit—a still life with religious sacramental associations, carried by the contrast between worm-eaten apples and grapes, symbols respectively of perishable flesh and the redemption of Jesus’ blood in the form of holy wine. That painting formed part of the collection of Federico (Federigo) Borromeo, who may have commissioned it from the artist. In addition, he painted devotional works for other Roman noblemen in del Monte’s circle, including The Penitent Magdalene and The Rest on the Flight to Egypt: soft, delicately coloured paintings of a gently lyrical character that would not be repeated in his later work. Del Monte was ambassador for the powerful Florentine family of the Medici , who supported the expense of his Roman residences. Encouraged by del Monte, Caravaggio painted two of his most teasingly original pictures of the mid-to-late 1590s for the Medici grand duke of Tuscany: Bacchus and Head of the Medusa. Each is a subtle jeu d’esprit.

The Bacchus, for which Caravaggio’s moonfaced friend, the Sicilian painter Mario Minniti, acted as model, has been interpreted as a depiction of a male prostitute in down-at-heel lodgings offering a prospective client a glass of wine. But on closer examination, the boy’s thoughtful expression and his attributes—vine-leaf wreath, another of the artist’s baskets of fruit in which worm-holed apples and salvific grapes are mingled, carafe of wine—indicate that the figure is Bacchus in his guise as a prefiguration of Christ, offering not the pleasures of vice but eternal salvation. It is the kind of picture that Ottavio Cardinal Paravicino may have had in mind when he referred to Caravaggio, in a letter of 1603, working “in that middle area, between the sacred and the profane.” Bacchus, oil on canvas by Caravaggio, 1596–97; in the Uffizi … Fine Art Images/Heritage-Images The Medusa is even more strikingly unconventional and might in its way be regarded as a precursor of conceptual art .

Painted on canvas and attached to a piece of wood in the shape of a shield with a strap on the back, it is a picture intended not merely to be looked at but actually worn. Only when strapped to the viewer’s arm, as it once was by the Medici ruler of Florence for whom it was painted, did its meaning become clear. It turned its wearer by implication into the hero Perseus , at the moment when he slew the snake-haired Medusa . The wearer of the shield in effect became Perseus, gazing at the monster’s reflection in the shield mirror, by which means he could escape the Gorgon ’s deadly gaze. Since Perseus was indeed a mythological hero with whom the Medici liked to identify themselves—as evinced in Benvenuto Cellini ’s famous sculpture of Perseus and Medusa of half a century earlier—it was likely a compliment well calculated to please them. Head of the Medusa, oil on wood covered with canvas by Caravaggio, … Fine Art Images/Heritage-Images Successful artist and criminal This period of the painter’s life, when his fortunes began to rise, also marks his first appearances in the criminal archives of Rome.

He is mentioned in testimony given in July 1597 by a barber named Luca, in connection with a murky and ultimately unsolved case involving a missing cloak and a dagger: This painter is a stocky young man…with a thin black beard, thick eyebrows and black eyes, who goes dressed all in black, in a rather disorderly fashion, wearing black hose that is a little bit threadbare, and who has a thick head of hair, long over his forehead. Caravaggio, who wore black not because it was fashionable but probably because it enabled him to evade detection in Rome’s unlit streets at night, would be arrested on numerous occasions over the succeeding years. A strong flavour of the artist’s proud and acerbic character is conveyed by his own words in court following his detention on May 4, 1598, for bearing arms in a public place: “I was arrested last night…because I was carrying a sword. I carry the sword by right because I am Painter to Cardinal del Monte. I am in his service and live in his house.

I am entered on his household payroll.” The German etcher and art historian Joachim von Sandrart (1606–88) wrote a short account of Caravaggio during his years in Rome, remarking that he liked to go around “in the company of his young friends, mostly brash, swaggering fellows—painters and swordsmen—who lived by the motto nec spe, nec metu, ‘without hope, without fear.’ ” His friends included the painters Orsi, Minniti, and Orazio Gentileschi as well the architect Onorio Longhi, a man so hot-tempered that he would be described by a later biographer as having “a head that smoked.” Caravaggio also associated with a number of Rome’s prostitutes and courtesans, notably Fillide Melandroni, a woman from Siena who served as his model for a number of pictures painted in the late 1590s: Martha and Mary Magdalene; the startlingly sadistic-erotic Judith Beheading Holofernes, in which she saws at the neck of the tyrant with her sword in a setting more reminiscent of a Roman bordello than the Assyrian general’s tent described

 in the Apocrypha ; and the haunting Saint Catherine of Alexandria, shown embracing the sword of her own martyrdom with the tenderness of a lover’s caress.

