The Caravaggisti were stylistic followers of the late 16th-century Italian Baroque painter Caravaggio. His influence on the new Baroque style that eventually emerged from Mannerism was profound. Caravaggio never established a workshop as most other painters did, and thus had no school to spread his techniques. Nor did he ever set out his underlying philosophical approach to art, the psychological realism which can only be deduced from his surviving work. But it can be seen directly or indirectly in the work of Rubens, Jusepe de Ribera, Bernini, and Rembrandt. Famous while he lived, Caravaggio himself was forgotten almost immediately after his death. Many of his paintings were re-ascribed to his followers, such as The Taking of Christ, which was attributed to the Dutch painter Gerrit van Honthorst until 1990.
Mars Chastising Cupid (ca. 1605–1610) by Bartolomeo Manfredi
Baglione – The Divine Eros Defeats the Earthly Eros, ca. 1602, Gemäldegalerie
Borgianni – Christ amongst the Doctors, ca. 1605–1610
Saraceni – Judith with the Head of Holophernes, 1610–1615, Kunsthistorisches Museum
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, known mononymously as Caravaggio, was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life. During the final four years of his life, he moved between Naples, Malta, and Sicily until his death. His paintings have been characterized by art critics as combining a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, which had a formative influence on Baroque painting.
Chalk portrait of Caravaggio, c. 1621
Basket of Fruit, c. 1595–1596, oil on canvas, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan
The Musicians, 1595–1596, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy (c. 1595), Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford