Information AboutCaravaggio |
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around 1621.]] Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio ( 29 September 1571 – 18 July 1610 ) was an Italian Artist active in Rome , Naples , Malta and Sicily between 1593 and 1610 . He is commonly placed in the Baroque school, on which he had a formative influence. Even in his own lifetime Caravaggio was enigmatic, fascinating, and dangerous. He burst upon the Rome art scene in 1600, and never afterwards lacked commissions or patrons, yet handled his success atrociously. The earliest published notice on him, dating from 1604 and describing his lifestyle some three years previously, tells how "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 ball-court to the next, ever ready to engage in a fight or an argument, so that it is most awkward to get along with him."Floris Claes van Dijk, a contemporary of Caravaggio in Rome in 1601, quoted in John Gash, "Caravaggio", p.13. The quotation originates in Carl (or Karel) van Mander's ''Het Schilder-Boek'' of 1604, translated in full in Howard Hibbard, "Caravaggio". In 1606 he killed another young man in a brawl and fled Rome with a price on his head. In Malta in 1608 he was involved in another brawl, and yet another in Naples in 1609, possibly a deliberate attempt on his life by unidentified enemies. By the next year, after a career of little more than a decade, he was dead. Huge new churches and palazzi were being built in Rome in the decades of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, and paintings were needed to fill them. The Counter-Reformation Church was searching for an authentic religious art with which to counter the threat of Protestantism, and for this task the artificial conventions of Mannerism , which had ruled art for almost a century, no longer seemed adequate. Caravaggio's novelty was a radical Naturalism which combined close physical observation with a dramatic, even theatrical, approach to Chiaroscuro , the use of light and shadow. In Caravaggio's hands this new style was the vehicle for authentic and moving spirituality. Famous while he lived, Caravaggio was almost completely forgotten in the centuries after his death, and it was only in the last few decades of the 20th century that he has been rediscovered. Yet despite this his influence on the common style which eventually emerged from the ruins of Mannerism, the new Baroque , was profound. Andre Berne-Joffroy, Paul Valery ’s secretary, said of him: "What begins in the work of Caravaggio is, quite simply, modern painting."Quoted in Gilles Lambert, "Caravaggio", p.8. Biography Early life (1571-1592) '', 1601 . Oil on canvas, 230 x 175 cm. Cerasi Chapel , Santa Maria Del Popolo , Rome .]] Caravaggio’s father, Fermo Merisi, was a household administrator and architect-decorator to Francesco Sforza, Marchese of Caravaggio , a town some thirty kilometers from Milan . His mother, Lucia Aratori, came from a propertied family of the same district. None of the Merisi children — Michelangelo was Lucia's eldest — are listed on the baptismal records from Caravaggio, and all were probably born in Milan, where the Marchese had his court and where their father lived. In 1576 the family moved to Caravaggio to escape a plague which ravaged Milan. Caravaggio’s father died there in 1577 . It is assumed, but not certain, that he grew up in Caravaggio; it is equally possible that some of his childhood may have passed in Milan, where it appears his family kept up connections with the Sforzas and with the powerful Colonna family, who were allied by marriage with the Sforzas and destined to play a major role in Caravaggio's later life.The Colonna were one of the leading aristocratic families in Rome, and part of a network of powerful connections who supported the artist at crucial points in his life. Thus in 1606, following the death of Ranuccio, he fled first to the Colonna estates south of Rome, then on to Naples where Costanza Colonna Sforza, widow of Francesco Sforza, in whose husband's household Caravaggio's father had held a position, maintained a palace. Costanza's brother Ascanio was Cardinal-Protector of the Kingdom of Naples, another brother, Marzio, was an advisor to the Spanish Viceroy, and a sister was married into the important Neapolitan Carafa family - connections which might help explain the cornucopia of major commissions which fell into Caravaggio's lap in that city. Costanza's son Fabrizio Sforza Colonna, Knight of Malta and general of the Order's galleys, appears to have facilitated his arrival in the island in 1607 and his escape the next year, and