Caravaggio
Italian Baroque Era Painter, ca.1571-1610
Italian painter. After an early career as a painter of portraits, still-life and genre scenes he became the most persuasive religious painter of his time. His bold, naturalistic style, which emphasized the common humanity of the apostles and martyrs, flattered the aspirations of the Counter-Reformation Church, while his vivid chiaroscuro enhanced both three-dimensionality and drama, as well as evoking the mystery of the faith. He followed a militantly realist agenda, rejecting both Mannerism and the classicizing naturalism of his main rival, Annibale Carracci. In the first 30 years of the 17th century his naturalistic ambitions and revolutionary artistic procedures attracted a large following from all over Europe.
ID: 20351 The Death of the Virgin (mk05) Canvas,145 1/4 x 96 1/2''(369 x 245 cm).Commissioned for the Church of Santa Maria dela Scala at Trastevere in Rome But rejected on grounds of indecency.collections of Duke of Mantua,Charles I,and Louis XIV(acquired from Eberhard Jabach in 1671)
