Roman History - Caravaggio and His Art

Running head: ROMAN HISTORY
Roman History
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1ROMAN HISTORY
Topic chosen: Caravaggio and his art
Information about the artist
Caravaggio, by name of Michelangelo Merisi, was born September 29, 1571 in Italy. He was a
leading Italian painter from the late 16th and early 17th centuries, renowned both for his vivid
and unsettling realism and violent exploits. His works blend a detailed physical and emotional
perception of the human condition with a radically inspired decoration of Baroque art. Before
traveling to Rome in his twenties Caravaggio studied in Milan as a painter (Poropat et al. 2018).
As an artist and a aggressive, touching and offensive individual he built a considerable
reputation. A uprising led to a killing penalty which coerced him into fleeing to Naples. Again,
he established himself there as one of his generation's leading Italian painters. He visited Malta
and Sicily in 1607 and requested papal remission of his conviction. In 1609 he engaged in a
brutal altercation in Naples, where he had a facial disfigurement and rumors spread of his death.
His erroneous and odd conduct posed concerns about his mental health (Jones 2017). On his
return to Rome from Naples he died in unknown circumstances in 1610. According to sources,
he was suffering from a fever, but claims that he was killed or died from lead poisoning were
made.
The style of Caravaggio
With the drastic use of tenebrism, Caravaggio, in his paintings, has used close physical
observation. The technique became a popular stylistic feature, with shadows darkening as well as
transfixing subjects down bright light shafts. Caravaggio depicted dramatic moments and events,
often with brutal combat, torture and killing. He was able to work on a rapid manner with live

2ROMAN HISTORY
models and tended to skip sketches and work on the canvas directly. He had a major influence on
the modern, manneric Baroque style.
According to the researchers, while Caravaggio didn't invent the chiaroscuro technique, he was
the first painter to use the technique as the main stylistic feature, to darken the shadows and to
emphasize precisely defined rays of light. The style has become more popular in his later work
and is associated with more sophisticated photographs afterwards (Stone 2017). The populist
portrayals of religious figures by Caravaggio are revolutionary, with unidealized presentation of
biblical characters by incorporating indications of ages and hardship and use of contemporary
vestments. It aimed to humanize the Divine nature and make it more available to the average
audience. Caravaggio became a kind of theological imperialism in this work (Mormando 2018).
Caravaggio's naked, filthy feet combined the works of the artist with church doctrines, which
reflected Christ's suffering as well as the demands for purity in religious art after the Trent
Concilium (1545-1563). These portrayals have attracted some sharp criticism from Caravaggio,
considering this identification with the existing dogma.
The inventions of Caravaggio influenced the baroque painting, however the Baroqe had
incorporated the drama of Caravago's chiarcuro without incorporating the psychological realism.
The trend had grown and Caravaggio has been out of favor. His interest in his work was renewed
in the 20th century and his significance was reevaluated for the advancement of Western art. The
art historian of the 19th century, André Berne-Joffroy, stated that "What starts with the work of
Caravaggio is simply modern painting." Caravaggio "put the oscuro (shadows) into chiaroscuro."
Chiaroscuro was studied well prior to the emergence of Caravaggio, but the technique became a
dominant stylistic feature that distorted the darkness and turned the subject into a bright light