Caravaggio

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Introduction After the death of her husband in 1577, Caravaggio's mother, Lucia Aratori, raised Michelangelo and his three siblings with the help of her father. Caravaggio is thought to have received the basics of a formal education, but he appears to have had no interest in writing unlike, say, Leonardo da Vinci, who composed learned treatises, or Michelangelo Buonarroti, who left a body of written work that ranges from poems to grocery lists. Not a single letter, drawing or preparatory sketch by Caravaggio has ever been found. He wrote nothing about himself, certainly nothing about his childhood, and his adult life seems to have included no one who knew him as a boy. Discussion But evidently his eruptive anger was never directed at the influential aristocrats and ecclesiastical authorities who furthered his career. Heading toward the Tiber from the Campo Marzio, you can pass the Palazzo Madama, now the home of the Italian Senate, where Caravaggio lived for several years in the household of his first, most loyal and important patron, the Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte. An avid art collector, music lover and adviser to Ferdinando de' Medici, Del Monte bought two of Caravaggio's canvases, The Gypsy Fortune Teller and The Cardsharps, then supported him while he painted the dewily sensual, lush-lipped and seductive young men who populate such early masterpieces as The Musicians and The Lute Player(Robert, pp 473). As the Caravaggio pilgrim traces the artist's erratic path through the city where he led a sort of double life spanning low and high society, it soon becomes clear that even the intense drama of the artist's biography rather pales beside the vibrancy and high-wire theatrics of his paintings. The Church of Pio Mont... ... middle of paper ... ... the Conscious Reader, United States, (2006), pp 371-378 Janis, C; Seventeenth-Century Appraisals of Caravaggio’s Coloring in Artibus Histories vol.14 (2003), pp.103-129 Muller, M; Caravaggio’s Theory and Practice of the Imitation of Art, in The Art Bulletin, vol.64, (1982), pp. 229-24 Robert, W; Caravaggio: A source for a Painting from the Medici Cycle in the Art Bulletin vol.54, (2002) pp 473-477 Works Cited Ellison, R; On Becoming an Artist, the Conscious Reader, United States, (2006), pp 371-378 Janis, C; Seventeenth-Century Appraisals of Caravaggio’s Coloring in Artibus Histories vol.14 (2003), pp.103-129 Muller, M; Caravaggio’s Theory and Practice of the Imitation of Art, in The Art Bulletin, vol.64, (1982), pp. 229-24 Robert, W; Caravaggio: A source for a Painting from the Medici Cycle in the Art Bulletin vol.54, (2002) pp 473-477

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