Michelangelo Merisi, known as “Caravaggio”, David with the Head of Goliath,
detail (1609–1610), oil on canvas, 125 x 101 cm, Galleria Borghese, Rome
Few artists in history have had an impact as profound as Caravaggio. Unlike his contemporaries, such as the Carracci brothers, Caravaggio rejected the fading Mannerist style of the late 1500s. He grounded his work in raw, intense realism. His life, too, was marked by turmoil: an unrelenting existential struggle, a constant flight, from others and from himself.
So who was Caravaggio? A rebel, a madman, a degenerate, as he’s often portrayed? Or just a product of a chaotic, violent era? More likely, he was a restless soul, quick-tempered and impulsive, reacting to a deep and persistent inner unrest.
Perhaps nowhere is this inner anguish more striking than in his self-portrait as the severed head of Goliath. Painted for Pope Paul V and delivered via his nephew, Scipione Borghese, the work is an act of symbolic self-decapitation, Caravaggio offering his guilt and suffering as a plea for forgiveness. In this, Caravaggio isn’t alone. Years later, another irreverent genius — Mozart — would do something similar, composing La clemenza di Tito.
Antonio Campi, Adoration of the Shepherds, detail (1575),
oil on canvas, 290 × 165 cm, Sanctuary of Santa Maria della Croce, Crema
His life
Michelangelo Merisi was born in Milan on September 29, 1571, into a well-off family originally from Caravaggio, a small town in the Bergamo area, which at the time was part of the Duchy of Milan under the harsh rule of Spanish domination.
He lost his father early to the plague and spent much of his childhood in his family’s hometown, where his maternal grandfather oversaw his upbringing. In 1584, the young Michelangelo was apprenticed to Simone Peterzano, a strict Mannerist painter in Milan. He remained in Peterzano’s workshop for four years, during which he absorbed the distinctive style of the Lombard-Venetian artistic tradition — sober, naturalistic, and rooted in observation.
Influences like Leonardo’s Last Supper, the luminous works of Savoldo, Romanino, Moretto, and the naturalism of the Campi brothers all shaped him. He also absorbed the bold use of color from Venetian masters like Giorgione, Titian, and Tintoretto.
After his mother’s death in 1592, Caravaggio left for Rome, probably at the suggestion of his first patron, the Marchesa Costanza Colonna; but some sources suggest it was already a flight from legal trouble in Milan.
He arrived in Rome just as the city was undergoing sweeping changes under Pope Sixtus V. For a few years, Caravaggio lived in total poverty, surviving in the grimy underbelly of Rome, and even falling ill with malaria.
Eventually, he crossed paths with Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, an influential patron, who took him under his wing and introduced him to the Roman elite. Caravaggio’s reputation soared. His commissions became increasingly prestigious; but as his fame grew, his personal life spiraled, marked by drinking, brothels, and violence.
His admirers, most notably the Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani, frequently intervened to cover up his growing list of offenses; but that changed on May 28, 1606, when Caravaggio killed a man named Ranuccio Tomassoni over petty reasons. Sentenced to death, he was forced to flee Rome.
Under the protection of the Colonna family, he made his way to Naples, and a year later, to Malta, hoping to become a knight of the Order of Malta and gain immunity; but once again, he managed to make enemies. He fled again, first to Sicily, then back to Naples. There, after surviving an attempted assassination and receiving word of a possible pardon from Pope Paul V, he decided to return to Rome; but he never made it.
A series of mishaps left him stranded in Porto Ercole, where he died on July 18, 1610, at just thirty-eight years old, alone and reportedly robbed of his paintings.
The circumstances surrounding his death remain a mystery. Some believe illness finally claimed him, while others suspect foul play. What’s certain is that by the end of his life, Caravaggio had become a complex figure, some would follow him anywhere, while others wished he would never return.
Michelangelo Merisi, known as “Caravaggio”, The Calling of Saint Matthew (1599–1600),
oil on canvas, 322 × 340 cm, Contarelli Chapel, Church of San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome
His style
Caravaggio skipped preparatory sketches, a radical break from tradition that showed his instinctive compositional genius. In his works, figures emerge from dark backgrounds lit by sharp beams of light that shape volumes, model bodies, and highlight details. It’s no longer architectural elements structuring the paintings, nor perspectival or landscape backgrounds, but purely the plasticity of the figures created through chiaroscuro.
