My Quest for Caravaggio

• Original Title: Chiamata di San Matteo
• Date: c.1600
• Style: Baroque, Tenebrism
• Genre: religious painting
• Media: oil, canvas
• Dimensions: 323 x 343 cm

On July 23, 1599, Caravaggio signed a contract to paint two large paintings for the side walls of the Contarelli Chapel of San Luigi dei Francesi, the church of the French in Rome. The commission was secured for him by his patron Cardinal del Monte, whose links to the Medici meant that he had close connections with the French community in Rome. Not only was this Caravaggio’s first major public commission, but it involved working on a far larger scale than he had previously undertaken: the pictures were each to be almost 10 feet (3 metres) square. Caravaggio responded to the challenge with mastery.

• Original Title: Martirio di San Matteo
• Date: 1599 - 1600
• Style Baroque, Tenebrism
• Genre: religious painting
• Media: oil, canvas
• Dimensions: 323 x 343 cm

 The church was designed by Giacomo della Porta and built by Domenico Fontana between 1518 and 1589, and completed through the personal intervention of Catherine de' Medici, who donated to it some property in the area. It is the national church in Rome of France. It is also a titular church. The current Cardinal-Priest of the title is André Vingt-Trois, a former Archbishop of Paris.

• Date: 1602
• Style: Baroque, Tenebrism
• Genre: religious painting
• Media: oil, canvas
• Dimensions: 292 x 186 cm

San Luigi dei Francesi

• Date: 1605
• Style: Baroque, Tenebrism
• Genre: religious painting
• Media: oil, canvas
• Dimensions: 112 x 157 cm

• Date: 1610
• Style: Baroque, Tenebrism
• Genre: religious painting
• Media: oil, canvas
• Dimensions: 125 x 101 cm

One of the most famous art galleries in the world. It is located in Rome, Italy, and housed in the former Villa Borghese Pinciana. The gallery houses a considerable part of the Borghese collection of paintings, sculpture and antiquities, begun by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the nephew of Pope Paul V (reign 1605–1621). Not only the gallery attracts thousands of visitors, but also astonishing green gardens that surround it in the third largest park in Rome, on the territory of which the Galleria Borghese located.

Borghese Gallery

In the realm of paintings, Caravaggio’s influence is palpable. His “David with the Head of Goliath” explores guilt and redemption, showcasing his dramatic chiaroscuro technique. 

• Date: 1593
• Style: Baroque, Tenebrism
• Genre: portrait
• Media: oil, canvas
• Dimensions: 70 x 67 cm

Caravaggio completed this painting when he was new to Rome and relatively unknown in the art world. The model for the boy in painting was Caravaggio’s good friend Mario Minniti, who was 16 at the time, and who would serve as one of his models many times in the future. As a realist painter, 

Caravaggio did not idealize his paintings, instead he captured the very essence of what he saw on the canvas in front of him. This is beautifully clear in his portrayals of the fruit and leaves in the basket, which are so realistic that they have been analyzed by horticultural scientists, who were able to accurately determine the individual cultivars.

• Date: 1606
• Style: Baroque, Tenebrism
• Genre: religious painting
• Media: oil, canvas
• Dimensions: 292 x 211 cm

• Original Title: Giovane Bacco malato
• Date: 1593
• Style: Baroque, Tenebrism
• Genre: mythological painting
• Media: oil, canvas
• Dimensions: 67 x 53 cm

• Date: 1597
• Style: Baroque
• Genre: religious painting
• Media: oil, canvas
• Dimensions: 133.5 x 166.5 cm

Built on the original nucleus of the residence of cardinal Fazio Santoro, dating back to the beginning of the 16th century, Palazzo Doria Pamphilj is a blend of art and history, 

which consists of nobility, politics, and unions between some of the most important Italian noble families: from the Della Rovere to the Aldobrandini Families, from the Pamphilj to the Doria and the Doria Pamphilj Families, to the Facchinetti, Colonna, Borghese, Savoia families and many more. 

