The Renaissance

biblical stories and miraculous occurrences
in a familiar setting, making a break with
the idealized figures and surroundings of
past artists. Caravaggio also showed little
respect for the gods of classical mythol-
ogy; his portrait Bacchus, completed in
1595, shows the Greek god of wine and
revelry as an insolent teenager draped in a
bedsheet. His paintings had elongated,
oddly posed figures and areas of deep
shadow and startlingly bright color, used
to highlight the personalities and themes
of the work. This technique, called tene-
brism, would be taken up by artists who
followed him during the Baroque period.

The Saint Matthew series won Carav-
aggio fame and future commissions, in-
cludingThe Deposition of ChristandDeath
of the Virgin. This last painting distressed
his patrons with his depiction of the Vir-
gin Mary as a plain, fleshy, and noticeably
pregnant woman. Caravaggio was accused
of degrading religion and the saints, but
his revolutionary new style, full of dra-
matic effects of light and posing, also at-
tracted a legion of admirers, especially
among fellow painters.

Caravaggio’s turbulent private life got
him into frequent trouble with the law. In
1600 he was arrested for fighting with an
officer at the Castle Sant’ Angelo in Rome,
and in 1603 he was charged and jailed for
libel after writing derogatory poetry about
a rival painter. Several instances of dis-
turbing the peace occurred in the next few
years. In 1606, he got into a violent argu-
ment over a game of tennis that quickly
turned into a sword fight in which Carav-
aggio killed his rival, Ranuccio Tomassoni.
Threatened with arrest, he fled Rome and
wandered through southern Italy and
Naples, then under the control of Spain.

Caravaggio arrived in Sicily and in
1608 sailed for Malta, where his portrait

of Alof de Wignacourt, head of the Knights

of Malta, earned him the title of honorary

knight of the order, and a payment of two

Turkish slaves. A sword fight with one of

the Knights then landed him in prison,

from which he escaped; now pursued by

the authorities of Malta as well as Rome,

he wandered through Sicily and then

reached Naples, where he was found by

his Maltese pursuers and beaten senseless.

Through these events Caravaggio con-

tinued to produce expressive and startling

religious imagery. TheMadonna of Loreto

shows the Virgin appearing before an old

man and woman, whose bare feet are in-

solently turned toward the viewer of the

painting. One of his last works,The Resur-

rection of Lazarus, shows Christ raising

Lazarus from the dead; according to some

accounts, Caravaggio exhumed a recently

buried corpse to use as a model.

Severely injured after the assault in

Naples, Caravaggio left Naples for Port’

Ercole, where he was arrested by Spanish

police who mistook him for another

wanted man. He was released, only to

come down with a pestilential fever from

which he died within a few days. Three

days later after his death, he received a

formal pardon from the pope for the kill-

ing of Ranuccio Tomassoni in Rome.

SEEALSO: Tintoretto, Jacopo; Titian;

Veronese, Paolo

Carpaccio, Vittore .............................

(ca. 1460−1525)

The painter Vittore Carpaccio was born

into a humble family of seafarers and fish-

ermen and lived his entire life in Venice,

Italy. He was a student of Lazzaro Bastiani

and also studied under Gentile Bellini, al-

though Bellini outshone him in prestige

and commissions from the city’s rulers and

Carpaccio, Vittore