Caravaggio

Caravaggio, born Michelangelo Merisi, was born on September 29, 1571, in Milan or Caravaggio. Caravaggio, a town in Lombardy, was his home town, and the name “Caravaggio” comes from it.⁠[1][2]

He was orphaned at a young age and trained as a painter in Milan.⁠[3][4]

As an adolescent, Caravaggio signed an apprenticeship contract with the Milanese painter Simone Peterzano; the contract was discovered by Pevsner in 1927, and scholars place his time in Peterzano’s workshop between 1584 and 1588.⁠[5]

In 1592, aged 21, Caravaggio moved to Rome, then Italy’s artistic centre. He at first specialised in still lifes in other artists’ studios, and painted still lifes of fruit and flowers and half-length figures that he sold on the street.⁠[2][6]

Works of this period include Boy bitten by a Lizard, an oil on canvas of about 1594–1595, in which a young man recoils in pain as a lizard clings to his finger.⁠[6]

In 1595 Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte took Caravaggio into his household, gave him quarters in his palace and bought his The Cardsharps of about 1594. Through the cardinal’s circle Caravaggio received his first public commissions.⁠[2][4]

In 1597 he painted The Musicians, now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art.⁠[4]

In 1599–1600 Caravaggio painted The Calling of St. Matthew and The Martyrdom of St. Matthew for the Contarelli Chapel in Rome; unveiled in 1600, they caused a sensation. In 1602 he painted two versions of St. Matthew and the Angel.⁠[1][4]

The series made him the most famous and most controversial painter in Rome. He used ordinary people as models and painted religious subjects with unidealised realism, using tenebrism, in which strong light picks out forms from deep shadow; some commissions were rejected for their unidealised depictions, yet his reputation and income continued to grow.⁠[3]

In 1601, after the stir caused by the Contarelli Chapel paintings, Ciriaco Mattei (1542–1614) commissioned The Supper at Emmaus from Caravaggio. Mattei and his brother Asdrubale were enthusiastic patrons and protectors of Caravaggio and ordered three works from him in 1601–1602. The painting soon left the Mattei collection for that of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, and remained in the Borghese collection in Rome until the early 19th century.⁠[7]

On May 28, 1606, Caravaggio killed Ranuccio Tomassoni in a duel. An argument, said variously to have been over a woman or a tennis match, escalated into a swordfight, and Tomassoni died of his wound. Caravaggio was sentenced in absentia to decapitation; he left Rome rather than face justice, expecting a quick pardon.⁠[8][2]

After his flight he first took refuge on the Colonna estate at Paliano, where the other version of the Supper at Emmaus, now in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, was probably painted, in 1605–1606. He then worked in Naples in 1606–1607.⁠[9][4]

In July 1607 Caravaggio arrived in Malta aboard a vessel of the Order of St John (the Knights of Malta). There he painted St Jerome Writing, of about 1607.⁠[10]

On July 14, 1608, Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt accepted Caravaggio as a Knight of Obedience. He was admitted in return for painting The Beheading of St John the Baptist, an oil on canvas of about 1608 measuring 520 by 360 cm.⁠[10][2]

In late August 1608 Caravaggio was involved in a brawl in which knights were wounded, and he was arrested and imprisoned in Fort St Angelo. He escaped and fled Malta before his trial. On December 1, 1608, a Public Assembly of the Order expelled him, declaring that he was “expelled and thrust forth like a rotten and fetid limb.”⁠[10][2]

After leaving Malta he travelled around Sicily in 1608–1609.⁠[4][2]

In 1609 Caravaggio returned to Naples, where a bar brawl left him badly disfigured. Meanwhile, friends in Rome petitioned the Pope for a pardon. Cardinal Scipione Borghese agreed to intercede for him, and Caravaggio sent the cardinal works including David with the Head of Goliath (1609–1610), which was in Scipione Borghese’s collection by 1613.⁠[2][4][8]

The Denial of Saint Peter (1610), now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, is one of his last paintings.⁠[4]

In 1610 Caravaggio loaded his belongings onto a ship but, for unknown reasons, was arrested and had to buy his way out of jail; by the time he was released, the ship had sailed with all his possessions. Making his way along the coast he fell ill, perhaps with malaria, and a few days later died alone and feverish.⁠[2]

Baglione recorded that he died on July 18, 1610, on a beach in southern Tuscany; he is also said to have collapsed in Porto Ercole.⁠[8][1]

Caravaggio’s art was particularly popular among foreign painters in Rome. His followers included Bartolomeo Manfredi in Italy, Hendrick ter Brugghen and Gerrit van Honthorst from the Netherlands, Valentin de Boulogne and Nicolas Tournier from France, and Juan Bautista Maino, Jusepe de Ribera and Zurbarán from Spain. His tenebrism became a defining feature of Baroque painting, and his influence spread across Europe.⁠[4][3]

In 1839 George Vernon (Lord Vernon) presented The Supper at Emmaus to the National Gallery in London; it was the first Caravaggio to enter the collection.⁠[7]

In 1939 the Associazione Amici di Brera bought the Supper at Emmaus that Caravaggio painted during his flight from the Patrizi family’s palazzo in Rome for the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan.⁠[9]

In 1985 Paul Getty Junior created an endowment fund for the National Gallery. In 1986 the Gallery bought Boy bitten by a Lizard with the aid of a contribution from the J. Paul GettyJ. Paul GettyJ. Paul Getty (1892–1976) was an American oil businessman and art collector who held a controlling interest in the Getty Oil Company and founded the J. Paul Getty Museum; his bequest built the J. Paul Getty Trust after his death.Open the full entry Jr Endowment Fund. The National Gallery states that the endowment helped it acquire works by Caravaggio, Daddi, Holbein and Poussin, among others, and continues to allow it to acquire major paintings for the nation.⁠[11][6][12]