The palace is the result of 500 years of additions, annexes and expansion, which create the centuries-old splendour that can be seen today.

Doria Pamphilj Gallery

• Date:  1597
• Style: Baroque
• Genre: religious painting
• Media: oil, canvas
• Dimensions: 122.5 x 98.5 cm

Built on the original nucleus of the residence of Cardinal Fazio Santoro dating back to the early sixteenth century, Palazzo Doria Pamphilj is a concentration of art and history, 

a history made of nobility, politics and unions between some of the greatest Italian noble families: from the Della Rovere families to the Aldobrandini, from the Pamphilj to the Doria then Doria Pamphilj, to the Facchinetti, to the Colonna, to the Borghese, to the Savoia.
The grandiose residence is the result of evolutions, annexations and enlargements that have taken place for 500 years to present itself before our eyes today in all its centuries-old splendor.

• Date: 1602
• Style: Baroque, Tenebrism
• Genre: religious painting
• Media: oil, canvas

In the Second Room you can admire, side by side, the two marvellous canvases with the ‘Penitent Magdalene’ and the ‘Rest during the Flight into Egypt’ by the young Caravaggio, as well as his St. John the Baptist.

• Original Title: Narciso
• Date: c.1599
• Style: Baroque, Tenebrism
• Genre: portrait
• Media: oil, canvas
• Dimensions: 110 x 92 cm
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The classical myth of Narcissus has had numerous representations since ancient times, but Caravaggio's version stands out for its unusual compositional scheme conceived almost like a playing card: the lower part mirrors the upper part as if the painter had reversed the upper half of the canvas by 180 degrees to obtain the reflected figure. A layout suited to the story of the young hunter, who falls in love with his own image reflected in the water.

Palazzo Barberini, the prototype of the Baroque palace, is the result of the work of the most important architects of the seventeenth century: Carlo Maderno, Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini.

Maffeo Barberini (Florence 1568 – Rome 1644) was elected pope in 1623 with the name of Urban VIII and two years later he purchased a villa on the Quirinale hill previously belonging to the Sforza family for his nephews, invested with offices and honours, and commissioned Carlo Maderno (1556-1629) the new family palace. Instead of demolishing the villa, the architect incorporated it into a new architectural project: the Sforza wing

1599 ca.

oil painting on canvas

145 x 195 cm

Barberini Palace

Three characters and a red cloth in the background: few elements, capable of orchestrating a true theater of opposites. Darkness and light, old age and youth, life and death, strength and fragility.
Judith is an Old Testament heroine, a young Jewish widow who saves her people from the siege of the Assyrian army. 

She pretends to want to ally herself with the enemy and kills the general Holofernes with her own hands, after being welcomed into the camp with a sumptuous banquet.

We see a young Saint John the Baptist without a beard, half-naked and covered in a red cloak, with the cross-shaped staff resting at his side, but without the traditional camel fur that 

appears in other versions. 

Caravaggio depicts a moment of rest during John's life of penance in the desert, but compared to traditional iconography the saint's attributes are almost marginalized: the bowl with which John poured the water in the baptism of Jesus is as if deprived of its role sacral, while the cross is barely visible, hidden by the edge of the painting. 

In this way 

Caravaggio updated the representation of the young Baptist in the desert, giving greater immediacy to a theme that had often lent itself to interpretations in which the sacred and the profane are mixed.

Biglietto

The history of Palazzo Corsini begins in 1511 with the building built by Cardinal Raffaele Riario (1461-1521) on the land in Via della Lungara. The original building was modified between 1659 and 1689, when it became the residence of Queen Christina of Sweden, who moved to Rome in 1655 after converting to Catholicism. 

