CARAVAGGIO

What is known as the Neapolitan School of Painters originated with Michelangelo Amerigi, called Caravaggio after his birthplace near Milan where he first saw the light in 1569. Undaunted by the great achievements of the Italian masters who immediately preceded him, Caravaggio sought to form an independent style of his own, instead of slavishly copying Titian, Tintoretto, Raphael and Michel Angelo. As Sir William Orpen points out, Caravaggio saw the error of his contemporaries and "perceiving that art based on art leads to decadence, he gave his whole attention to nature and so became a pioneer of realism." "His real fight," observes Professor Mather, "was with the nobility of Raphael. His saints are taken from the streets and often from the gutters. He loves character above all, and wants it proletarian. Within his chosen limitations he admittedly is a powerful and sincere artist."

Nor did he live up to his own formula. His contemporaries regarded the Caravaggio method as 'too natural'. A modern realist would make the far more radical criticism that Caravaggio is not natural enough. He really makes no close study of the subtleties of natural appearance or of the actual refinements of illumination. Logically he should have gone forward with Ribera and Velasquez to a real investigation of appearances. But his logic was only that of scorn, and it would doubtless have somewhat compensated him for a sordid and premature end, could he have foreseen that his biographers would credit him with the ruin of Italian painting."

Caravaggio's love for the low life, symbolized in his famous picture "The Card Players," led him to commit a murder in a gambling quarrel at Rome. To avoid paying the penalty of this act he escaped to Naples and then to Malta where his fierce temper again landed him in prison. Later, being pardoned, he set forth for Rome, where he died of a fever..