Michelangelo+Caravaggio

=**Mp3: [|World civilations project two.mp3] media type="file" key="World civilations project two.mp3" General Information:**= Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, usually just known as Caravaggio, was an Italian artist in Rome, Naples, Malta and Sicily. He is the first great representative of the Baroque school of painting. He handled his success atrociouslyIn his own lifetime. He was considered enigmatic, fascinating, rebellious and dangerous. He burst upon the Rome art scene in 1600. He was always ready to get involved in some fights, and some say he was "most akward to get along with." in one fight his temper got the best of him. In 1606 he killed a young man in a brawl and fled from Rome. In Malta in 1608 he was involved in yet another brawl, and another in Naples in 1609, possibly an attempt on his life by unidentified enemies. By the next year, after a brief career, he was dead. Caravaggio was almost entirely forgotten in the centuries after his death, and it was only in the 20th century that his importance to the development of Western art was rediscovered. =His Early Life:= Caravaggio was born in Milan. He had a mother, Lucia Aratori, and his father, Fermo Merisi. He and his family moved to Caravaggio to escape a plague in Milan. He is assumed to have grown up there. In 1584 he was apprenticed for four years to the Lombard painter __Simone Peterzano__. He would also have become familiar with the art treasures of Milan, including Leonardo da Vinci's //Last Supper//, and with the Lombard art, a style which valued simplicity and attention to naturalistic detail and was closer to the naturalism of Germany than to the stylised formality and grandeur of Roman Mannerism. =Life in Rome:= Caravaggio fled Milan for Rome in mid-1592 after "certain quarrels" and the wounding of a police officer. He was in pretty bad shape after ariving in Rome. few months later he was performing hack-work for the highly successful Giuseppe Cesari, Pope Clement VIII's favourite painter, "painting flowers and fruit." Known works from this period include a small //Boy Peeling a Fruit// (his earliest known painting), a //Boy with a Basket of Fruit//, and the //Young Sick Bacchus//, and a self-portrait done during a serious illness that ended his work with Cesari. Caravaggio left Cesari in January 1594, determined to make his own way. His fortunes were at their lowest ebb, yet it was now that he forged some extremely important friendships, with the painter Prospero Orsi, the architect Onorio Longhi, and the sixteen year old Sicilian artist Mario Minniti, and from here on out, he became more and more famous. =His Works:= In 1599, presumably through the influence of Del Monte, Caravaggio contracted to decorate the Contarelli Chapel in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi. The two works making up the commission, the //Martyrdom of Saint Matthew// and //Calling of Saint Matthew//, delivered in 1600, were an immediate sensation. So, Caravaggio then did many other works as well. Caravaggio went on to secure a string of prestigious commissions for religious works featuring violent struggles, grotesque decapitations, torture and death. A lot of these things were rejected. His first version of //Saint Matthew and the Angel//, featured the saint as a bald peasant with dirty legs attended by a lightly-clad over-familiar boy-angel, was rejected and a second version had to be painted as //The Inspiration of Saint Matthew.// The //Death of the Virgin//, then, commissioned in 1601 by a wealthy jurist for his private chapel in the new Carmelite church of Santa Maria della Scala, was rejected(again) by the Carmelites in 1606. So oviously Caravaggio was used to being rejected, because of all these "failures" he had. However he did have some famous works too such as //Amor Vincit Omnia, Alof de Wignacourt, and St Jerome.// =Laterlife:= In the summer of 1610 he took a boat northwards to receive the pardon, which seemed imminent thanks to his powerful Roman friends. With him were three last paintings, gifts for Cardinal Scipione. What happened next is the subject of much confusion and conjecture. The bare facts are that on 28 July an anonymous //avviso// (private newsletter) from Rome to the ducal court of Urbino reported that Caravaggio was dead. Three days later another //avviso// said that he had died of fever. This is pretty much all they know about his death. =Photos:=

== == = = =Sources:= (2001-present). Caravaggio. Retrieved October 1, 2008, from Wikipedia Web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravaggio

(1996-2008 ) Biography of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Retrieved October 1, 2008, from www.italiamia.com Web site: http://www.italiamia.com/art_caravaggio.html

Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) (1571–1610) and his Followers. Retrieved October 1, 2008, from [|http://www.metmuseum.org] Web site: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/crvg/hd_crvg.htm

(Karin Hellwig, April 28, 2005) //Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (Lifelines)//.

