The intensity of Caravaggio's paintings was matched only by his tempestuous lifestyle.
Despite being a hot-headed, violent man often in trouble with the law and
implicated in more than one murder, he created striking, innovative paintings
and pioneered the use of dramatic lighting and the representation of religious figures
in modern clothes and attitudes. Working from life and without the aid of preparatory sketches,
Caravaggio paired close observation of his models with the use of strong beams of light
to focus attention on certain elements of his images, contrasting these well-lit areas with
dark shadows elsewhere on the canvas. This use of chiaroscuro became a core part of
Caravaggio's highly individualized style and was widely imitated by his contemporaries.
Even though he only lived until the age of 39, Caravaggio had a profound influence on the
painters around him and on later art movements, notably Baroque art and 19th-century Realism.
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was probably the most revolutionary artist of his time,
for he abandoned the rules that had guided a century of artists who had idealized both
the human and religious experience. He can be said almost single-handedly
to have created the Baroque style. Caravaggio: the master of light.
1, Young Sick Bacchus.
Completed circa 1593, this early self-portrait depicts the artist as Bacchus,
the Roman god of wine. According to Caravaggio’s first biographer,
Giovanni Baglione, the work was a cabinet piece created with the aid of a mirror.
It dates from Caravaggio’s first years in Rome, after his arrival from his native Milan in 1592.
Sources tend to agree that at one point the artist fell ill and spent six months in the hospital of
Santa Maria della Consolazione, possibly suffering an ailment like malaria, which would explain
the jaundiced appearance of the skin and the icterus in the eyes, as portrayed in Bacchus.
The painting demonstrates the artist’s precocious ability to blend three genres into one canvas:
portraiture, classical subject matter and still-life. Apart from its assumed
autobiographical content, this early painting was likely used by Caravaggio to promote his variety
of skills, demonstrating his virtuosity in painting genres such as still-life
and portraits and hinting at the ability to paint the classical figures of antiquity.
The three-quarters angle of the face was a popular convention of late Renaissance portraiture, though
some art historians regard Caravaggio’s portrayal of a sick Bacchus, a classical god, as a statement
that classical art is flawed, highlighting the artist’s preference for naturalism, represented
by the beautiful detail of the still-life peaches and grapes in the painting’s foreground.
The still-life can be compared with other examples in slightly later works, such as Boy With a Basket
of Fruit and Boy Bitten by a Lizard, where the fruits are in a much better condition,
reflecting no doubt Caravaggio’s improved health. The painting also demonstrates the
influence of his current master, the Bergamasque Simone Peterzano, in the depiction of the tensed
musculature and of the austere Lombard school style in its attention to realistic details.
Now housed in the Galleria Borghese in Rome,
Young Sick Bacchus was among the many works making up the collection of Giuseppe Cesari,
one of Caravaggio’s early employers, which was later seized by the art-collector Cardinal-Nephew
Scipione Borghese in 1607, together with the Boy Peeling Fruit and Boy with a Basket of Fruit.
2, Boy With a Basket of Fruit.
Completed in 1593, this painting is housed in the Galleria Borghese in Rome and
presents Mario Minniti, a Sicilian model, who was the friend and companion of Caravaggio.
It is believed the work dates to the period when the artist worked for Cavalier d’Arpino,
completing minor work, such as painting flowers and fruits, in the workshop,
though the painting may date from a slightly later period when Caravaggio and Minniti had left
d’Arpino’s workshop to make their own way selling paintings through the dealer Costantino.
The canvas depicts a young fruit seller from the streets of Rome, bearing a dreamy and
sensual expression, whilst clutching a basket of fruit to his chest. The fruits are depicted
with vivid and rich detail, along with the minute precision of the basket’s weave.
At one level the painting is a genre piece designed to demonstrate the artist’s ability
to depict everything from the skin of the boy, the folds of his robe and the blemishes on the fruit.