he stayed in Costanza's Neapolitan palazzo on his return there in 1609. These connections are treated in most biographies and studies - see, for example, Catherine Puglisi, "Caravaggio", p.258, for a brief outline. Helen Langdon, "Caravaggio: A Life", ch.12 and 15, and Peter Robb, "M", pp.398ff and 459ff, give a fuller account. In 1584 he was apprenticed for four years to the painter Simone Peterzano of Milan, described in the contract of apprenticeship as a pupil of of Germany than to the stylised formality and grandeur of Roman Mannerism . Rome (1592-1600) '', c. 1593. Oil on canvas, 67 x 53 cm. Galleria Borghese , Rome .]] In mid-1592 he arrived in Rome, “naked and extremely needy ... without fixed address and without provision ... short of money.”Quoted without attribution in Robb, p.35, apparently based on the three primary sources, Mancini, Baglione and Bellori, all of whom depict Caravaggio's early Roman years as a period of extreme poverty (see references below). A few months later he was doing hack-work for the highly successful (''Glomerella cingulata'')." Caravaggio's Fruit: A Mirror on Baroque Horticulture (Jules Janick, Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana) Allied with this type of realism is another, the psychological: the boy is clearly a little bored posing with the heavy basket, but amused and compliant; his bared shoulder is treated with such physical desire that it is quite clear how the painter felt about his model; but the boy himself, while amiable, gives no sign of reciprocating the feeling. '', c. 1594. Oil on canvas, 107 x 99 cm. Kimbell Art Museum , Fort Worth , Texas .]] Caravaggio left Cesari in January 1594, determined to make his own way. His fortunes were at their lowest ebb, yet it was now that he forged some extermely important friendships, with the painter '' — showing another unsophisticated boy falling the victim of card cheats — is even more psychologically complex, and perhaps Caravaggio’s first true masterpiece. Like the '' Fortune Teller '' it was immensely popular, and over 50 copies survive. More importantly, it attracted the patronage of Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte , one of the leading connoisseurs in Rome, and henceforth Caravaggio would share an apartment with Minniti in the cardinal’s Palazzo Madama .The relationship may have been a stormy one: Minniti's Sicilian biographer, writing in 1724, relates that he eventually "settled down and took a wife, because he found the stormy escapades of his friend distasteful." Langdon, p.153. For Del Monte and his wealthy art-loving circle Caravaggio executed a number of intimate chamber-pieces — '' The Musicians '', '' The Lute Player '', a tipsy '' Bacchus '', an allegorical but realistic '' Boy Bitten By A Lizard '' — featuring Minniti and yet more boy models. These poetic, introverted, cryptically homoerotic worksDonald Posner's "Caravaggio's Early Homo-erotic Works" (''Art Quarterly 24'' (1971), pp.301-26) was the first to broach the subject of Caravaggio's sexuality and its relationship to his art. The most recent biographers and commentators generally take a homoerotic content for granted, but the subject is complex. For a perceptive and well-sourced discussion, see Brian Tovar's Sins against nature: Homoeroticism and the epistemology of Caravaggio . were a step away from the psychological realism that had begun to emerge a few years earlier. The realism returned with Caravaggio’s first paintings on religious themes, and the emergence of remarkable spirituality. The first of these was the '''', '' Martha And Mary Magdalene '', '' Judith Beheading Holofernes '', a '' Sacrifice Of Isaac '', a '' Saint Francis Of Assisi In Ecstasy '', and a '' Rest On The Flight Into Egypt ''. The works, while viewed by a comparatively limited circle, increased Caravaggio's fame with both connoisseurs and his fellow-artists. But a true reputation would depend on public commissions, and for these it was necessary to look to the Church. 'Most famous painter in Rome' (1600-1606) ''. 