Caravaggio paintings. Biography of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio Caravaggio Works

The great artist Michelangelo Merisi, known to us as Caravaggio, had many troubles and misadventures. Fate was not kind to him. Either because of his temperament, quick temper, lifestyle, or because of his talent, the makings of which were already noticeable by the age of eleven.

He was born, according to some sources, on September 28, 1571 in Lombardy, in northern Italy in the small town of Caravaggio, in the family of a well-to-do architect of local marquises, signor Fermo Merisi. In 1577 he dies of the plague. In 1584, the boy was sent to Milan to study art with the well-known then artist Simone Peterzano from Bergamo, who promises to teach him by the age of fifteen.

In 1590 his mother died. Having shared with his brother the inheritance left after the death of his parents, which allowed Michelangelo to live comfortably for several years, in 1592 he leaves his native city. Addiction to gambling, noisy intoxicated companies soon shook his well-being, and he ends up in Rome without money, hungry and ragged. From day to day he works on unpretentious handicrafts in the workshop of a certain Lorenzo.

Siciliano. Of course, the young artist, who had already shown the ability to do something better, could not be satisfied with this state of affairs. Disappointment, poverty, lead Caravaggio to illness, he ends up in a hospital for the poor. After his recovery, he is taken to his studio by Giuseppe Cesari d'Arpino. He is well versed in the preferences of customers, knows the market situation, is resourceful enough and he always has clients. Need briefly recedes from Caravaggio.

But here again there is trouble. The artist is hit by a horse, and he again ends up in the hospital. After recovering, Caravaggio decides to work on his own. At this time, one after another, the most famous paintings of his first period of creativity appear. "Fortune Teller", "Rest on the Flight into Egypt", "Penitent Magdalene", "Young Man Bitten by a Lizard".

But, despite the fact that with these works he declared himself as a talented artist, the public remains indifferent to him. And only by the will of fate, several works get to the connoisseur of painting, Cardinal Francesco del Monte, who takes him into his service with quite a decent salary.

According to contemporaries, the artist's patron was not distinguished by piety and chastity. At his feasts, "women were never invited, but young boys dressed in women's clothes danced there." Well, since Caravaggio directly depended on the desire of the customer, erotica with a homosexual inclination also appeared in ego paintings.

Unfortunately, very little reliable information has been preserved about Caravaggio. He was not married, but he was not indifferent to the female sex. “A minx living in the Banka district”, “Laura and her daughter and her daughter Isabella, because of which the process arose”, “Maddalena, the wife of Michelangelo, who lives near Piazza Navona”, broken windows of a jealous husband - all this is only from small notes of biographers, informants observing, by order of the Inquisition, the progressive trends of the artistic life of those years.

Thanks to Cardinal del Monte, Caravaggio receives the first major commission for the Contarelli Chapel of the Roman church of San Luigi dei Francesca "The Calling of the Apostle Matthew" and "The Martyrdom of the Apostle Matthew". This certainly affected his authority, the artist begins to receive prestigious orders.

Caravaggio in his works always had a passion for painting from life. He carefully wrote down every detail, trying to bring it closer to the original. It was Caravaggio who introduced a new genre for Rome - still life as such. If we remove figures of people, fruits, cutlery, remnants of dinner, musical instruments from his genre works, all these details still continue to live their own lives, representing an almost independent center of attraction. There was only one desire in Caravaggio's inclination for naturalism - to reflect the object, setting, characters as accurately as possible, up to the use of a mirror as an image transmission screen independent of the retina and a powerful light flux in modeling objects. With the help of sharp chiaroscuro, which was not previously welcomed by the masters of the Renaissance, Caravaggio achieves extraordinary tension in the freeze frame of his work. At the same time, it is very difficult to determine what is more important than a mirror or a light that strikes like a spotlight on the most significant parts of the body, accurately indicating to the viewer the essence of the idea for which the canvas was conceived. The naturalism of Caravaggio is not a soulless clone, but a visual transmission of internal emotions taking place here and now. The images of his heroes do not fit into the idealized standards of the then dominant directions of mannerism and academism. He writes them from real ordinary people from the crowd, regardless of the plot of the picture.