However, later commentators have speculated on the implied sexuality of the piece,
emphasised by the boy’s expression and the rich symbolism of the fruit.
3, Cardsharps.
This 1594 painting is generally considered by many art historians
to be the artist’s first major work. Having left Arpino’s workshop in January 1594,
Caravaggio started selling his own works through the art dealer Costantino, with the assistance of
Prospero Orsi, an established painter of Mannerist grotesques (masks, monsters, etc.). Orsi
introduced Caravaggio to an extensive network of contacts in the world of collectors and patrons,
helping to launch his professional career. Cardsharps portrays an expensively dressed,
but naïve boy playing cards with another boy. The second boy, a ‘cardsharp’,
has extra cards tucked behind his back in his belt, hidden from the other boy,
whilst an older man is peering over the victim’s shoulder and signalling to his young accomplice.
The second boy has a dagger handy at his side, intimating that violence is not far away.
It was the second such painting Caravaggio created, with The Fortune Teller drawing attention
to the artist’s ability in this genre beforehand, and this second work enhanced his rapidly growing
reputation. The subjects of The Fortune Teller and Cardsharps offered a new type of painting to
patrons: realistic scenes of street life, especially with the beautifully rendered
attention to detail, such as the split fingers on the older man’s gloves, the wrinkles on his brow,
the young cheat’s anxious glance at his master. With its blend of low-life realism and luminous
Venetian delicacy, Cardsharps was much admired and Orsi was quick to promote Caravaggio’s new style,
further heightening the reputation of his work. Caravaggio appears to have produced more than
one version of the work. Over fifty copies and variants made by other painters have survived,
with artists such as Georges de La Tour painting their own versions of the theme.
Cardsharps came to the notice of the prominent collector Cardinal Francesco Del Monte,
who purchased the painting and became Caravaggio’s first important patron, giving him lodgings in his
Palazzo Madama behind the Piazza Navona, then, as it is now, a main square in Rome. From Del Monte’s
collection the work entered the collection of Cardinal Antonio Barberini, nephew of the
Pope Urban VIII (whose pre-elevation portrait, Portrait of Maffeo Barberini, Caravaggio would
paint in 1598), in Rome and was passed through the Colonna-Sciarra family. It eventually disappeared
in the 1890s, and was rediscovered in 1987 in a private collection in Zürich. The painting was
subsequently sold to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, where it remains today.
4, Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy.
Now housed in the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford,
Connecticut, this was the first of Caravaggio’s religious canvasses, which dates from 1595,
when he had recently entered the household of Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte.
Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy was presumably painted at the behest of Del Monte,
while Caravaggio was living in the Palazzo Madama. The canvas depicts Saint Francis of Assisi,
the Cardinal’s name-saint, at the moment of receiving the signs of the Stigmata — the
wounds left in Christ’s body by the Crucifixion. The story is told by one of Francis’ companions,
Brother Leo. In 1224 Francis retired to the wilderness with a small number of his followers
to contemplate God. On the mountainside at night Brother Leo saw a six-winged seraph come down to
Francis in answer to his prayer that he might know both Christ’s suffering and His love.
The subject had been a popular choice since the 13th century, with Giotto completing a
version in 1290 and Giovanni Bellini painting a famous adaptation of the subject in c. 1480.
Caravaggio’s painting is less dramatic than the account given by Leo, as the six-winged seraph
is replaced by a two-winged angel and there is none of the violent confrontation described in
the account, with no streams of fire, nor pools of blood or fiery images of Christ.
Instead, Caravaggio concentrates his interest on the serenity of the angel,
appearing much larger than the unconscious Saint, and the focus of the painting is given to the
majestic fall of light delineating the ecstasy on the Saint’s face. Caravaggio uses the technique
of chiaroscuro (light and dark), employing the strong contrast between light and dark,
affecting the whole composition, with light falling from the top left of the canvas,
bathing the subjects in an almost ethereal glow, adding to the sacred atmosphere of the painting.