CARAVAGGIO, Michelangelo Merisi (AMEGHINI), known as. — Painter, son of the stonemason Fermo Merisi, born in Caravaggio near Bergamo, probably on 28 September 1573, died at Porto Ercole on 18 July 1610. He is the founder of the "naturalistic" movement of the 17th century and one of the greatest artistic geniuses of the century.
His education began at the age of 11, when, having left his native town, he was placed in the workshop of Simone Peterzano, a Bergamasque painter settled in Milan, as attested by a notarial deed of 6 April 1584, by which the latter undertook to keep the young man in his home for four years and to teach him painting until he was sufficiently skilled and able to work independently. As compensation, Caravaggio agreed to pay the master 24 gold ducats. It is likely that Caravaggio completed his Milanese apprenticeship regularly and then, as Bellori states, moved to Venice. The latter writes that "being of a troubled and contentious disposition, and involved in certain disputes," he fled from Milan and arrived in Venice, where "he took such pleasure in the coloring of Giorgione that he made it his guide in imitation": a judgment repeated for centuries by Caravaggisti scholarship, though recently too much disputed. Even if no document proves Caravaggio’s Venetian sojourn, it is nonetheless easy to admit that the young artist wished to acquaint himself with this celebrated painting, of which he had heard so much, especially from his master Peterzano, who proclaimed himself and signed himself *Titiani discipulus*. Yet there is no trace in Caravaggio’s art of the influence of the "patchy" and "tonal" style of Titian; rather, one finds there the dramatic accent, the plastic vigor, and that power of light which Caravaggio must have admired in the Averoldi altarpiece in Brescia and, certainly, in Venice, in the *Martyrdom of St. Peter* and the *Martyrdom of St. Lawrence*. As for Caravaggio’s "Giorgionism," it must be understood, according to Bellori, in the broadened and generic sense that 17th-century criticism gave to the idea of the master from Castelfranco: that is, the idea from which so much of the "new" Venetian painting derived, from Lotto to Savoldo and Tintoretto—precisely those masters who first exerted a direct influence (alongside Lombard painters such as Moretto and Moroni, who formed its foundation) on Caravaggio’s development. To these were added, during his Milanese years, the influences of Lombard Mannerism, primarily from Antonio Campi; as well as those of the Counter-Reformation school of Morazzone and Cerano, whose echoes would resurface in the pathos of his later works.
"Poorly provided with money," as Mancini says, Caravaggio arrived in Rome before he was twenty; his early years were hard, exploited by unscrupulous people, he fell ill and was admitted to hospital. In the "environment" of the derivative Mannerism of the Zuccaris, Nebbia, Pomarancio, and Muziano, who were then at the height of their fame, Caravaggio had little to learn. But the necessities of life forced him to place himself in the service of Cavalier d’Arpino, another of the empty but well-paid Roman Mannerists, for whom he painted flowers and fruit; then he associated with a certain Pierino delle Grottesche to paint figures, lacking, on his own, the money for models. It was in these years that his first works appeared, in which still lifes play a large part and which already reveal in embryo the power and novelty of his painting, in clear antithesis to Roman academicism and the classicism of the Mannerists. These works earned him, around 1592, the favor of Cardinal del Monte, who took him into his palace and later commissioned from him the canvases with the *Stories of St. Matthew* for the Contarelli Chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi. The altarpiece, for its crude naturalism, was rejected and repeated by the artist in a more traditional sense; the other two scenes aroused enthusiasm in some and indignation in others. Caravaggio’s name was on everyone’s lips as that of a revolutionary: the old despised him and did not understand him, while the young followed him as the revelation of a new pictorial creed. The two canvases executed around 1600–1601 for the Cerasi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo further increased his fame.