But in Rome, it was not a resemblance to nature that was required, but the sublimity and piety of plots, actions, and certainly not the earthiness of holy characters. Therefore, the church very often did not accept the work of Caravaggio. He made new works based on the canons of the customer. And the rejected canvases were acquired by collectors who knew a lot about painting. Church functionaries quite often refused his canvases. Caravaggio became a scandalous artist. Michelangelo's popularity grew. And in 1604, the rumor about him spread throughout Northern Europe.

Along with the fame of the artist, the cases of his participation in scandalous incidents also increased. More and more manifested the features of his character as a quick-tempered, self-centered person living one day. One of the informants who observed the trends in the artistic life of those years wrote about Caravaggio: “His shortcoming is that he does not pay constant attention to work in the workshop - after working for two weeks, he indulges in monthly idleness. With a sword at his side and a page behind his back, he goes from one gambling house to another, always ready to enter into a quarrel and grab hand-to-hand, so that it is very unsafe to walk with him.

Frequent trips to a tavern with friends, throwing a tray in the face of a waiter, noisy antics at night, clashes with rivals, broken windows in a jealous owner of the house, carrying a weapon without permission, insulting the police, days spent in jail - all this created a reputation for him in the eyes of authorities as an unreliable person.

In May 1606, during a quarrel, Caravaggio killed Ranuccio Tommasoni. The artist himself was wounded and taken out by friends from Rome. The court sentenced him to death, and a reward was set for his capture.

In 1607 he moved to live in Malta. There, in 1608, the artist became a knight of the Order of Malta. And again there is a quarrel with a noble knight, whom he wounded. Then prison, escape, expulsion from the knightly order, Sicily. Caravaggio becomes aware that the knight wounded by him sent assassins to him. The artist returns to Naples, he is haunted by fear, he even sleeps with a dagger. But in the fall of 1609, the mercenaries, having overtaken Caravaggio on the threshold of the tavern, stabbed him in the face with daggers.

Tired of all the misadventures, the artist dreams of returning to Rome. But the death sentence has not yet been abolished. Rumors reach him that thanks to influential patrons, including Cardinal Gonzago, the abolition of the death sentence will soon be signed. From Naples, he goes to the Port of Ercole to wait there for more definite news. But here, for the last time, misadventures fall on his head. Mistakenly mistaken for a bandit and arrested, he is then released. In order to return his belongings left in the weather vane, he returns to the shore infected with malaria, falls ill, and dies on July 18, 1610 at the age of 37, without knowing that on July 31, an amnesty was announced by the papal rescript of Caravaggio.

Caravaggio - biography

The great Italian artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was born on September 29, 1571 in Milan. In 1576, his father died of the plague, and his mother and children moved to Caravaggio, a town not far from Milan. Here Michelangelo lived until 1591. The first genre scenes and portraits painted in Milan have not been preserved.

Michelangelo had a fiery temper. Fights and imprisonment became companions of his life. In 1591, the artist was forced to flee from Milan to Venice, and then to Rome.

Here Caravaggio (as they began to call him, as was customary among artists, according to his place of birth) met prominent artists and patrons, such as Jan Brueghel the Velvet, and also studied the works of Leonardo, Giorgione and Titian. The first of the paintings that have come down to us by Caravaggio himself is “Boy Peeling Fruit” (1593).

Nearly dying of a fever (1593), Caravaggio creates, perhaps, an autobiographical painting "Sick Bacchus". In the same year he painted his first multi-figure paintings, opposing the degenerate mannerism and the emerging academicism with lively realism. The heroes of Caravaggio are people from the street crowd, beautiful and cheerful. In 1594-96, Caravaggio experienced a fruitful period, working for his patron, the enlightened Cardinal Francesco del Monti, in his villa (many paintings from that time have survived to this day).

Despite outstanding successes in 1596 Caravaggio was refused admission to the Academy of St. Luke. In the same year, he created the first pure still life in the history of Italian painting, Fruit Basket.

In subsequent years, the artist receives many orders for the decoration of churches, but not all customers are satisfied with the work performed.

