Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio
(29 September 1571 - 18 July 1610) |
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intense palettes, dramatic religious narratives Art Work
| Name: |
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio |
| Gender: |
Male |
| Place of Birth: |
Milan, Italy |
| Nationality: |
Italian |
| Birth: |
29 September 1571 |
| Death: |
18 July 1610 |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
intense palettes, dramatic religious narratives |
| Medium: |
oil painting, bronze, marble, travertine |
| Method: |
oil painting |
| Style: |
Italian Baroque |
| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painter
Sculptor
Architect |
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Biography
Caravaggio without doubt revolutionized European painting. His use of plebeian models enacting sacred religious dramas in theatrically lit stages shocked critics and electrified artists throughout Italy, Holland, and France. Though he died in 1610, Caravaggio's impact lasted for decades and stretched beyond Italy into Holland as well as France. Remarkable for working swiftly and painting directly from nature, without using drawings, Caravaggio produced a prodigious and influential body of work during his short, yet violent lifetime.
Caravaggio's origins are obscure. The date of his birth has been adjusted from 1573 to 1571, while the place of his birth remains a matter of conjecture, it being either Milan or nearby Caravaggio, where ihe family held property. Caravaggio must have nurtured his talent in the north, where Venetian painting, particularly that of Titian and Giorgione, as well as Savoldo, clearly affected him. Between 1584 and 1588, Caravaggio studied with the Milanese painter Simone Peterzano. Shortly thereafter, around 1592, Caravaggio made his way to Rome, where he joined the studio of Cavaliere d'Arpino, the most prominent painter then active in Rome. Caravaggio may have arrived in Rome as a specialist in still life painting. His one known still life, Basket of Fruit Milan, Pinacoteca Amborisiana, has been placed to the early phase of his career.
His development as a figure painter involved single or half length figures in the tradition of Giorgione. His Boy with a Basket of Fruit Rome, Galleria Borghese and Self Portrait as Bacchus, were both in Cavaliere d'Arpino's collection and were later seized by Scipione Borghese in 1607. Not a popular picture type when Caravaggio first adopted it, such halflengths spawned numerous imitators including Valentin and Manfredi and introduced informal low life subjects that became particularly popular in Rome and Utrecht during the first half of the century. Painted directly from the model, Caravaggio's early figure paintings were refreshingly direct in their confrontation and interaction with the viewer. All share a provocative sexuality as well as playful allusions to the senses.
Caravaggio's first significant Roman patron was Cardinal del Monte, who granted Caravaggio rooms in his palace around 1594 to 1596. Caravaggio reportedly painted a scene of card players for del Monte, which Caravaggio himself never repeated but which was frequently copied. Del Monte was also the patron for whom Caravaggio produced The Lute Player and, according to some scholars, which may have been a gift from del Monte to the Duke of Tuscany. Both Baglione and Bellori suggest that the first painting Caravaggio produced for del Monte was The Concert. It shows Caravaggio's rapid mastery of multiple figured compositions which, with their device of a figure seen from the back, forms a link to Caravaggio's early attempts at religious imagery. By 1597 Caravaggio began to turn his attention toward religious subjects, of which Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Rome Galleria Doria- Pamphili) and The Penitent Magdalen (Rome, same location) share the same dates (ca. 1596/8) and similar compositional and pictorial treatment. In both works the viewer is confronted by deeply brooding figures that fill the picture, devoid of much setting and many of the conventional attributes associated with traditional religious subject matter. Nevertheless, their intense emotional states, their striking derivation from models, and their demonstrable mastery of both technique and composition insured his growing reputation. To this phase of Caravaggio's development also belong the Ecstasy of St. Francis (Hartford, Connecticut, Wadsworth Atheneum) and Catherine of Alexandria (Lugano, Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection).