**Script:**
Hello everyone, I’m here to inform you all about Michelangelo Caravaggio. Before I go into great hello everyone, I’m here to inform you all about Michelangelo Caravaggio. Before I go into great detail about him, I’ll give some basic background information on him. Michelangelo Caravaggio was born in Milan on 28 September 1571. where his father, Fermo Merisi, was a household administrator and architect-decorator to the Marchese of Caravaggio. Now, his mother, who is a bit different, came from a propertied family of the same district. Now Michelangelo went through a lot in his life, a lot of which was good and bad. Something bad he did was wounding a police officer, and getting into many other brawls as well. Some good things he did were the many sculptures he did such as “Boy with a basket of fruit” c. 1593” “The Cardsharps”, c. 1594” “The Crucifixion of Saint Peter”, 1601.” And “The Calling of Saint Matthew”. 1599-1600.” Now, along with all of these paintings he did many others as well. Now as far as his “anger” as I like to call it, he was not a very peaceful guy. No, instead he was actually very violent. As I mentioned earlier with the wounding of the police officer, causing him to flee to Rome, he got into a lot of brawls. In fact, on 29 May 1606,  he killed, possibly unintentionally, a young man named Ranuccio Tomassoni! The fact that he did this really shocked me. I mean, we all knew he was violent, but still, a killing, just wow. But alas, besides the fact he was violent, he did make a, lot of achievements. Some of these acheivements being able to work for people such as Lombard painter Simone Peterza, Giuseppe Cesari, Pope Clement VIII's favorite painter, with the painter Prospero Orsi, the architect Onorio Longhi, and the sixteen year old Sicilian artist Mario Minniti. So, now we know that Michellangello Caravaggio has been around and worked with some great people, but what about his “Most famous painter in Rome” title? Well I’ll share in great detail about this with you. Now, to start, in 1599, presumably through the influence of Del Monte, Caravaggio contracted to decorate the Contarelli Chapel in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi. The two works making up the commission, the //Martyrdom of Saint Matthew// and //Calling of Saint Matthew//, delivered in 1600, were an immediate sensation. Caravaggio's tenebrism (a heightened chiaroscuro) brought high drama to his subjects, while his acutely observed realism brought a new level of emotional intensity. Opinion among Caravaggio's artist peers was polarized. Some denounced him for various perceived failings, notably his insistence on painting from life, without drawings, but for the most part he was hailed as a great artistic visionary: "The painters then in Rome were greatly taken by this novelty, and the young ones particularly gathered around him, praised him as the unique imitator of nature, and looked on his work as miracles. Caravaggio went on to secure a string of prestigious commissions for religious works featuring violent struggles, grotesque decapitations, torture and death. For the most part each new painting increased his fame, but a few were rejected by the various bodies for whom they were intended, at least in their original forms, and had to be re-painted or find new buyers. The essence of the problem was that while Caravaggio's dramatic intensity was appreciated, his realism was seen by some as unacceptably vulgar. His first version of //Saint Matthew and the Angel// featured the saint as a bald peasant with dirty legs attended by a lightly-clad over-familiar boy-angel was rejected and a second version had to be painted as //The Inspiration of Saint Matthew//. Similarly, //The Conversion of Saint Paul// was rejected, and while another version of the same subject, the //Conversion on the Way to Damascus//, was accepted, it featured the saint's horse's haunches far more prominently than the saint himself, prompting this exchange between the artist and an exasperated official of Santa Maria del Popolo: "Why have you put a horse in the middle, and Saint Paul on the ground?" "Because!" "Is the horse God?" "No, but he stands in God's light!   Other works included //Entombment//, the //Madonna di Loreto// (//Madonna of the Pilgrims//), and the //Death of the Virgin// (As I mentioned earlier//)// . The history of these last two paintings illustrates the reception given to some of Caravaggio's art, and the times in which he lived. The Grooms Madona, also known as Madonna dei palafrenieri, painted for a small altar in Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome, remained there for just two days, and was then taken off. A cardinal's secretary wrote: "In this painting there are but vulgarity, sacrilege, impiousness and disgust...One would say it is a work made by a painter that can paint well, but of a dark spirit, and who has been for a lot of time far from God, from His adoration, and from any good thought..." The //Death of the Virgin//, then, commissioned in 1601 by a wealthy jurist for his private chapel in the new Carmelite church of Santa Maria della Scala, was rejected by the Carmelites in 1606. Caravaggio's contemporary Giulio Mancini records that it was rejected because Caravaggio had used a well-known prostitute as his model for the Virgin, Giovanni Baglione, another contemporary, tells us it was due to Mary's bare legs a matter of decorum in either case. Caravaggio scholar John Gash suggests that the problem for the Carmelites may have been theological rather than aesthetic, in that Caravaggio's version fails to assert the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary, the idea that the Mother of God did not die in any ordinary sense but was assumed into Heaven. The replacement altarpiece commissioned (from one of Caravaggio's most able followers, Carlo Saraceni), showed the Virgin not dead, as Caravaggio had painted her, but seated and dying; and even this was rejected, and replaced with a work which showed the Virgin not dying, but ascending into Heaven with choirs of angels. In any case, the rejection did not mean that Caravaggio or his paintings were out of favor. The //Death of the Virgin// was no sooner taken out of the church than it was purchased by the Duke of Mantua, on the advice of Rubens, and later acquired by Charles I of England before entering the French royal collection in 1671. So, keeping my promise as I’ve explained this to you, I feel as now there is only one thing left for me to do, and that is to explain his death a little. Everything concerning his death started In the summer of 1610 he took a boat northwards to receive the pardon, which seemed imminent thanks to his powerful Roman friends. With him were three last paintings, gifts for Cardinal Scipione. What happened next is the subject of much confusion and conjecture. The bare facts are that on 28 July an anonymous //avviso// (private newsletter) from Rome to the ducal court of Urbino reported that Caravaggio was dead. Three days later another // avviso // said that he had died of fever. This is pretty much all they know about his death. So I feel as though I have now described Michelangelo Caravaggio pretty well now, and my work here is now complete. Thank’s for listening.