Editing Caravaggio (section)

==== Sicily ====

[[File:Room of caravaggio, regional museum od of messina.JPG|thumb|''[[The Raising of Lazarus (Caravaggio)|The Raising of Lazarus]]'' and the ''[[Adoration of the Shepherds (Caravaggio)|Adoration of the Shepherds]]'', [[Regional Museum of Messina]], Sicily, Italy]]

Caravaggio made his way to [[Sicily]] where he met his old friend Mario Minniti, who was now married and living in [[Syracuse, Italy|Syracuse]]. Together they set off on what amounted to a triumphal tour from Syracuse to [[Messina]] and, maybe, on to the island capital, [[Palermo]]. In Syracuse and Messina Caravaggio continued to win prestigious and well-paid commissions. Among other works from this period are ''[[Burial of St. Lucy (Caravaggio)|Burial of St. Lucy]]'', ''[[The Raising of Lazarus - Messina (Caravaggio)|The Raising of Lazarus]]'', and ''[[Adoration of the Shepherds (Caravaggio)|Adoration of the Shepherds]]''. His style continued to evolve, showing now friezes of figures isolated against vast empty backgrounds. "His great Sicilian altarpieces isolate their shadowy, pitifully poor figures in vast areas of darkness; they suggest the desperate fears and frailty of man, and at the same time convey, with a new yet desolate tenderness, the beauty of humility and of the meek, who shall inherit the earth."<ref>Langdon, p.365.</ref> Contemporary reports depict a man whose behaviour was becoming increasingly bizarre, which included sleeping fully armed and in his clothes, ripping up a painting at a slight word of criticism, and mocking local painters.

Caravaggio displayed bizarre behaviour from very early in his career. Mancini describes him as "extremely crazy", a letter from Del Monte notes his strangeness, and Minniti's 1724 biographer says that Mario left Caravaggio because of his behaviour. The strangeness seems to have increased after Malta. Susinno's early-18th-century ''Le vite de' pittori Messinesi'' ("Lives of the Painters of Messina") provides several colourful anecdotes of Caravaggio's erratic behaviour in Sicily, and these are reproduced in modern full-length biographies such as Langdon and Robb. Bellori writes of Caravaggio's "fear" driving him from city to city across the island and finally, "feeling that it was no longer safe to remain", back to Naples. Baglione says Caravaggio was being "chased by his enemy", but like Bellori does not say who this enemy was.