Around 1598 both Caravaggio's style and subject matter changed. His Conversion of the Magdalen (Detroit Institute of Arts) and his Judith Beheading Holofemes (Naples, Museo e Galleria Nazionale di Capodimonte) point to his adoption of dramatic lighting and his fascination with violent subjects and brutal reality. In July 1599 Caravaggio received his first great public commission: the two large pictures for the Contarelli chapel, San Luigi dei Francesi, across the street from del Monte's palace. Completed by 4 July 1600, The Calling of St. Matthew and The Martyrdom of St. Matthew remain in situ. Both real and theatrical, Caravaggio achieved his startling results by converting his earlier secular scenes into religious ones through the introduction of Christ and St. Peter. Quoting from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel (The Creation of Adam) for Christ's hand, Caravaggio made Christ seem like an apparition who enters one of Caravaggio's gambling episodes. Underscoring the transformation of the mundane into the divine, Caravaggio's Calling of St. Matthew remains among his most celebrated and successful paintings, in contrast to the violent Martyrdom, in which the saint's death never really rises above a portrayal of a Roman street gang attacking a helpless cleric. Technical examination of the Martyrdom indicates that Caravaggio himself was not satisfied with his efforts and that he repainted a number of the ancillary figures at least once.
Two months after the Contarelli project was installed, the Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani replaced del Monte as Caravaggio's principal patron, and through him, Caravaggio received his next important commission. For Monsignor Tiberio Cerasi, Papal Treasurer, Caravaggio was to paint The Conversion of St. Paul and The Crucifixion of St. Peter in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, a project for which he received final payment in November 1601. There is some speculation that the Conversion of St. Paul (Principe Guido Odescalchi collection) was a first (and according to Baglioni, a failed) attempt at pleasing his patron (a work that was later acquired by Cardinal Sannesio), and that Caravaggio re-did the Conversion, producing the work now in the chapel. Certainly the two works are radically different, the first conforming to Caravaggio's earlier approach to painting such as found in his Rest on the Flight into Egypt, while his second attempt has the depth of feeling, the psychological and narrative drama of his Calling of St. Matthew. Reduced to a few elements, a large calm piebald horse, a fallen rider, and an attendant, all pressed to the surface of a vast, dark canvas, Caravaggio's second Conversion is a masterpiece of both over- and understatement. Its simple, unadorned actors strip Paul's conversion to its most basic elements, while the scene's monumental size and nocturnal lighting make the simple event both compelling and dramatic and ultimately holy. In this pairing, Caravaggio's Martyrdom of St. Peter brilliantly compliments and balances Paul's conversion. As three ordinary young men cope with the problems of hoisting up Peter's cross, the aged saint stoically accepts his doom, though momentarily distracted by the pain from a nail driven through his hand. Caravaggio's interpretation permits prosaic reality to contrast with and heighten St. Peter's dignity, frailty, and sanctity. Caravaggio abandoned violence here, obtaining a sense of tragic inevitability.
Roughly a month after beginning work on the Cerasi chapel, reports of assaults involving Caravaggio are found in surviving Roman police records. He continued, however, to paint rapidly and with increasing refinement of his characterization. His Supper at Emmaus (London, National Gallery) returns to the half-length format and attempts to monumentalize the scene with exaggerated, foreshortened gestures and more generalized facial types. From the same year stems his most overtly erotic painting, the Victorious Cupid (dated 1602, Berlin, Dahlem Museum, Gemaidegalerie), as well as 5/. John in the Wilderness (Rome, Pinacoteca Capitolina). Later in 1602, Caravaggio's St. Matthew and the Angel for the Contarelli Chapel, San Luigi dei Francesi, was rejected for lacking decorum (according to Bellori). The tender and intimate manner in which the angel guides Matthew's hand, as well as Matthew's rustic simplicity, was replaced in the second and accepted version by a more noble, aged Matthew and a suitably airborne angel. The earlier version (Berlin, destroyed in 1945, acquired by Giustiniani) was, however, the more profound and more original conception.
Sometime between 1602 and 1604 Caravaggio painted what has become his most admired altarpiece: The Entombment of Christ for the Chiesa Nuova (S. Maria in Vallicella, Rome, now in the Vatican Museum). Using models posed in the studio as well as artistic sources such as Raphael and Giotto, Caravaggio created an image that reconciles and synthesizes the many op poshes from which it is composed. Frozen in time, it nonetheless elucidates a carefully constructed series of actions. Shrouded in darkness, it seems bathed in a searing spotlight. Its entirely real and believable people, exist beyond our reality by the sanctity and nobility of their actions; and despite the vagueness of the place in which they exist, they move inexorably into our space. In 1603, a libel trial was mounted against Caravaggio by the rival painter Giovanni Baglione (among others). From the preserved testimony we have Caravaggio's only certain words on art: the artist must "paint well...and imitate natural things well."
