thepoorgentry.Simaodiedonavoyage
to India shortly after the birth of his son,
who would be schooled in monasteries and
at Coimbra, the leading university in Por-
tugal. In 1543, after completing his stud-
ies, he joined the royal court at Lisbon. He
was banished from the court in 1548 for
falling in love with a lady-in-waiting to
the queen. He was further exiled from Lis-
bon for an insulting characterization of
the king represented in one of his plays.
He enlisted in the Portuguese army and
fought against the Moors in North Africa,
where he lost an eye defending the Medi-
terranean port of Ceuta. Returning to Lis-
bon, he was soon in trouble over a fight
with a member of the king’s household.
He was arrested but released from prison
on a pledge that he made stating he would
serve in the Portuguese colonies in Asia.
Glad to leave the intrigues and back-
stabbing at court, Camoes sailed for India
in 1553. He served honorably for three
years, taking part in expeditions against
the Malabar Coast and Arab ports along
the Red Sea. He won a commission as an
officer in the colony of Macau, a small is-
land territory that Portuguese navigators
had seized off the coast of China. Some
time before or during these adventures he
began writing The Lusiades, which re-
counts the voyages of Vasco da Gama and
extols Portugal as a daring nation of ex-
plorers and colonizers.
Recalled to India to answer charges of
theft, he was shipwrecked in the waters off
the mouth of the Mekong River, in South-
east Asia. He survived to return to Goa, a
state on the Malabar Coast, then sailed to
Portugal’s African colony of Mozambique.
Destitute and nearly starving, he returned
to Portugal with onlyThe Lusiadesto his
name in 1570. He published the poem to
popular acclaim and was rewarded by the
king of Portugal with a small pension. The
poem was translated into several languages
and served as an inspiration for the explo-
ration and settlement of new lands in Asia
and Brazil, the Portuguese colony in South
America. Camoes also wrote plays and po-
etic works, including sonnets and lyric po-
etry that was collected and published un-
der the titleRimasshortly after his death.
His love poems took inspiration from the
work of ancient writers as well as his con-
temporaries, including the Italian poet Pi-
etro Bembo.SEEALSO: de Gama, Vasco; PortugalCaravaggio, Michelangelo da .............
(1573–1610)
Italian painter whose expressive works
overthrew the classical traditions of the
Renaissance with dark and striking imag-
ery that would be widely imitated during
the Baroque period that followed. Born in
the town of Caravaggio to a carpenter, he
was orphaned as a boy and served as an
apprentice to the painter Simone Peter-
zano in Milan. He then traveled to Rome,
where he struggled for a time as a painter
of still lifes and flowers in a small and
little-known painter’s workshop.
In Rome Caravaggio’s career turned
when he gained the patronage of Cardinal
Francesco del Monte, who had admired
and bought the artist’s realistic painting
Cardsharps. This and other early paintings,
includingBoy Bitten by a Lizard, Concert
of Youths, andThe Fortuneteller, dealt with
worldly scenes and ordinary people—an
entirely new genre. But Caravaggio brought
this interest in street life and everyday ex-
perience to his religious art, beginning
with works depicting Saint Matthew (The
Calling of St. MatthewandThe Martrydom
of St. Matthew). These paintings used com-
moners as models and placed sanctifiedCaravaggio, Michelangelo da