The queen, a woman of great culture and lover of the arts, also used the palace as the seat of the intellectual club she established and had the interiors modified to house the collection of statues on the ground floor and the picture gallery on the main floor. Traces of this phase in the history of the palace are preserved in the Queen's Alcove, where the sixteenth-century decorations survive.The history of Palazzo Corsini begins in 1511 with the building built by Cardinal Raffaele Riario (1461-1521) on the land in Via della Lungara. The original building was modified between 1659 and 1689, when it became the residence of Queen Christina of Sweden, who moved to Rome in 1655 after converting to Catholicism. The queen, a woman of great culture and lover of the arts, also used the palace as the seat of the intellectual club she established and had the interiors modified to house the collection of statues on the ground floor and the picture gallery on the main floor. Traces of this phase in the history of the palace are preserved in the Queen's Alcove, where the sixteenth-century decorations survive.

Date:  1606

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 130 cm × 98 cm

The Capuchin Museum was created with the intention of presenting to the numerous visitors from all over the world a living and organic reality, which, through the Church, the Cemetery and the Museum itinerary, presents itself in its historical evolution.

Caravaggio's work

The fifth section focuses on "St. Francis in meditation", a work created by the great artist Caravaggio, specifically for the Capuchin Convent.

Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccino,

• Date: 1598 - 1599
• Style: Baroque
• Genre: genre painting
• Media: oil, canvas
• Dimensions: 99 x 131 cm

The birth of the Capitoline Museums dates back to 1471 , when Pope Sixtus IV donated a group of bronze statues of great symbolic value to the Roman people .

The collections have a close connection with the city of Rome, where most of the works come from.

• Date:  1605
• Style: Baroque
• Genre: religious
• Media: oil, canvas
• Dimensions: 118 x 81 cm

Saint Jerome, hermit, Father of the Church, and responsible for the translation of the Bible into Latin, (the Vulgate Bible) was a popular figure in Caravaggio's time, and the artist painted him at least eight times (only three survive). 

Whether this was from personal choice or at the request of patrons is unknown, but it gave Caravaggio the opportunity to explore the potential – from an artist's perspective – of aged and wrinkled flesh. 

Jerome is shown here contemplating one of his symbols, the skull, a reminder of the inevitability of death and the vanity of worldly things.

Museum of Montserrat

Compared with the many other treatments of this well-known biblical episode, the scene depicted in the Prado picture is somewhat unusual. It captures the moment when the young David, having felled the giant Goliath by striking him on the forehead with a stone hurled from his sling, “ran and stood upon the Philistine, and took his sword, and drew it out of the sheath thereof, and slew him, and cut off his head therewith. … And David took the head of the Philistine, and brought it to Jerusalem” (1 Samuel 17:51 and 54). The young man, emerging from a shadowy background, straddles the giant’s body, reaching down to seize Goliath’s severed head – lying in the immediate foreground – by the hair,… |+

The building that today houses the Museo Nacional del Prado was designed by architect Juan de Villanueva in 1785. It was constructed to house the Natural History Cabinet, by orders of King Charles III. However, the building's final purpose - as the new Royal Museum of Paintings and Sculptures - was the decision of the monarch's grandson, King Ferdinand VII, encouraged by his wife Queen Maria Isabel de Braganza.

May 20, 2000

• Date:  1598 - 1599
• Style: Baroque
• Genre: genre painting
• Media: oil, canvas
• Dimensions: 99 x 131 cm

The three Caravaggio paintings in the Louvre’s collection provide an interesting arc, showing you the major stages of the artist’s career.

With The Fortune Teller, we get his early success. He has already figured out what will make him stand out, and he is beginning to make a name for himself in Rome. Next, we have Death of the Virgin, which shows him at the zenith of his career. And in the portrait, we see him during his life in exile.

This enormous painting (about 3.5 by 2.5 meters, or 12 by 8 feet) was commissioned by a lawyer for the Pope in order to fill a chapel. By this time, Caravaggio was well established in Rome as the en vogue artist, and a painting by him — especially of this size — would no doubt prove to be a major get for the parish.

This painting gives us an example of Caravaggio’s work after going into exile. It was while living in Malta that he was commissioned to create this portrait. Wignacourt was a high ranking member of the Knights of Malta, and so this was a prestigious way to begin his practice there.