POLIDORO da CARAVAGGIO. - Painter, born c. 1500 at Caravaggio, died at Messina (killed by a servant in the course of a robbery) in 1543. Lomazzo has transmitted his surname: Caldara.
Together with the Florentine Maturino, he executed numerous monochrome fresco friezes, in imitation of ancient bas-reliefs, which decorated Roman palaces; but they did not withstand atmospheric agents. There remain, however, the “friezes with the story of Niobe” in Via della Maschera d'Oro, and the decoration of Palazzo Ricci Parracciani in Via Giulia. There also survive numerous drawings by P. da C., in various collections, and numerous engravings derived from his graffiti or monochromes executed with Maturino.
Moreover, P. da C. and Maturino are responsible for the earliest examples of classical landscape, through a picturesque taste deriving from Hellenistic pictorial experience, in the frescoes (no longer monochrome) of the Chapel of Fra' Mariano, in S. Silvestro al Quirinale. At Messina he made for Ansalone, Spanish consul, a Andata al Calvario, now in the Pinacoteca di Napoli, where the Raphael-esque tradition appears interpreted through Flemish impressions.