In 1601, Caravaggio finally removes his own workshop, he has students. His Entombment (1603) was copied by many artists (including the great Rubens).

The creation of masterpieces was interspersed with Caravaggio's wild life, fights, conclusions. On May 26, 1606, Caravaggio was accused of killing a man in a fight. Outlawed, the artist flees to Naples, then to Malta and continues to paint. His life here is full of adventures (in 1608 he even becomes a knight of the Order of Malta), but his health was already undermined. In the town of Porto d "Ercole, Caravaggio dies of a fever on July 18, 1610. The papal decree for pardon was published after his death.

Caravaggio is the great reformer of European painting, the founder of 17th century realism. His method is characterized by a sharp opposition of light and shadow.

The significance of Caravaggio turned out to be unheard of, because none other than he was the first in the history of European art to proclaim the essence of artistic images of vitally concrete phenomena, people for their characteristic occupations, things that surround them in reality. The innovation of Caravaggio's concept lay in the brutal directness with which painting became the literal reproduction of life. Moreover, the creative attitudes of the master, as well as his numerous followers in different European countries, the so-called "caravagists", did not change even when they turned to religious subjects.

The influence of Caravaggio on all subsequent art is so huge that there is simply nothing to compare it with: even the influence of Jan van Eyck, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Titian and Michelangelo was not so comprehensive. To mention at least a few names of those who experienced his significant or even decisive influence, comments will already be superfluous: Ribera, Zurbaran, Velazquez and Murillo in Spain, Rubens and Jordaens in Flanders, Rembrandt and Vermeer in Holland, Georges de La Tour, brothers Le Nain, partly even Poussin in France. In Italy itself in the 17th century, it seems, there was not a single painter who did not become, to one degree or another, a “caravagist”.

From now on, art was no longer focused primarily on the ideal, but saw in nature, as in life itself, the simultaneous presence of opposite principles. In this sense, the aforementioned “Fruit Basket” by Caravaggio has become very indicative, where, along with ripe and juicy fruits and leaves, there are also rotten and withered ones, as a result of which the picture becomes not a proud statement of nature and life, but a sad reflection on the essence of our being ...

Michelangelo Caravaggio (1571 - 1610) - Italian artist, reformer of European painting of the 17th century, founder of realism in painting, one of the greatest masters of the Baroque. He was one of the first to apply the style of writing "chiaroscuro" - a sharp opposition of light and shadow. Not a single drawing or sketch was found, the artist immediately realized his complex compositions on canvas.

Life and work of Caravaggio

Italian painter. Born September 28, 1573. Studied in Milan (1584-1588); worked in Rome (until 1606), Naples (1607 and 1609-1610), on the islands of Malta and Sicily (1608-1609). Caravaggio, who did not belong to a particular art school, already in his early works contrasted the individual expressiveness of the model, simple everyday motifs (“Little Sick Bacchus”, “Young Man with a Basket of Fruit” - both in the Borghese Gallery, Rome) to the idealization of images and the allegorical interpretation of the plot, characteristic of the art of mannerism and academism.

Little sick Bacchus Youth with a basket of fruits Rest on the flight to Egypt Fortune teller

He gave a completely new, intimate psychological interpretation of traditional religious themes (“Rest on the Flight into Egypt”, Doria Pamphilj Gallery, Rome). The artist made a great contribution to the development of the everyday genre (“The Fortuneteller”, Louvre, Paris and others).

The mature works of the artist Caravaggio are monumental canvases of exceptional dramatic power (“The Calling of the Apostle Matthew” and “The Martyrdom of the Apostle Matthew”, 1599-1600, the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome; “The Entombment”, 1602-1604, Pinacoteca , Vatican; "Death of Mary", circa 1605-1606, Louvre, Paris).

The Calling of the Apostle Matthew The Martyrdom of the Apostle Matthew The Entombment of the Tomb The Death of Mary

The picturesque manner of Caravaggio during this period is based on powerful contrasts of light and shadow, expressive simplicity of gestures, energetic modeling of volumes, saturation of color - techniques that create emotional tension, sharp affectation of feelings. Emphasized "common people" types, the assertion of the ideals of democracy put Caravaggio in opposition to contemporary art, doomed him in the last years of his life to wander around southern Italy. In his later works, Caravaggio addresses the theme of human loneliness in a hostile world, he is attracted by the image of a small community of people united by family closeness and warmth (“The Burial of Saint Lucia”, 1608, the Church of Santa Lucia, Syracuse).

