POLIDORO da CARAVAGGIO. — Painter, born c. 1500 in Caravaggio, died in Messina (killed by an apprentice for robbery) in 1543. Lomazzo records his surname as Caldara.
Together with Maturino of Florence, he executed numerous monochrome fresco friezes imitating ancient bas-reliefs, which adorned Roman palaces; these did not withstand the elements, yet remain the “friezes of the story of Niobe” in Via della Maschera d’Oro and the decoration of the Palazzo Ricci Parrocchiani in Via Giulia. Numerous drawings by P. da C. also survive in various collections, as do many engravings derived from his graffiti or monochromes executed with Maturino.
Moreover, the first examples of classical landscape painting, through a picturesque taste rooted in Hellenistic pictorial experience, are attributed to P. da C. and Maturino in the (no longer monochrome) frescoes of the Chapel of Fra’ Mariano in S. Silvestro al Quirinale. In Messina, for Ansalone, the Spanish consul, he painted a *Way to Calvary*, now in the Pinacoteca of Naples, where the Raphaelesque tradition appears interpreted through Flemish impressions.