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Caravaggio

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Artists

   Chalk portrait of Caravaggio by Ottavio Leoni, c. 1621.
   Enlarge
   Chalk portrait of Caravaggio by Ottavio Leoni, c. 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, of which he
   was the first great representative.

   Even in his own lifetime Caravaggio was considered enigmatic,
   fascinating, and dangerous. He burst upon the Rome art scene in 1600,
   and thereafter never lacked for commissions or patrons, yet handled his
   success atrociously. An early 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." In 1606 he killed a young man in a
   brawl and fled from 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 searched for 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 and extremely influential while he lived, Caravaggio was almost
   entirely forgotten in the centuries after his death, and it was only in
   the 20th century that his importance to the development of Western art
   was 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 Valéry’s secretary, said of
   him: "What begins in the work of Caravaggio is, quite simply, modern
   painting."

Biography

Early life (1571-1592)

   The Crucifixion of Saint Peter, 1601. Oil on canvas, 230 x 175 cm.
   Cerasi Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome.
   Enlarge
   The Crucifixion of Saint Peter, 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 that the artist
   grew up in Caravaggio, but 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.

   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 Titian. Caravaggio appears to have stayed in the
   Milan-Caravaggio area after his apprenticeship ended, but it is
   possible that he visited Venice and saw the works of Giorgione, whom he
   was later accused of aping, and of Titian. Certainly he would have
   become familiar with the art treasures of Milan, including Leonardo’s
   Last Supper, and with the regional Lombard art, a style which valued
   "simplicity and attention to naturalistic detail" and was closer to the
   naturalism of Germany than to the stylised formality and grandeur of
   Roman Mannerism.

Rome (1592-1600)

   Boy with a Basket of Fruit, c. 1593. Oil on canvas, 67 x 53 cm.
   Galleria Borghese, Rome.
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   Boy with a Basket of Fruit, 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.” A few months
   later he was doing hack-work for the highly successful Giuseppe Cesari,
   Pope Clement VIII’s favourite painter, “painting flowers and fruit” in
   his factory-like workshop. Known works from this period include a small
   Boy Peeling a Fruit (his earliest known painting), a Boy with a Basket
   of Fruit, and the Young Sick Bacchus, supposedly a self-portrait done
   during convalescence from a serious illness that ended his employment
   with Cesari. All three demonstrate the physical particularity — one
   aspect of his realism — for which Caravaggio was to become renowned:
   the fruit-basket-boy’s produce has been analysed by a professor of
   horticulture, who was able to identify individual cultivars right down
   to "... a large fig leaf with a prominent fungal scorch lesion
   resembling anthracnose (Glomerella cingulata).".

   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 extremely important friendships, with the painter Prospero Orsi,
   the architect Onorio Longhi, and the sixteen year old Sicilian artist
   Mario Minniti. Orsi, established in the profession, introduced him to
   influential collectors; Longhi, more balefully, introduced him to the
   world of Roman street-brawls; and Minniti served as a model and, years
   later, would be instrumental in helping Caravaggio to important
   commissions in Sicily. The Fortune Teller, his first composition with
   more than one figure, shows Mario being cheated by a gypsy girl. The
   theme was quite new for Rome, and proved immensely influential over the
   next century and beyond. This, however, was in the future: at the time,
   Caravaggio sold it for practically nothing. The Cardsharps — 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. 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 other boy models. The allegedly
   homoerotic ambience of these paintings has been the centre of
   considerable dispute amongst scholars and biographers since it was
   first raised in the later half of the 20th century.
   The Cardsharps, c. 1594. Oil on canvas, 107 x 99 cm. Kimbell Art
   Museum, Fort Worth, Texas.
   Enlarge
   The Cardsharps, c. 1594. Oil on canvas, 107 x 99 cm. Kimbell Art
   Museum, Fort Worth, Texas.