The light in his paintings becomes soft and moving, the color tends to tonal unity, the manner of writing takes on the character of free improvisation. The events of Caravaggio's biography are striking in their drama. Caravaggio had a very quick-tempered, unbalanced and complex character. Starting from 1600, the time of the highest creative upsurge of Caravaggio, his name began to appear constantly in the protocols of the Roman police.

At first, Caravaggio and his friends committed minor illegal acts (threats, obscene poems, insults), for which he was brought to trial. But in 1606, in the heat of a quarrel during a ball game, the artist committed murder and has since been forced to hide from the police.

After the murder, the artist fled from Rome to Naples. There he continued to work on large commissions; his art had a decisive influence on the development of the Neapolitan school of painting. In 1608 Caravaggio moved to Malta, where he painted a portrait of the Master of the Order of Malta and joined the Order himself. But soon Caravaggio had to flee from there to Sicily because of his quick temper. After living in Sicily for some time, the artist returned to Naples in 1609, where he was attacked in a port tavern and mutilated. At this time, Caravaggio was already ill with malaria, from an attack of which he died on July 18, 1610. The harsh realism of Caravaggio was not understood by his contemporaries, adherents of "high art". The appeal to nature, which he made the direct object of the image in his works, and the truthfulness of its interpretation caused many attacks on the artist by the clergy and officials. Nevertheless, in Italy itself there were many of his followers, who were called caravagists.

The influence of Caravaggio on the art world

The creative manner of Caravaggio had a direct influence on the formation of the current of Caravaggism, an independent trend in European art of the 17th century. Caravaggism is characterized by the democratism of the figurative system, an increased sense of real objectivity, the materiality of the image, the active role of light and shade contrasts in the pictorial and plastic solution of the picture, the monumentalization of genre and everyday motives. In Italy, where the tendencies of Caravaggism remained relevant until the end of the 17th century and were especially affected in the painting of Rome, Genoa and Naples, the most powerful and original interpretation of the legacy of Caravaggio was in the work of the Italian artist Orazio Gentileschi and his daughter Artemisia.

But even more significant was the influence of Caravaggio's work outside of Italy.

Not a single major painter of that time passed by the passion for caravagism, which was an important stage on the path of European realistic art. Among the European masters of caravagism outside of Italy, the most significant are the works of the Utrecht caravagists in Holland (Gerrit van Honthorst, Hendrik Terbruggen, etc.), as well as Jusepe de Ribera in Spain and Adam Elsheimer in Germany. Peter Paul Rubens, Diego Velasquez, Rembrandt van Rijn, Georges de Latour passed through the stage of caravaggism. The influence of individual methods of caravagism is also felt in the works of some masters of academicism (Guido Reni, Sebastiano Ricci in Italy and William-Adolf Bouguereau in France) and baroque (Karel Shkret in the Czech Republic and others).

Caravaggio's devotion to realism sometimes went very far.

Such an extreme case is the history of the creation of the painting "The Resurrection of Lazarus". Referring to the testimonies of eyewitnesses, the writer Suzinno tells how the artist ordered the body of a recently murdered young man, dug out of the grave, to be brought to the spacious room at the hospital of the brotherhood of the Crusaders and undressed in order to achieve greater authenticity when writing Lazarus. Two hired sitters flatly refused to pose, holding in their hands a corpse that had already begun to decompose. Then, angry, Caravaggio drew a dagger and forced them to submit to his will by force.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio(ital. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio; September 29 ( 15710929 ) , Milan - July 18, Grosseto, Tuscany) - Italian artist, reformer of European painting of the 17th century, one of the largest masters of the Baroque. One of the first to use the style of writing "chiaroscuro" - a sharp opposition of light and shadow.

