Caravaggio

Michelangelo Merisi (Michele Angelo Merigi or Amerighi) da Caravaggio

Caravaggio
(/ˌkærəˈvædʒioʊ/, US: /-ˈvɑːdʒ-/; Italian pronunciation: [mikeˈlandʒelo meˈriːzi da
(k)karaˈvaddʒo]; 28 September 1571[2] – 18 July 1610) was an Italian painter active
in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily from the early 1590s to 1610. His paintings
combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional,
with a dramatic use of lighting, which had a formative influence on Baroque
painting.[3][4][5]

Caravaggio employed close physical observation with a dramatic use of chiaroscuro

that came to be known as tenebrism. He made the technique a dominant stylistic
element, darkening shadows and transfixing subjects in bright shafts of light.
Caravaggio vividly expressed crucial moments and scenes, often featuring violent
struggles, torture and death. He worked rapidly, with live models, preferring to
forego drawings and work directly onto the canvas. His influence on the new
Baroque style that emerged from Mannerism wasprofound. It can be seen directly or
indirectly in the work of Peter Paul Rubens, Jusepe de Ribera, Gian Lorenzo
Bernini, and Rembrandt, and artists in the following generation heavily under his Chalk portrait of Caravaggio by
influence were called the "Caravaggisti" or "Caravagesques", as well as tenebrists or Ottavio Leoni, circa 1621.
tenebrosi ("shadowists"). Born Michelangelo Merisi
or Amerighi
Caravaggio trained as a painter in Milan before moving in his twenties to Rome. He
28 September 1571
developed a considerable name as an artist, and as a violent, touchy and provocative
Milan, Duchy of
man. A brawl led to a death sentence for murder and forced him to flee to Naples.
Milan, Spanish
There he again established himself as one of the most prominent Italian painters of
Empire[1]
his generation. He traveled in 1607 to Malta and on to Sicily, and pursued a papal
pardon for his sentence. In 1609 he returned to Naples, where he was involved in a Died 18 July 1610
violent clash; his face was disfigured and rumours of his death circulated. Questions (aged 38)
about his mental state arose from his erratic and bizarre behavior. He died in 1610 Porto Ercole, State
under uncertain circumstances while on his way from Naples to Rome. Reports of the Presidi,
stated that he died of a fever, but suggestions have been made that he was murdered Spanish Empire
or that he died of lead poisoning. Known for Painting
Notable work See Chronology of
Caravaggio's innovations inspired Baroque painting, but the Baroque incorporated
works by
the drama of his chiaroscuro without the psychological realism. The style evolved
Caravaggio
and fashions changed, and Caravaggio fell out of favor. In the 20th century interest
in his work revived, and his importance to the development of Western art was Movement Baroque
reevaluated. The 20th-century art historian André Berne-Joffroy stated, "What
Patron(s) Cardinal Francesco
, modern painting."[6]
begins in the work of Caravaggio is, quite simply
Maria del Monte
Alof de Wignacourt

Contents
Biography
Early life (1571–1592)
Beginnings in Rome (1592/95–1600)
"Most famous painter in Rome" (1600–1606)
 A crime too many (1606)
Exile and death (1606–1610)
Naples
Malta
Sicily
Return to Naples
Death
Sexuality
As an artist
The birth of Baroque
The Caravaggisti
Death and rebirth of a reputation
Epitaph
Oeuvre
Art theft
See also
Footnotes
References
Primary sources
Secondary sources
External links

Biography

Early life (1571–1592)

Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi or Amerighi) was born in Milan, where his father,
Fermo (Fermo Merixio), was a household administrator and architect-decorator to
the Marchese of Caravaggio, a town not far from the city of Bergamo.[7] In 1576 the
family moved to Caravaggio (Caravaggius) to escape a plague that ravaged Milan,
and Caravaggio's father and grandfather both died there on the same day in
1577.[8][9] It is assumed that the artist grew up in Caravaggio, but his family kept up
connections with the Sforzas and with the powerfulColonna family, who were allied
by marriage with the Sforzas and destined to play a major role later in Caravaggio's
life.
Basket of Fruit, c. 1595–1596, oil on
Caravaggio's mother died in 1584, the same year he began his four-year canvas, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana,
apprenticeship to the Milanese painter Simone Peterzano, described in the contract Milan
of apprenticeship as a pupil of Titian. Caravaggio appears to have stayed in the
Milan-Caravaggio area after his apprenticeship ended, but it is possible that he
visited Venice and saw the works of Giorgione, whom Federico Zuccari later accused him of imitating, and Titian.[10] He would also
have become familiar with the art treasures of Milan, including Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, and with the regional Lombard art,
a style that valued simplicity and attention to naturalistic detail and was closer to the naturalism of Germany than to the stylised
formality and grandeur of RomanMannerism.[11]

Beginnings in Rome (1592/95–1600)

Following his initial training under Simone Peterzano, in 1592 Caravaggio left Milan for Rome, in flight after "certain quarrels" and
the wounding of a police officer. The young artist arrived in Rome "naked and extremely needy ... without fixed address and without
provision ... short of money."[12] During this period he stayed with the miserly Pandolfo Pucci, known as "monnsignor Insalata".[13]
A few months later he was performing hack-work for the highly successful Giuseppe Cesari, Pope Clement VIII's favourite artist,
"painting flowers and fruit"[14] in his factory-like workshop.

In Rome there was demand for paintings to fill the many huge new churches and palazzos being built at the time. It was also a period
when the Church was searching for a stylistic alternative to Mannerism in religious art that was tasked to counter the threat of
Protestantism.[15] Caravaggio's innovation was a radical naturalism that combined close physical observation with a dramatic, even
theatrical, use of chiaroscuro that came to be known astenebrism (the shift from light to dark with little intermediate value).

Known works from this period include a small Boy Peeling a Fruit (his earliest
known painting), a Boy with a Basket of Fruit, and the Young Sick Bacchus,
supposedly a self-portrait done during convalescence from a serious illness that
ended his employment with Cesari. All three demonstrate the physical particularity
for which Caravaggio was to become renowned: the fruit-basket-boy's produce has
been analysed by a professor of horticulture, who was able to identify individual
cultivars right down to "... a large fig leaf with a prominent fungal scorch lesion
resembling anthracnose (Glomerella cingulata)."[16]

The Musicians, 1595–1596, gument.[17]

Caravaggio left Cesari, determined to make his own way after a heated ar
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New At this point he forged some extremely important friendships, with the painter
York Prospero Orsi, the architect Onorio Longhi, and the sixteen-year-old Sicilian artist
Mario Minniti. Orsi, established in the profession, introduced him to influential
collectors; Longhi, more balefully, introduced him to the world of Roman street-
brawls.[18] Minniti served Caravaggio as a model and, years later, would be instrumental in helping him to obtain important
commissions in Sicily. Ostensibly, the first archival reference to Caravaggio in a contemporary document from Rome is the listing of
his name, with that of Prospero Orsi as his partner, as an 'assistante' in a procession in October 1594 in honour of St. Luke.[19] The
earliest informative account of his life in the city is a court transcript dated 11 July 1597, when Caravaggio and Prospero Orsi were
witnesses to a crime near San Luigi de' Francesi.[20]

An early published notice on Caravaggio, dating from 1604 and describing his lifestyle three years previously, recounts that "after a
fortnight's work he will swagger about for a month or two with a sword at his side and a servant following him, from one ball-court to
the next, ever ready to engage in a fight or an argument, so that it is most awkward to get along with him."[21] In 1606 he killed a
young man in a brawl, possibly unintentionally
, and fled from Rome with a death sentence hanging over him.