This approach contrasts sharply with Piero della Francesca’s even light or Leonardo’s soft sfumato. Caravaggio’s light is striking and direct, loaded with deep symbolic meaning: it represents Salvation tearing through the darkness of Sin, transforming and redeeming Humanity, as powerfully demonstrated in the extraordinary Calling of Saint Matthew in the Contarelli Chapel. It’s no coincidence that Christ’s gesture echoes that of God on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, a masterpiece by another great Michelangelo in history.
Caravaggio also used curving, almost hypnotic geometries, “energy flows” that strike and capture the viewer’s attention, an effect intensified by his masterful use of composition and psychological tension. Like Leonardo, Caravaggio seemed to fuse art and science in his work. Especially fitting since the turn of the 16th to 17th century was a revolutionary period for science, marked by the rise of a new experimental and empirical methodology. The events Caravaggio portrays are concrete, tangible, featuring everyday people he encountered in daily life.
That’s why Caravaggio is often called a “realist”; but for him, art wasn’t just about copying reality as faithfully as possible, that would come centuries later with the Impressionists. He didn’t reject the Renaissance masters, whom he often quotes; he understood their idealism, but also saw Mannerism collapsing into intellectualism and artifice. Instead, Caravaggio rejected painting idealized models imposed from above. He aimed for an ideal result with symbolic power, grounded in nature and driven by direct observation and raw emotion. To him, artistic value wasn’t about pleasing form, it was about truth, even in its most brutal or ugly forms. Pain and death became central themes in his work. Yet, even amid horror, his paintings reveal moments of dazzling beauty, not for pleasure, but for profound impact, as Judith’s story in the famous Palazzo Barberini painting shows.
This isn’t quite Baroque painting yet — that style would develop later with artists like Rubens, who made it more accessible; but Caravaggio’s work already contains the key ingredients: energy, emotional intensity, spiritual depth, and a fascination with death.
Michelangelo Merisi, known as “Caravaggio”, Judith beheading Holofernes (1599–1600),
oil on canvas, 145 × 195 cm, The National Galleries of Ancient Art, Palazzo Barberini, Rome
His legacy
Nicolas Poussin once famously called Caravaggio “Born to destroy painting”. He was a leading figure of the classical movement — a style quite different from Caravaggio’s dramatic approach — that came to dominate the later Baroque period. Caravaggio, however, left such a deep mark on art that he didn’t just make it impossible to return to old styles, he made it hard for anyone to truly replicate what he did.
This becomes clear when looking at the “Caravaggisti”, followers who tried to imitate his style but achieved only modest success. They often pushed his intense, violent style even further, and in some cases, even mirrored his behavior. Still, these followers played a crucial role in keeping Caravaggio’s artistic language alive and spreading it across Europe. Without their efforts, we might never have had masters like Velázquez or Rembrandt, or works like David’s The Death of Marat. Naples, in particular, became a stronghold for this bold, rebellious style, thriving in the city’s passionate and gritty culture.
This unique Neapolitan spirit was later highlighted by one of Caravaggio’s last true followers, the writer and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini. His famous film The Gospel According to St. Matthew shows a shared “symbolic realism” with Caravaggio’s work, but it’s their provocative personalities and tragic life stories that truly connect them.
Still, there’s an important difference: Caravaggio’s art is deeply shaped by Faith, while Pasolini, though personal religious concerns, created from a place of social protest and political commitment — a perspective quite unlike the painter’s.
Pier Paolo Pasolini, still from The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964)
Epilogue
Did Caravaggio ever atone for his guilt? Probably yes — through his miserable life, his tragic death, the centuries of obscurity that clouded his art, and the misunderstandings that still follow it today. He poured his unconscious mind, fears, and obsessions into his paintings, tracing a dark, self-destructive journey; but it was also a path of true Faith, set against the backdrop of the intense spiritual renewal brought about by the Counter-Reformation. This journey started in Milan, the city of the great reformer Saint Charles Borromeo, and led to Rome, home to Saint Philip Neri, the “apostle of the streets”.
Caravaggio pushed this renewed religious spirit to its limits, portraying the Gospel message in raw, literal terms, meant for the marginalized. His work reveals the real, tangible presence of God breaking through the darkness of the world.
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