Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610)

Andre Berne-Joffroy, Paul Valéry’s secretary: "What begins in the work of Caravaggio is, quite simply, modern painting."

from the ago.net

known by the name of his northern Italian hometown of "Caravaggio," was one of the most revolutionary artists of the 17th century. He began his career as a painter of genre with pictures of gypsies, musicians, card players, still lifes and portraits, but quickly developed into the most powerful religious artist of his age.

The major impetus on Caravaggio's art was the artistic principles articulated as a result of the Counter-Reformation. Art was to act as a media for propaganda and its depictions of biblical stories, and figures were to be realistic, in direct contrast to the idealistic style during the Renaissance. His paintings were vivid and his bold naturalistic style, which emphasized the common humanity of the apostles and martyrs, suited the aspirations of the Counter-Reformation church. Caravaggio's dramatic use of light and shadow, a technique called chiaroscuro, and his placing of figures directly in the foreground was revolutionary, and his works attracted a large following from all over Europe. His artistic influence was pervasive throughout the century, particularly on such artists as Rembrandt and Velazquez.

At age 24 Caravaggio was commissioned 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.

Despite violent criticism, Caravaggio's reputation grew and he began to be envied. He had many encounters with the law during his stay in Rome and 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. When he reached Naples, probably early in 1607, he painted there for a time, awaiting a pardon by the Pope.

Early in 1608 Caravaggio went to Malta and was received as a celebrated artist. Fearful of imprisonment, 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, at which time 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.

The Caravaggisti (from wikipedia)

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 attenuated, 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.