The Fortune Teller, his first composition with more than one figure, shows a boy,
likely Minniti, having his palm read by a gypsy girl, who is stealthily removing his
ring as she strokes his hand. The theme was quite new for Rome, and proved
immensely influential over the next century and beyond. This, however, was in the
future: at the time, Caravaggio sold it for practically nothing. The Cardsharps –
showing another naïve youth of privilege falling the victim of card cheats – is even
more psychologically complex, and perhaps Caravaggio's first true masterpiece.
Like The Fortune Teller, it was immensely popular, and over 50 copies survive.
More importantly, it attracted the patronage of Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte,
Judith Beheading Holofernes1599–
one of the leading connoisseurs in Rome. For Del Monte and his wealthy art-loving 1602, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte
circle, Caravaggio executed a number of intimate chamber-pieces – The Musicians, Antica, Rome
The Lute Player, a tipsy Bacchus, an allegorical but realisticBoy Bitten by a Lizard –
featuring Minniti and other adolescent models.
Caravaggio's first paintings on religious themes returned to realism, and the
emergence of remarkable spirituality. The first of these was the Penitent Magdalene,
showing Mary Magdalene at the moment when she has turned from her life as a
courtesan and sits weeping on the floor, her jewels scattered around her. "It seemed
not a religious painting at all ... a girl sitting on a low wooden stool drying her hair
... Where was the repentance ... suffering ... promise of salvation?"[22] It was
understated, in the Lombard manner, not histrionic in the Roman manner of the time.
It was followed by others in the same style: Saint Catherine; Martha and Mary
Magdalene; Judith Beheading Holofernes; a Sacrifice of Isaac; a Saint Francis of Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy
Assisi in Ecstasy; and a Rest on the Flight into Egypt. These works, while viewed by (c.1595)
a comparatively limited circle, increased Caravaggio's fame with both connoisseurs
and his fellow artists. But a true reputation would depend on public commissions,
and for these it was necessary to look to the Church.

Already evident was the intense realism or naturalism for which Caravaggio is now famous. He preferred to paint his subjects as the
eye sees them, with all their natural flaws and defects instead of as idealised creations. This allowed a full display of his virtuosic
talents. This shift from accepted standard practice and the classical idealism of Michelangelo was very controversial at the time.
Caravaggio also dispensed with the lengthy preparations traditional in central Italy at the time. Instead, he preferred the Venetian
practice of working in oils directly from the subject – half-length figures and still life. Supper at Emmaus, from c. 1600–1601, is a
characteristic work of this period demonstrating his virtuoso talent.

"Most famous painter in Rome" (1600–1606)

In 1599, presumably through the influence of Del Monte, Caravaggio was contracted to decorate the Contarelli Chapel in the church
of San Luigi dei Francesi. The two works making up the commission, theMartyrdom of Saint Matthew and Calling of Saint Matthew,
delivered in 1600, were an immediate sensation. Thereafter he never lacked commissions or patrons.

Caravaggio's tenebrism (a heightened chiaroscuro) brought high drama to his

subjects, while his acutely observed realism brought a new level of emotional
intensity. Opinion among his artist peers was polarized. Some denounced him
for various perceived failings, notably his insistence on painting from life,
without drawings, but for the most part he was hailed as a great artistic
visionary: "The painters then in Rome were greatly taken by this novelty, and
the young ones particularly gathered around him, praised him as the unique
[23]
imitator of nature, and looked on his work as miracles."

Caravaggio went on to secure a string of prestigious commissions for religious

works featuring violent struggles, grotesque decapitations, torture and death,
most notable and most technically masterful among them The Taking of Christ
of circa 1602 for the Mattei Family, recently rediscovered in Ireland after two

The Calling of Saint Matthew(1599– centuries.[24] For the most part each new painting increased his fame, but a
1600), Contarelli Chapel, San Luigi dei few were rejected by the various bodies for whom they were intended, at least
Francesi, Rome. Without recourse to flying in their original forms, and had to be re-painted or find new buyers. The
angels, parting clouds or other artifice, essence of the problem was that while Caravaggio's dramatic intensity was
Caravaggio portrays the instant .[25]
appreciated, his realism was seen by some as unacceptably vulgar
conversion of St Matthew, the moment on
which his destiny will turn, by means of a His first version of Saint Matthew and the Angel, featuring the saint as a bald
beam of light and the pointing finger of
peasant with dirty legs attended by a lightly clad over-familiar boy-angel, was
Jesus.
rejected and a second version had to be painted as The Inspiration of Saint
Matthew. Similarly, The Conversion of Saint Paul was rejected, and while
another version of the same subject, the Conversion on the Way to Damascus, was accepted, it featured the saint's horse's haunches
far more prominently than the saint himself, prompting this exchange between the artist and an exasperated official of Santa Maria
del Popolo: "Why have you put a horse in the middle, and Saint Paul on the ground?" "Because!" "Is the horse God?" "No, but he
stands in God's light!"[26]

Other works included Entombment, the Madonna di Loreto (Madonna of the Pilgrims), the
Grooms' Madonna, and the Death of the Virgin. The history of these last two paintings
illustrates the reception given to some of Caravaggio's art, and the times in which he lived.
The Grooms' Madonna, also known as Madonna dei palafrenieri, painted for a small altar in
Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome, remained there for just two days, and was then taken off. A
cardinal's secretary wrote: "In this painting there are but vulgarity, sacrilege, impiousness and
disgust...One would say it is a work made by a painter that can paint well, but of a dark spirit,
and who has been for a lot of time far from God, from His adoration, and from any good
thought..."

The Death of the Virgin, commissioned in 1601 by a

wealthy jurist for his private chapel in the new
Carmelite church of Santa Maria della Scala, was
rejected by the Carmelites in 1606. Caravaggio's Death of the Virgin, 1601–
contemporary Giulio Mancini records that it was 1606, Louvre, Paris
rejected because Caravaggio had used a well-known
prostitute as his model for the Virgin.[27] Giovanni
Baglione, another contemporary, tells us it was due to Mary's bare legs[28] —a matter of
decorum in either case. Caravaggio scholar John Gash suggests that the problem for the
Carmelites may have been theological rather than aesthetic, in that Caravaggio's version fails
to assert the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary, the idea that the Mother of God did not die
in any ordinary sense but was assumed into Heaven. The replacement altarpiece
Amor Vincit Omnia, 1601– commissioned (from one of Caravaggio's most able followers, Carlo Saraceni), showed the
1602, Gemäldegalerie, Virgin not dead, as Caravaggio had painted her, but seated and dying; and even this was
Berlin. Caravaggio shows rejected, and replaced with a work showing the Virgin not dying, but ascending into Heaven
Cupid prevailing over all
with choirs of angels. In any case, the rejection did not mean that Caravaggio or his paintings
human endeavors: war,
music, science, government. were out of favour. The Death of the Virgin was no sooner taken out of the church than it was
purchased by the Duke of Mantua, on the advice of Rubens, and later acquired by Charles I of
England before entering the French royal collection in 1671.

One secular piece from these years is Amor Victorious, painted in 1602 for Vincenzo Giustiniani, a member of Del Monte's circle.
The model was named in a memoir of the early 17th century as "Cecco", the diminutive for Francesco. He is possibly Francesco
Boneri, identified with an artist active in the period 1610–1625 and known as Cecco del Caravaggio ('Caravaggio's Cecco'),[29]
carrying a bow and arrows and trampling symbols of the warlike and peaceful arts and sciences underfoot. He is unclothed, and it is
difficult to accept this grinning urchin as the Roman god Cupid – as difficult as it was to accept Caravaggio's other semi-clad
adolescents as the various angels he painted in his canvases, wearing much the same stage-prop wings. The point, however, is the
intense yet ambiguous reality of the work: it is simultaneously Cupid and Cecco, as Caravaggio's Virgins were simultaneously the
Mother of Christ and the Roman courtesans who modeled for them.