Imprisoned for two weeks (September 11-25) he then entered on what is considered by some to be the greatest phase of his career. In 1604 he undertook the Madonna di Loreto for the Cavaletti chapel of S. Agostino, Rome. Composed with the same expansive, monumental simplicity of the Entombment the Madonna di Loreto continued his vision of rustic and humble humanity ennobled by transcendent faith. The model for the Madonna may have been a certain Lena over whom Caravaggio had another one of his famous brawls, wounding a notary on the side of his head with a sword and ensnaring himself again with the law.
Caravaggio thereupon left Rome for Genoa in early August of 1605. There he probably painted SL John the Baptist (Kansas City, Missouri, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art), wherein the lighting and the massive drapery lend a certain temperamental dignity and maturity to this portrayal of a youthful, post-adolescent model. The work is in marked contrast to his portrayal of St. Jerome in his Study, of the same year (Rome, Galleria Borghese), in which the aged hermit is succinctly portrayed with a minimum attention to detail. Back in Rome on 26 August 1605, Caravaggio received his only commission for St. Peter's: a Madonna with St. Anne, painted for the papal grooms (Palafrenieri). Exhibited only two days (April 14 and 15) on the St. Peter's altar (authorities apparently regarded it as indecent), the painting was removed to the church of the Palafrenieri (St. Anna), where it was sold to Cardinal Borghese by June 1606.
At about the same time Caravaggio's largest Roman altarpiece, Death of the Virgin (Paris, Louvre), was painted for the Carmelite church of Santa Maria della Scala in Trastevere. Rejected as too unorthodox for its sacred subject, Mancini reported that Caravaggio had used a drowned prostitute as his model for the Virgin. A brilliant recapitulation (in reverse) of his Entombment composition, Caravaggio's Death of the Virgin is more apallingly real, filled as it is with anecdotal details of mourners grieving over the body of the virgin, whose bare feet and slightly bloated body make her death seem less tragic than merely pathetic. The painting was sufficiently admired to be acquired by the Duke of Mantua on the advice of Rubens* in 1607.
On 29 May 1606 Caravaggio killed Ranuccio Tommasoni and less than a year later fled from Rome to escape prosecution. He made his way to Naples, where he received his first known commission in October. Caravaggio's move to Naples spread his influence to the Neapolitan school and marked a radical shift in his personal style. Knowledge about Caravaggio's Neapolitan period has increased in recent years, culminating in several notable exhibition catalogues (see Bibliography). Caravaggio's first Neapolitan stay lasted from October 1606 to July 1607. Caravaggio's second Christ at Emmaus done in this period (Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera) reveals substantial changes in his vision. More subdued in color and mood, the Milan Christ at Emmaus demonstrates a deeper and more profound psychological interpretation, and is painted with thinner layers of paint allowing the texture of the canvas to play a greater role.
Sometime in 1606, before or after he left Rome, Caravaggio also began work on his Madonna of the Rosary (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum), a painting completed in 1607 and sold in Naples. Perhaps painted for the Colonna family who sheltered Caravaggio on his escape from Rome, this major painting is slightly flawed by numerous figures that crowd the scene. In January of 1607 Caravaggio received final payment for the painting The Seven Acts of Mercy, considered by many scholars the most important religious work of the Seicento. Painted for the Pio Monte della Misericordia of Naples and still in situ, it portrays charitable deeds enacted by figures that seem almost randomly part of the Neapolitan street at night. Only the Virgin, Christ, and angels (added undoubtedly at the request of the patrons) looking down lend a supernatural quality. The characters who feed the hungry, bury the dead, clothe the naked do so with intensity mingled with reluctance. There is a raw crudeness to this scene which lends power and pathos to the action, and the scuddering light, reminiscent of Tintoretto, is a reminder that having left Rome, Caravaggio was remembering his Northern origins more intensely.
Shortly after completing The Seven Acts of Mercy Caravaggio began work on The Flagellation of Christ (Naples, Museo e Galleria Nazionale di Capodimonte) for the De Franchis family chapel in San Domenico Maggiore. These two paintings are considered the fountainhead of Neapolitan Caravaggist painting. Caravaggio's paint handling is simultaneously more summary and yet more synthetic, elucidating more subtle details of skin texture and physiognomy and at the same time concentrating on essentials. Caravaggio's Crucifixion of St. Andrew (Ohio, Cleveland Museum of Art) which, according to Bellori, was taken to Spain by the Spanish Viceroy of Naples in 1610, became one of the sources for Spanish realism that emerged early in the seventeenth century. Its place in Caravaggio's Neapolitan career is a matter of dispute; opinion is divided as to its place in the first or second stay in Naples.