1599-1600. Oil on canvas, 322 x 340 cm. Contarelli Chapel , San Luigi Dei Francesi , Rome . The beam of light, which enters the picture from the direction of a real window, expresses in the blink of an eye the conversion of St Matthew, the hinge on which his destiny will turn, with no flying angels, parting clouds or other artifacts.]] In 1599, presumably through the influence of Del Monte, Caravaggio contracted to decorate the Contarelli Chapel in the church of San Luigi Dei Francesi . The two works making up the commission, the ''Martyrdom Of Saint Matthew'' and '' Calling Of Saint Matthew '', delivered in 1600, were an immediate sensation. Caravaggio’s heightened Chiaroscuro brought high drama to his subjects, while his acutely observed realism brought a new level of emotional intensity. This heightened form of chiaroscuro is known as Tenebrism , and he is credited with popularizing it. Opinion among Caravaggio’s artist peers was polarized. Some denounced him for various perceived failings, notably his insistence on painting from life, without drawings, but for the most part he was hailed as the saviour of art: "The painters then in Rome were greatly taken by this novelty, and the young ones particularly gathered around him, praised him as the unique imitator of nature, and looked on his work as miracles."Bellori. The passage continues: " younger painters outdid each other in copying him, undressing their models and raising their lights; and rather than setting out to learn from study and instruction, each readily found in the streets or squares of Rome both masters and models for copying nature." Caravaggio went on to secure a string of prestigious commissions for religious works featuring violent struggles, grotesque decapitations, torture and death. For the most part each new painting increased his fame, but a few were rejected by the various bodies for whom they were intended, at least in their original forms, and had to be re-painted or find new buyers. The essence of the problem was that while Caravaggio’s dramatic intensity was appreciated, his realism was seen by some as unacceptably vulgar.For an outline of the Counter-Reformation Church's policy on decorum in art, see Giorgi, p.80. For a more detailed discussion, see Gash, p.8ff; and for a discussion of the part played by notions of decorum in the rejection of "St Matthew and the Angel" and "Death of the Virgin", see Puglisi, pp.179-188. His first version of '' on the ground?” “Because!” “Is the horse God?” “No, but he stands in God’s light!”Quoted without attribution in Lambert, p.66. '' (detail). 1601 - 1606 . Oil on canvas, 396 x 245 cm. Louvre , Paris .]] Other works included the deeply moving '', the idea that the Mother of God did not die in any ordinary sense but was assumed into Heaven. The replacement altarpiece commissioned (from one of Caravaggio's most able followers, Carlo Saraceni ), showed the Virgin not dead, as Caravaggio had painted her, but seated and dying; and even this was rejected, and replaced with a work which showed the Virgin not dying, but ascending into Heaven with choirs of angels. In any case, the rejection did not mean that Caravaggio or his paintings were out of favour. The ''Death of the Virgin'' was no sooner taken out of the church than it was purchased by the Duke of Mantua, on the advice of Rubens , and later acquired by Charles I of England before entering the French royal collection in 1671. ''. One secular piece from these years is '' Amor Victorious '', painted in 1602 for Vincenzo Giustiniani , a member of Del Monte’s circle. The model was named in a memoir of the early 17th century as "Cecco", the diminutive for Francesco. He is possibly Francesco Boneri, identified with an artist active in the period 1610-1625 and known as Cecco Del Caravaggio ('Caravaggio's Ceccho')While Gianni Papi's identification of Cecco del Caravaggio as Francesco Boneri is widely accepted, the evidence connecting Boneri to Caravaggio's servant and model in the early 1600s is circumstantial. See Robb, pp193-196., carrying a bow and arrows and trampling symbols of the warlike and peaceful arts and sciences underfoot. He is unclothed, and it is difficult to accept this grinning urchin as the Roman god Cupid – as difficult as it was to accept Caravaggio’s other semi-clad adolescents as the various angels he painted in his canvases, wearing much the same stage-prop wings. The point, however, is the intense yet ambiguous reality of the work: it is simultaneously Cupid and Cecco, as Caravaggio’s Virgins were simultaneously the Mother of Christ and the Roman courtesans who modeled for them. Exile and death (1606-1610) '', c. 1610. Oil on canvas, 94 x 125 cm. Metropolitan Museum Of Art , New York . In the Chiaroscuro a woman points two fingers at Peter while a soldier points a third. Caravaggio tells the story of Peter denying Christ three times with this symbolism.]] Caravaggio led a tumultuous life. He was notorious for brawling, even in a time and place when such behavior was commonplace, and the transcripts of his police records and trial proceedings fill several pages. On . There, outside the jurisdiction of the Roman authorities and protected by the Colonna family, the most