CARAVAG'GIO, MICHAEL ANGELO AMERIGIII or MERIGHI DA, a celebrated Italian painter, was b. 1569, at Caravaggio, in Lombardy, northern Italy. His father, who was a mason, employed him in making paste for the fresco-painters, and in this way the artistic genius of the boy was stirred. After studying the works of the great masters in Milan and Venice, he went to Rome, where he lived for some time in very reduced circumstances. At length a picture of his attracted the notice of cardinal del Monte, who now patronized the young artist; but the ferocious and quarrelsome character of C. soon involved him in difficulties. Having fled from Rome to Malta, on account of man slaughter, he obtained the favor of the grand-master by painting an altar-piece in the church of St. John, and other pictures. His quarrelsome nature soon forced him to flee from Malta; and, in making his way back to Rome, he was wounded, lost all his baggage, caught a violent fever, and on reaching Porto Ecole, lay down on a bank and died (1609), at the age of 40. Trueness to nature was the object aimed at by C., who left all schools, and himself to paint life as he found it in lanes, alleys, and other resorts of the lower classes. He studied no such matters as refined sentiment or
elevation of realities, but gave in his paintings expression to his own wild and gloomy character. One of his best paintings, "The Fraudulent Gamblers," is preserved in the Sciarra gallery, at Rome. His shadows are deep, his backgrounds very obscure; in consequence of which the whole picture seems to possess a kind of mysterious great ness, that is very imposing. Even Rubens confessed that C. was his superior in chiaro oscuro. When he painted sacred subjects, he remained falsely faithful to the low real ities of Italian life; so that several of his pictures painted for churches, had to be removed from their places, because they could not be harmonized with sacred asso ciations. Kugler, the German critic, has justly said of one of C.'s most celebrated works, a "Burial of Christ," that it appears "like nothing better than the funeral of a gypsy chieftain."—Au earlier Italian painter of less eminence, POLIDORO CALDARA DA CARAVAGGIO, was born in 1495, and murdered in 1543.