Caravaggio e la luce che taglia
Caravaggio and the cutting light
When Michelangelo Merisi arrived in Rome around the year 1592, he had about twenty and almost nothing in his pocket. The city was full of painters who were looking for their fortune.
But Caravaggio was not was like the others. He painted the people real as models: beggars, soldiers, girls from the street. This scandalised many people.
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The his technique is called was called chiaroscuro: a contrast strong between areas of light intense and areas of shadow deep. The light cut through the darkness like a blade.
In his his canvases, the saints did not look like distant figures, but people real who felt fear, pain and hope. Those who looked at the his paintings could not could stay indifferent.
His his life was violent as the his art. In the year 1606 he killed a man during a brawl and had to flee from Rome.
During the years that followed he continued to paint masterpieces in Naples, in Malta and in Sicily. He died in 1610, at only thirty-nine years old, but he had already changed the painting for ever.