   The realism returned with Caravaggio’s first paintings on religious
   themes, and the emergence of remarkable spirituality. The first of
   these was the Penitent Magdalene, showing Mary Magdalene at the moment
   when she has turned from her life as a courtesan and sits weeping on
   the floor, her jewels scattered around her. “It seemed not a religious
   painting at all ... a girl sitting on a low wooden stool drying her
   hair ... Where was the repentance ... suffering ... promise of
   salvation?” It was understated, in the Lombard manner, not histrionic
   in the Roman manner of the time. It was followed by others in the same
   style: Saint Catherine, 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)

   The Calling of Saint Matthew. 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.
   Enlarge
   The Calling of Saint Matthew. 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."
   Death of the Virgin (detail). 1601 - 1606. Oil on canvas, 396 x 245 cm.
   Louvre, Paris.
   Enlarge
   Death of the Virgin (detail). 1601 - 1606. Oil on canvas, 396 x 245 cm.
   Louvre, Paris.

   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. His first version of Saint Matthew and the Angel,
   featured the saint as a bald peasant with dirty legs attended by a
   lightly-clad over-familiar boy-angel, was rejected and had to be
   repainted as The Inspiration of Saint Matthew. Similarly, The
   Conversion of Saint Paul was rejected, and while another version of the
   same subject, the Conversion of Saint Paul, was accepted, it featured
   the saint’s horse’s haunches far more prominently than the saint
   himself, prompting this exchange between the artist and an exasperated
   official of Santa Maria del Popolo: “Why have you put a horse in the
   middle, and Saint Paul on the ground?” “Because!” “Is the horse God?”
   “No, but he stands in God’s light!”

   Other works included the deeply moving Entombment, the Madonna di
   Loreto (Madonna of the Pilgrims), the Grooms' Madonna, and the Death of
   the Virgin. The history of these last two paintings illustrate the
   reception given to some of Caravaggio's art, and the times in which he
   lived. The Grooms' Madonna, also known as Madonna dei palafrenieri,
   painted for a small altar in st.Peter's Basilica in Rome, remained
   there for just two days, and was then taken off. A cardinal's secretary
   wrote: " In this painting there are but vulgarity, sacrilege,
   impiousness and disgust...One would say it is a work made by a painter
   that can paint well, but of a dark spirit, and who has been for a lot
   of time far from God, from His adoration, and from any good
   thought...". The Death of the Virgin, then, commissioned in 1601 by a
   wealthy jurist for his private chapel in the new Carmelite church of
   Santa Maria della Scala, was rejected by the Carmelites in 1606.
   Caravaggio's contemporary Giulio Mancini records that it was rejected
   because Caravaggio had used a well-known prostitute as his model for
   the Virgin; Giovanni Baglione, another contemporary, tells us it was
   because of Mary's bare legs: a matter of decorum in either case. But
   Caravaggio scholar John Gash suggests that the problem for the
   Carmelites may have been theological rather than aesthetic, in that
   Caravaggio's version fails to assert the doctrine of the Assumption of
   Mary, 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.
   Amor Vincit Omnia. 1602 - 1603. Oil on canvas. 156 x 113 cm.
   Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. Caravaggio shows Cupid prevailing over all
   human endeavors: war, music, science, government.
   Enlarge
   Amor Vincit Omnia. 1602 - 1603. Oil on canvas. 156 x 113 cm.
   Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. Caravaggio shows Cupid prevailing over all
   human endeavors: war, music, science, government.

   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 Cecco'), 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)

