CARAVAGGIO, Michelangelo Merisi (Amerighi), Known As. - Painter, son of the mason Fermo Merisi, b. at Caravaggio near Bergamo, probably on 28 Sept. 1573, d. at Porto Ercole on 18 July 1610. He is the founder of the "naturalistic" current of the seventeenth century, one of the greatest pictorial geniuses of the century.
His education began at the age of 11, when, having left his native city, he was placed in the workshop of Simone Peterzano, a Bergamasque painter settled in Milan, as appears from a notarial deed of 6 Apr. 1584, by which the latter undertakes to keep the youth in his own house for 4 years and to teach him painting, until he is sufficiently skilled and able to work on his own. As compensation the C. binds himself to pay the master 24 gold ducats. It is probable that the C. regularly completed his Milanese apprenticeship and then moved, as Bellori states, to Venice. The latter writes that "being of a turbid genius, and quarrelsome because of certain discords," having fled from Milan, he reached Venice, where "he took such delight in the colouring of Giorgione that he proposed him as his guide in imitation": a judgment repeated for centuries by Caravaggesque historiography, and of late too much opposed. Even if no document proves the C.'s Venetian stay, it is nevertheless easy to admit that the young man had wished to take account of this famous painting, of which he had heard so much talk, especially from his master, Peterzano, who proclaimed himself and signed himself Titiani discipulus. But of an influence of the Old Man's "spot" and "tonal" painting there is no trace in the C.'s art, whereas there is found in it the dramatic accent, the plastic vigour, and that power of light which the C. must have admired in Averoldo's altarpiece at Brescia, and, certainly, at Venice, in the Killing of St. Peter, and in the Martyrdom of St. Lawrence. As for the C.'s "Giorgionism," it is to be understood, according to Bellori, in the amplified and generic sense that seventeenth-century criticism conferred on the idea of the master of Castelfranco: that is, on that idea from which so great a part of "new" Venetian painting derived, from Lotto to Savoldo and to Tintoretto, that is to say, precisely those masters who first had a direct ascendancy (with the Lombard painters such as Moretto and Moroni, who constituted its foundation) on the C.'s formation. To these were added, in the Milanese years, the influences of Lombard "Mannerism," primarily of Antonio Campi; as well as those of the "Counter-Reformation" school of Morazzone and Cerano, whose memories will resurface in the pathos of his last creations.
"Poorly provided with money," as Mancini says, the C. arrived in Rome, not yet twenty years old; the beginnings are hard; he is exploited by people of little conscience, falls ill, is taken into hospital. In the "milieu" of the retrograde Mannerism of the Zuccari, the Nebbia, the Pomarancio, the Muziano, who then were in the greatest vogue, the C. has little to learn. But the necessities of life force him to enter the service of Cavalier d'Arpino, another of the empty but well-rated Roman Mannerists, for whom he paints flowers and fruit; then he associates with a certain Pierino dalle Grottesche, to paint figures, lacking, on his own, the money for models. From these years date his first works, in which "still lifes" play a great part, and which already reveal in nuce the power and novelty of his painting, in clear antithesis to Roman academism and to the classicism of the Mannerists. It is these that win him, ca. 1592, the favour of Card. del Monte, who receives him into his palace, and subsequently commissions him to paint the canvases with the Stories of St. Matthew for the Contarelli chapel, in S. Luigi dei Francesi. The altarpiece, for its crude naturalistic rendering, is rejected and repeated by the artist in a more traditional sense; the other two scenes meet with enthusiasm from some, indignation from others. The C.'s name runs on everyone's lips, as that of a revolutionary: the old disesteem him and in any case do not understand him; the young follow him as the revelation of a new pictorial creed. The two canvases executed around 1600-1601 for the Cerasi chapel in S. Maria del Popolo increase his fame. By nature impetuous and quarrelsome, the C. quarrels with his enemies, creates masterpieces in demonstration of his artistic ideals, polemicizes, becomes entangled in suits for defamation and woundings. From 1603 to 1605 four serious trials hang over him. In 1605 the C. takes refuge in Genoa, then returns to Rome where he works for Pope Paul V and for Card. Scipione Borghese. Following a dispute over gambling he stains himself with murder. He flees from Rome, and Prince don Marzio Colonna gives him asylum in his estates of Zagarolo, Palestrina and Pagliano, in