It was with those works, in which he placed sacred figures in a modern setting and in modern dress, using a live model posed before him, that Caravaggio perfected the method that would bring him both fame and notoriety. He also began at this time to develop his characteristically extreme technique of chiaroscuro, darkening his shadows to produce stark contrasts of light and dark, a method eloquently described by Bellori: He went so far in this style that he never showed any of his figures in open daylight, but instead found a way to place them in the darkness of a closed room, placing a lamp high so that the light would fall straight down, revealing the principal part of the body and leaving the rest in shadow. Caravaggio’s association with his model for these pictures, Melandroni, may have been personal as well as professional. It was illegal for women to model for painters in Rome at the time, so employing a prostitute was a convenient way of getting around the legislation.

Caravaggio would be linked to a number of other prostitutes during his time in Rome, and there is circumstantial evidence to suggest that he actually operated as a pimp in the time when he was not painting for Cardinal del Monte or his other patrons: an arrangement that would have provided him with free models and casual sexual encounters on demand, as well as extra income. Caravaggio’s association with Melandroni certainly fueled the animosity that would develop, during the years that followed, with a man named Ranuccio Tomassoni. Tomassoni was Melandroni’s pimp during the years when she began modeling for Caravaggio and may well have resented the painter’s connection to her. In any case, the triangular relationship produced a simmering antagonism between the two men. Tomassoni was a dangerous man to have as an enemy, with powerful connections in the city: one of his brothers, Giovan Francesco, was caporione, or area commander, of the Campo Marzio district; another, Alessandro, was accorded the honour of being buried in the Pantheon in Rome.

Rome: 1599–1606 The Contarelli Chapel and other church commissions 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. The subjects prescribed were The Calling of St. Matthew and The Martyrdom of St. Matthew. Caravaggio used his by-now-established method, setting both episodes in the present day and painting directly from live models posed in mise-en-scènes of his own devising. He set the subject of Christ calling Matthew , the tax gatherer, in a dingy modern tax collector’s office somewhere in a basement of Rome.

Christ and Peter , wearing timeless robes that symbolize eternal salvation, encounter Matthew and a group of taxpayers in gaudy modern dress. Christ beckons Matthew, as if to draw him away from the temptations of money toward redemption. A great beam of light bisects the composition diagonally, turning the entire composition into an abstract diagram of Matthew’s traditional symbol, the balance or set of scales: Christ’s divine light will lever him upward, making his soul light and enabling him to rise out of base darkness. In the second of the two panels, Caravaggio imagined Matthew’s apocryphal murder on the orders of a pagan ruler as a terrorist killing taking place in the baptismal chapel of a modern Roman church. Matthew, wearing priest’s robes, is baptizing a group of nearly naked men. One of the men, who has been merely feigning Christian devotion, leaps up to assassinate Matthew with a sword. As the saint bleeds to death into the baptismal pool—a subtle allusion to the belief that violent death in the name of faith represents a second and yet holier baptism, baptism by blood—an angel descends to thrust the martyr’s palm branch into his hands.

Caravaggio included his own self-portrait in the picture, as a man looking back at the horror of the killing as he turns to flee. The Calling of St. Matthew, oil on canvas by Caravaggio, … Mauro Magliani/age fotostock The paintings for the Contarelli Chapel instantly established Caravaggio as the most dynamic and original painter working in Rome. More commissions followed, notably, in the autumn of 1600, for the funerary chapel of Tiberio Cerasi in Santa Maria del Popolo. The subjects this time were The Conversion of St. Paul and The Crucifixion of St. Peter. Caravaggio treated both themes with extreme austerity and simplicity. He placed Paul on his back in a pool of light, just after having been struck from his horse by a divine thunderbolt.

