Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (Caravaggio Michelangelo Merisi da)

(1573-1610)
Caravaggio's name comes from the name of the town in northern Italy, where the artist was born September 28, 1573. In the eleven years he worked as an apprentice of one of the Milanese painter, and in 1590 moved to Rome, which by the end of 16. became an artistic center not only in Italy but across Europe. It is here that Caravaggio has achieved the greatest success and fame. Unlike most of his contemporaries, who could accept a more or less familiar set of aesthetic values, Caravaggio managed to abandon the traditions of the past and create your own, deeply personal style. This is partly a reaction to the cliches of late Mannerism. Caravaggio's biographers write that he treated with contempt by the great masters of the past and even to the ancient art of. Tells the story of how an artist has led from the street gypsy, wrote to her fortune-teller predicting the fate of a young man, and said that nature - the only mentor, in which he needs. The independence of the masters of the previous artistic tradition is clearly exaggerating his jealous, but the novelty and originality of his art really made Caravaggio's revolutionary figure in the cultural life of Rome at the time
. The realism of Caravaggio - is more, . than just an imitation of nature, in his paintings combine a deep understanding of human psychology and the exact nature of the transfer of light and form, . which makes it possible to transform reality into drama, . unfolding itself on the canvas,
. These features are best visible in the paintings on religious subjects relating to the Roman period of his work: The Conversion of Saul (1601) for the church of Santa Maria del Popolo and the Assumption of the Virgin (1605-1606, Louvre). The first of these future apostle Paul, and yet Saul was a persecutor of Christians, is depicted at the moment when he heard the voice of God, and, startled, fell from a horse. It seems that the upraised hands stretched to the land of Saul and his head outside the frame of the picture in the space of the spectator, who thus turns out to be a direct participant in ongoing. Supernatural event highlights the intense artificial light.

In Assumption religious subjects are treated humanely and simply. Weak and emaciated body of the Mother of God rests on the bed; around - grieving apostles and Mary Magdalene. In the darkened room and an atmosphere of quiet and all-consuming grief. Here the bright streams of light penetrate the darkness, highlighting details and enhancing the drama. It is for such paintings by Caravaggio criticized his contemporaries. In the era of the Counter-Reformation had been established for the strict canons of religious art, which was supposed to follow each artist. Caravaggio was accused that he had profaned the memory of the saints and sacred events, speaking about their usual 'human' language. However, in many ways, his art can be seen as the embodiment of the basic spiritual values of the Counter-Reformation, as it did religious ideas more understandable and meaningful for the believer. Religious feeling, which permeates the work of Caravaggio, congenial zhitiyam Saints Filippo Neri and Ignatius Loyola.

Personality and biographies of Caravaggio events capture the imagination almost as much as his paintings. Obviously, he arrived in Rome without a livelihood and in the early period of his creative writing still lifes and genre scenes, such as the above-mentioned picture of Fortune Teller (c.. 1595, Rome, Capitoline Museums) and Schuler (ca. 1596, formerly in the collection Skyarra). Two pictures, written for the Roman church of San Luigi dei Francesi in 1597-1599, The Calling of St. Matthew and The Martyrdom of St. Matthew, mark a turning point in the work of Caravaggio. Both works are similar in style of the early genre scenes, but so full of inner drama, which reached its full expression in the altarpiece early 1600-ies. Since 1600, the time of his greatest creativity, the name of Caravaggio began to appear in the records of the Roman police. Most of the documents it comes to minor offenses: together with his friends, he is prosecuted for obscene poems, written to one of the painters, the threat of a waiter in a tavern or insults at the police. However, there were cases of physical violence, followed by arrests. In May, 1606 Caravaggio killed his young friend in a fight that has arisen from a dispute over a game of ball.

After the murder of the artist ran first in the neighborhood of Rome, and then in Naples. There he continued to work on large orders, his art had a decisive influence on the development of the Neapolitan school of painting. In 1608 he moved to Malta, where a portrait of Master of the Order of Malta, and he joined the Order of. But here the difficult nature of Caravaggio brought him into trouble: he had insulted senior in rank, was imprisoned and escaped to Sicily. Having lived there for several months, the artist returned to Naples, which was attacked in a tavern and was devastated. In late June 1610 he boarded a ship, apparently intending to return to Rome. However, on the shore of his mistakenly arrested by the Spanish guards and detained for three days. At this time, Caravaggio, probably already had the disease malaria, from which attack he died in the town of Porto Ercole July 18, 1610.