Catholic Italy / Caravaggio       Caravaggio Because he is from a town named Caravaggio in Lombardy where he was born around 1571, Michelangelo Merisi will always bear this nickname. Little is known of his training and his real education seems to have been the observation of nature and the study of light, to which are added his years as apprentice to an artists' studio in Milan where he is influenced by the Lombard realist painters. He goes to Rome around 1589, where he is introduced to the mannerist artistic environment. Very quickly, he detaches himself from this movement which he considers already exhausted and empty of content. From his first work, he demonstrates that he rejects this style of painting, and his Magdalena Sleeping, his Lute Player or his Fortune-teller impose a rigorous realism and a marvellous mastery of light that contrast with the usual production of the time. He receives his first official order in 1599 for the Contarelli Chapel of the church of St. Louis des Français in Rome. Thus he works until 1602 on three pictures of St. Matthew that mark a turning point in his career and offer a new conception of light that seems to spring from the deepest darkness of the night. His lateral lighting produces a violent counterpoint, bringing rhythm to the composition, and freezes the characters in all their expression and movement. For his religious themes, Caravaggio chooses his models from the common people, in order to confirm the realism that he defends and to underline the unadorned and natural, humble aspect. Thus he marks a true break with the conventional religious characters that until then had idealised the human person, and his work is deemed scandalous. Even though his work is at the time qualified as indecent, vulgar or offending public morals, he confirms his commitment in his following creations and increasingly exploits the dramatic function of light. All his religious or mythological paintings become violent and full of pathos. However this “ religious painter ” does not have a private life in the image of his compositions. His existence is dissolute, he is always involved in questionable business dealings and his sentimental life frequently results in regular problems with the police. This is the reason for his flight from Rome in 1606, when he travels to Naples, Malta and Sicily for some years, continuing to paint for the churches of the cities where he stays. His time in Naples is decisive for the development of painting there and gives birth to a movement named the Neapolitan School. He dies in 1610 and his work, produced in a mere twenty years, immediately influences European painting through the artistic tendency known as “ Caravaggio style", inspiring Zurbaran, and Ribeira in Spain, Rubens in Holland and La Tour in France.