His patient, heavy horse and loyal retainer stand beside him, half shrouded in shadow, as he experiences the mystical truth of Christ’s entire life, from alpha to omega, in an ecstasy of revelation mimed by his gesture and position: helpless as the newborn Jesus was at the Nativity , a baby in a manger, yet with his arms simultaneously outflung, as Christ’s would be on the cross. In the second picture he showed Peter being crucified upside down by a group of burly, poor assassins, grimly focused on the mechanics of murder. In each of the pictures, Caravaggio aggressively asserted the humility of the followers of Christ. Santa Maria del Popolo was one of the principal pilgrimage churches of Rome, placed as it was at the northernmost edge of the city. These were paintings aimed squarely at poor pilgrims, intended to foster in them a sense of identification with the equally poor first followers of Christ. His pictures make a striking contrast with the altarpiece for the same chapel, painted at the same time by Annibale Carracci , in which the Virgin Mary , clothed splendidly as the Queen of Heaven, is watched on her way skyward by a group of nobly dressed apostles.

Two rival approaches to representing the mysteries of the faith are there crystalized. Caravaggio’s paintings express what might be termed the pauperist view within the Catholic church, favoured by the Franciscans and other orders strongly committed to the notion that “the meek shall inherit the earth.” Caracci’s painting takes a more-cautious approach to the notion of holy poverty, presenting a vision of the blessed Virgin intended to awe and inspire the mass of poor pilgrims flooding into Rome at the turn of the 16th century—and, by implication, to keep them in their place. Caravaggio may have shown what he thought of Carracci’s picture by arranging the composition of his Conversion of St. Paul so that the rump of his horse is turned toward the face of Carraci’s Virgin. But during the years that followed, his direct insistence on Christian humility and poverty would fall out of favour with the Catholic church in Rome. Caracci’s more-decorous style, closely attuned to the church authorities’ desire to control and subdue a large shifting population of actual poor—increasingly perceived as a threat to social order—would gradually gain the ascendancy.

As a result, Caravaggio would suffer much censorship and frustration, despite his rising reputation. Sometime during the first half of 1601, Caravaggio left the household of Cardinal del Monte—although he remained under his protection, as he would assert more than once during his several appearances in court—to take up residence with the powerful Mattei family, who lived in a honeycomb of interconnected residences built over the ancient Roman Teatro di Balbo. Caravaggio lived in the palace of Girolamo Cardinal Mattei, painting a number of pictures for him and his two brothers, Ciriaco and Asdrubale. These included two of his most-brilliant devotional paintings, The Supper at Emmaus and The Betrayal of Christ. In the second picture he once more included his own self-portrait as a witness to the Judas kiss, holding up a lantern as if almost to advertise his by-now-trademark use of intense light-dark contrasts. About the same time, Caravaggio was commissioned to add an altarpiece to the two side panels he had painted for the Contarelli Chapel.

The subject was Matthew and the Angel, in which the apostle was to be shown writing his gospel to heavenly dictation. For the first time, Caravaggio painted a picture that displeased his patrons within the church, and for the first time, he was forced to modify his aggressive insistence on the theme of holy poverty. Initially, he represented Matthew as the poorest of peasants, with gnarled features and rough hands, sitting in a simple Savonarola chair with the soles of his dirty feet prominent in the foreground: an evident illiterate, being miraculously guided in the act of writing by a gentle adolescent angel with luxuriant locks of hair. That picture, which survives only in black-and-white photographs (having been destroyed by fire in Berlin during the World War II ), was rejected outright and a replacement requested. Caravaggio’s second version, which still survives on the altar of the Contarelli Chapel, shows Matthew in a considerably more-decorous light, as a scholar saint in dignified robes, writing to the instruction of a more-remote, less patronizingly familiar angel.

Continued successes and the murder of Tomassoni Caravaggio continued to work at secular commissions during that period, painting a highly erotic depiction of Cupid surrounded by the tumbled attributes of science, art, music, and military might, entitled Amor Vincit Omnia. He painted the celebration of the power of love for the Roman nobleman Vincenzo Giustiniani, possibly to mark a wedding, and it was displayed in pride of place in Giustiniani’s palace behind a green curtain. The model for it was Caravaggio’s studio assistant, Cecco Boneri, and the picture would later occasion rumours that Caravaggio and Cecco had slept together. An Englishman visiting Rome about 1650, Richard Symonds, was told the story by a custodian who took him around the Giustiniani Palace. Whether the rumours were true or not, it would be a mistake to regard Caravaggio as homosexual in any modern sense of the term. The balance of evidence suggests that he did have sexual relationships with men as well as women, but it could be argued that his amorous or sexual preferences were defined by his conspicuous reluctance to settle with any one partner.