A crime too many (1606)

Caravaggio led a tumultuous life. He was notorious for brawling, even in a time and place when such behavior was commonplace,
and the transcripts of his police records and trial proceedings fill several pages. On 29 May 1606, he killed, possibly unintentionally,
a young man named Ranuccio Tomassoni from Terni (Umbria). The circumstances of the brawl and the death of Ranuccio Tomassoni
remain mysterious. Several contemporary avvisi referred to a quarrel over a gambling debt and a tennis game, and this explanation
has become established in the popular imagination.[30] But recent scholarship has made it clear that more was involved. Good
modern accounts are to be found in Peter Robb's M and Helen Langdon's Caravaggio: A Life. A theory relating the death to
Renaissance notions of honour and symbolic wounding has been advanced by art
historian Andrew Graham-Dixon.[31] Whatever the details, it was a serious
matter.[32][33] Previously, his high-placed patrons had protected him from the
consequences of his escapades, but this time they could do nothing. Caravaggio,
outlawed, fled to Naples.

Exile and death (1606–1610)

St. Jerome, 1605–1606, Galleria
Naples Borghese, Rome.

Following the death of Tomassoni, Caravaggio fled first to the estates of theColonna
family south of Rome, then on to Naples, where Costanza Colonna Sforza, widow of
Francesco Sforza, in whose husband's household Caravaggio's father had held a position,
maintained a palace. In Naples, outside the jurisdiction of the Roman authorities and protected
by the Colonna family, the most famous painter in Rome became the most famous in Naples.

His connections with the Colonnas led to a stream of important church commissions,
including the Madonna of the Rosary, and The Seven Works of Mercy.[34] The Seven Works of
Mercy depicts the seven corporal works of mercy as a set of compassionate acts concerning
the material needs of others. The painting was made for, and is still housed in, the church of
Pio Monte della Misericordia in Naples. Caravaggio combined all seven works of mercy in
one composition, which became the church's altarpiece.[35] Alessandro Giardino has also
established the connection between the iconography of "The Seven Works of Mercy" and the
cultural, scientific and philosophical circles of the painting'scommissioners.[36]

The Seven Works of Mercy,

Malta 1606–1607, Pio Monte della
Misericordia, Naples
Despite his success in Naples, after only a few months in the city Caravaggio left for Malta,
the headquarters of the Knights of Malta. Fabrizio Sforza Colonna, Costanza's son, was a
Knight of Malta and general of the Order's galleys. He appears to have facilitated Caravaggio's arrival in the island in 1607 (and his
escape the next year). Caravaggio presumably hoped that the patronage of Alof de Wignacourt, Grand Master of the Knights of Saint
John, could help him secure a pardon for Tomassoni's death.[37] De Wignacourt was so impressed at having the famous artist as
official painter to the Order that he inducted him as a Knight, and the early biographer Bellori records that the artist was well pleased
with his success.[37]

Major works from his Malta period include the Beheading of Saint John the
Baptist, his largest ever work, and the only painting to which he put his
signature, Saint Jerome Writing (both housed in Saint John's Co-Cathedral,
Valletta, Malta) and a Portrait of Alof de Wignacourt and his Page, as well as
portraits of other leading Knights.[37] According to Andrea Pomella, The
Beheading of Saint John the Baptist is widely considered "one of the most
important works in Western painting.".[38] Completed in 1608, the painting had
been commissioned by the Knights of Malta as an altarpiece[38][39] and was the
largest altarpiece Caravaggio painted.[40] It still hangs in St. John's Co-
The Beheading of Saint John(1608) by Cathedral, for which it was commissioned and where Caravaggio himself was
Caravaggio (Saint John's Co-Cathedral,
inducted and briefly served as a knight.[41][40]
Valletta, Malta)
Yet, by late August 1608, he was arrested and imprisoned,[37] likely the result
of yet another brawl, this time with an aristocratic knight, during which the door
[37][42] Caravaggio was imprisoned by the Knights at Valletta, but he
of a house was battered down and the knight seriously wounded.
managed to escape. By December, he had been expelled from the Order "as a foul and rotten member", a formal phrase used in all
such cases.[43]

Sicily
Caravaggio made his way to Sicily where he met his old friend Mario Minniti, who
was now married and living in Syracuse. Together they set off on what amounted to
a triumphal tour from Syracuse to Messina and, maybe, on to the island capital,
Palermo. In Syracuse and Messina Caravaggio continued to win prestigious and
well-paid commissions. Among other works from this period are Burial of St. Lucy,
The Raising of Lazarus, and Adoration of the Shepherds. His style continued to
evolve, showing now friezes of figures isolated against vast empty backgrounds.
"His great Sicilian altarpieces isolate their shadowy, pitifully poor figures in vast
areas of darkness; they suggest the desperate fears and frailty of man, and at the The Raising of Lazarusand the
same time convey, with a new yet desolate tenderness, the beauty of humility and of Adoration of the Shepherds,
the meek, who shall inherit the earth."[44] Contemporary reports depict a man whose Regional Museum of Messina
behaviour was becoming increasingly bizarre, which included sleeping fully armed
and in his clothes, ripping up a painting at a slight word of criticism, and mocking
local painters.

Caravaggio displayed bizarre behaviour from very early in his career. Mancini describes him as "extremely crazy", a letter of Del
Monte notes his strangeness, and Minniti's 1724 biographer says that Mario left Caravaggio because of his behaviour. The
strangeness seems to have increased after Malta. Susinno's early-18th-century Le vite de' pittori Messinesi ("Lives of the Painters of
Messina") provides several colourful anecdotes of Caravaggio's erratic behaviour in Sicily, and these are reproduced in modern full-
length biographies such as Langdon and Robb. Bellori writes of Caravaggio's "fear" driving him from city to city across the island
and finally, "feeling that it was no longer safe to remain", back to Naples. Baglione says Caravaggio was being "chased by his
enemy", but like Bellori does not say who this enemy was.

Return to Naples
After only nine months in Sicily, Caravaggio returned to Naples in the late summer
of 1609. According to his earliest biographer he was being pursued by enemies
while in Sicily and felt it safest to place himself under the protection of the Colonnas
until he could secure his pardon from the pope (now Paul V) and return to Rome.[45]
In Naples he painted The Denial of Saint Peter, a final John the Baptist (Borghese),
and his last picture, The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula. His style continued to evolve
— Saint Ursula is caught in a moment of highest action and drama, as the arrow
fired by the king of the Huns strikes her in the breast, unlike earlier paintings that
had all the immobility of the posed models. The brushwork was also much freer and
Salome with the Head of John the more impressionistic.
Baptist
In October 1609 he was involved in a violent clash, an attempt on his life, perhaps
ambushed by men in the pay of the knight he had wounded in Malta or some other
faction of the Order. His face was seriously disfigured and rumours circulated in Rome that he was dead. He painted a Salome with
the Head of John the Baptist (Madrid), showing his own head on a platter, and sent it to de Wignacourt as a plea for forgiveness.
Perhaps at this time, he painted also a David with the Head of Goliath, showing the young David with a strangely sorrowful
expression gazing on the severed head of the giant, which is again Caravaggio. This painting he may have sent to his patron, the
unscrupulous art-loving Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of the pope, who had the power to grant or withhold pardons.[46]
Caravaggio hoped Borghese could mediate a pardon, in exchange for works by the artist.
News from Rome encouraged Caravaggio, and in the summer of 1610 he took a boat
northwards to receive the pardon, which seemed imminent thanks to his powerful Roman
[47] What happened
friends. With him were three last paintings, the gifts for Cardinal Scipione.
next is the subject of much confusion and conjecture, shrouded in much mystery
.