Biography

The son of the architect Fermo Merisi and his second wife Lucia Aratori, the daughter of a landowner from the town of Caravaggio, near Milan. My father served as steward in the house of Francesco I Sforza, Marquis de Caravaggio, the owner of this town. His father died of the plague when Michelangelo was five years old. He studied from 1584 with Simone Peterzano in Milan, but for some unknown reason he finished his studies ahead of schedule. Then he disappears from view for four years and is declared in Rome - poor and hungry.

At first, Caravaggio was in great need. He entered the studio of a minor, but very fashionable in Rome, artist Cesari d'Arpino. Under the contract, Caravaggio performed images of flowers and fruits in the paintings. Later, it was he who opened the genre of still life for Italian painting. Sometimes the artist Antiveduto Gramatika shared his orders with Caravaggio. Borromeo, who met Caravaggio at the time of his Roman life, described him as “an uncouth man, with rude manners, always dressed in rags and living wherever he wants. Drawing street boys, tavern regulars and pitiful tramps, he looked like a completely happy person ”and admitted that he didn’t like everything in the artist’s paintings. Having saved some money, Caravaggio paints a picture of the Rounder, which Cardinal del Monte saw and invited the artist to the position of a house painter on his estate.

In 1591, Caravaggio moved to the palace of his patron, Cardinal del Monte, where he worked for about five years. One of the admirers of Caravaggio's painting and a collector of his paintings was the Marquis Vincenzo Giustiniani.

"Bacchus" - one of the early paintings by Caravaggio, which supposedly depicts his roommate Mario Minniti

In 1595, despite the recommendations given by Gentileschi, Gramatica, Prospero Orsi, Caravaggio was denied admission to the Academy of St. Luke. The main opponent of the admission of Caravaggio to the Academy was its president - Federico Zuccaro. He believed that the effects of Caravaggio's paintings were the result of an extravagant character, and the success of his paintings owed only to their "shade of novelty", which was highly appreciated by wealthy patrons.

Caravaggio was addicted to gambling early, made debts, in addition, he had a quick temper that brought him trouble more than once, he was often detained by the Roman police, but his patrons protected him until he crossed the line.

He never knew that in Rome he was granted full forgiveness.

Early period

The dramatic life of Caravaggio, full of adventures, corresponded to the rebellious spirit of his creative nature. Already in the first works performed in Rome: “ Little Sick Bacchus" (c. 1593-94, Rome, Borghese Gallery), "Boy with Fruit" (c. 1593, ibid.), "Bacchus" (c. 1593, Uffizi) , “Divination” (c. 1594, Louvre), “Lute Player” (c. 1595, Hermitage), he acts as a bold innovator, he challenged the main artistic trends of that era - mannerism and academicism, opposing them with the harsh realism and democracy of his art . The hero of Caravaggio is a man from the street crowd, a Roman boy or youth, endowed with coarse sensual beauty and the naturalness of a thoughtlessly cheerful being; the hero of Caravaggio appears either in the role of a street vendor, a musician, an ingenuous dandy, listening to a crafty gypsy, or in the guise and with attributes of the ancient god Bacchus.

These inherently genre characters, flooded with bright light, are pushed close to the viewer, depicted with emphasized monumentality and plastic tangibility.

Not shying away from deliberately naturalistic effects, especially in scenes of violence and cruelty (The Sacrifice of Isaac, c. 1603, Uffizi; Judith and Holofernes, c. 1596, Coppi collection (now exhibited in the Palazzo Barberini), Rome), Caravaggio in a number of other paintings of the same period, he finds a deeper and poetically significant interpretation of images (“Rest on the Flight into Egypt”, c. 1595 and “Penitent Mary Magdalene”, c. 1596, Doria-Pamphilj Gallery, Rome).