   The Denial of Saint Peter, 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.
   Enlarge
   The Denial of Saint Peter, 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 behaviour was commonplace, and the
   transcripts of his police records and trial proceedings fill several
   pages. On 29 May 1606, he killed, possibly unintentionally, a young man
   named Ranuccio Tomassoni. Previously his high-placed patrons had
   protected him from the consequences of his escapades, but this time
   they could do nothing. Caravaggio, outlawed, fled to Naples. 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 Malta, the headquarters of the Knights of Malta,
   presumably hoping that the patronage of Alof de Wignacourt, Grand
   Master of the Knights, could help him secure a pardon for Tomassoni's
   death. De Wignacourt proved so impressed at having the famous artist as
   official painter to the Order that he inducted him as a knight, and the
   early biographer Bellori records that the artist was well pleased with
   his success. Major works from his Malta period include a huge Beheading
   of Saint John the Baptist (the only painting to which he put his
   signature) and a Portrait of Alof de Wignacourt and his Page, as well
   as portraits of other leading knights. Yet by late August of 1608 he
   was arrested and imprisoned. The circumstances surrounding this abrupt
   change of fortune have long been a matter of speculation, but recent
   investigation has revealed it to have been the result of yet another
   brawl, during which the door of a house was battered down and a knight
   seriously wounded. By December he had been expelled from the Order "as
   a foul and rotten member."
   The Raising of Lazarus (1609), Museo Regionale Uffici, Messina.
   Enlarge
   The Raising of Lazarus (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. 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.

   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. What happened
   next is the subject of much confusion and conjecture. The bare facts
   are that on 28 July an anonymous avviso (private newsletter) from Rome
   to the ducal court of Urbino reported that Caravaggio was dead. Three
   days later another avviso said that he had died of fever. These were
   the earliest, brief accounts of his death, which later underwent much
   elaboration. No body was found. A poet friend of the artist later gave
   18 July 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 Ercole, near Grosseto in Tuscany.

Caravaggio the artist

The birth of Baroque

   The Taking of Christ, 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.
   Enlarge
   The Taking of Christ, 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.” 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 ("Lena" mentioned
   in court documents (the "Artichoke" case) as Caravaggio's concubine),
   all well-known prostitutes, who appear as female religious figures
   including the Virgin and various saints. Caravaggio himself appears in
   several paintings, his final self-portrait being as the witness on the
   far right to the Martyrdom of Saint Ursula.
   Supper at Emmaus, 1601. Oil on canvas, 139 x 195 cm. National Gallery,
   London.
   Enlarge
   Supper at Emmaus, 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 Supper at
   Emmaus depicts the recognition of Christ by his disciples: a moment
   before he is a fellow traveler, mourning the passing of the Messiah, as
   he never ceases to be to the inn-keeper’s eyes, the second after, he is
   the Saviour. In The Calling of St Matthew, 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 artists
   would travel the same path, for example Bernini, fascinated with themes
   from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

The Caravaggisti

   Judith Beheading Holofernes 1598-1599. Galleria Nazionale d'Arte
   Antica, Rome.
   Enlarge
   Judith Beheading Holofernes 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
   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.

Death and rebirth of a reputation

   The Entombment of Christ (1602-1603). Pinacoteca Vaticana.
   Enlarge
   The Entombment of Christ (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, Vermeer, La Tour and Rembrandt could never have existed
   without him. And the art of Delacroix, Courbet and Manet would have
   been utterly different.” The influential Bernard Berenson agreed: “With
   the exception of Michaelangelo, no other Italian painter exercised so
   great an influence.”

Modern tradition

   The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, 1608. Oratory of the
   co-Cathedral of St John, Valletta.
   Enlarge
   The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, 1608. Oratory of the
   co-Cathedral of St John, Valletta.

   Many large museums of art, for example those in Detroit and New York,
   contain rooms where dozens of paintings by as many artists display the
   characteristic look of the work of Caravaggio — nighttime setting,
   dramatic lighting, ordinary people used as models, honest description
   from nature. In modern times, painters like the Norwegian Odd Nerdrum
   and the Hungarian Tibor Csernus make no secret of their attempts to
   emulate and update him, and the contemporary American artist Doug
   Ohlson pays homage to Caravaggio's influence on his own work. Filmmaker
   Derek Jarman turned to the Caravaggio legend when creating his movie
   Caravaggio; and Dutch art forger Han van Meegeren used genuine
   Caravaggios when creating his ersatz Old Masters.

   Only about 50 works by Caravaggio survive. One, The Calling of Saints
   Peter and Andrew, was recently authenticated and restored. It had been
   in storage in Hampton Court, mislabeled as a copy. At least a couple of
   his paintings have been or may have been lost in recent times. Richard
   Francis Burton writes of 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. Also, 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

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