The bare facts seem to be that on 28 July an anonymous avviso (private newsletter) from
Rome to the ducal court of Urbino reported that Caravaggio was dead. Three days later
another avviso said that he had died of fever on his way from Naples to Rome. A poet friend
of the artist later gave 18 July as the date of death, and a recent researcher claims to have
discovered a death notice showing that the artist died on that day of a fever in Porto Ercole,
near Grosseto in Tuscany.
David with the Head of
Goliath, 1609–1610, Galleria
Death Borghese, Rome
Caravaggio had a fever at the time of his death, and what killed him has been a matter of
historical debate and study.[48] Traditionally historians have long thought he died of
syphilis.[48] Some have said he had malaria, or possibly brucellosis from unpasteurized dairy.[48] Some scholars have argued that
Caravaggio was actually attacked and killed by the same "enemies" that had been pursuing him since he fled Malta, possibly
Wignacourt and/or factions of the Knights.[49]

Human remains found in a church in Porto Ercole in 2010 are believed to almost certainly belong to Caravaggio.[50] The findings
come after a year-long investigation using DNA, carbon dating and other analyses.[51] Initial tests suggested Caravaggio might have
died of lead poisoning - paints used at the time contained high amounts of lead salts, and Caravaggio is known to have indulged in
violent behavior, as caused by lead poisoning.[52] Later tests suggested he died as the result of a wound sustained in a brawl in
Naples, specifically from sepsis.[48] Recently released Vatican documents (2002) also indicate that fatal wounds may have been
[53]
sustained as a result of a vendetta, perpetrated after Caravaggio had murdered a love rival in a botched attempt at castration.

Sexuality
Caravaggio never married and had no known children, and Howard Hibbard notes the absence
of erotic female figures from the artist's oeuvre: "In his entire career he did not paint a single
female nude."[54] On the other hand, the cabinet-pieces from the Del Monte period are replete
with "full-lipped, languorous boys ... who seem to solicit the onlooker with their offers of
fruit, wine, flowers – and themselves" suggesting an erotic interest in the male form.[55] At
the same time, however, a connection with a certain Lena is mentioned in a 1605 court
deposition by Pasqualone, where she is described as "Michelangelo's girl".[56] According to
G.B. Passeri, this 'Lena' was Caravaggio's model for the Madonna di Loreto; and according to
Catherine Puglisi, 'Lena' may have been the same person as the courtesan Maddalena di Paolo
Antognetti, who named Caravaggio as an "intimate friend" by her own testimony in
1604.[57][58] Caravaggio also probably enjoyed close relationships with other "whores and
courtesans" such as Fillide Melandroni, of whom he painted a portrait.[59] Portrait of a Courtesan
Fillide Melandroni
Nevertheless, since the 1970s both art scholars and historians have debated the inferences of
homoeroticism in Caravaggio's works as a way to better understand the man.[60] The model of
"Amor vincit omnia", for example, is known to have been Cecco di Caravaggio. Cecco stayed with Caravaggio even after he was
[61]
obliged to leave Rome in 1606, and the two may have been lovers.

Caravaggio's sexuality also received early speculation due to claims about the artist by Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau.
Writing in 1783, Mirabeau contrasted the personal life of Caravaggio directly with the writings of St Paul in the Book of Romans,[62]
arguing that "Romans" excessively practice sodomy or homosexuality. The twenty-sixth verse of the first chapter[63] contains the
Latin phrase: "Et fœminæ eorum immutaverunt naturalem usum in eum usum qui est contra naturam." The phrase, according to
 Mirabeau, entered Caravaggio's thoughts, and he claimed that such an "abomination" could be
witnessed through a particular painting housed at the Museum of the Grand Duke of Tuscany
– featuring a rosary of a blasphemous nature, in which a circle of thirty men (turpiter ligati)
are intertwined in embrace and presented in unbridled composition. Mirabeau notes the
affectionate nature of Caravaggio's depiction reflects the voluptuous glow of the artist's
sexuality.[64] By the late nineteenth century, Sir Richard Francis Burtonidentified the painting
as Caravaggio's painting of St. Rosario. Burton also identifies both St. Rosario and this
painting with the practices of Tiberius mentioned by Seneca the Younger.[65] The survival
status and location of Caravaggio's painting is unknown. No such painting appears in his or
Boy with a Basket of Fruit, his school's catalogues.[66]
1593–1594, oil on canvas,
67 cm × 53 cm (26 in Aside from the paintings, evidence also comes from
× 21 in), Galleria Borghese, the libel trial brought against Caravaggio by Giovanni
Rome Baglione in 1603. Baglione accused Caravaggio and
his friends of writing and distributing scurrilous
doggerel attacking him; the pamphlets, according to
Baglione's friend and witness Mao Salini, had been distributed by a certain Giovanni Battista,
a bardassa, or boy prostitute, shared by Caravaggio and his friend Onorio Longhi. Caravaggio
[67]
denied knowing any young boy of that name, and the allegation was not followed up.

Baglione's painting of "Divine Love" has also been seen as a visual accusation of sodomy
against Caravaggio.[59] Such accusations were damaging and dangerous as sodomy was a
capital crime at the time. Even though the authorities were unlikely to investigate such a well-
connected person as Caravaggio, "Once an artist had been smeared as a pederast, his work
was smeared too."[61] Francesco Susinoo in his later biography additionally relates the story Sacred Love Versus Profane
of how the artist was chased by a school-master in Sicily for spending too long gazing at the Love (1602–03), by
boys in his care. Susino presents it as a misunderstanding, but Caravaggio may indeed have Giovanni Baglione. Intended
been seeking sexual solace; and the incident could explain one of his most homoerotic as an attack on his hated
enemy, Caravaggio, it shows
paintings: his last depiction of St John the Baptist.[68]
a boy (hinting at
Caravaggio's alleged
The art historian, Andrew Graham-Dixonhas summarised the debate:
homosexuality) on one side,
a devil with Caravaggio's
A lot has been made of Caravaggio's presumed homosexuality, which has in face on the other, and
more than one previous account of his life been presented as the single key between an angel
that explains everything, both the power of his art and the misfortunes of his representing pure, meaning
life. There is no absolute proof of it, only strong circumstantial evidence and non-erotic, love.
much rumour. The balance of probability suggests that Caravaggio did indeed
have sexual relations with men. But he certainly had female lovers.
Throughout the years that he spent in Rome he kept close company with a
number of prostitutes. The truth is that Caravaggio was as uneasy in his
relationships as he was in most other aspects of life. He likely slept with men.
He did sleep with women. He settled with no one... [but] the idea that he was
an early martyr to the drives of an unconventional sexuality is an anachronistic
fiction.[61]

As an artist

The birth of Baroque

Caravaggio "put the oscuro (shadows) into chiaroscuro."[69] Chiaroscuro was
practiced long before he came on the scene, but it was Caravaggio who made the
technique a dominant stylistic element, darkening the shadows and transfixing the
subject in a blinding shaft of light. With this came the acute observation of physical
and psychological reality that formed the ground both for his immense popularity
and for his frequent problems with his religious commissions.

He worked at great speed, from live models, scoring basic guides directly onto the
canvas with the end of the brush handle; very few of Caravaggio's drawings appear
to have survived, and it is likely that he preferred to work directly on the canvas. The The Taking of Christ, 1602, National
approach was anathema to the skilled artists of his day, who decried his refusal to Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.
work from drawings and to idealise his figures. Yet the models were basic to his Caravaggio's application of the
realism. Some have been identified, including Mario Minniti and Francesco Boneri, chiaroscuro technique shows through
on the faces and armour
both fellow artists, Minniti appearing as various figures in the early secular works,
notwithstanding the lack of a visible
the young Boneri as a succession of angels, Baptists and Davids in the later shaft of light. The figure on the
canvasses. His female models include Fillide Melandroni, Anna Bianchini, and extreme right is a self-portrait.
Maddalena Antognetti (the "Lena" mentioned in court documents of the "artichoke"
case[70] as Caravaggio's concubine), all well-known prostitutes, who appear as
female religious figures including the Virgin and various saints.[71] Caravaggio
himself appears in several paintings, his final self-portrait being as the witness on the
far right to the Martyrdom of Saint Ursula.[72]

Caravaggio had a noteworthy ability to express in one scene of unsurpassed

vividness the passing of a crucial moment. The Supper at Emmaus depicts the
recognition of Christ by his disciples: a moment before he is a fellow traveler,
mourning the passing of the Messiah, as he never ceases to be to the inn-keeper's
eyes; the second after, he is the Saviour. In The Calling of St Matthew, the hand of
the Saint points to himself as if he were saying "who, me?", while his eyes, fixed Supper at Emmaus, 1601, oil on
upon the figure of Christ, have already said, "Yes, I will follow you". With The canvas, 139 cm × 195 cm (55 in
Resurrection of Lazarus, he goes a step further, giving us a glimpse of the actual × 77 in), National Gallery, London.
physical process of resurrection. The body of Lazarus is still in the throes of rigor Caravaggio included himself as the
figure at the top left.
mortis, but his hand, facing and recognizing that of Christ, is alive. Other major
Baroque artists would travel the same path, for example Bernini, fascinated with
themes from Ovid's Metamorphoses.