famous painter in Rome became the most famous in Naples. His connections with the Colonnas led to a stream of important church commissions, including the '' Madonna Of The Rosary '', and '' The Seven Works Of Mercy ''. Despite his success in Naples, after only a few months in the city Caravaggio left for 1608 and, after verifying that the accused had failed to appear although summoned four times, voted unanimously to expel their ''putridum et foetidum'' ex-brother. Caravaggio was expelled, not for his crime, but for having left Malta without permission (i.e., escaping). '' (1609), Museo Regionale Uffici , Messina .]] After only nine months in Sicily Caravaggio returned to Naples. According to his earliest biographer he was being pursued by enemies while in Sicily and felt it safest to place himself under the protection of the Colonnas until he could secure his pardon from the pope (now Paul V ) and return to Rome.Baglione says that Caravaggio in Naples had "given up all hope of revenge" against his unnamed enemy. In Naples he painted '' The Denial Of Saint Peter '', a final '' John The Baptist (Borghese) '', and, his last picture, '' The Martyrdom Of Saint Ursula ''. His style continued to evolve - Saint Ursula is caught in a moment of highest action and drama, as the arrow fired by the king of the Huns strikes her in the breast, unlike earlier paintings which had all the immobility of the posed models. The brushwork was much freer and more impressionistic. Had Caravaggio lived, something new would have come. In Naples an attempt was made on his life, by persons unknown. At first it was reported in Rome that the "famous artist" Caravaggio was dead, but then it was learned that he was alive, but seriously disfigured in the face. He painted a '' Salome With The Head Of John The Baptist (Madrid) '', showing his own head on a platter, and sent it to de Wignacourt as a plea for forgiveness. Perhaps at this time he painted also a '' David With The Head Of Goliath '', showing the young David with a strangely sorrowful expression gazing on the wounded head of the giant, which is again Caravaggio's. This painting he may have sent to the unscrupulous art-loving cardinal-nephew Scipione Borghese, who had the power to grant or withhold pardons.According to a 17th century writer the painting the head of Goliath is a self-portrait of the artist, while David is ''il suo Caravaggino'', "his little Caravaggio". This phrase is obscure, but it has been interpreted as meaning either that the boy is a youthful self-portrait, or, more commonly, that this is the Cecco who modelled for the ''Amor Vincit''. The sword-blade carries an abbreviated inscription which has been interpreted as meaning Humility Conquers Pride. Attributed to a date in Caravaggio's late Roman period by Bellori, the recent tendency is to see it as a product on Caravaggio's second Neapolitan period. (See Gash, p.125). In the summer of 1610 he took a boat northwards to receive the pardon, which seemed imminent thanks to his powerful Roman friends. With him were three last paintings, gifts for Cardinal Scipione.A letter from the Bishop of Caserta in Naples to Cardinal Scipione Borghese in Rome, dated 29 July 1610, informs the Cardinal that the Marchesa of Caravaggio is holding two John the Baptists and a Magdalene which were intended for Borghese. These were presumably the price of Caravaggio's pardon from Borghese's uncle, the pope. What happened next is the subject of much confusion and conjecture. The bare facts are that on as the date of death, and a recent researcher claims to have discovered a death notice showing that the artist died on that day of a fever in Porto Ercole1There seems to be no later confirmation of this report., near Grosseto in Tuscany . Caravaggio the artist The birth of Baroque '', 1602. National Gallery Of Ireland , Dublin . Caravaggio's application of the Chiaroscuro technique shows through on the faces and armour notwithstanding the lack of a visible shaft of light.]] Caravaggio “put the oscuro (shadows) into chiaroscuro.”Lambert, p.11. Chiaroscuro was practiced long before he came on the scene, but it was Caravaggio who made the technique definitive, darkening the shadows and transfixing the subject in a blinding shaft of light. With this went the acute observation of physical and psychological reality which formed the ground both for his immense popularity and for his frequent problems with his religious commissions. He worked at great speed, from live models, scoring basic guides directly onto the canvas with the end of the brush handle. 