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Starting in the 17th-century, Caravaggio's picture has been considered a scene of active burial. This interpretation was based on heroic formula derived from antique sources, that of Adonis or Meleager: head thrown back and one arm hanging limply by the side. Indeed, Raphael's Borghese Deposition is an example of this formula.
Caravaggio depicted beheadings multiple times in his work, including Judith beheading Holofernes, The beheading of Saint John the Baptist, David with the head of Goliath and Medusa, but he probably changed the beheading in this painting due to a request of the city’s senate.
When he painted The Death of the Virgin (c. 1601–06), Caravaggio had been working in Rome for fifteen years. [5] The painting was commissioned by Laerzio Cherubini, a papal lawyer, for his chapel in the Carmelite church of Santa Maria della Scala in Trastevere, Rome; the painting could not have been finished before 1605–06. [5]
The scene, popular with Italian artists in general and with Caravaggio himself, is not directly inspired by the Bible, but rather by the tale as related in the Golden Legend. [7] It is the only work by Caravaggio to bear the artist's signature, which he placed in red blood spilling from the Baptist's cut throat. [8]
The paintings in the Contarelli Chapel form a group of three large-format canvases painted by Caravaggio between 1599 and 1602, initially commissioned by Cardinal Matteo Contarelli for the Church of St. Louis of the French (San Luigi dei Francesi) in Rome, and eventually honored after his death by his executors.
Caravaggio had a noteworthy ability to express in one scene of unsurpassed vividness the passing of a crucial moment. The Supper at Emmaus depicts the recognition of Christ by his disciples: a moment before he is a fellow traveller, mourning the passing of the Messiah, as he never ceases to be to the innkeeper's eyes; the second after, he is ...
The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew (Italian: Martirio di San Matteo; 1599–1600) is a painting by the Italian master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.It is located in the Contarelli Chapel of the church of the French congregation San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, where it hangs opposite The Calling of Saint Matthew and beside the altarpiece The Inspiration of Saint Matthew, both by Caravaggio.
The juxtaposition of the two scenes had a well-known precedent in the frescos of the Capella Paolina at the Apostolic Palace (1542–1549) but the paintings of Caravaggio were starkly different from the crowded Mannerist scenes of Michelangelo. A notary's copy of the contract between Caravaggio and Cerasi.