Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio in the context of "Caravaggisti"

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⭐ Core Definition: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (also Michele Angelo Merigi or Amerighi da Caravaggio; 29 September 1571 – 18 July 1610), known mononymously as Caravaggio, was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life. During the final four years of his life, he moved between Naples, Malta, and Sicily. His paintings have been characterized by art critics as combining a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, which had a formative influence on Baroque painting.

Caravaggio employed close physical observation with a dramatic use of chiaroscuro that came to be known as tenebrism. He made the technique a dominant stylistic element, transfixing subjects in bright shafts of light and darkening shadows. Caravaggio vividly expressed crucial moments and scenes, often featuring violent struggles, torture, and death. He worked rapidly with live models, preferring to forgo drawings and work directly onto the canvas. His inspiring effect on the new Baroque style that emerged from Mannerism was profound. His influence can be seen directly or indirectly in the work of Peter Paul Rubens, Jusepe de Ribera, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Velázquez and Rembrandt. Artists heavily under his influence were called the "Caravaggisti" (or "Caravagesques"), as well as tenebrists or tenebrosi ("shadowists").

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Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio in the context of Galleria Borghese

The Galleria Borghese or Borghese Gallery is an art gallery in Rome, Italy, housed in the former Villa Borghese Pinciana. At the outset, the gallery building was integrated with its gardens, but nowadays the Villa Borghese gardens are considered a separate tourist attraction. The Galleria Borghese houses a substantial part of the Borghese Collection of paintings, sculpture and antiquities, begun by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the nephew of Pope Paul V (reign 1605–1621). The building was constructed by the architect Flaminio Ponzio, developing sketches by Scipione Borghese himself, who used it as a villa suburbana, a country villa at the edge of Rome.

The museum displays one of the most prestigious art collections in the world, with masterpieces by artists such as Caravaggio, Bernini, Canova, Raphael and Titian. Scipione Borghese was an early patron of Bernini and an avid collector of works by Caravaggio, who is well represented in the collection by his Boy with a Basket of Fruit, St Jerome Writing, Sick Bacchus and others. Additional paintings of note include Titian's Sacred and Profane Love, Raphael's Entombment of Christ and works by Peter Paul Rubens and Federico Barocci. Considered among the greatest masterpieces of Italian art, some of these works show the evolution of art between the Renaissance, the Baroque and the Neoclassicism, artistic movements born in the Italian peninsula and subsequently spread throughout Europe.

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Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio in the context of The Fortune Teller (Caravaggio)

The Fortune Teller is a painting by Italian Baroque artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. It exists in two versions, both by Caravaggio, the first from c. 1594 (now in the Musei Capitolini in Rome), the second from c. 1595 (which is in the Louvre museum, Paris). The dates in both cases are disputed.

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Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio in the context of Polidoro da Caravaggio

Polidoro Caldara, usually known as Polidoro da Caravaggio (c. 1499 – 1543), was an Italian painter of the Mannerist period, "arguably the most gifted and certainly the least conventional of Raphael's pupils", who was best known for his now-vanished paintings on the facades of Roman houses. He was unrelated to the later painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, usually known just as Caravaggio, but both came from the town of Caravaggio.

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Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio in the context of The Cardsharps

The Cardsharps (painted around 1594) is a painting by the Italian Baroque artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.The original is generally agreed to be the work acquired by the Kimbell Art Museum in 1987, although Caravaggio may have painted more than one version.

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Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio in the context of The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew (Caravaggio)

The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew (Italian: Martirio di San Matteo; 1599–1600) is a painting by the Italian master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. It is located in the Contarelli Chapel of the church of the French congregation San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, where it hangs opposite The Calling of Saint Matthew and beside the altarpiece The Inspiration of Saint Matthew, both by Caravaggio. It was the first of the three to be installed in the chapel, in July 1600.

The painting shows the martyrdom of Saint Matthew the Evangelist, author of the Gospel of Matthew. According to tradition, the saint was killed on the orders of the king of Ethiopia while celebrating Mass at the altar. The king lusted after his own niece, and had been rebuked by Matthew, for the girl was a nun, and therefore the bride of Christ. Cardinal Matthieu Cointerel, who had died several decades earlier, had laid down very explicitly what was to be shown: the saint being murdered by a soldier sent by the wicked king, some suitable architecture, and crowds of onlookers showing appropriate emotion. (See the article on the Contarelli Chapel).

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