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. Some have been identified, including Mario Minniti and Francesco Boneri , both fellow-artists, Mario appearing as various figures in the early secular works, the young Francesco as a succession of angels, Baptists and Davids in the later canvasses. His female models include Fillide Melandroni , Anna Bianchini , and Maddalena Antognetti, all well-known prostitutes, who appear as female religious figures including the Virgin and various saints.Robb, ''passim'', makes a fairly exhaustive attempt to identify models and relate them to individual canvases. Caravaggio himself appears in several paintings, his final self-portrait being as the witness on the far right to the '' Martyrdom Of Saint Ursula ''.Caravaggio's self-portraits run from the ''Sick Bacchus'' at the beginning of his career to the head of Goliath in the ''David with the Head of Goliath'' in Rome's Borghese Gallery. Previous artists had included self-portraits as onlookers to the action, but Caravaggio's innovation was to include himself as a participant. '', 1601. Oil on canvas, 139 x 195 cm. National Gallery , London .]] Caravaggio had a noteworthy ability to express in one scene of unsurpassed vividness the passing of a crucial moment. '''', 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. Other major Baroque artist would travel the same path, for example Bernini fascinated with themes from Ovid’s '' Metamorphosis ''. The ''Caravaggisti'' '' 1598-1599. Galleria Nazionale D'Arte Antica , Rome.]] 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 Giovanni Baglione (although his Caravaggio phase was short-lived) and Orazio Gentileschi . In the next generation 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, and ended up as court painter to Charles I in England. His daughter Artemisia Gentileschi was also close to Caravaggio, and one of the most gifted of the movement. Yet in Rome and in Italy it was not Caravaggio, but the influence of Annibale Carraci , blending elements from the High Renaissance and Lombard realism, which ultimately triumphed. 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. 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 . In the following generation the affects of Caravaggio, although attentuated, are to be seen in the work of Rubens (who purchased one of his paintings for the Gonzaga of Mantua and painted a copy of the '' Entombment Of Christ ''), Vermeer , Rembrandt , and Velazquez , the last of whom presumably saw his work during his various sojourns in Italy. Death and rebirth of a reputation '' (1602-1603). Pinacoteca Vaticana .]] Caravaggio’s fame scarcely survived his death. His innovations inspired the Baroque, but the Baroque took the drama of his chiaroscuro without the psychological realism. He directly influenced the style of his companion Orazio Gentileschi , and his daughter Artemisia Gentileschi , and, at a distance, the Frenchmen Georges De La Tour and Simon Vouet , and the Spaniard Giuseppe Ribera . Yet within a few decades his works were being ascribed to less scandalous artists, or simply overlooked. Largely this was a matter of changing fashion — the Baroque, to which he contributed so much, had moved on. And partly it was due to critical demolition-jobs done by two of his earliest biographers, Giovanni Baglione , a rival painter with a personal vendetta, and the influential 17th century critic Giovan Bellori , who had not known him but was under the influence of the French Classicist Poussin , who had not known him either but hated his work. In the 1920s art critic Roberto Longhi brought Caravaggio's name once more to public attention, and placed him in the European tradition: “Ribera, , no other Italian painter exercised so great an influence.”Bernard Berenson, in Lambert, op. cit., p.8 Modern tradition '', 1608 . Oratory of the co-Cathedral of St John, Valletta .]] Many large museums of art, for example those in writes of a work of his, a "picture of St. Rosario (in the museum of the Grand Duke of Tuscany), showing a circle of thirty men ''turpiter ligati"'' which is not known to have survived. A painting of an Angel was destroyed during the bombing of Dresden though there are black and white photographs of the work. Chronology of major works See Also: Caravaggio, chronology of works Footnotes References Primary sources The main primary sources for Caravaggio's life are:
All have been reprinted in Howard Hibbard's "Caravaggio" and in the appendices to Catherine Puglisi's "Caravaggio", while Baglione's biography is available online (see External links section). Secondary sources
External links
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