Caravaggio

            Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, usually referred to as Caravaggio after his birthplace near Milan, is one of the most important artists in the history of Western art. From his early teens into his twenties he was trained in Milan as an apprentice in a painter's studio. He traveled to Rome in the early 1590's to enter the studio of a more prominent painter. He lived a brief and dramatic life, and his work was sometimes shocking to the people of his time. .
             Caravaggio was considered a rebel against convention, both in his art and in his behavior. In May 1605 he was seized for misuse of arms. In 1606, he had to leave Rome after killing a man over a wager on a tennis match. In terror of the consequences of his act, Caravaggio, himself wounded and feverish, fled the city and sought refuge on the nearby estate of a relative of the Marquis of Caravaggio. He then moved on to other places of hiding and eventually reached Naples, probably in early 1607. He remained at Naples for a time, painting "Madonna of the Rosary" for the Flemish painter Louis Finson and one of his late masterpieces, "The Seven Works of Mercy" for the Chapel of Monte della Misericordia. It is hard to ignore the connection between the dark and urgent nature of this painting and what must have been his desperate state of mind. It is also the first indication of a shift in his painting style. .
             Even though his life was short, his painting style had enormous impact on artists throughout Europe. Caravaggio's style consists of a rejection of idealization in favor of realism vividly depicted in contemporary costumes and settings. Solid figures are represented with expressive and many times violent gestures in unusual and dramatic groups composed within a shallow foreground space. His method of painting was regarded as revolutionary; instead of following the traditional procedure of working from drawings and sketches; no drawings of his exist; he painted directly from the posed model on to the canvas, often making changes as he advanced.