On 13 July 1607 Caravaggio landed on the island of Malta, apparently seeking a Knighthood of St. John. There he painted two portraits of Alof de Wignacourt (Florence, Palazzo Pitti; Paris, Louvre), the Grand Master of the Order, and thereby gained his objective. His Beheading of St. John the Baptist (dated 1608, Valletta, church of San Giovanni), painted for the Cathedral of Jerusalem was finished by August 29th of that year, the feast day of John's decollation. Here Caravaggio's remarkable narrative powers have reached new levels. Choosing to portray the moment just after the swordsman has completed his task and is about to remove the severed head from the body, Caravaggio avoids any direct reference to physical violence and yet, by the moment he has chosen to portray, creates a scene deeply saturated with dread and horror. A single instant conveys all that has already happened and alludes to that still to come. Endowing his onlookers with frank curiosity, mingled with revulsion and grief, Caravaggio has given this biblical episode a grippingly human reality. His staging, wherein the figures are set within large, spartan spaces, echoes but does not repeat his great compositions of around 1600 to 1602. Now the spaces have become vaster, the figures more dwarfed, and their human dimensions underscored both physically and psychologically.
By 1608 Caravaggio had reportedly attacked a knight and was thrown into prison, from which he escaped and headed for Sicily. His first stop was Syracuse, where in late 1608 he was commissioned to paint The Burial of St. Lucy for the Church of Santa Lucia al Sepolchro. Here his tendency to envelop his action with a large space is further developed and to it is added the device of having the foreground dominated by the crude figures of gravediggers who pragmatically go about their task, indifferent to the sacred drama unfolding behind them. St. Lucy, clearly based on reminders of Caravaggio*s dead Madonna, is surrounded by mourners, made all the more poignant by the imminent internment of the object of their grief.
In the winter of 1608/9 Caravaggio left Syracuse for Malta, stopping in Messina, where in June 1609 he completed his Resurrection of Lazarus (Messina, Museo Nazionale) for a patron named Lazzari. Surely one of Caravaggio's most haunting works, it points to his maturing narrative powers. Adopting the figure of Lazarus from Pieta and Lamentation traditions, Caravaggio shows him not falling but awkwardly coming to life as Christ, appearing at the left (a recapitulation of his Calling of Matthew) and barely illuminated, stretches his arm in a gesture of command to awaken. As Lazarus's outstretched hand catches the light, it, together with Christ's hand, separated by a void at the top of the picture and a tangle of figures supporting Lazarus's body at the bottom, becomes the vehicle for the miracle that is transpiring before us. Crude in their typologies, the figures nonetheless are arranged across the picture surface in a composition that is daringly classical and profoundly elemental. Only the late Donatello created images of equal levels of roughness and subtlety.
Sometime in late summer or early fall of 1609, Caravaggio returned to Naples. Here according to Baglione, in October he was attacked and slashed in the face, rendering him unrecognizable. Among his last works, his Martyrdom of St. Ursula (Naples, Banca Commericale Italiana) is documented as finished in May 1610. Showing the moment just after the arrow has pierced her breast, it, like the Beheading of St. John, is a masterpiece of exceptional narrative timing and succinct story telling.
By the summer of 1610 Caravaggio set sail from Naples to Rome, landing at the Port' Ercole. There he was wrongly imprisoned and held for two days. Upon his release he set out to find his boat, caught fever, and died on the beach on 18 July 1610.
Caravaggio started his career as a still life and genre painter and ended it as a creator of profound, deeply personal, religious drama. His early work is shockingly and minutely realistic, often sensuous and licentious, bathed in a bright and searching light. His late works are steeped in darkness and mystery. His early paintings allow figures to dominate the picture, occupying most of the space and endowing them with superhuman monumentality despite their origins in the most pragmatic reality. His late works set his figures into vast spaces, wherein they are summarily treated and yet they resonate with a more penetrating sense of humanity, diminished in power but enriched by emotion. |
Samples of Work
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