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By Geographical Region & Time Period

• 
  The Denial of Saint Peter
  Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) (Italian, Lombard, 1571–1610)
  Oil on canvas; 37 x 49 3/8 in. (94 x 125.4 cm)
  Gift of Herman and Lila Shickman, and Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 1997 (1997.167)
  
• 
  The Musicians, ca. 1595
  Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) (Italian, Lombard, 1571–1610)
  Oil on canvas; 36 1/4 x 46 5/8 in. (92.1 x 118.4 cm)
  Rogers Fund, 1952 (52.81)
  
• 
  The Supper at Emmaus, 1622–23
  Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (Spanish, 1599–1660)
  Oil on canvas; 48 1/2 x 52 1/4 in. (123.2 x 132.7 cm)
  Bequest of Benjamin Altman, 1913 (14.40.631)
  
• 
  The Crucifixion with the Virgin and Saint John, ca. 1625
  Hendrick ter Brugghen (Dutch, 1588–1629)
  Oil on canvas; 61 x 40 1/4 in. (154.9 x 102.2 cm)
  Funds from various donors, 1956 (56.228)
  
• 

  The Lute Player, ca. 1626
  Valentin de Boulogne (French, 1591–1632)
  Oil on canvas; 50 1/2 x 39 in. (128.3 x 99.1 cm)
  Purchase, Walter and Leonore Annenberg Acquisitions Endowment Fund; funds from various donors; Acquisitions Fund; James and Diane Burke and Mr. and Mrs. Mark Fisch Gifts; Louis V. Bell, Harris Brisbane Dick, Fletcher, and Rogers Funds and Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 2008 (2008.459)

Trained in Milan and active in Rome (1592–1606), Naples (1606–7; 1609–10), Malta (1607–8), and Sicily (1608–9), Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610) was one of the most revolutionary figures of European art. His practice of painting directly from posed models violated the idealizing premise of Renaissance theory and promoted a new relationship between painting and viewer by breaking down the conventions that maintained painting as a plausible fiction rather than an extension of everyday experience.

In early work such as The Cardsharps (ca. 1594; Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth), Caravaggio appropriated a scene of street life—a gullible, well-dressed youth being taken in by professional cheats—and, by abstracting it against a plain background and focusing on the expressions and actions of the various figures, gave it an artistic as well as moral interest. The analogy is with contemporary popular theater. This much-copied picture was purchased by Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, who gave Caravaggio quarters in his palace and promoted the artist, securing for him his first ecclesiastical commission—the crucial step to fame.

Caravaggio's two canvases, the Calling of Saint Matthew and the Martyrdom of Saint Matthew (San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome), were unveiled in 1600, and established his reputation. The combination of figures in contemporary dress inhabiting a religious scene was not new, but the impression the picture made of an event from the distant past unfolding before the viewer's own eyes was unmatched. Caravaggio pushed the figures up against the picture plane and used light to enhance the dramatic impact and give the figures a quality of immediacy. These devices were much imitated. As a contemporary critic noted, "a characteristic of this school [of painting] is to use a focused light source from high up, without reflections, as though in a room with a [single] window and the walls painted black. In this fashion the lit and shadowed areas are very light and very dark and give enormous three-dimensionality to the painting, but in an unnatural fashion neither done or even conceived before by such artists as Raphael, Titian, Correggio, or others." What was at issue was not a descriptive naturalism, but a provocative insistence on the physical reality of the scene portrayed.

This new approach to painting was sometimes at odds with the function of the altarpieces as the focus of devotional practice. Should a depiction of the death of the Virgin emphasize the theological importance of the event and show the Madonna as the ageless mother of Christ, as worshippers had come to expect, or should it emphasize the physical reality of death—as Caravaggio's painting seemed to do (Death of the Virgin, Musée du Louvre, Paris)? Should Christ's burial be depicted as a tragic drama or as a sacred event? Much of Caravaggio's work, such as his spellbinding Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, reveals the artist dealing with these crucial issues. In his last paintings, such as The Denial of Saint Peter (1997.167), he revealed the psychological rather than merely physical dimension of the narrative.

Caravaggio's key Italian propagator was Bartolomeo Manfredi, whose gambling and drinking scenes (Bacchus and the Drinker, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome), and gypsy fortune tellers were widely imitated. Caravaggio's art was particularly popular among foreign painters in Rome—the Dutchmen Hendrick ter Brugghen (56.228) and Gerrit van Honthorst, the French painters Valentin de Boulogne (Fortune Teller with Drinkers, Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, and The Luteplayer, [2008.459]) and Nicholas Tournier, and the Spaniards Juan Bautista Maino and Jusepe de Ribera (copies of his work may have been known by Velázquez [14.40.631]) and Zurbarán. Through them, Caravaggism became an international movement and one of the keystones of Baroque painting.

Citation Christiansen, Keith. "Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) (1571–1610) and his Followers". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/crvg/hd_crvg.htm (October 2003) Further Reading . Exhibition catalogue.. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1985. Langdon, Helen Caravaggio: A Life. London: Chatto & Windus, 1998. Related exhibitions and online features Special Exhibitions (including upcoming, current, and past exhibitions)

These related Museum Bulletin or Journal articles may or may not represent the most current scholarship. Nickel, Helmut "The Sun, the Moon, and an Eclipse: Observations on The Crucifixion with the Virgin and Saint John, by Hendrick Ter Brugghen." Metropolitan Museum Journal, Vol. 42 (2007). JSTOR | PDF Christiansen, Keith "Going for Baroque: Bringing 17th-Century Masters to the Met." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 62, no. 3 (Winter, 2005). JSTOR | PDF | Supplemental PDFs "Director’s Note" PDF Camiz, Franca Trinchieri "Music and Painting in Cardinal del Monte's Household." Metropolitan Museum Journal, Vol. 26 (1991). JSTOR | PDF Cropper, Elizabeth "The Petrifying Art: Marino's Poetry and Caravaggio." Metropolitan Museum Journal, Vol. 26 (1991). JSTOR | PDF Mahon, Denis "On Some Aspects of Caravaggio and His Times." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New ser., v. 12, no. 2 (October, 1953). JSTOR | PDF