By nature impetuous and quarrelsome, Caravaggio quarreled with his enemies, created masterpieces to demonstrate his artistic ideals, engaged in polemics, and became embroiled in lawsuits for defamation and assault. From 1605 to 1606, four serious lawsuits hung over him. In 1605, Caravaggio took refuge in Genoa, then returned to Rome, where he worked for Pope Paul V and Cardinal Scipione Borghese. Following a gambling dispute, he was charged with murder, fled from Rome, and Prince Don Marzio Colonna gave him asylum on his estates in Zagarolo, Palestrina, and Pagliano, pending a pardon. But this did not come, and in September 1607 Caravaggio went to Naples, where he immediately received important commissions. Restless and tormented, the following year he moved on to Malta and painted the portrait of Alof de Wignacourt, Grand Master of the Order of Malta, from whom he obtained favors and protection and was made a knight. But after offending a Maltese knight, he was thrown into the prison of Valletta and stripped of the knighthood recently conferred upon him. He escaped on 6 October 1608 and, crossing the sea, landed in Syracuse; after two months he was in Messina, painting everywhere; and finally he arrived in Palermo, where he was commissioned to execute a *Nativity* for the Oratory of San Lorenzo. Pursued by de Wignacourt, he left Sicily and returned to Naples. There he was attacked and wounded in the face by the knight’s assassins. Finally, having obtained a pardon from Paul V through the intercession of Cardinal Gonzaga, he embarked on a felucca to return
Caravaggio – *David with the Head of Goliath*. Rome, Galleria Borghese.
At Rome. But at Porto Ercole he was mistakenly arrested; and, freed shortly afterward, he neither found his felucca nor his belongings. Desperate, he wandered the beach under the scorching sun, was struck by fever, and died in inhuman solitude at only 37 years of age.
In a twenty-year career marked by the milestones of his masterpieces, C. transformed not only Italian but European painting: his new naturalistic vision influenced vast areas of Italian art as well as Rubens, Vermeer, Rembrandt, Murillo, and Velázquez.
In his early period, C.’s painting is enlivened by a vivid sense of color, of distinctly Venetian origin, which only the absurd would deny; and in these early works there is also an elegiac quality, with a distant Giorgionesque flavor, which he soon abandoned to pursue an exacerbated naturalism through researches into luminous plasticity. The *Bacchus* in the Uffizi, the *Boy Bitten by a Lizard* in the collection of Prof. Longhi (closely paralleled by the *Sick Bacchus* and the *Young Man with a Basket of Fruit* in the Borghese Gallery), the *Still Life* in the Kress Collection, New York, and the famous *Basket of Fruit* in the Ambrosiana in Milan (unfortunately overpainted in the background) serve as examples of C.’s early creations, in which “still life” plays an important role both as an element of realistic pictorial skill and as a note of poetic suggestiveness. A sense of intimate humanity pervades the *Penitent Magdalene* in the Doria Gallery in Rome and, above all, that elegiac masterpiece, the *Rest on the Flight into Egypt* in the same gallery, where exquisite Venetian nostalgia resounds. To the “gypsy” genre belong, still in the early period, the *Cardsharps*, formerly in the Sciarra Gallery in Rome, the *Fortune Teller* in the Louvre and its replica in the Capitoline Gallery, as well as the splendid *Lute Player* in the Hermitage in Leningrad and the *Lute Player* in the Augsburg Gallery. In these early years must also be counted the *St. Francis Supported by an Angel*, formerly in Trieste, the half-length *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, the mature Caravaggesque period begins, informed by more decisive aims of dramatic realism. In the first version of *St. Matthew*, now in the Berlin Museum, the artist’s program is set forth with the most unflinching pictorial rendering; but the work, precisely for this reason, was rejected and had to 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 emerge both for the intensity of chiaroscuro contrasts and for the anxious agitation of the figures. After these works (executed around 1595–98), C. undertook in 1601 to paint for the Cerasi Chapel in S. Maria del Popolo the two canvases of the *Crucifixion of St. Peter* and the *Conversion of St. Paul*, works of harsh and almost “peasant” realism, executed after the first two versions had been rejected by Cerasì. Probably one of these is the *Conversion of St. Peter* (the only painting by C. on panel, apart from the *Medusa* in the Uffizi) in the Balbi Collection in Genoa, while the *Crucifixion* of the same chapel may perhaps be a copy of the lost original now in the Hermitage.
