Italian Art & Architecture - Italy - page 1802

Milanese-born enfant terrible Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1573-1610) had no
liking for classical models or respect for 'ideal beauty'. He was condemned by some con-
temporaries for seeking truth rather than ideal beauty in his art and shocked them with his
radical practice of copying nature faithfully, regardless of its aesthetic appeal. But even
they were forced to admire his skill with the technique of chiaroscuro (the bold contrast of
light and dark) and his employment of tenebrism, where dramatic chiaroscuro becomes a
dominant and highly effective stylistic device. One look at his Conversion of St Paul and
the Crucifixion of St Peter (both 1600-01), both in Rome's Chiesa di Santa Maria del Po-
polo, or his Le sette opere di Misericordia (The Seven Acts of Mercy) in Naples' Pio
Monte della Misericordia, and the raw emotional intensity of his work becomes clear.
This intensity reflected the artist's own notorious temperament. Described by the writer
Stendhal as a 'great painter [and] a wicked man', Caravaggio fled to Naples in 1606 after
killing a man in a street fight in Rome. Although his sojourn in Naples lasted only a year,
it had an electrifying effect on the city's younger artists. Among these artists was Gi-
useppe (or Jusepe) de Ribera (1591-1652), an aggressive, bullying Spaniard whose capo
lavoro (masterpiece), the Pietà , hangs in the Museo Nazionale di San Martino in Naples.
Along with the Greek artist Belisiano Crenzio and Naples-born painter Giovanni Battista
Caracciolo (known as Battistello), Ribera formed a cabal to stamp out any potential com-
petition . Merciless in the extreme, they shied away from nothing to get their way. Ribera
reputedly won a commission for the Cappella del Tesoro in the Duomo by poisoning his
rival Domenichino (1581-1641) and wounding the assistant of a second competitor,
Guido Reni (1575-1642). Much to the relief of other nerve-racked artists, the cabal even-
tually broke up when Caracciolo died in 1642.
North of Rome, Annibale Caracci (1560-1609) was the major artist of the baroque
Emilian, or Bolognese, school. With his painter brother Agostino he worked in Bologna,
Parma and Venice before moving to Rome to work for Cardinal Odoardo Farnese. In
works such as his magnificent frescoes of mythological subjects in Rome's Palazzo
Farnese, he employed innovative illusionistic elements that would prove inspirational to
later baroque painters such as Cortona, Pozzo and Gaulli. However, Caracci never let the
illusionism and energy of his works dominate the subject matter, as these later painters
did. Inspired by Michelangelo and Raphael, he continued the Renaissance penchant for
idealising and 'beautifying' nature.
The roots of baroque art lay in religious spirituality and stringent aestheticism. Its
artists and patrons used it to combat the rapidly spreading Protestant Reformation while
simultaneously exalting Catholicism. Considering this, it's somewhat ironic that its style