Caravaggio

Caravaggio (1571-1610) painted saints and apostles with the faces and dirty feet of the people he met in the street, and lit them with a light that cuts through the dark like a spotlight. He became famous before he was thirty with the paintings of Saint Matthew for the church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome: in the Calling, Christ walks into a dark room and a beam of light comes in with him, reaching the tax collectors sitting at the table counting money.

In this collection you will find the Calling of Saint Matthew, the Crucifixion of Saint Peter in Santa Maria del Popolo, the Madonna of the Rosary in Vienna, Judith Beheading Holofernes in Palazzo Barberini, the Boy with a Basket of Fruit in the Galleria Borghese, The Cardsharps and the Supper at Emmaus, printed on handmade Amalfi paper.

Among the painters who looked at him closely are Artemisia Gentileschi, daughter of Orazio, a painter of his circle, and Peter Paul Rubens, who persuaded the Duke of Mantua to buy his Death of the Virgin after the church it was painted for had turned it down.