To this period belong: the *Deposition*, executed between 1602 and 1604 for the Church of S. Maria in Vallicella, now in the Vatican Pinacoteca; the *Madonna of Loreto*, probably painted in 1605 for the Cavalletti Chapel in S. Agostino, where it is still preserved; the *Madonna and Child Crushing the Serpent*, executed in 1605 or 1606 for the altar of the Palafrenieri in St. Peter’s Basilica but later removed from the church and now in the Borghese Gallery; the *Death of the Virgin*, rejected from the altar of S. Maria della Scala in Trastevere, sold in 1607 to the Duke of Mantua, and now in the Louvre. Alongside these large altarpieces, then misunderstood, C. painted in this period a considerable number of works on private commission, which instead enjoyed favor.
(photo Altinari)
CARAVAGGIO — *Calling of St. Matthew* — Rome, Church of S. Luigi dei Francesi.
In the brief Neapolitan period C. produced three sacred works of capital importance: the *Madonna of the Rosary*, completed on Sept. 25, 1607, soon sent to Antwerp and now in the Vienna Museum; the altarpiece with the *Seven Works of Mercy*, painted the same year for the Monte della Misericordia in Naples, where it still remains; and the *Flagellation of Christ*, also of 1607, still in the Church of S. Domenico Maggiore. In Malta, in 1608, C. provided for the churches of Valletta a *Beheading of St. John* and a *Penitent St. Jerome*, 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, now in 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 *Raising of Lazarus* for the chapel of the Crociferi, delivered on June 10, 1609, now in the museum; as well as the *Adoration of the Shepherds*, executed for the church of the Capuchins, now also in the museum. The last known work by C. is the *Nativity* in the oratory of S. Lorenzo in Palermo, painted there in 1609.
In attempting to condense these developments into “stylistic periods”
The activity of C. can be divided (very approximately, and without any claim to rigour) into three periods: the early period, from his first works up to about 1595, in which the colouring is generally intense and lively, the linear taste is undulating and sinuous, and plasticity is still soft; the mature period, which extends to his flight from Rome in 1607, during which he powerfully develops problems of light and movement, at first in an intricate interplay of often pleasing elements, then increasingly simplifying his style towards an essential plastic rendering; a simplification that sometimes appears even summary in his last brief period, in which the colour becomes thick, blackish, and the execution is often hasty; yet here too there arise the lofty intuitions of a pictorial genius among the greatest of humanity. C. himself enunciated his programme, as Bellori reports, disdaining the study of antique statuary models and maintaining that nature had sufficiently provided him with living models. And Mancini specifies, in 1620, that it is characteristic of the school of C. to illuminate with a single light descending from above without reflections, as in a room with black-painted walls, which serve to give relief to the painting; adding that this school, in operating thus, is very observant of truth. There is therefore in C. an explicit revolutionary will that renounces the supposed untouchable dogmas of the classical or humanist tradition of the Cinquecento. Hence the influence of C. was immense; and without him it is difficult to imagine much of the painting of the following centuries. — See Pl. XLVII.
CARAVAGGIO, SANTUARIO DELLA MADONNA DI
The principal Marian sanctuary of Lombardy, situated about 2 km from C. (province of Bergamo), to which it is connected by a broad avenue. Its origin is owed to an apparition of the Virgin to a humble peasant woman, Giovannietta (or Giannetta) di Pietro Vacchi, on 26 May 1432, in the meadow called Massalengo. The fame of the event soon spread far and wide, and Giovannietta was received at the court of the Sforzas and at that of the Emperor of Constantinople, Constantine Palaeologus. At the site of the apparition there still flows a spring whose water is used even for the bathing of the sick.
The first church on the sanctuary was erected by Duke Filippo Maria Sforza in 1451. The present church, 93 m long and 33 m wide, with a dome 64 m high, was built, in place of a dilapidated predecessor, by the architect T. Baldo Pellegrino, called il Tibaldi, at the wish of St Charles Borromeo. Construction, however, lasted from 1575 until the close of the 18th century, and the pictorial decoration was completed by two Caravaggisti, Giovanni Morigia in 1854 and Luigi Cavenaghi between 1891 and 1901. The temple is in the shape of a Latin cross, with a sumptuous small temple beneath the dome. The image of the Virgin was crowned in 1710.
The principal feast of the sanctuary, which draws the greatest concourse of the faithful, is 26 May, and also 15 August and 16 September. Attached to the sanctuary is also a hospice for pilgrims.