The Caravaggisti
The installation of the St. Matthew paintings in the Contarelli Chapel had an immediate impact among the younger artists in Rome,
and Caravaggism became the cutting edge for every ambitious young painter. The first Caravaggisti included Orazio Gentileschi and
Giovanni Baglione. Baglione's Caravaggio phase was short-lived; Caravaggio later accused him of plagiarism and the two were
involved in a long feud. Baglione went on to write the first biography of Caravaggio. In the next generation of Caravaggisti there
were Carlo Saraceni, Bartolomeo Manfredi and Orazio Borgianni. Gentileschi, despite being considerably older, was the only one of
these artists to live much beyond 1620, and ended up as court painter to Charles I of England. His daughter Artemisia Gentileschi
was also close to Caravaggio, and one of the most gifted of the movement. Yet in Rome and in Italy it was not Caravaggio, but the
influence of his rival Annibale Carracci, blending elements from the High Renaissance and Lombard realism, which ultimately
triumphed.

Caravaggio's brief stay in Naples produced a notable school of Neapolitan Caravaggisti, including Battistello Caracciolo and Carlo
Sellitto. The Caravaggisti movement there ended with a terrible outbreak of plague in 1656, but the Spanish connection – Naples was
a possession of Spain – was instrumental in forming the important Spanish branch of his influence.
A group of Catholic artists from Utrecht, the "Utrecht Caravaggisti", travelled to
Rome as students in the first years of the 17th century and were profoundly
influenced by the work of Caravaggio, as Bellori describes. On their return to the
north this trend had a short-lived but influential flowering in the 1620s among
painters like Hendrick ter Brugghen, Gerrit van Honthorst, Andries Both and Dirck
van Baburen. In the following generation the effects of Caravaggio, although
attenuated, are to be seen in the work ofRubens (who purchased one of his paintings
for the Gonzaga of Mantua and painted a copy of the Entombment of Christ),
Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Velázquez, the last of whom presumably saw his work
during his various sojourns in Italy.

Death and rebirth of a reputation

Caravaggio's innovations inspired the
Baroque, but the Baroque took the drama of
his chiaroscuro without the psychological The Crucifixion of Saint Peter, 1601,
Cerasi Chapel, Santa Maria del
realism. While he directly influenced the
Popolo, Rome
style of the artists mentioned above, and, at a
distance, the Frenchmen Georges de La Tour
and Simon Vouet, and the Spaniard Giuseppe Ribera, within a few decades his works were
being ascribed to less scandalous artists, or simply overlooked. The Baroque, to which he
contributed so much, had evolved, and fashions had changed, but perhaps more pertinently
Caravaggio never established a workshop as the Carracci did, and thus had no school to
spread his techniques. Nor did he ever set out his underlying philosophical approach to art, the
psychological realism that may only be deduced from his surviving work.

The Entombment of Christ, Thus his reputation was doubly vulnerable to the critical demolition-jobs done by two of his
(1602–1603), Pinacoteca earliest biographers, Giovanni Baglione, a rival painter with a personal vendetta, and the
Vaticana, Rome influential 17th-century critic Gian Pietro Bellori, who had not known him but was under the
influence of the earlier Giovanni Battista Agucchi and Bellori's friend Poussin, in preferring
the "classical-idealistic" tradition of the Bolognese school led by the Carracci.[73] Baglione,
his first biographer, played a considerable part in creating the legend of Caravaggio's unstable and violent character, as well as his
inability to draw.[74]

In the 1920s, art critic Roberto Longhi brought Caravaggio's name once more to the foreground, and placed him in the European
tradition: "Ribera, Vermeer, La Tour and Rembrandt could never have existed without him. And the art of Delacroix, Courbet and
Manet would have been utterly different".[75] The influential Bernard Berenson agreed: "With the exception of Michelangelo, no
[76]
other Italian painter exercised so great an influence."

Epitaph
Caravaggio's epitaph was composed by his friend Marzio Milesi. It reads:

Michelangelo Merisi, son of Fermo di Caravaggio – in painting not equal to a painter, but to Nature itself – died in
Port' Ercole – betaking himself hither from Naples – returning to Rome – 15th calend of August – In the year of our
Lord 1610 – He lived thirty-six years nine months and twenty days – Marzio Milesi, Jurisconsult – Dedicated this to a
friend of extraordinary genius."[77]

He was commemorated on the front of the Banca d'Italia 100,000 lire banknote in the 1980s and 90s (before Italy switched to the
Euro) with the back showing hisBasket of Fruit.
Oeuvre
There is disagreement as to the exact size of
Caravaggio's oeuvre, with counts as low as
40 and as high as 80. In his biography,
Caravaggio scholar Alfred Moir writes "The
forty-eight colorplates in this book include
almost all of the surviving works accepted by
every Caravaggio expert as autograph, and
The Denial of Saint Peter(1610),
even the least demanding would add fewer Metropolitan Museum of Art
than a dozen more".[78] One, The Calling of
Saints Peter and Andrew, was recently
authenticated and restored; it had been in storage in Hampton Court, mislabeled as a copy.

Conversion on the Way to Richard Francis Burton writes of a "picture of St. Rosario (in the museum of the Grand Duke
Damascus, 1601, Cerasi of Tuscany), showing a circle of thirty men turpiter ligati" ("lewdly banded"), which is not
Chapel, Santa Maria del known to have survived. The rejected version of The Inspiration of Saint Matthew, intended
Popolo, Rome for the Contarelli Chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, was destroyed during the
bombing of Dresden, though black and white photographs of the work exist. In June 2011 it
was announced that a previously unknown Caravaggio painting of Saint Augustine dating to
about 1600 had been discovered in a private collection in Britain. Called a "significant discovery", the painting had never been
published and is thought to have been commissioned byVincenzo Giustiniani, a patron of the painter in Rome.[79]

A painting believed by some experts to be Caravaggio's second version of Judith Beheading Holofernes, tentatively dated between
1600 and 1610, was discovered in an attic in Toulouse in 2014. An export ban was placed on the painting by the French government
[80][81]
while tests were carried out to establish its provenance.