Mature creativity

The period of creative maturity (the end of the 16th - the first decade of the 17th centuries) opens a cycle of monumental paintings dedicated to St. Matthew (1599-1602, Church of San Luigi dei Francesi, Contarelli Chapel, Rome). In the first and most significant of them - "The Calling of the Apostle Matthew", - transferring the action of the gospel legend to a semi-basement room with bare walls and a wooden table, making people from the street crowd participate in it, Caravaggio at the same time built an emotionally strong dramaturgy of a great event - an invasion the light of Truth to the very bottom of life. The “cellar light”, penetrating into a dark room after Christ and St. Peter, highlights the figures of the people gathered around the table and at the same time emphasizes the miraculous nature of the appearance of Christ and St. Peter, his reality and at the same time unreality, snatching out of the darkness only part of the profile of Jesus, the thin brush of his outstretched hand, the yellow cloak of St. Peter, while their figures dimly emerge from the shadows.

In the second picture of this cycle - “The Martyrdom of St. Matthew" - the desire for a more bravura and spectacular solution prevailed. The third picture is "St. Matthew and the Angel” (subsequently located in the Berlin Museum of the Emperor Friedrich and died during the Second World War) was rejected by the customers, shocked by the rude, commonplace appearance of the apostle. In the altar paintings "The Martyrdom of St. Peter" and "Conversion of Saul" (1600-1601, Santa Maria del Popolo, Cerasi Chapel, Rome) Caravaggio finds a balance between dramatic pathos and defiant naturalistic details. Even more organically, he combines the emphatically plebeian appearance of the characters and the depth of dramatic pathos in the mournfully solemn altarpieces "The Entombment" (1602-1604, Vatican Pinakothek) and "The Assumption of Mary" (1605-1606, Louvre), which aroused the admiration of young artists, including Rubens (at his insistence, the "Assumption of Mary", rejected by the customers, was bought by the Duke of Mantua).

Pathetic intonations are also characteristic of the “Seven Acts of Mercy” altarpiece made in exile (1607, Monte della Misericordia, Naples), written with great pictorial energy. In recent works - "The Execution of John the Baptist" (1608, La Valetta, Cathedral), "The Burial of St. Lucia" (1608, Santa Lucia, Syracuse), "The Adoration of the Shepherds" (1609, National Museum, Messina) is dominated by an immense night space, against which the outlines of buildings and figures of actors vaguely appear. The art of Caravaggio had a huge influence on the work of not only many Italian, but also the leading Western European masters of the 17th century - Rubens, Jordans, Georges de Latour, Zurbaran, Velasquez, Rembrandt. Caravagists appeared in Spain (Jose Ribera), France (Trofim Bigot), Flanders and the Netherlands (Gerrit van Honthorst, Hendrik Terbruggen, Judith Leyster) and other European countries, not to mention Italy itself (Orazio Gentileschi, his daughter Artemisia Gentileschi).

Caravaggio's devotion to realism sometimes went very far. Such an extreme case is the history of the creation of the painting "The Resurrection of Lazarus". As is known from the Bible, this happened on the third day after the burial. To achieve credibility, Caravaggio had two hired workers dig up the recently buried body and hold it while he painted. Unable to bear the terrible smell, the workers left the corpse and wanted to run away. But Caravaggio, threatening them with a knife, forced them to continue to hold the corpse until he finished the job.

Films about Caravaggio

• Caravaggio is a 1986 British film directed by Derek Jarman based on the artist's life, starring Nigel Terry as an adult Caravaggio
• Caravaggio 2007 directed by Angelo Longoni starring Alessio Boni

Notes

Literature

• Mahov A. Caravaggio. - M .: Young Guard, 2009. - (Life of wonderful people). - ISBN 978-5-235-03196-8
• Elizabeth Lundy The secret life of great artists. - M ., 2011. - ISBN 978-5-98697-228-2

• Shapiro Yu.G., Persianova O.M., Mytareva K.V., Arane N.M. Fifty short biographies of the masters of Western European art of the XIV-XIX centuries. - L.: Aurora, 1971.

Links

Categories:

• Personalities in alphabetical order
• September 29
• Born in 1571
• Deceased July 18
• Deceased in 1610
• Artists in alphabetical order
• Italian artists
• Baroque artists
• Paintings by Caravaggio

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Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (Italian Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio; September 29, 1571 (15710929), Milan - July 18, 1610, Porto Ercole) - Italian artist, reformer of European painting of the 17th century, founder of realism in painting, one of the greatest masters of the Baroque. He was one of the first to apply the style of writing "chiaroscuro" - a sharp opposition of light and shadow. Not a single drawing or sketch was found, the artist immediately realized his complex compositions on canvas.

