Editing Caravaggio (section)

== As an artist ==

=== The birth of Baroque ===
[[File:Caravaggio - Cena in Emmaus.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|''[[Supper at Emmaus (London) (Caravaggio)|Supper at Emmaus]]'', 1601, oil on canvas, {{convert|139|x|195|cm|0|abbr=on}}, [[National Gallery]], London. Self-portrait of Caravaggio as the figure at the top left.]]

Caravaggio "put the oscuro (shadows) into [[chiaroscuro]]".<ref>Lambert, p.11.</ref> Chiaroscuro was practised 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, an unusual approach at the time. His models were basic to his realism; some have been identified, including [[Mario Minniti]] and [[Francesco Boneri]], both fellow artists, Minniti appearing as various figures in the early secular works, the young Boneri as a succession of angels, Baptists and Davids in the later canvasses. His female models include [[Portrait of a Courtesan (Caravaggio)|Fillide Melandroni]], [[Martha and Mary Magdalene (Caravaggio)|Anna Bianchini]], and Maddalena Antognetti (the "Lena" mentioned in court documents of the "artichoke" case<ref>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.</ref> as Caravaggio's concubine), all well-known prostitutes, who appear as female religious figures including the Virgin and various saints.<ref>Robb, ''passim'', makes a fairly exhaustive attempt to identify models and relate them to individual canvases.</ref> Caravaggio himself appears in several paintings, his final self-portrait being as the witness on the far right to the ''[[The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula (Caravaggio)|Martyrdom of Saint Ursula]]''.<ref>Caravaggio's self-portraits run from the ''Sick Bacchus'' at the beginning of his career to the head of Goliath in the ''David with the Head of Goliath'' in 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.</ref>
[[File:The Taking of Christ-Caravaggio (c.1602).jpg|left|thumb|upright=1.2|''[[The Taking of Christ]]'', 1602, [[National Gallery of Ireland]], Dublin. The [[chiaroscuro]] shows through on the faces and armour even in the absence of a visible shaft of light. The figure on the extreme right is a self-portrait.]]

Caravaggio had a noteworthy ability to express in one scene of unsurpassed vividness the passing of a crucial moment. ''[[Supper at Emmaus (London) (Caravaggio)|The Supper at Emmaus]]'' depicts the recognition of Christ by his disciples: a moment before he is a fellow traveller, mourning the passing of the Messiah, as he never ceases to be to the innkeeper'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 upon the figure of Christ, have already said, "Yes, I will follow you". With ''[[The Raising of Lazarus (Caravaggio)|The Resurrection of Lazarus]]'', he goes a step further, giving a glimpse of the actual physical process of resurrection. The body of Lazarus is still in the throes of [[rigor mortis]], but his hand, facing and recognising that of Christ, is alive. Other major [[Baroque]] artists would travel the same path, for example [[Bernini]], fascinated with themes from [[Ovid]]'s ''[[Metamorphoses]]''.{{sfn|Thornhill|2015|p=Foreword}}

=== The Caravaggisti ===
[[File:Crucifixion of Saint Peter-Caravaggio (c.1600).jpg|thumb|The ''[[Crucifixion of Saint Peter (Caravaggio)|Crucifixion of Saint Peter]]'', 1601, [[Cerasi Chapel]], [[Santa Maria del Popolo]], Rome]]

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 a court painter to [[Charles I of England]]. His daughter [[Artemisia Gentileschi]] was also stylistically close to Caravaggio and one of the most gifted of the movement. However, in Rome and Italy, it was not Caravaggio, but the influence of his rival [[Annibale Carracci]], blending elements from the [[High Renaissance]] and Lombard realism, that ultimately triumphed.
[[File:Peter Paul Rubens - Old Woman and Boy with Candles.jpg|thumb|left|''Old Woman and Boy with Candles'' by [[Rubens]] ([[Mauritshuis]], The Hague)]]
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.

