Collection: Art Prints by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was an Italian painter who is considered one of the most revolutionary and influential artists in European art history. He came from a humble background in Milan, where he grew up as the son of a steward and master builder, and lost his father and other family members to the plague at the age of six. From 1584, Caravaggio completed an apprenticeship in the Milanese workshop of the painter Simone Peterzano, where he intensively studied the Lombard painting tradition and acquired the technical foundations that he would later develop into a completely independent and groundbreaking style.

In his early works, Caravaggio initially devoted himself to small-format genre paintings and still lifes, which he offered to the circles of wealthy patrons and cardinals after his move to Rome. These works already displayed the inimitable combination of precise observation of nature and intense lighting that was to characterize his entire later oeuvre. With growing fame and important ecclesiastical commissions, Caravaggio developed his unmistakable style, in which dramatic chiaroscuro, an unsparing depiction of human bodies and a revolutionary immediacy of pictorial language took center stage.

A central feature of Caravaggio's work was his radical use of chiaroscuro, the extreme chiaroscuro painting technique that makes his figures appear as if they have been torn out of deep darkness by a spotlight. His large-format paintings such as the Calling of St. Matthew, the Crucifixion of St. Peter and Judith and Holofernes, which are among the most haunting and most discussed works of all Baroque painting, are famous. These works demonstrate his unique ability to endow biblical and mythological scenes with an almost unbearable physical presence and psychological force that draws the viewer directly into the action.

In addition to his work as a painter, Caravaggio was a dazzling and dangerous figure in Roman life who repeatedly came into conflict with the law. In 1606, he killed a man in an argument and was forced to flee Rome, which drove him on a restless and violent odyssey through Naples, Malta and Sicily. In spite of his submissiveness, he received important commissions while on the run and created works of unbroken power before he died in 1610 under unexplained circumstances at the age of just thirty-nine. Today, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio is considered the founder of the Baroque and one of the boldest innovators of Western painting, whose influence on subsequent generations from Rubens to Rembrandt can hardly be overestimated and whose works are among the most visited treasures in the world's most important museums.