Caravaggio 1571-1610
Full name Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.
He was an Italian artist who had a short but very influential painting career between 1593-1610.
His work is characterised by dramatic and theatrical use of lighting known as Chiaroscuro.
His work is very realistic, with close observation of people and they communicate both their physical and emotional states.
His influence on the new Baroque style that emerged from the ruins of Mannerism, was profound. It can be seen directly or indirectly in the work of many artists, and the following generation of artists, heavily under his influence, were called the "Caravaggisti" or "Caravagesques", as well as "Tenebrists" or "Tenebrosi" ("shadowists").
Caravaggio, when in Rome, was a visitor to the Palazzo Firenze, and there, Cardinal Del Monte, Florence ambassador to the city, introduced him to the Medici Grand Duke Ferdinand. Over the coming decades the Medici (especially Cosimo II) would continue to be collectors, both of Caravaggio himself and of his many followers and imitators.
By the end of the 16th century the Bacchus and the Medusa were already hanging in the Uffizi.
Analysis of the paintings shows that he experimented with various oils for his paints, to achieve the smoothness, luminosity, transparency and chiaroscuro that he was after.
Sant Jeroni penitent
To achieve realism, he liked to "pull" his subject out of surrounding darkness into strong lateral or overhead light, as close to the viewer as possible so that the viewer really feels part of the scene.
When he did realistic genre scenes, such as The Cardsharps (Fort Worth, Kimball Art Museum), he would put up a studio stage set and light it with elaborate care, both naturally and artificially.
Not a single drawing by him has survived and it is likely that he never did any. He simply stood up to the canvas and painted directly onto it, from the living model.
Caravaggio aimed at total realism, but he wanted drama too.
He depicts dramatic moments, whether cheating at cards or the very second a miracle occurs, in such a way that the viewer feels they are present and can step into the picture, or are even seated at the table with the people in the painting.
The Tooth-Drawer
The Church, which bought more than half his paintings, recognised the huge popular appeal of his vivid portrayals of the Christian faith after Mannerism.
But it sometimes found Caravaggio too real for comfort. It rejected at least five of his commissioned works or forced him to repaint them, because (as one cardinal put it) he 'crosses the borderline between the sacred and profane'
His Death of the Virgin, a work of marvelous sadness and pity (Louvre), shows her as an old woman, already a corpse. This was done from life, from the body of a prostitute found in the Tiber.
His two versions of The Supper at Emmaus (National Gallery; Milan, Brera), show ordinary people rather than holy figures.
His Christ in The Crowning with Thorns (Prado) is in horrible pain.
In his St Matthew and the Angel (Berlin, Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, destroyed), the evangelist looks too stupid, the angel dictating to him too delicious.
Judith Beheading Holofernes (Rome, Barberini) is a terrifying mass of blood and horror.
Caravaggio systematically and deliberately, for the first time in the history of art, destroyed the space between the event in the painting and the people looking at it. He made direct windows into life, whether religious life or ordinary life. It is like the viewer is in the same room or manger or tomb or prison where the events are taking place.
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/C/caravaggio.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravaggio
http://www.tickitaly.com/exhibitions/2010-uffizi-caravaggio.php