expectation of a pardon. But this does not come, and the C. in Sept. 1607 goes to Naples, where he immediately obtains important commissions. Restless and tormented, the following year he proceeds to Malta, and paints the portrait of the Grand Master of the Order of Malta Alof de Wignacourt, from whom he obtains favours and protection, and is named a knight. But following offences caused to a knight of Malta he is thrown into the prison of Valletta and deprived of the Order so recently granted him. He flees from it on 6 Oct. 1608, and, having crossed the sea, lands at Syracuse: after two months he is at Messina, painting everywhere; and, finally, he reaches Palermo, where he is granted permission to execute a Nativity for the Oratory of S. Lorenzo. Persecuted by de Wignacourt, he abandons Sicily, returns to Naples. Here he is attacked and wounded in the face by the knight's hired assassins. Finally, having obtained the pardon of Paul V through the intercession of Card. Gonzaga, he embarks on a felucca to return to Rome. But at Porto Ercole he is arrested by mistake; and, freed shortly afterward, he finds neither the felucca nor his belongings. In despair he wanders along the beach under the blazing sun, is seized by fever, and, in inhuman solitude, dies at only 37 years of age.
In twenty years of activity marked by the milestones of his masterpieces, C. reformed the course of painting, not only Italian but European: inasmuch as his new naturalistic vision acted, beyond vast areas of Italian art, upon Rubens, Vermeer, Rembrandt, Murillo, and Velázquez.
In his youthful period, C.'s painting is enlivened by a coloristic sense so vivid, and of such clearly Venetian origin, that only one who loves the absurd would dare deny it; and there is, in those early works of his, also an elegiac taste, of a distant Giorgionesque flavor, which he soon abandons, in order to pursue an exasperated naturalism through researches into luministic plasticity. The Adolescent Bacchus of the Uffizi, the Boy Bitten by a Lizard from the collection of Prof. Longhi, to which the Sick Bacchus and the Youth with a Basket of Fruit in the Borghese Gallery almost exactly correspond, the Still Life of the Kress collection in New York and the celebrated Basket of the Ambrosiana Picture Gallery in Milan (unfortunately repainted in the background) serve as examples of C.'s first creations, in which the "still life" has an important role, both as an element of realistic pictorial bravura and as a note of poetic suggestiveness. A feeling of intimate humanity pervades the Penitent Magdalene of the Doria Gallery in Rome and, principally, that elegiac masterpiece which is the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, of the same gallery, in which exquisite "Venetian" nostalgias resound. To the "gypsy" genre belong, still in the youthful period, The Cardsharps, formerly of the Sciarra Gallery in Rome, the Fortune Teller of the Louvre and its replica in the Capitoline Gallery, as well as the stupendous Lute Player of the Hermitage in Leningrad and the Lute Player of the Augsburg Gallery. To these youthful years are to be counted, furthermore, the St. Francis Supported by an Angel, formerly in Trieste, the half-length figure of a Young Woman, in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin, the almost Antonellesque Portrait of Maffeo Barberini, in the Corsini collection in Florence, the St. Catherine formerly Barberini, now in the Thyssen collection in Lugano, and the Incredulity of St. Thomas in the Neues Palais in Potsdam.
With the works executed for S. Luigi dei Francesi begins the period of Caravaggesque maturity, informed by more decisive intentions of dramatic verism. In the first version of the St. Matthew, now in the Berlin museum, the artist's program is set forth with the crudest pictorial rendering: but the work, precisely for this reason, is rejected; and it must be repeated in a more traditional and conformist sense, as it is today on the altar. In the Calling of St. Matthew and the Martyrdom of St. Matthew, executed for the same chapel, the luministic interpretation prevails, from which dramatic solutions spring both from the intensity of the chiaroscuro contrasts and from the anxious agitation of the figures. After these works (executed in the years around 1595-98), C. set about painting for the Cerasi Chapel in S. Maria del Popolo, in 1601, the two canvases of the Crucifixion of St. Peter and the Conversion of St. Paul, works of a harsh and almost "peasant" verism, executed after the first two versions had been rejected by Cerasi. Probably one of these is the Fall of St. Peter (the only painting by C. executed on panel, besides the Medusa of the Uffizi) of the Balbi collection in Genoa, while the painting in the Hermitage is perhaps a copy of the lost Crucifixion of that same chapel.
