49 Fun Facts About Caravaggio

What was Caravaggio's real name?

Michelangelo Merisi. 'Caravaggio' is the Lombard town his family came from, and his first name points to a birthday on 29 September, the feast of the Archangel Michael.

In which city did the young Caravaggio begin his apprenticeship as a painter in 1584?

Milan. His father had kept a workshop there, and at 12 the boy was bound to Simone Peterzano, a specialist in fresco, a technique Caravaggio never took up.

Caravaggio's dramatic form of chiaroscuro came to be known as what?

Tenebrism. Faces and hands are picked out by a harsh light against a mostly dark setting, a look so widely copied that his followers were called tenebrists.

Caravaggio's teacher Simone Peterzano styled himself a pupil of which Venetian master?

Titian. Peterzano had trained in Venice and signed pictures 'Titiani alumnus', and the darkest, most dramatic Venetian painting reads like a forerunner of his own pupil's style.

Caravaggio left Lombardy for Rome in 1592 after a violent incident said to involve whom?

A police officer. The only evidence is a note in the margin of an early biography, but it fits the pattern: he began his career as he ended it, in trouble with the law.

What was the young Caravaggio set to paint in Giuseppe Cesari's busy Roman workshop?

Flowers and fruit. An early biographer says he chafed at being kept from painting figures, and after about eight months he left to sell pictures of his own.

Caravaggio's Entombment of Christ, painted for a Roman church, now hangs in which museum?

The Vatican Museums. French commissioners carried it off to Paris in 1797, and when it came back two decades later it went into the pope's picture gallery, not its old chapel.

Which cardinal became Caravaggio's first major patron and took him into his Roman palace?

Francesco Maria del Monte. Living in his household gave the painter a status he flaunted: arrested in 1598 for carrying a sword, he told the court he bore it by right as the cardinal's painter.

Why did the young Caravaggio nickname his first Roman landlord, a priest, 'Monsignor Salad'?

He served little else. Caravaggio lodged with Pandolfo Pucci soon after reaching Rome, was given only salad in the evenings, and left within a few months with the nickname as his revenge.

In Caravaggio's The Fortune Teller, what does the girl steal as she reads the young man's palm?

His ring. She eases it off while he gazes into her face, and Caravaggio painted the scene twice; one canvas stayed in Rome and the other was given to Louis XIV.

One of two versions of Caravaggio's Boy Bitten by a Lizard hangs in which London museum?

The National Gallery. Catching a split second of pain was almost unheard of in the 1590s, and an early biographer said you could almost hear the boy scream.

Caravaggio's Medusa was painted on what kind of object?

A shield. It was made as a gift for the Grand Duke of Tuscany, whose family had owned a Medusa by Leonardo da Vinci, and Caravaggio's was meant to stand the comparison.

In which Florence museum does Caravaggio's Medusa hang?

Uffizi. The picture was painted in Rome to enter the Medici collection in Florence, and four centuries later it still hangs with that collection.

What did Caravaggio include in his Basket of Fruit?

Wormholes and blight. A horticulturist who studied the canvas found an apple bored by insects and starting to rot, and leaves scorched by fungus, all painted as carefully as the perfect fruit.

Caravaggio's Saint Matthew cycle decorates which Roman church's Contarelli Chapel?

San Luigi dei Francesi. It was his first major public commission, two canvases each almost ten feet square, and it established him at once as the most original painter in Rome.

Caravaggio's The Calling of Saint Matthew shows Jesus summoning a man of which trade?

Tax collector. Caravaggio moved the Gospel scene to a dim counting room of his own day and dressed Matthew's companions in the gaudy fashions of Rome around 1600.

What offended the patrons in Caravaggio's first version of Matthew and the Angel?

The saint's dirty peasant legs. The priests wanted a dignified scholar, which is what Caravaggio then supplied; the rejected canvas ended up in Berlin, where it burned in 1945.

In Caravaggio's Conversion on the Way to Damascus, what dominates the canvas more than Saint Paul himself?

A horse's haunches. Paul lies on his back in a pool of light, arms flung wide, while an old groom calmly steadies the animal so that it does not tread on him.

