28th September: Caravaggio

Michelangelo da Caravaggio, influential Italian realist painter, was born on this date in 1571.

1. His full name is Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, the Caravaggio part actually being the name of the town he grew up in.
2. He was born in Milan, where his father was a household administrator and architect-decorator to the Marchese of Caravaggio. When Michelangelo was about six, the family moved to Caravaggio because there was a plague in Milan. Sadly, his father and grandparents died anyway. He was just eleven when his mother died, too. It was then that he became an apprentice to the Milanese painter Simone Peterzano, under a contract describing him as a "pupil of Titian".
3. After his training, he left for Rome. he was possibly running away because he'd been involved in "certain quarrels" and had wounded a police officer, most likely in a brawl. In fact, throughout his life he seemed to be quarrelsome and violent, apt to get involved in brawls and many of his moves to new cities were because he was fleeing from the law. There are pages and pages of police and court records relating to his violent crimes, including smashing a waiter in the the mouth with a plate and, eventually, a murder - he killed a young man named Ranuccio Tomassoni from Terni (Umbria). The exact circumstances aren't known but it is thought to have been accidentally during a fight over a gambling debt. This crime was serious enough that his influential patrons could do nothing this time. He fled to Naples and was on the run for most of the rest of his life.
4. His earliest known painting is Boy Peeling a Fruit, painted during his first job in Rome, in a painting factory belonging to Giuseppe Cesari, Pope Clement VIII's favourite artist. Even then, the realism and attention to detail were such that botanists could identify the type of fruit in his painting right down to exactly which cultivar had been depicted.
5. He frequently included his own image in his paintings. Notable examples are an early work, Young Sick Bacchus, a self portrait painted while he was recovering from a serious illness which had cost him his job. While he was on the run for murder, he painted David with the Head of Goliath, with his own features on Goliath's severed head, which some have interpreted as a plea for forgiveness and a pardon. He is also believed to be the lantern-bearing figure in the far-right hand corner of The Taking of Christ.
6. Caravaggio is famous for his realism. To achieve it, he often used lower class people as models and painted them "warts and all". This occasionally got him into trouble with the church. The Carmelites rejected one of his paintings, The Death of the Virgin. Although there was a theological issue (The Virgin Mary is supposed to have been taken up to Heaven rather than dying) it was as likely to have been because the model for Mary was a well known prostitute, and the painting showed her bare legs.
7. Caravaggio never married and had no known children. Which naturally led to speculation that he was gay, especially since he never painted female nudes, but the male form was often celebrated in his work. He lived with a male friend for a while, so it was rumoured they were lovers - but he also painted portraits of prostitutes, albeit with clothes on. Whether he was ever a customer, we don't know.
8. During his flights from the law, Caravaggio went to Valetta, Malta, and secured a patronage with Alof de Wignacourt, Grand Master of the Knights. Perhaps he thought this would help him get a pardon in Italy. De Wignacourt was so impressed with him that he inducted him as a Knight of Malta. While there, he painted more religious paintings as well as portraits of leading knights. However, his propensity for getting into fights dogged him even here. He apparently lost his rag with one of the knights and the resulting brawl saw the knight badly injured and the door of his house broken down. Caravaggio was thrown in prison for this but managed to escape. Needless to say, he was expelled from the order, dubbed a "foul and rotten member".
9. The following year, he suffered a disfiguring injury to his face, possibly at the hands of Knights of Malta seeking revenge. The injuries were bad enough that rumours circulated that he was dead. It's thought his painting Salome with the Head of John the Baptist, with his own head on the platter, which he sent to de Wignacourt, might have been a plea for forgiveness.
10. Finally, he received news from Rome that he might finally be getting that pardon, thanks to the influence of some of his powerful friends there. He set sail for Rome with three paintings as gifts. He never got there. Nobody knows exactly what happened to him, although reports say he died of a fever on the way. There are suggestions that the Knights of Malta or some other faction which had it in for him caught up with him and murdered him. Another possibility is that he died of lead poisoning. Bones believed to be his were found to have a lot of Lead in them. This would have been an occupational hazard back then, as paints contained high levels of lead salts. One symptom of lead poisoning is a tendency for violent behaviour, so it's entirely possible.

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