The son of the architect Fermo Merisi and his second wife Lucia Aratori, the daughter of a landowner from the town of Caravaggio, near Milan. His father served as manager of the Marquis Francesco Sforza da Caravaggio. In 1576, during the plague, the father and grandfather died, the mother and children moved to Caravaggio.

The first patrons of the future artist were the Duke and Duchess of Colonna.

In 1584, in Milan, Michelangelo Merisi came to the workshop of Peterzano, who was considered a student of Titian. At that time, Mannerism dominated the Italian art world, but Lombard realism was strong in Milan.

The first works of the artist, written in Milan, genre scenes and portraits, have not survived to this day.

By the end of the 1580s, the life of the quick-tempered Merisi was overshadowed by scandals, fights and imprisonments that would accompany him all his life.

In 1589, the artist comes home to sell his land allotment, apparently in need of money. He visited the house for the last time after the death of his mother in 1590.

In the autumn of 1591, he was forced to flee Milan after a quarrel over a card game that ended in murder. After stopping first in Venice, he heads to Rome.

In Rome, Merisi noticed Pandolfo Pucci, invited him to his house, ensured his existence by instructing him to make copies from church paintings.

Borromeo, who met Caravaggio at the time of his Roman life, described him as “an uncouth man, with rough manners, always dressed in rags and living wherever he wants. Drawing street boys, habitues of taverns and miserable tramps, he looked like a completely happy person. Borromeo admitted that he did not like everything in the artist's paintings.

In the capital, according to the custom of Italian artists of that time, he receives a nickname associated with the place of birth, as, for example, it was with Veronese or Correggio. So Michelangelo Merisi became Caravaggio.

In 1593, Caravaggio entered the workshop of Cesari d'Arpino, who instructed Caravaggio to paint flowers and leaves on frescoes. In the workshop of d'Arpino, he met patrons and artists, in particular, Jan Brueghel the Elder.

The early works of Caravaggio were written under the influence of Leonardo da Vinci (he met Madonna in the Rocks and The Last Supper in Milan), Giorgione, Titian, Giovanni Bellini, Mantegna.

The first painting that has come down to us is Boy Peeling Fruit (1593).

In the workshop of d'Arpino, Caravaggio met Mario Minniti, who became his student and model for a number of paintings, the first of which is "Young Man with a Basket of Fruit" (1593-1594).

After a fight, Caravaggio ends up in the Tor di Nona prison, where he meets Giordano Bruno.

Soon he breaks with Cesari d'Arpino, the homeless Caravaggio invited Antiveduto Grammar to his place.

In 1593 he fell ill with Roman fever (one of the names for malaria), for six months he was in the hospital on the verge of life and death. Perhaps, under the impression of the disease, he creates the painting “Sick Bacchus” (1593) - his first self-portrait.

The first multi-figure paintings were created in 1594 - these are "Rounders" and "Fortune Teller" (Capitoline Museums). Georges de Latour would later write his "The Fortuneteller" with an identical composition.

In these works, he acts as a bold innovator who challenged the main artistic trends of that era - mannerism and academicism, opposing them with the harsh realism and democracy of his art. The hero of Caravaggio is a man from the street crowd, a Roman boy or youth, endowed with coarse sensual beauty and the naturalness of a thoughtlessly cheerful being; the hero of Caravaggio appears either in the role of a street vendor, a musician, an ingenuous dandy, listening to a crafty gypsy, or in the guise and with the attributes of an ancient god. These inherently genre characters, flooded with bright light, are pushed close to the viewer, depicted with emphasized monumentality and plastic tangibility.

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Italian painter, one of the largest representatives of the Baroque Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio) was born on September 28, 1573 in the Italian village of Caravaggio. His father was the majordomo and architect of the Marquis Caravaggio. Until the early 1590s, Michelangelo da Caravaggio studied with the Milanese painter Simone Peterzano, leaving for Rome around 1593. At first he was in poverty, he worked for hire. Some time later, the fashionable painter Cesari d'Arpino took Caravaggio as an assistant in his workshop, where he painted still lifes on the monumental paintings of the owner.

