5 most important WORKS of CARAVAGGIO

Michelangelo Merisi, Caravaggio (Milan, 1571-Porto Ercole, 1610) was a italian baroque painter whose painting stands out for being inspired by reality and using dark techniques to introduce drama and expressiveness. His style revolutionized painting at the time, also influencing numerous 17th century artists as well as, for example, Velázquez, and current artists such as the painter Francis Bacon, the photographer LaChapelle or the film director Martin Scorsese.

In this lesson at unPROFESOR.com we offer you a selection of the most important works of Caravaggio to get closer to one of the most impressive and revolutionary artists in the history of art.

Index

1. Characteristics of Caravaggio's works
2. Bacchus (1595), one of Caravaggio's most important works
3. The Musicians (1595), another important work by Caravaggio
4. Fruit Basket (1596)
5. Medusa Head (1597)
6. Death of the Virgin (1606)

Caravaggio's work is framed within the

Between the main characteristics of his work stand out:

• Caravaggio observes nature and he introduces in his paintings all the details, even the most insignificant, that he appreciates in his models, without stopping at the academic study of drawing.
• He was inspired by the people on the street, these becoming his models, making them pose for his paintings. Something unusual in his time.
• It also stops at object details, also revolutionizing the genre of still lifes or still lifes.
• Also innovative was how he used light. Thus, he turns light into a dramatic element, using it to create chiaroscuro and give strength to what he wants to narrate and involve the viewer.
• Although there was a moment of searching for his paintings during the first decades of the 17th century, from the middle of that century he began to forget and return to classicism. The figure of him was recovered in the middle of the 20th century.

Bacchusis a work in which Caravaggio represents the greek god of wine like a seventeenth-century Italian teenager. Some critics have pointed out that it may be a self-portrait of the painter himself as Bacchus and that it could use a mirror to paint it, something that is based on the fact that the character carries the glass in his left hand and there's a little reflection of Caravaggio with a brush in hand.

In this work, Caravaggio run away from the idealized beauty of the Renaissance and the canons of him to opt for the realism, copying from nature and without prior preparation. Bacchus is a young man from the village represented as Bacchus and in the classical way with vine leaves and grapes in his hair, without there being a landscape and representing him next to a stone table with a small still life with a glass of wine, a bowl of fruit and a glass jug with wine red.

Bacchus offers his cup to the spectator and the whole arrangement is the result of the use of a complex mirror system that Caravaggio used to paint.

Caravaggio painted this work for his first patron, Cardinal Francesco del Monte, a man with a taste for music, one of the arts that aroused the admiration and applause of the patrons of the time.

In this work, Caravaggio represents a group of young musicians, one of them the painter himself, located in the center area on the right. Caravaggio stares at the viewer, while the rest of the musicians are concentrating on preparing the concert they are going to perform. In the background you can see a kind of Cupid who is in charge of picking up a bunch of grapes.

A work full of sensuality and eroticism far from the platonic conception of music at that time, conceived as a symbol of virtuous love.

basket with fruit is another of Caravaggio's best works. It is a very representative creation of Caravaggio as he was one of the painters who contributed the most to making the still life a star genre among Baroque painters.

A very controversial painting, being the subject of numerous interpretations because Caravaggio included very ripe fruit with worms. A painting that recalls the theme of the passage of time and the expiration of things, Caravaggio also resorting to a trompe l'oeil to create the illusion that the fruit is going to fall at any moment towards the viewer.

This is one of the most representative works of Caravaggio. It is painted on a ceremonial shield presented to Ferdinand I de Medici.

Caravaggio painted the work on canvas to later paste it on board in the form of a shield. In it he represented Medusa, a mythological beast whose head was cut off by Perseus. It was considered one of the bloodiest works of the painter.

It is considered one of the most important works by Caravaggio, being commissioned by a papal lawyer as decoration for a chapel owned by him, not being accepted at the end by be considered unseemly by showing the deceased Virgin on some boards and with bare legs.

An image that was provocative for the time, even commenting that had a prostitute as a model drowned in the Tiber river. Caravaggio's work introduces us to a dark room, in line with the gloomy used by a painter, illuminating the scene with a spotlight that falls on the Virgin's face.

A work full of realism and far from the prevailing idealized vision.

If you want to read more articles similar to Caravaggio: most important works, we recommend that you enter our category of History.

• CASTELLOTTI, Marco Bona. Caravaggio's paradox. Encounter, 2011.
• GRAHAM-DIXON, Andrew. Caravaggio: a sacred and profane life. Taurus, 2012.
• HIBBARD, Howard. Caravaggio. Routledge, 2018.
• LANGDON, Helen. Caravaggio. RandomHouse, 2012.