The Caravaggisti are Among Us
One thing is for certain, when your name is morphed into a new word to indicate your influence on those in your field, you can be certain that your impact is something that will live on far beyond your time. This is just what happened with Caravaggio, an artist who was as personally troubled as he was professionally talented, yet accumulated a following of artists who emulated his work. These artists came to be referred to as the Caravaggisti.
Some Background
Despite his fame, Caravaggio was a tormented soul. In childhood he lost most of his family to the Bubonic Plague. He was orphaned and homeless at a young age. As an adult he spent much of his life balancing his painting aspirations with his need to keep a low profile to evade the authorities after his violent outbursts. He died at the young age of 38 while attempting to receive a pardon from the pope for a murder he committed years prior. Most likely his cause of death was lead poisoning from the very paints that were his tools of fame.
Caravaggio’s much admired technique and approach was certainly formed by the moment in history that he happened to occupy. His fresh new ideas came at a time when the Catholic church was trying new ways to engage the populace. The Counter-Reformation’s church building spree brought on abundant commission opportunities at the same time of Caravaggio’s emergence onto the Italian art scene.
A New Look
There are many things that are distinctive about Caravaggio’s technique and approach. He used light in a much more dramatic way than those who came before him. He took the chiaroscuro of Leonardo Da Vinci and Raphael and made the contrast between light and dark even more dramatic. With a technique come to be known as tenebrism, his subject would be bathed in a singular light coming from above, his secondary characters would often be partially hidden by the darkness of the background. He pulled his viewer into his scenes by only depicting parts of a person’s body so that the viewer felt as if the action is up close and they too are a part of the scene. He used commoners as live models to depict the saints and biblical figures that were often his subjects. Their expressions and contemporary look was a stark contrast to the idealized beauty of the subjects in the Mannerist paintings the people of the times were used to seeing. Caravaggio, as both a young man and an artist was a disruptor.
And the people of his time period were startled, intrigued and paid attention. Most artists who leave their mark in the artistic community do so through being a teacher or having a workshop or collecting apprentices. Because of his transient lifestyle and his volatile personality, Caravaggio never did this. In fact, he was known to threaten other artists who he felt were imitating him. Yet during his lifetime and well after it, artists throughout Europe used Caravaggio’s paintings as inspiration to usher in a new style.
The Caravaggisti in the Galleries
Four TMA paintings are included in The Brilliance of Caravaggio for this very reason. These painters were influenced by what they saw in the Caravaggio work they were exposed to. Artemesia Gentileschi had a direct link to Caravaggio because her father, Orazio Gentileschi, also a painter, was a friend of Caravaggio’s. In Lot and his Daughters, the dark background seems to be swallowing up the relatable and contemporary looking subjects and points to Caravaggio’s technique.
In Fortune Teller with Soldiers, Valentin de Boulogne gives commoners tightly grouped around a table dignity and relatability. In Hendrik ter Brugghen’s The Supper at Emmaus, we are drawn to biblical characters who look like people of the times rather than the ancients. Spanish artist, Jusepe de Ribera, Portrait of a Musician, was so taken by Caravaggio’s technique of using a singular light source from above that he cut a hole in his roof to source that light in his studio.
Wander the museum and Caravaggio’s influence is easy to find. Look for the dark backgrounds, the tight groupings of subjects, the relatable looking biblical and mythological figures. Luca Giordano’s The Liberation of St Peter, and The Feast of Herod, by Mattia Preti use light and dark to draw our eyes to certain subjects in tightly knit groups of modern looking people. Gerrit van Honthorst’s Adoration of the Shepherds, has an obvious singular light source from above. Abraham Bloemaert’s Shepherdess Reading a Sonnet, draws us into the quiet drama as if we are the third person standing at the shepherdess’ left shoulder. Man with a Wine Glass, attributed to Velázquez and Rembrandt’s Man in a Fur Lined Coat, are Caravaggioesque portraits that use light and dark to guide our eyes to the emotions on their subjects’ faces.
Caravaggio ushered in the Baroque period by emotionally charging his paintings through the use of tenebrism, bold colors and tight groupings of realistic and relatable looking subjects. This was such a dramatic stylistic departure from what preceded him, that artists throughout Europe took note and we are left with an interesting way to categorize painting techniques before and after the short lifetime of one of the most volatile and controversial painters in Western Art history.