Art theft
In October 1969, two thieves entered the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo, Italy and stole
Caravaggio's Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence from its frame. Experts estimated its
value at $20 million.[82][83]

Following the theft, Italian police set up an art theft task force with the specific aim of re-
acquiring lost and stolen art works. Since the creation of this task force, many leads have been
followed regarding the Nativity. Former Italian mafia members have stated that Nativity with
St. Francis and St. Lawrence was stolen by the Sicilian mafia and displayed at important
mafia gatherings.[84] Former mafia members have said that the Nativity was damaged and has
since been destroyed.[84]

The whereabouts of the artwork are still unknown. A reproduction currently hangs in its place
in the Oratory of San Lorenzo.[84]
Nativity with St. Francis and
St. Lawrence, 1600
See also
Caravaggio portal
Italian neorealism, a 1944–52 movement characterized by stories set amongst the disadvantaged
Utrecht Caravaggism

Footnotes
1. Carminati, Marco (25 February 2007)."Caravaggio da Milano"(http://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/SoleOnLine4/Tempo%
 20libero%20e%20Cultura/2007/06/carminati-caravaggio.shtml?uuid=4d415878-19a4-11dc-ac19-00000e251029)
(in
Italian). Retrieved 28 July 2016.
2. https://www.caravaggio-foundation.org/
3. Vincenzio Fanti (1767). Descrizzione Completa di Tutto Ciò che Ritrovasi nella Galleria di Sua Altezza Giuseppe
Wenceslao del S.R.I. Principe Regnante dellaCasa di Lichtenstein (https://books.google.com/books?id=_dROAAAA
cAAJ&pg=PA21) (in Italian). Trattner. p. 21.
4. "Italian Painter Michelangelo Amerighi da Caravaggio"(http://www.gettyimages.it/detail/fotografie-di-cronaca/italian-p
ainter-michelangelo-amerighi-da-fotografie-di-cronaca/2636291) . Gettyimages.it. Retrieved 2013-07-20.
5. "Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi da (Italian painter
, 1571–1610)" (http://www.getty.edu/vow/ULANFullDisplay?find=
Caravaggio&role=&nation=&prev_page=1&subjectid=500115312) . Getty.edu. Retrieved 2012-11-18.
6. Quoted in Gilles Lambert, "Caravaggio", p.8.
7. "Confirmed by the finding of the baptism certificate from the Milanese parish of Santo Stefano in Brolo" (https://web.a
rchive.org/web/20090416123558/http://www .italica.rai.it/index.php?categoria=bio&scheda=caravaggio_prima_parte).
Italica.rai.it. Archived fromthe original (http://www.italica.rai.it/index.php?categoria=bio&scheda=caravaggio_prima_p
arte) on 2009-04-16. Retrieved 2012-11-18.
8. "Paris Art Studies Caravaggio"(http://www.parisartstudies.com/index2.php?
option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=129). parisartstudies.com. 2009.
9. Malta Culture Guide (http://www.maltacultureguide.com/index.php?page=article&article_id=38). Retrieved 21
February 2017
10. Harris, p. 21.
11. Rosa Giorgi, "Caravaggio: Master of light and dark – his life in paintings", p.12.
12. Quoted without attribution in Robb, p.35, apparently based on the three primary sources, Mancini, Baglione and
Bellori, all of whom depict Caravaggio's early Roman years as a period of extreme poverty (see references below).
13. Louise Brown, Beverly (2001).The Genius of Rome, 1592-1623. Royal Academy of Arts. p. 21.
ISBN 9780900946882.
14. Giovanni Pietro Bellori,Le Vite de' pittori, scultori, et architetti moderni, 1672: "Michele was forced by necessity to
enter the services of Cavalier Giuseppe d'Arpino, by whom he was employed to paint flowers and fruits so
realistically that they began to attain the higher beauty that we love so much today ."
15. Harris, Ann Sutherland, Seventeenth-century Art & Architecture (Upper Saddle River: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2008).
16. "Caravaggio" (http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/caravaggio/caravaggio_l.html). Hort.purdue.edu. Retrieved
2012-11-18.
17. Hibbard, Howard (1983).Caravaggio. London: Thames and Hudson. pp. 85–86.ISBN 0500274916.
18. Catherine Puglisi, "Caravaggio", p.79. Longhi was with Caravaggio on the night of the fatal brawl withomassoni;
T
Robb, "M", p.341, believes that Minniti was as well.
19. H. Waga "Vita nota e ignota dei virtuosi al Pantheon" Rome 1992, Appendix I, pp.219 and
220ff
20. "The earliest account of Caravaggio in Rome" Sandro Corradini and Maurizio Marini,
The Burlington Magazine,
pp.25–28
21. Floris Claes van Dijk, a contemporary of Caravaggio in Rome in 1601, quoted in John Gash, "Caravaggio", p. 13.
The quotation originates inKarel van Mander's Het Schilder-Boek of 1604, translated in full in Howard Hibbard,
"Caravaggio".
22. Robb, p.79. Robb is drawing on Bellori, who praises Caravaggio's "true" colours but finds the naturalismfensive:
of
"He (Caravaggio) was satisfied with [the] invention of nature without further exercising his brain."
23. Bellori. The passage continues: "[The younger painters] outdid each other in copying him, undressing their models
and raising their lights; and rather than setting out to learn from study and instruction, each readily found in the
streets or squares of Rome both masters and models for copying nature."
24. For the details of the discovery, see the essay by eye-witness Noel Barber (superior of the Jesuit community in
Dublin in which the painting had been found), inSaints and Sinners: Caravaggio and the Baroque Image,ed. Franco
Mormando (Chestnut Hill, MA: McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, 1999), catalog of the exhibition featuring
the first display of the painting in the USA.
25. For an outline of the Counter-Reformation Church's policy on decorum in art, see Giorgi, p.80. For a more detailed
discussion, see Gash, p.8ff; and for a discussion of the part played by notions of decorum in the rejection of "St
Matthew and the Angel" and "Death of the V irgin", see Puglisi, pp.179–188.
26. Quoted without attribution in Lambert, p.66.
27. Mancini: "Thus one can understand how badly some modern artists paint, such as those who, wishing to portray the
Virgin Our Lady, depict some dirty prostitute from the Ortaccio, as Michelangelo da Caravaggio did in the Death of
the Virgin in that painting for the Madonna della Scala, which for that very reason those good fathers rejected it, and
perhaps that poor man suffered so much trouble in his lifetime."
28. Baglione: "For the [church of] Madonna della Scala in rTastevere he painted the death of the Madonna, but because
he had portrayed the Madonna with little decorum, swollen and with bare legs, it was taken away
, and the Duke of
Mantua bought it and placed it in his most noble gallery
."
29. While Gianni Papi's identification of Cecco del Caravaggio as Francesco Boneri is widely accepted, the evidence
connecting Boneri to Caravaggio's servant and model in the early 17th century is circumstantial. See Robb, pp193–
196.
30. Baglione, Giovanni (1642). Life of Caravaggio (http://caravaggio.com/preview/attach/data01/D000001.htm) . Italy.
Because of the excessive ardour of his spirit Michelangelo was a little wild and he sometimes looked for the chance
to break his neck or to risk the lives of others. People as quarrelsome as he were often to be found in his company:
and having in the end confronted Ranuccio T omassoni a well-mannered young man over some disagreement about
a tennis match they challenged one another to a duel. After Ranuccio fell to the ground Michelangelo struck him with
the point of his sword and having wounded him in the thigh killed him.
31. Milner, Catherine (2002-06-02)." 'Red-blooded Caravaggio killed love rival in bungled castration attempt
' " (https://w
ww.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/1396127/Red-blooded-Caravaggio-killed-love-rival-in-bungled-castr
ation-attempt.html). London: Telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved 2014-03-17.
32. Willey, David. "Caravaggio's crimes exposed in Rome's police files"(https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-12497
978). BBC News. bbc. Retrieved 28 November 2015.
33. Watkins, Ally (2011-02-24)."Caravaggio's Rap Sheet Reveals Him to Have Been a Lawless Sword-Obsessed
Wildman, and a Terrible Renter" (http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/37059/caravaggios-rap-sheet-reveals-him-to-hav
e-been-a-lawless-sword-obsessed-wildman-and-a-terrible-renter/) . Artinfo. Retrieved 2012-11-18.
34. Costanza's brother Ascanio was Cardinal-Protector of the Kingdom of Naples; another brother , Marzio, was an
advisor to the Spanish Viceroy; and a sister was married into the important Neapolitan Carafa family . Caravaggio
stayed in Costanza's palazzo on his return to Naples in 1609. These connections are treated in most biographies
and studies—see, for example, Catherine Puglisi, "Caravaggio", p.258, for a brief outline. Helen Langdon,
"Caravaggio: A Life", ch.12 and 15, and Peter Robb, "M", pp.398f f and 459ff, give a fuller account.
35. Ralf van Bühren, Caravaggio’s ‘Seven Works of Mercy’ in Naples (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23753