The esteem in which Giustiniani held Omnia Vincit Amor provoked the jealousy of Giovanni Baglione, a rival painter who would later write a remarkably evenhanded (albeit sometimes acerbic) account of Caravaggio’s life. In 1602 Baglione publically exhibited a parody of the work titled Divine Love, which he later followed with a second version in which Caravaggio himself is depicted in the guise of the devil plotting to sodomize a furtive figure of Cupid. This visual accusation of sodomy provoked Caravaggio and his friends, including Gentileschi, to compose a set of satiric verses mocking Baglione as Giovanni Coglione (“Johnny Bollocks”) in no uncertain terms. In late summer 1603 Baglione had Caravaggio and Gentileschi thrown into prison on charges of criminal libel, which potentially carried a sentence of life rowing in the papal galleys.

The subsequent trial, for which full transcripts survive in the Roman archive, elicited from Caravaggio his only known statement on the art of painting , a single frustratingly terse sentence: “In painting a valent’huomo [man of worth] is one who knows how to paint well and imitate natural objects well.” Probably with the help of Cardinal del Monte, Caravaggio and his coaccused were released from prison on September 25, 1603, and all charges against them were dropped. After the libel trial Caravaggio traveled to Loreto , Italy, to research a large altarpiece on the subject of the Madonna of Loreto. He returned to Rome around the start of 1604 and, at about the same time, moved into rented accommodation in the Vicolo dei Santa Cecilia e Biagio (now the Vicolo del Divino Amore). Between 1603 and 1606 he would receive only a handful of commissions for large-scale public religious paintings, a fact suggestive of the extent to which his style was out of tune with the times. At the same time, his appearances in court for various disturbances of the peace multiplied.

In 1604 he was arrested, variously, for assaulting a waiter who had served him with a plate of artichokes dressed in butter rather than oil; for throwing stones in the street in the company of, among others, a perfume maker and some prostitutes; and for telling a policeman who was attempting to release him quietly, even though he was carrying a sword and dagger, that “you can stick it up your arse.” In between committing those crimes and misdemeanours, he painted the austere and monumental altarpiece of The Entombment of Christ for the Oratorian church of Santa Maria in Vallicella, in Rome. The Entombment of Christ, oil on canvas by Caravaggio, 1602–04; … SCALA/Art Resource, New York The pattern continued into 1605. In early summer he completed his altarpiece of The Madonna of Loreto, popularly known as “The Madonna of the Pilgrims,” for the Cavalletti Chapel in the Roman church of Sant’Agostino.

The sweetest and most overtly sentimental of his major religious pictures, it was greeted with such enthusiasm by the mass of Rome’s pilgrims who gathered to see it that Giovanni Baglione compared the sound of their collective approbation to “the cackling of geese.” But in late May of that same year, Caravaggio was arrested again for carrying his sword and dagger in a public place. On July 19 he was arrested once more, this time for defacing the house front of a woman named Laura della Vecchia, a crime known as deturpatio, often committed as revenge for an insult or affront. Just 10 days later he was arrested yet again for inflicting grievous bodily harm. Caravaggio skipped bail and fled to the coastal city of Genoa for the month of August . On his return he discovered that the landlady from whom he was renting his house in the Vicolo dei Santa Cecilia e Biagio, one Prudentia Bruni, had seized his possessions and changed the locks. He committed the crime of deturpatio against her, this time smearing excrement on the door of her house and singing obscene songs to the accompaniment of a guitar outside her window.

In her deposition to the court, the landlady complained that Caravaggio had damaged one of the ceilings in her house, a detail that may suggest one of the practicalities of his working method. At the end of 1605, Caravaggio signed a contract to paint an altarpiece for the chapel of the papal grooms in St. Peter’s. He completed the work, The Madonna of the Palafrenieri, sometimes known as “The Madonna of the Serpent,” on April 8, 1606. Not more than a month later, it was removed from view because, according to Bellori, it was considered “offensive.” The precise cause of offence remains unknown, but the church fathers may have been disturbed by the emphatically generous bosom of the Virgin who treads on the viper , Satan, with her son Jesus as the grooms’ patron saint, Anne, looks on; or they may have learned (perhaps tipped off by one of the painter’s rivals) that she had been modeled by a known prostitute. Shortly afterward Caravaggio completed the last of his great altarpieces for Roman churches, The Death of the Virgin.