[[Rubens]] was likely one of the first Flemish artists to be influenced by Caravaggio whose work he got to know during his stay in Rome in 1601. He later painted a copy (or rather an interpretation) of Caravaggio's ''[[The Entombment of Christ (Caravaggio)|Entombment of Christ]]'' and recommended his patron, the [[Vincenzo I of Gonzaga|Duke of Mantua]], purchase [[Death of the Virgin (Caravaggio)|''Death of the Virgin'']] ([[Louvre]]). Although some of this interest in Caravaggio is reflected in his drawings during his Italian residence, it was only after his return to Antwerp in 1608 that Rubens' works show openly Caravaggesque traits such as in the ''[[:File:Peter Paul Rubens - Cain slaying Abel, 1608-1609.jpg|Cain slaying Abel]]'' (1608–1609) ([[Courtauld Institute of Art]]) and the [[:File:Peter Paul Rubens - Old Woman and Boy with Candles.jpg|''Old Woman and Boy with Candles'']] (1618–1619) ([[Mauritshuis]]). However, the influence of Caravaggio on Rubens' work would be less important than that of [[Raphael]], [[Correggio]], [[Barocci]] and the Venetians. Flemish artists, who were influenced by Rubens, such as [[Jacob Jordaens]], [[Pieter van Mol]], [[Gaspar de Crayer]] and [[Willem Jacob Herreyns]], also used certain stark realism and strong contrasts of light and shadow, common to the Caravaggesque style.<ref>Gregori, Mina, Luigi Salerno, and Richard E. Spear, ''The Age of Caravaggio'', Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1985</ref>

A number of Catholic artists from [[Utrecht]], including [[Hendrick ter Brugghen]], [[Gerrit van Honthorst]] and [[Dirck van Baburen]] travelled in the first decades of the 17th century to Rome. Here they became profoundly influenced by the work of Caravaggio and his followers. On their return to Utrecht, their Caravaggesque works inspired a short-lived but influential flowering of artworks inspired indirectly in style and subject matter by the works of Caravaggio and the Italian followers of Caravaggio. This style of painting was later referred to as [[Utrecht Caravaggism]]. In the following generation of Dutch artists the effects of Caravaggio, although attenuated, are to be seen in the work of [[Vermeer]] and Rembrandt, neither of whom visited Italy.<ref name=rijk>[https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio/styles/caravaggism Caravaggism at the Rijksmuseum]</ref>

=== Death and rebirth of a reputation ===
[[File:Caravaggio - La Deposizione di Cristo.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|''[[The Entombment of Christ (Caravaggio)|The Entombment of Christ]]'', (1602–1603), [[Pinacoteca Vaticana]], Rome]]

Caravaggio's innovations inspired the Baroque, but the Baroque took the drama of his chiaroscuro without the psychological realism.{{dubious|date=November 2022}} While he directly influenced the 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.

Thus his reputation was doubly vulnerable to the unsympathetic critiques of his earliest biographers, [[Giovanni Baglione]], a rival painter with a vendetta, and the 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 (painting)|Bolognese school]] led by the Carracci.<ref>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.</ref> 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.<ref>Ostrow, 608</ref>

In the 1920s, art critic [[Roberto Longhi]] brought Caravaggio's name once more to the foreground and placed him in the European tradition: "[[Jusepe de Ribera|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".<ref>Roberto Longhi, quoted in Lambert, op. cit., p.15</ref> The influential [[Bernard Berenson]] agreed: "With the exception of [[Michelangelo]], no other Italian painter exercised so great an influence."<ref>Bernard Berenson, in Lambert, op. cit., p.8</ref>

=== Epitaph ===

[[File:The Denial of Saint Peter-Caravaggio (1610).jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|''[[The Denial of Saint Peter (Caravaggio)|The Denial of Saint Peter]]'' (1610), [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]], New York City]]

Caravaggio's epitaph was composed by his friend Marzio Milesi.<ref>{{cite journal |title=Caravaggio's Deaths |first=Philip |last=Sohm |journal=[[The Art Bulletin]] |volume=84 |issue=3 |date=September 2002 |pages=449–468 |doi=10.2307/3177308 |jstor=3177308}}</ref> It reads:

{{blockquote|"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."<ref>Inscriptiones et Elogia (Cod.Vat.7927)</ref>}}

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 his ''Basket of Fruit''.