CARAVAGGIO

Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio, was born in1571. His pseudonym derives from the name of the village Caravaggio, siutated near Milan and where Merisi spends his childhood.
In the early 1590s he moves to Rome and specialising in still lives of fruit and flowers, and later in half-length figures.
An early patron of him is Cardinal del Monte, who acquired commissions for him. These include altarpieces and narrative scenes, often showing dramatic moments of revelation.
In 1606 Caravaggio kills a man in a duel, for this reason he leaves Rome and settles in Naples. There he spends several months executing such works as the Flagellation of Christ, which is crucial to the development of naturalism among the artists of that city.
Then he goes to Malta where is made a knight, or cavaliere, of the Maltese order, and executes one of his few portraits, that of his fellow Cavaliere Alof de Wignacourt. He sejourns in Sicily and southern Italy.
In October of 1608, Caravaggio is again arrested and, escaping from a Maltese jail, went to Syracuse in Sicily.
While in Sicily he paints several monumental canvases, including the Burial of Saint Lucy and the Raising of Lazarus. These are multi-figured compositions of great drama achieved through dark tonalities and selective use of lighting. These are the last works of Caravaggio, for the artist died on the beach at Port'Ercole in Tuscany on July 18, 1610, of a fever contracted after a mistaken arrest. In Naples he continues to paint religious works. Among his latest works there are also Salome receives the Head os Saint John the Baptist.
Caravaggio is the archetypal artist-rebel whose tempestuous life matches the drama of his works. The immediacy of his mature paintings was achieved by the uncompromising representation of people and objects from life, intense and theatrical lighting, and strong foreshortening. In 1610 Caravaggio is pardoned for the murder, but dies of a fever shortly afterwards.