Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was a notable Italian artist known to be the first great representative of the Baroque style. Caravaggio, despite the widely acclaimed artistry during his time, led quite an enigmatic and fascinating lifestyle that seemed to be a puzzle to many.

He was famous and very influential when he lived but somehow was almost forgotten completely for many centuries until his artistic influences in the development of Modern Art was again rediscovered.

Caravaggio was born in Milan, Italy on September 28, 1571. His father, Fermi Merisi worked for the Marchese of Caravaggio while his mother, Lucia Aratori, came from a wealthy landowning family in the same district. The family relocated to Caravaggio in order to escape the plague that struck Milan in 1576. Sadly, Caravaggio’s father died the following year. It was known that the artist spent hie early years at Caravaggio.

In 1584, Caravaggio became an apprentice to Simone Peterzano, a Lombard painter who was a pupil of Titian. Caravaggio was influenced with Lombard art which valued simplicity and naturalistic details. Caravaggio eventually went to Rome sometime in 1592 where he surprisingly became an immediate favorite.

At Rome, Caravaggio initially became a part of the workshop of Guiseppi Cesari a highly successful painter who was the favorite of Pope Clement VIII. Through Cesari, Caravaggio was able to make very valuable friendships. In 1594, he left the workshop of Cesari to go out on his own.

With his friendship with established painter Prospero Orsi, he was introduced to some of the influential collectors in Rome. Caravaggio began creating unique paintings that took on new themes which became popular and later on influenced other paintings.

Caravaggio also later on began doing paintings with religious themes, the first of which was the Penitent Magdalene. Realism was a noteworthy feature in his paintings that established his reputation that eventually led him to do rich commissions for the Church. By 1599, Caravaggio started doing work decorating the Contarelli Chapel.

His works there such as the Martyrdom of Saint Matthew and Calling of Saint Matthew became immediate sensations. His works made him the most popular painter in Rome from 1600 to 1606 where his level of acute realism in his works brought them to a higher level of emotional intensity.

But aside from enjoying a successful life as a painter in Rome, Caravaggio was also known for his troublesome lifestyle filled with endless street brawling. This usually found him being arrested until sometime in 1606, he unintentionally killed a young man. To escape prosecution, Caravaggio went to Naples where he was outside Roman jurisdiction.

There Caravaggio began to become popular as a painter. But his penchant for trouble followed him and led him to go from one place to another just to evade troubles that he caused. Caravaggio eventually died of a fever on July of 1610.

Revolutionary, madman, iconoclast, and murderer. Michelangelo Merisi’s complex life is mirrored in his radical art. He defied centuries of tradition to present ordinary scenes with models from the lower classes. His use of chiaroscuro- dramatic light and dark effects- was an important discovery that will be copied by many other artists and in different mediums.

Michelangelo Merisi was born in the Lombardy hill town of Caravaggio on September 28, 1573. His professional name is derived from his hometown. He was apprenticed to the painter Simone Peterzano of Milan at the age of 11. He spent four years under Peterzano’s tutelage before heading for Rome in 1593. He then entered the employ of the painter Giuseppe Cesari for whom he painted genre paintings.

Caravaggio’s talent was discovered by his first major patron, the Cardinal Francesco del Monte. He was commissioned to paint the ceiling of the church of San Luigi dei Francesci. There he fully unveiled his realistic and dramatic artistic style. The combination of figures in contemporary dress inhabiting a religious scene was not new, but the impression the picture made of an event from the distant past unfolding before the viewer’s own eyes was unmatched. Caravaggio pushed the figures up against the picture plane and used light to enhance the dramatic impact and give the figures a quality of immediacy. These devices were much imitated.

This new approach to painting was sometimes at odds with the function of the altarpieces as the focus of devotional practice. Should a depiction of the death of the Virgin emphasize the theological importance of the event and show the Madonna as the ageless mother of Christ, as worshippers had come to expect, or should it emphasize the physical reality of death—as Caravaggio’s painting seemed to do? Should Christ’s burial be depicted as a tragic drama or as a sacred event? Much of Caravaggio’s work, such as his spellbinding Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, reveals the artist dealing with these crucial issues. In his last paintings, such as The Denial of Saint Peter, he revealed the psychological rather than merely physical dimension of the narrative.

Despite increasing fame, Caravaggio’s life was far from peaceful. He was often in trouble with the law and was often in prison. He was charged with murder in 1606 and fled Rome. He spent several months in Naples painting several works and encouraging other artists to follow his techniques. He travelled to Malta and was again arrested. He escaped jail and went to Sicily. It was in Sicily that he painted his masterpieces including the Burial of Saint Lucy and the Raising of Lazarus. He achieved the height of his art with the use of multi figured compositions of great drama and lighting. Unfortunately he died of a fever in 1610 from complications brought about by a wrongful arrest.

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