CARAVAGGIO, MICHELANGELO AMERIGHI (or MERIGI) DA (1569-1609), Italian painter, the son of a mason, was born in the village of Caravaggio, in Lombardy, from which he received his name. He painted portraits for about five years at Milan, and then went to Venice and to Rome, where he produced his first picture of note, "The Card Players." He despised every sort of idealism, became the head of the Naturalisti (unmodified imitators of ordinary nature) in painting, and adopted a style of potent contrasts of light and shadow, laid on with a sort of fury. At the close of a stormy life he fled to Malta and Sicily and died of fever on the beach at Pontercole in 1609. His best pictures are the "Entombment of Christ," now in the Vatican; "St. Sebastian," in the Roman Capitol; a magnificent whole-length portrait of a grand-master of the Knights of Malta, Alof de Vignacourt, and his page, in the Louvre; and the Borghese "Supper at Emmaus."