234.2017.1287283), 2017.
36. Alessandro Giardino, The Seven Works of Mercy(http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/1
5700593-01600100), 2017.
37. Sammut, E. (1949). "Caravaggio in Malta" (http://melitensiawth.com/incoming/Index/Scientia%20(Malta)/Scientia.%2
015(1949)2(Apr.-Jun.)/03.pdf) (PDF). Scientia. 15 (2): 78–89.
38. Pomella, Andrea (2005).Caravaggio: an artist through images(https://books.google.com/books?id=JDH4lOa8qRgC
&pg=PA106). ATS Italia Editrice. p. 106.ISBN 978-88-88536-62-0. Retrieved 28 June 2010.
39. Varriano (2006), pp. 74, 116.
40. Patrick, James (2007).Renaissance and Reformation(https://books.google.com/books?id=i6ZJlLHLPY8C&pg=P
A19
4). Marshall Cavendish. p. 194.ISBN 978-0-7614-7651-1.
41. Rowland, Ingrid Drake (2005).From heaven to Arcadia: the sacred and the profane in the Renaissance
(https://book
s.google.com/books?id=yke1Kx4v9sYC&pg=P A163). New York Review of Books. p. 163.ISBN 978-1-59017-123-3.
42. Sciberras, Keith (April 2002). "Frater Michael Angelus in tumultu: the cause of Caravaggio's imprisonment in Malta".
The Burlington Magazine(CXLV): 229–232. and Sciberras, Keith (July 2002). "Riflessioni su Malta al tempo del
Caravaggio". Paragone Arte. LII (629): 3–20. Sciberras' findings are summarised online atCaravaggio.com (http://ca
ravaggio.com/preview/attach/data01/D000199.htm)Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20060310151813/http://ca
ravaggio.com/preview/attach/data01/D000199.htm)2006-03-10 at the Wayback Machine..
43. The senior Knights of the Order convened on 1 December 1608 and, after verifying that the accused had failed to
appear although summoned four times, voted unanimously to expel their putridum et foetidum ex-brother.
Caravaggio was expelled, not for his crime, but for having left Malta without permission (i.e., escaping).
44. Langdon, p.365.
45. Baglione says that Caravaggio in Naples had "given up all hope of revenge" against his unnamed enemy
.
46. According to a 17th-century writer the painting of the head of Goliath is a self-portrait of the artist, while David ilis
suo Caravaggino, "his little Caravaggio". This phrase is obscure, but it has been interpreted as meaning either that
the boy is a youthful self-portrait, or, more commonly, that this is the Cecco who modeled for theAmor Vincit. The
sword-blade carries an abbreviated inscription that has been interpreted as meaning Humility Conquers Pride.
Attributed to a date in Caravaggio's late Roman period by Bellori, the recent tendency is to see it as a product on
Caravaggio's second Neapolitan period. (See Gash, p.125).
47. A letter from the Bishop of Caserta in Naples to Cardinal Scipione Borghese in Rome, dated 29 July 1610, informs
the Cardinal that the Marchesa of Caravaggio is holding two John the Baptists and a Magdalene that were intended
for Borghese. These were presumably the price of Caravaggio's pardon from Borghese's uncle, the pope.
48. Laura Geggel (September 28, 2018)."Renaissance Master Caravaggio Didn't Die of Syphilis, but of Sepsis"(https://
www.livescience.com/63702-caravaggio-died-of-sepsis.html). Live Science. Retrieved September 30, 2018.
49. Robb argues this in M beginning in chapter 20.
50. "BBC News – Vatican reveals Caravaggio painting 'found' in Rome" (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-
10682743). Bbc.co.uk. 2010-07-19. Retrieved 2012-11-18.
51. "BBC News – Church bones 'belong to Caravaggio', researchers say"(https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10333158).
Bbc.co.uk. 2010-06-16. Retrieved 2012-11-18.
52. Tom Kington in Rome (2010-06-16)."The mystery of Caravaggio's death solved at last – painting killed him"(https://
www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/jun/16/caravaggio-italy-remains-ravenna-art). London: The Guardian.
Retrieved 2012-11-18.
53. The Telegraph 02 Jun 2002 - Red-blooded Caravaggio killed by love rival in bungled castration attempt(https://www.
telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/1396127/Red-blooded-Caravaggio-killed-love-rival-in-bungled-castratio
n-attempt.html)
54. Hibbard, p.97
55. Louis Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization(Harvard, 2006) p.288
56. Bertolotti, Artisti Lombardi. pp.71–72
57. Catheine Puglisi, "Caravaggio" Phaidon 1998, p.199
58. Riccardo Bassani and Fiora Bellini, "Caravaggio assassino", 1994, pp.205–214
59. Andrew Graham-Dixon,Caravaggio: A life sacred and profane, Penguin, 2011
60. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/arts/design/10abroad.html?hp Herwarth Roettgen, Il Caravaggio, ricerche e
interpretazione, Rome 1975; R. Longhi, ‘Novelletta del Caravaggio ‘’invertito’
’, Paragone, March 1952, 62–4;
Calvesi, ‘Caravaggio’, Art & Dossier, April 1986; Christopher Frommer, ‘Caravaggios frühwerk und der cardinal del
Monte’, Storia dell’arte, 9–10 (1971): 5–29; Margaret W alters, The Male Nude, Harmondsworth, 1978: 188–189;
Helen Langdon, Caravaggio; Robb, M
61. Andrew Graham-Dixon,Caravaggio: A life sacred and profane, Penguin, 2011, p.4
62. "Masculi, delicto naturali usu faeminae as exarserunt in desiriis suits in invicem, masculi in masculos, turpitudinem
operant let mercidem quam oportuit erroris sui somatipsis recipient's."" -- Romans I:27.
63. Romans I:26, cf. https://www.bibleserver.com/text/VUL/Romans1%3A26.
64. Mirabeau, Honoré (1867).Erotika Biblion (https://archive.org/stream/erotikabiblion00mirauoft#page/92/mode/1up)
.
Chevalier de Pierrugues. Chez tous les Libraries.
65. Burton, Richard Francis (1900).A Plain and Literal Translation of "Arabian Nights." Volume 10 (https://books.google.
com/books?id=ApUWAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA215&lpg=PA215&dq=Caravaggio+%22thirty+men%22&source=bl&ots=UjP
2YrustM&sig=hnr3tGYcY4oXCUVjChbCkbh-T w0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiE3_7PkaPV AhXHyj4KHTGdAb0Q6A
EIazAS#v=onepage&q=Caravaggio%20%22thirty%20men%22&f=false) . Press of The Carson-Harper Company .
66. White, Chris (1999). Nineteenth-Century Writings on Homosexuality: A Sourcebook(https://books.google.com/book
s?id=BPv4WuX0CzIC&pg=PA232&lpg=PA232&dq=%22St.+Rosario%22+Caravaggio&source=bl&ots=vla2qCC2Rm
&sig=yKXe10-QHfoIoD0uruFt01CZKRw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjW rs6RvaPVAhVD4D4KHQTuBRQQ6AEISTA
I#v=onepage&q=%22St.%20Rosario%22%20Caravaggio&f=false) . Routledge.
67. The transcript of the trial is given in Walter Friedlander, "Caravaggio Studies" (Princeton, 1955, revised edn. 1969)
68. Andrew Graham-Dixon,Caravaggio: A life sacred and profane, Penguin, 2011, p.412
69. Lambert, p.11.
70. Much of the documentary evidence for Caravaggio's life in Rome comes from court records; the "artichoke" case
refers to an occasion when the artist threw a dish of hot artichokes at a waiter
.
71. Robb, passim, makes a fairly exhaustive attempt to identify models and relate them to individual canvases.
72. Caravaggio's self-portraits run from theSick Bacchus at the beginning of his career to the head of Goliath in the
David with the Head of Goliathin Rome's Borghese Gallery. Previous artists had included self-portraits as onlookers
to the action, but Caravaggio's innovation was to include himself as a participant.
73. Wikkkower, p. 266; also see criticism by fellow Italian Vincenzo Carducci (living in Spain), who calls Caravaggio an
"Antichrist" of painting with "monstrous" talents of deception.
74. Ostrow, 608
75. Roberto Longhi, quoted in Lambert, op. cit., p.15
76. Bernard Berenson, in Lambert, op. cit., p.8
77. Inscriptiones et Elogia (Cod.Vat.7927)
78. Alfred Moir, "Caravaggio", p.9
79. Alberge, Dalya (19 June 2011)."Unknown Caravaggio painting unearthed in Britain"(https://www.theguardian.com/a
rtanddesign/2011/jun/19/unknown-caravaggio-painting-unearthed-britain)
. The Guardian. London. Retrieved
2011-06-20.
80. "Painting thought to be Caravaggio masterpiece found in French loft"(https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-art
s-36024865). BBC News Online. 12 April 2016. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
81. 'Lost Caravaggio,' found in a French attic, causes rift in the art world(https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/201
6/apr/12/lost-caravaggio-causes-rift-in-art-world)
, The Guardian, Angelique Chrisafis, April 12, 2016. Retrieved 13
April 2016.
82. "FBI — Caravaggio" (https://web.archive.org/web/20121020071907/http://www .fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/vc_major
thefts/arttheft/caravaggio). Fbi.gov. 2012-09-17. Archived fromthe original (https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/v
c_majorthefts/arttheft/caravaggio)on 2012-10-20. Retrieved 2012-11-18.
83. Sooke, Alastair (23 December 2013)."Caravaggio's Nativity: Hunting a stolen masterpiece"(http://www.bbc.com/cult
ure/story/20131219-hunting-a-stolen-masterpiece)
. BBC website. Retrieved 24 December 2013.
84. "The World's Most Expensive Stolen Paintings – BBC Two" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03n2yzh). BBC.
Retrieved 2016-10-30.

References

Primary sources
The main primary sources for Caravaggio's life are:

Giulio Mancini's comments on Caravaggio inConsiderazioni sulla pittura, c.1617–1621

Giovanni Baglione's Le vite de' pittori, 1642
Giovanni Pietro Bellori'sLe Vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti moderni, 1672
All have been reprinted in Howard Hibbard'sCaravaggio and in the appendices to Catherine Puglisi'sCaravaggio.

Secondary sources
Andrea Bayer (2004). Painters of reality : the legacy of Leonardo and Caravaggio in Lombardy. New York: The
Metropolitan Museum of Art.ISBN 9781588391162.
Erin Benay (2017) Exporting Caravaggio: the Crucifixion of St. AndrewGiles Press Ltd. ISBN 978-1911282242
Ralf van Bühren, Caravaggio’s ‘Seven Works of Mercy’ in Naples. The relevance of art history to cultural journalism
,
in Church, Communication and Culture2 (2017), pp. 63–87
Maurizio Calvesi, Caravaggio, Art Dossier 1986, Giunti Editori (1986) (ISBN not available)
Maurizio Calvesi (1990).Le realtà del Caravaggio(in Italian). Torino: G. Einaudi.
John Denison Champlinand Charles Callahan Perkins, Ed.,Cyclopedia of Painters and Paintings, Charles
Scribner's Sons, New York (1885), p. 241 (available at the Harvard's Fogg Museum Library and scanned on Google
Books)
Keith Christiansen. (1990).A Caravaggio Rediscovered, The Lute Player. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of
Art. ISBN 9780870995750.
 Andrea Dusio, Caravaggio White Album, Cooper Arte, Roma 2009,ISBN 978-88-7394-128-6
Michael Fried, The Moment of Caravaggio, Yale University Press, 2010, ISB: 9780691147017, Review
Walter Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1955
John Gash, Caravaggio, Chaucer Press, (2004)ISBN 1-904449-22-0)
Rosa Giorgi, Caravaggio: Master of light and dark – his life in paintings
, Dorling Kindersley (1999)ISBN 978-0-7894-
4138-6
Andrew Graham-Dixon, Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane, London, Allen Lane, 2009.ISBN 978-0-7139-9674-
6
Jonathan Harr (2005).The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece . New York: Random House.
["The Taking of Christ"]
Howard Hibbard, Caravaggio (1983) ISBN 978-0-06-433322-1
Harris, Ann Sutherland.Seventeenth-century Art & Architecture, Laurence King Publishing (2004),ISBN 1-85669-
415-1.
Michael Kitson, The Complete Paintings of CaravaggioLondon, Abrams, 1967. New edition: Weidenfeld & Nicolson,
1969 and 1986, ISBN 978-0-297-76108-2
Pietro Koch, Caravaggio – The Painter of Blood and Darkness , Gunther Edition, (Rome – 2004)
Gilles Lambert, Caravaggio, Taschen, (2000) ISBN 978-3-8228-6305-3
Helen Langdon, Caravaggio: A Life, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999 (original UKedition 1998) ISBN 978-0-374-
11894-5
Denis Mahon (1947). Studies in Seicento Art. London: Warburg Institute.
Alfred Moir, The Italian Followers of Caravaggio, Harvard University Press (1967)ISBN 978-0674469006
Ostrow, Steven F., review of Giovanni Baglione: Artistic Reputation in Baroque Romeby Maryvelma Smith O'Neil,
The Art Bulletin, Vol. 85, No. 3 (Sep., 2003), pp. 608–611,online text
Catherine Puglisi, Caravaggio, Phaidon (1998) ISBN 978-0-7148-3966-0
Peter Robb, M, Duffy & Snellgrove, 2003 amended edition original
( edition 1998) ISBN 978-1-876631-79-6
Rudolph, Conrad and Steven Ostrow, "Isaac Laughing: Caravaggio, Non-traditional Imagery, and Traditional
Identification," Art History 24 (2001) 646–681
John Spike, with assistance from Michèle Kahn Spike, Caravaggio with Catalogue of Paintings on CD-ROM,
Abbeville Press, New York (2001) ISBN 978-0-7892-0639-8
John L. Varriano, Caravaggio: The Art of Realism, Pennsylvania State University Press (University Park, A P – 2006)
ISBN 978-0271027180
Rudolf Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy, 1600–1750, Penguin/Yale History of Art, 3rd edition, 1973, ISBN 978-
0300079395
Alberto Macchi, "L'uomo Caravaggio" – Atto unico (pref. Stefania Macioce), AET AS, Roma 1995, ISBN 88-851-72-
19-9

External links
Biography

Caravaggio, The Prince of the Night

Articles and essays

Christiansen, Keith. “Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) (1571–1610) and his Followers.”In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art
History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art,2000–. (October 2003)
FBI Art Theft Notice for Caravaggio'sNativity
The Passion of Caravaggio
Deconstructing Caravaggio and Velázquez
Interview with Peter Robb, author ofM
Compare Rembrandt with Caravaggio.
Caravaggio and the Camera Obscura
Caravaggio's incisions by Ramon van de Werken
Caravaggio's use of the Camera Obscura: Lapucci
Some notes on Caravaggio – Patrick Swift
Roberta Lapucci's website and most of her publications on Caravaggio as freely downloadable PDF
Art works
 caravaggio-foundation.org175 works by Caravaggio
Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio W
ebMuseum, Paris webpage
Caravaggio's EyeGate Gallery
Music

Lachrimae Caravaggio, by Jordi Savall, performed by Le Concert des Nations & Hesperion XXI (Article at
Answers.com)
Video

Caravaggio's Calling of Saint Matthewat Smarthistory, accessed February 13, 2013

Caravaggio's Crucifixion of Saint Peter, accessed February 13, 2013
Caravaggio's Death of the Virgin, accessed February 13, 2013
Caravaggio's Narcissus at the Source, accessed February 13, 2013
Caravaggio's paintings in the Contarelli Chapel, San Luigi dei Francesi
, accessed February 13, 2013
Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus, accessed February 13, 2013

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