At this time, such paintings by Caravaggio as "Little Sick Bacchus" and "Boy with a Basket of Fruit" were painted.

By nature, an artist who plunged him into difficult and dangerous situations. He fought duels many times, for which he repeatedly ended up in prison. Often spent days in the company of players, swindlers, brawlers, adventurers. His name often appeared in police chronicles.

© Merisi da Caravaggio / public domainPainting by Merisi da Caravaggio "Lute Player", 1595. State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

© Merisi da Caravaggio / public domain

In 1595, in the person of Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, Caravaggio found an influential patron who introduced him to the artistic environment of Rome. For Cardinal del Monte, the artist painted some of his best paintings - "Fruit Basket", "Bacchus" and "Lute Player". In the late 1590s, the artist created such works as "Concert", "Cupid the Winner", "Fortuneteller", "Narcissus". Caravaggio opened up new possibilities of painting, first turning to the "pure" still life and "adventure" genre, which was further developed among his followers and was popular in European painting of the 17th century.

Among the early religious works of Caravaggio are the paintings "Saint Martha Conversing with Mary Magdalene", "Saint Catherine of Alexandria", "Saint Mary Magdalene", "The Ecstasy of St. Francis", "Rest on the Flight into Egypt", "Judith", "Sacrifice of Abraham" .

© Photo: public domain Caravaggio Judith Slaying Holofernes. c.1598-1599

At the turn of the XVI-XVII centuries, Caravaggio created two cycles of paintings on scenes from the life of the apostles. In the years 1597-1600, three paintings dedicated to the Apostle Matthew were painted for the Contarelli Chapel in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome. Of these, only two have survived - "The Calling of the Apostle Matthew" and "The Martyrdom of the Apostle Matthew" (1599-1600). For the Cerasi Chapel in the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome, Caravaggio performed two compositions - "The Conversion of Saul" and "The Crucifixion of the Apostle Peter."

© Photo: Michelangelo da CaravaggioJohn the Baptist painting by Michelangelo da Caravaggio

In 1602-1604, the artist painted "The Entombment" ("Descent from the Cross") for the church of Santa Maria in Valicella in Rome. In 1603-1606 he created the composition "Madonna di Loreto" for the church of Sant'Agostino. In 1606, the painting "Assumption of Mary" was painted.

In 1606, after a quarrel at a ball game and the murder of his rival Rannuccio Tommasoni, Caravaggio fled from Rome to Naples, from where he moved to the island of Malta in 1607, where he was accepted into the Order of Malta. However, after a quarrel with a high-ranking member of the order, he was imprisoned, from where he fled to Sicily, and then to southern Italy.

In 1609, Caravaggio again returned to Naples, where he awaited pardon and permission to return to Rome.

During the wandering period, the artist created a number of outstanding works of religious painting. In Naples, he painted large altarpieces The Seven Works of Mercy (Church of Pio Monte della Misaricordia), The Madonna of the Rosary, and The Flagellation of Christ. In Malta, for the temple of San Domenico Maggiore, he created the canvases "The Beheading of John the Baptist" and "Saint Jerome", in Sicily - "The Burial of St. Lucy" for the Church of St. Lucia, "The Resurrection of Lazarus" for the Genoese merchant Lazzari and "The Adoration of the Shepherds" for the church Santa Maria degli Angeli. The last works of Caravaggio also include the painting "David with the Head of Goliath", in which the head of Goliath presumably represents a self-portrait of the artist.

In 1610, having received a pardon from Cardinal Gonzaga, the artist loaded his belongings onto a ship, intending to return to Rome, but never reached his destination. On the shore, he was mistakenly arrested by the Spanish guards and detained for three days.

On July 18, 1610, Caravaggio died of an attack of malaria in the Italian town of Porto Ercole at the age of 37.

The work of Caravaggio had a significant influence not only on many Italian artists of the 17th century, but also on the leading Western European masters - Peter Paul Rubens, Diego Velazquez, José de Ribera, and also gave rise to a new trend in art - caravaggism.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources