Following Caravaggio through Rome

By Antonia Moras
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, called Caravaggio for the name of the small town in northern Italy where he grew up, was known for his disdainful perspective of the conventions of his art. He was also known for being quarrelsome to the point of violence. He worked without assistants and unlike many of his contemporaries, he worked in a single medium – paint. When Caravaggio fled Rome as a fugitive, having murdered his opponent during a quarrel following a tennis match in 1606, he left behind a series of sublime paintings that still, after four hundred years, surprise viewer...