The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (88 page)

(1578–1635).
Neapolitan painter. He was one of the greatest of
Caravaggio's
followers, and his powerful work was an important factor in making Naples a stronghold of the Caravaggesque style. The decisive impact that Caravaggio made on his style can be seen from his
Liberation of St Peter
(1608–9), painted for the same church (the Chiesa del Monte della Misericordia, still
in situ
) as the master's
Seven Acts of Mercy
. It shows how Caracciolo, unlike so many of the
Caravaggisti
, looked beyond the obvious trademarks of Caravaggio's style, emulating it in depth of feeling as well as in mastery of dramatic light and shade. He visited Rome and Florence in the second decade of the century and his later work shows a more classical strain, influenced perhaps by the
Carracci
. Unusually for a Caravaggesque artist, he was an accomplished fresco painter, and his finest late works are decorations in the Certosa di S. Martino in Naples, finished in 1631.

 
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(1571–1610).
The most original and influential Italian painter of the 17th cent., named after his native town near Bergamo. He trained in Milan under the undistinguished Simone Peterzano and by 1592 had moved to Rome, the main centre of his activity. Two phases in his career can be distinguished there: an early experimental period (
c.
1592–9) and a mature period (1599–1606) in which he carried out several large commissions. The early works are usually fairly small, with half-length figures, a preponderance of still life, and a frankly homo-erotic character (
Young Bacchus
, Uffizi, Florence,
c.
1595). Subsequently his figures gained greater plasticity, and he painted in rich deep colours with strongly accentuated shadows (
The Supper at Emmaus
, NG, London,
c.
1600). The second Roman period began with a commission (probably gained through his first noteworthy patron, the hedonistic Cardinal Francesco Del Monte ) for the Contarelli Chapel in S. Luigi dei Francesi (
Calling of St Matthew
and
Martyrdom of St. Matthew
, 1599–1600), in which Caravaggio's extraordinary advance in mastery of construction and treatment of dramatic action was achieved only after great effort, as X-rays of the paintings make clear. The altarpiece of
St Matthew and the Angel
was rejected because it was thought to lack decorum, but it was bought by the Marchese Vincenzo
Giustiniani
, one of the most important patrons in Rome, who also paid for the replacement. (The first altarpiece was formerly in Berlin, but was destroyed in the Second World War; the replacement is still
in situ
. Both were painted in 1602.) Meanwhile Caravaggio had embarked on his second great public commission—two paintings for the Cerasi Chapel in Sta Maria del Popolo (
Crucifixion of St Peter
and
Conversion of St Paul
, 1600–1), which are astounding in the economy and force of the pictorial vision, seeing the old subjects in completely new ways. The Contarelli Chapel and Cerasi Chapel paintings changed the direction of Caravaggio's work, for thenceforth he devoted himself almost exclusively to large-scale religious pictures, among them the
Madonna de' Palafrenieri
(Borghese Gal., Rome, 1605) and
The Death of the Virgin
(Louvre, Paris, 1605–6). These two pictures were again refused on grounds of decorum or theological incorrectness. Despite this misunderstanding of his work, Caravaggio was not without powerful supporters and his rejected paintings found ready secular buyers.
Caravaggio's tempestuous character frequently caused scandals and in 1606 he fled Rome after killing a man in a brawl over a wager on a tennis match, spending the last four years of his life wandering from Naples (1606–7) to Malta (1607–8) and Sicily (1609), and back to Naples again (1609–10). He continued to paint large religious compositions in a new style shorn of all inessentials: little colour, thinly applied paint, the crowded drama and movement of the late Roman works replaced by a moving silence and contemplativeness. Remarkable among these is
The Beheading of St John the Baptist
(Valetta Cathedral, Malta, 1608), a work of the utmost tragic power. Caravaggio was not yet 40 when he died from malarial fever while returning to Rome in hope of a pardon, but his last works have all the ineffable qualities of the late works of an aged genius. In spite of his brief career and his fairly small output he made an enormous impact on painting throughout Europe. He had no pupils, but a legion of followers (the
Caravaggisti
), and his work, together with that of the
Carracci
, revived Italian painting from the nebulous unreality of late 16th-cent.
Mannerist
art.
Caravaggio continued to be a famous name throughout the 17th cent., but he was regarded by many as an ‘evil genius’ (in the words of Vincenzo
Carducho
, writing in 1633), whose influence on other artists was pernicious. Interest in him declined in the 18th cent. (he is not mentioned in
Reynolds's
Discourses
), but revived in the mid 19th cent. By this time his rejection of ideal beauty could be seen to have the advantage of truth, although there were still those, like
Ruskin
, who saw in him ‘perpetual seeking for and feeding upon horror and ugliness, and filthiness of sin’. Serious historical research on him began in the early years of the 20th cent., since when he has attracted an enormous amount of critical commentary and speculation, so much so that Ellis
Waterhouse
has written that ‘the innocent reader of art-historical literature could be forgiven for supposing that his place in the history of civilization lies somewhere in importance between Aristotle and Lenin.’

 
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Caravaggisti
.

Term applied to painters who imitated the style of
Caravaggio
in the early 17th cent. Caravaggio's methods. particularly his dramatic use of
chiaroscuro
, had extraordinary influence in Rome in the first decade of the 17th cent., on both Italian painters and artists from other countries, who flocked to what was then the artistic capital of Europe. His fame was already widespread by 1604, when Karel van
Mander
, in Haarlem, wrote of ‘Michelangelo da Caravaggio, who is doing extraordinary things in Rome’. The most prominent of the Italian Caravaggisti included Orazio
Gentileschi
, one of the few followers to have close personal contact with the master, and Bartolommeo
Manfredi
, who popularized tavern and guard room scenes, subjects that Caravaggio himself had not painted. In Naples, where Caravaggio worked intermittently between 1606 and 1610,
Caracciolo
, Artemisia
Gentileschi
, and
Ribera
, a Spaniard by birth, ensured that the style took firm root. In Rome, Caravaggism went out of favour in the 1620s, but it persisted elsewhere in Italy, and in other parts of Europe, particularly in Sicily (which Caravaggio visited), Utrecht, and Lorraine, lingering into the 1650s in all three places.
Baburen
,
Honthorst
, and
Terbrugghen
were the three most important artists in making Utrecht the Dutch centre of Caravaggism, and in Lorraine Georges de
La Tour
perfected perhaps the most personal and poetic interpretation of the style. Few major painters worked in a Caravaggesque style throughout their careers; some, such as Guido
Reni
, had a brief flirtation with it, while others, such as Honthorst (who became a court portraitist), had a complete change of direction. Echoes of the Caravaggesque style can be found in the work of some of the giants of 17th-cent. art:
Rembrandt
,
Rubens
, and
Velázquez
.

 
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