Caravaggio’s Life, And Death

Caravaggio’s Life, and Death

Many believed that Caravaggio was a curse to art and that he not only was destroying the values and identity of artistic work but he was a traitor who ignored the classical norms. Caravaggio’s reception during and after his time was mostly negative among fellow artist and critics. Most of them criticized his naturalistic style and views and referred to it aspoison and other ill descriptions. Many drew a parallel with his life and death to his work. A proverb used to justify this parallel states that “every painter paints himself” also that some one that took from nature as Caravaggio did only ended being taken by it. This referring to the way he died. The sole point of this project is to identify the irony between Carravagio’s work to his way of lifeand ultimately his demise.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was an influential and polemic artist and painter born in the small time of Caravaggio in the year 1571. His childhood seems to follow the drastic and gloomy aspect of his later violent adulthood. At a young age his parents both passed away, his dad became sick with the plague and his mom died a few years later. He took his inheritanceand moved to Rome. He received some formal education in the arts but he did not expect what was to come of him. (Buckley M.D.).

First, Caravaggio’s apparent innovative style to the contemporary audience in comparison to other painters of his time was considered by critics then to be a mockery of the artistic world. Also later historians and biographers characterized him as mad man, violentand narcissistic. There is a lot of facts to justify these views but much of the negativity aimed at his work was influenced by the dramatic environment that he himself created by criticizing artist of that era. It is recorded that Caravaggio bashed other artist not only with words but physically. Records state that he had various altercations with fellow artists and on one occasion with a formerboss. This resembles the trouble and narcissistic life of Michelangelo who Caravaggio shares his name with. Indeed Caravaggio was a troubled individual for reasons not fully understood. Maybe the death of his parents at a young age, or his lack of tact and control that might be attributed to the influence of his naturalistic views that did not allow him to censor or filter his behavior whileinteracting with others. Also present day psychologist have mentioned that his violent behavior was evidence of a mental illness. But that should be left to be analyzed at a future time.

While in Rome he started to gain recognition and was approached by Francesco del Monte a patron with a lot of wealth, under Del Monte he began to gain fame and appreciation among other and soon started doingimportant painting commissioned by the church. (Buckley M.D.) As mentioned Caravaggio was very different from other artist of his time. He implemented the use of a lived models for almost every painting, this is said to complement his naturalistic style. Also important to mention is that his models where random people from the street or town this shows sings not only that his style was naturalistic butthat he focused in a non-idealized naturalism. (Carman) This type of methods where criticized because it was said that the was no creativity involved in copying from a model “nature”. Even thought this point can be argued for his worked still appears to have more than creativity. Most of his painting provides the viewer with a moral argument. One example is Bacchus (figure 1) here he presentsthe dilemma between continence versus indulgences. In the painting you see a young man with very smooth features almost too feminine, he holds a full wine glass and is also the man is highly decorated. Also in front of him there is a basket of fruit this again is know from previous work to exhibits indulgence. Both the wine and the fruit are sings of indulgence because taste a sensory input causes...