Austere, solemn, tragic in its very mundanity, the work shows the Apostles lamenting the death of Mary in the poorest of homes. In the words of the 20th-century art historian Roberto Longhi, it resembles “a death in a night refuge.” It is among the most-powerful and moving of Caravaggio’s paintings, but once more, not long after being installed in the Carmelite church for which it had been commissioned, Santa Maria della Scala, it was removed from public view. To judge by the painting commissioned to replace it, an altarpiece by Carlo Saraceni on the same theme but infinitely more decorous in effect, Caravaggio had been censored for daring to place such strident and shocking emphasis on the poverty of Mary and the Apostles. The Death of the Virgin, oil on canvas by Caravaggio, … 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 . Naples, Malta, Sicily, Naples, Porto Ercole: 1606–10 Having fled from Rome, Caravaggio found shelter in the territories of the Colonna, in the Alban Hills above the city. Bellori and Mancini place him in Zagarolo, where the daunting fortress of the Colonna Palace still stands today. While there, he painted the affectingly bleak Supper at Emmaus, a far-more-somber treatment of the theme than his earlier version (1601) of the subject, which may reflect his penitential mood after the murder of Tomassoni. At the same time, he painted a compelling David with the Head of Goliath, in which Cecco is cast as the adolescent David and the grisly severed head of Goliath bears Caravaggio’s own agonized features. This picture has often been dated to the end of the painter’s life, but its style places it far closer to 1606, and its presence in the Borghese collection, together with its subject matter, suggests that it was intended as a form of plea bargain.

Scipione Borghese, the papal nephew, was also in charge of the papal justice system and a keen collector of Caravaggio’s work. David with the Head of Goliath was most likely a gift from the painter sent in hope of a pardon.. There is evidence to suggest that Borghese was inclined to show clemency—a pardon for Caravaggio was rumoured in Rome in the autumn of 1606—but Tomassoni’s powerful connections may have blocked a pardon. In any event, feeling that it was unsafe for him to return to Rome, Caravaggio traveled farther south to Naples , where he remained under the protection of the Colonna family and stayed in their palace. He painted one of his most-impressive altarpieces for the Neapolitan confraternity of the Pio Monte della Misericordia, devoted to the care of the sick and the poor. The Seven Acts of Mercy is a tall, dark, claustrophobically congested composition, in which the nominal seven good deeds, ranging from burial of the dead to clothing of the naked, are performed in a world so squeezed and teeming that it resembles some dark corner of Naples itself, the most famously crowded city in Italy.

Three other altarpieces are associated with Caravaggio’s time in the city: a harrowingly direct Flagellation of Christ, a harsh and brutally simplified Crucifixion of St. Andrew, and The Madonna of the Rosary, a picture so sweet in mood and so awkwardly theatrical that he probably painted it earlier in his career, around 1603–04, and took it to Naples with him from Rome. From Naples Caravaggio traveled to Malta , where he hoped to join the feared and respected Knights of the Order of St. John (or Hospitallers ), Christian soldiers waging guerrilla warfare against the forces of Islam from their island fortress in the Mediterranean . To be accepted into the order would mean automatic pardon for the murder he had committed in Rome and therefore redemption from his sins. The idea of traveling to Malta was probably suggested to Caravaggio by Costanza Colonna, whose own son Fabrizio Sforza Colonna had committed a crime and gained a pardon for it by entering the order, rising to become admiral in chief of the Maltese galleys.

