Caravaggio Art Prints

Michelangelo Merisi was born in Milan in 1571 and took his working name from the small town of Caravaggio, where his family moved to escape the plague. After a four-year apprenticeship with Simone Peterzano he reached Rome in 1592 with almost nothing, and soon found work painting fruit and flowers in another artist's workshop. Look closely at Basket of Fruit, where the leaves carry wormholes and fungal spots and the figs split with ripeness.

His break came in 1600 with two canvases for the Contarelli Chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi, The Calling of Saint Matthew and The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, and after that he never lacked patrons. In the Calling, follow the beam of light across the tax collectors' faces to the hand of Christ pointing at Matthew. He painted straight onto the canvas from live models, and to some patrons the result looked vulgar. The Carmelites rejected his Death of the Virgin, reportedly over a model who was a known prostitute, or over Mary's bare legs. It was quickly bought by the Duke of Mantua on Rubens's advice.

His temper was as well known as his painting. In May 1606 he killed Ranuccio Tomassoni, was sentenced to beheading and fled Rome, and severed heads began to crowd his pictures. In David with the Head of Goliath, the head hanging from David's hand is his own face, and he may have sent the picture to Cardinal Scipione Borghese, who could grant or withhold pardons. In Naples he painted The Seven Works of Mercy, which still hangs in the church it was made for, and The Denial of Saint Peter is thought to be one of his last two pictures. In the summer of 1610 he sailed north to collect a pardon that seemed close, and died of a fever on the way.