To this period belong: the Entombment, executed between 1602 and 1604 for the Church of S.
Maria in Vallicella, now in the Vatican Picture Gallery; the Madonna of Loreto, painted probably in 1605 for the Cavalletti Chapel at S. Agostino, where it is still preserved; the Madonna with the Child Crushing the Serpent, executed in 1605 or 1606 for the altar of the Palafrenieri in the basilica of St. Peter, but afterward removed from the church and now in the Borghese Gallery; the Death of Mary, rejected from the altar of S. Maria della Scala in Trastevere, sold as early as 1607 to the Duke of Mantua, and now in the Louvre. Besides these great altarpieces, then misunderstood, C. painted in that period a conspicuous number of works on private commissions, which instead testify to the favor enjoyed by his painting among the enlightened; and we recall the most important of them: the St. John the Baptist, the St. Jerome, the David with the Head of Goliath and the Narcissus of the Borghese gallery; the Amor Victorious of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin; the Supper at Emmaus of the National Gallery in London, and the somewhat later one of the Brera picture gallery, the Portrait of Paul V in the Palazzo Borghese in Rome.
In the brief Neapolitan period C. executed three sacred works of capital importance: the Madonna of the Rosary, finished on 25 Sept. 1607, which passed immediately to Antwerp and is now in the museum of Vienna; the altarpiece with The Seven Works of Mercy, painted in the same year for the Monte della Misericordia in Naples, where it still is; and the Flagellation of Christ, also of 1607, which remained in the church of S. Domenico Maggiore. In Malta, in 1608, C. supplied for the churches of Valletta a Decollation of St. John and a St. Jerome Penitent, both still in situ; and at the same time he completed the admirable Portrait of Alof de Wignacourt, grand master of the Order of Malta, an ornament of the Louvre. In Syracuse C. painted the Burial of St. Lucy, for the church of the same name, in the last months of 1608. In Messina, the Resurrection of Lazarus for the chapel of the Crociferi, delivered on 10 June 1609, now in the museum; as well as the Adoration of the Shepherds, executed for the church of the Capuchins, now, this one too, in the museum. The last creation of C. known to us is the Nativity of the oratory of S. Lorenzo in Palermo, painted there in 1609.
Seeking to condense into « stylistic periods »
the activity of C. can be divided (very approximately, and without any claim to rigor) into three periods: the youthful one, which runs from his first works to about 1595, in which the coloring is generally intense and lively, the taste linear, undulating and sinuous, the plasticity still soft; the period of maturity which runs until his flight from Rome, 1607, in which he powerfully develops the problems of light and movement, at first in an intricate play of often pleasing elements, then increasingly simplifying his own style toward an essential plastic rendering; a simplification that appears at times even summary in his last brief period, in which the color grows turbid, blackish, and the execution is often hurried; but where nevertheless the intuitions of a pictorial genius among the greatest of humanity rise high. C. himself set forth his program, as Bellori reports, disdaining the study of the statuary models of antiquity, and maintaining that nature had provided him sufficiently with living models. And Mancini specifies, in 1620, that it is proper to the school of C. to illuminate with a unified light that descends from above without reflections, as in a room with walls colored black, which come and give relief to the painting, adding that this school, operating in this way, is very observant of the truth. There is therefore in C. an explicit revolutionary will, which repudiates the presumed intangible dogmas of the classicizing, or humanistic, tradition of the sixteenth century. Hence the ascendancy of C. was immense, and without him a great part of the painting of the following centuries is difficult to imagine. - See Pl. XLVII.
Bibliography30 works
Antonio Morassi