Documents have emerged to show that the marchesa and Fabrizio both arrived in Naples a matter of days before Caravaggio left for Malta. Fabrizio then sailed for Malta at exctly the same time that Caravaggio set out for the island, so it is all but certain that the painter actually traveled there on his galley and under his protection. On Malta, Caravaggio painted a number of pictures to win the favour of senior figures in the order. Among them were an austere and ascetic St. Jerome Writing, for Ippolito Malaspina; the Portrait of Fra Antonio Martelli, so expressive and abbreviated a depiction of resolute old age that it prefigures the late portraiture of Rembrandt by more than half a century; and the Portrait of Alof de Wignacourt, with His Pageboy, a depiction of the grand master of the order himself, which so pleased Wignacourt that he petitioned the pope in Rome for permission to make Caravaggio a Knight of Obedience of the Order of St. John, despite his having killed a man. Permission was granted, and Caravaggio began work on the largest of all his paintings, The Beheading of St.

John, for the oratory of the conventual church, now cocathedral, of Valletta in Malta. The painting was to be accepted in lieu of his passaggio, the payment due from any knight on entering the order. It shows St. John ’s gruesome beheading taking place under the gaze of a Turkish Janissary , as if the saint were a modern knight of Malta suffering cruel martyrdom in some hostile corner of the Islamic world. The executioner has botched his first attempt at decapitation and is about to finish the job by slicing through the flesh of the saint’s neck with a sharp knife. The oratory for which the painting was intended was where prospective knights received instruction in the rules and expectations of the order. Caravaggio’s painting is to be understood as a cautionary image of the cruel fate they might expect to meet were they to fall into captivity. Its message was brutally straightforward: be ready to face a death like this, or leave. The canvas bears his only signature, spelled out in the blood that gushes from St. John’s neck. The meaning is neither sinister nor morbid. “F.

Michelangelo,” it announces, standing for Fra Michelangelo, as the painter would be entitled to style himself as a knight of Malta and henceforth a free and pardoned man—the blood on his hands washed clean by the blood of his new patron saint. In the event, Caravaggio’s stay on Malta culminated not in triumph but in disaster. On the eve of the feast day commemorating St. John’s beheading, when his painting was to be unveiled, he assaulted a more-senior knight of justice, Giovanni Rodomonte Roero, wounding him with a pistol, and was thrown into jail for the offence. The place of confinement was the guva, a rock-cut cell on the Castel Sant’Angelo from which escape was deemed impossible. However, with the aid of an accomplice, Caravaggio did escape, evading the castle guard, scaling the ramparts, and lowering himself down a sheer 200-foot (61-metre) precipice and into a boat awaiting him below. By the end of October 1608, he was in Syracuse , Sicily—a free man, but now doubly under threat, both of justice from Rome and of reprisals from Malta.

On December 1, 1608, an effigy representing him was ritually defrocked beneath his own painting of The Beheading of St. John in the oratory of St. John on Valletta, and he was declared to have been “expelled and thrust forth like a rotten and diseased limb from our Order and Society.” Caravaggio spent the short remainder of his life on the run, pursued, according to the usually reliable Baglione, by the man whom he had affronted and injured on Malta. Caravaggio nevertheless had time enough to create a number of haunting masterpieces: notably, in Sicily in 1608–09, a large altarpiece of The Burial of St. Lucy for the Basilica di Santa Lucia al Sepolcro in Syracuse; a heartbreakingly desolate Adoration of the Shepherds ; and a starkly simplified, almost neo-Byzantine Resurrection of Lazarus.

By the autumn of 1609, he had returned to Naples, where he stayed once more at the Colonna Palace, painting a now-lost altarpiece of The Raising of Lazarus for a chapel in the church of Sant’Anna dei Lombardi that was later destroyed in an earthquake . Soon after finishing that picture, he was attacked by four men outside the Osteria del Cerriglio, a Neapolitan tavern of ill repute, and so severely wounded in the face that he remained close to death for several months. The names of his attackers remain undocumented, but Baglione believed that they were from Malta, and the nature of Caravaggio’s injuries—a sfregio, or facial wound, being a traditional sign of revenge, leaving a lasting scar on both the victim’s face and his honour—suggests that Baglione’s supposition is probably true. If so, the most-likely candidates are Roero and three henchmen. Caravaggio created his last two paintings in 1610, while he was attempting to recover from the attack: The Denial of Peter and The Martyrdom of St. Ursula.

Both are painted in such a shaky, attenuated version of Caravaggio’s robust late manner as to suggest that he was suffering from some form of terrible tremor, or perhaps an eye complaint. 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.

Question: By what name was the artist Michaelangelo Merisi better known?
Answer: Caravaggio