Caravaggio History:

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (Italy Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio; 1571-1610) – an artist from Lombardy, a virtuoso of “chiaroscuro” (“light and shadow”), a brilliant and scandalous artist of the Baroque era (mid-16th century, and flourished in the period 1590-1720).
In art, his biblical themes shocked with their sharp departure from the then accepted canons of religious painting.
He painted saints from vagrants and prostitutes. Caravaggio can be recognized by the dirty soles of commoners.
Interesting fact: When he painted his “Resurrection of Lazarus”, for greater verisimilitude and as a model, he ordered the exhumation of the deceased. The models refused to hold the lifeless Lazarus (because a corpse) they said was disgusting. But Caravaggio took out a knife and threatened to send them to the vacant grave, and the process began.
His life itself, with gambling debts, drunken brawls, fights, murder, prisons. Another fight ended in murder, Paul V declared the artist “outlaw”, and Caravaggio went on the run for four years.
He was not destined to return to Rome, on the way to Porto Ercole he died at the age of either 39 or 37.
Either he died of malaria or syphilis and was buried in a common grave for the poor. Or his relatives (above the murdered man) killed him as revenge and threw him into the sea. Or he died as a result of a wound received in a fight in Naples. The circumstances of Caravaggio’s death are still unclear.
Italian researchers spent several years searching for his remains among 200 skulls and bones in the ancient common cemetery for the poor in Porto Ercole.
404 years after Caravaggio’s death, in 2014, Caravaggio’s ashes were reburied with honors.
A basket of fruit was placed on Caravaggio’s tomb – a copy of his famous still life “Fruit Basket”. (in the photo in the comment)
Michelangelo da Caravaggio, at the age of 22, without knowing it, became the founder of an innovative genre in world painting – still life (it was he, and not the Dutch masters!).
And this is his first still life (from the Italian natura morta – “dead nature”) –
“Basket of Fruit” (Italian Canestra di frutta)
Caravaggio (born Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio)
around 1596, oil 46 × 64.5 cm
Pinacoteca Ambrosiana art museum in Milan (Italy).
On a neutral background are depicted ripe fruits, among them apples with a wormhole, rotten and wrinkled grapes, burst overripe figs, withered leaves – everything, as in life: the transience of beauty, dying and the finiteness of the existence of all living things.
The composition is illuminated diagonally from the left, which, in combination with the image of a wicker basket and a spherical fruit, creates the impression of three-dimensionality and space.
Not to be confused:
Two Michelangelos in Rome: Michelangelo Buonarroti and Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.
The first is a famous Florentine sculptor, artist, architect, poet and philosopher, a titan of the Renaissance.
The second is an artist from Lombardy, the creator of his own style of painting, a virtuoso of “chiaroscuro” (“light and shade”), incomprehensible in its realism, a brilliant and scandalous artist of the Baroque era.