Caravaggio's Death of the Virgin was rejected partly because its model was thought to be what?

A prostitute. That was one early writer's account; others blamed the undignified look of the dead Virgin herself, and the friars replaced the picture with a far more decorous one.

On whose advice did the Duke of Mantua buy the rejected Death of the Virgin?

Peter Paul Rubens. He praised it as one of Caravaggio's best works, and before it left Rome the duke's envoy put it on show so that the city's artists could see it.

Which museum holds Caravaggio's Death of the Virgin, which once belonged to Charles I of England?

The Louvre. Charles I's pictures were sold off after his execution, and this one passed through a private collector's hands before Louis XIV bought it in 1671.

Caravaggio's Madonna of the Grooms was painted for an altar in which great church?

St Peter's Basilica. Commissioned by the pope's grooms and finished in April 1606, it was taken down within weeks, and Cardinal Scipione Borghese soon had it for his own collection.

How did Vincenzo Giustiniani display Caravaggio's Amor Vincit Omnia?

Behind a green curtain. He is said to have prized it above everything else he owned, and to have unveiled it only after visitors had seen his other pictures, so that it would not outshine them.

The courtesan Fillide Melandroni probably posed as which biblical heroine in a gory Caravaggio of about 1599?

Judith. She saws at the tyrant's neck with a sword while her old maid waits beside her, in a setting one biographer calls more like a Roman brothel than a general's tent.

A disputed Caravaggio, a biblical beheading, turned up in 2014 in the attic of a house in which French city?

Toulouse. The owners came across it while looking into a leak in the roof, and in 2019 a private buyer took it shortly before it was due to be auctioned.

In 1603 Caravaggio was arrested for defaming which fellow painter with offensive poems?

Giovanni Baglione. The verses twisted his surname into an obscenity, and the rival who had Caravaggio jailed for them went on to write one of the first accounts of his life.

A tavern waiter sued Caravaggio for throwing a plate of what in his face?

Artichokes. It was one of a string of charges in 1604, a year in which he was also arrested for carrying weapons and for insulting the city guard.

The 1606 sword fight in which Caravaggio killed Ranuccio Tomassoni is traditionally linked to which sport?

Tennis. Reports at the time spoke of a quarrel over a game and a wager, and the two men fought at a court in Rome's Campo Marzio, where Tomassoni bled to death.

What penalty did Rome's courts impose on Caravaggio for killing Ranuccio Tomassoni?

A death sentence. He was convicted in his absence after fleeing Rome, which is why he spent his last four years on the move between Naples, Malta and Sicily.

After killing a man in Rome in 1606, Caravaggio sheltered on the estates of which powerful family?

Colonna. Costanza Colonna, marchesa of his home town, had known his family since his childhood and sheltered him more than once in his years on the run.

Caravaggio hoped that becoming a Knight of Malta in 1608 would win him what?

A papal pardon. Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt was so pleased with his portrait that he asked the pope to let a killer join the order, and permission was granted.

Which Malta painting is the only work Caravaggio ever signed?

The Beheading of Saint John. He wrote his name in the blood running from the saint's neck, with an F in front of it for Fra, the title he had just earned as a knight.

Imprisoned on Malta in 1608 after a brawl, how did Caravaggio leave the island?

He broke out of jail. With help he got out of a rock-cut cell in the fortress, down the ramparts and away to Sicily by boat, and the knights expelled him in his absence.

Which saint's burial did Caravaggio paint for a church in Syracuse in 1608?

Saint Lucy. She is the patron saint of Syracuse, and the altarpiece was made for the basilica that marks the place of her martyrdom and burial.

The 1969 theft of Caravaggio's Nativity, long linked to the Mafia, took place in which Sicilian city?

Palermo. Two thieves cut the canvas from its frame above the altar of the Oratory of San Lorenzo one night in October 1969, and it has not been recovered.

Who is thought to have ordered the 1609 attack that scarred Caravaggio?

A knight he wounded on Malta. A slash to the face was a traditional mark of revenge, and an early biographer believed the attackers had come from the island.

Caravaggio died in July 1610 in which town on the Tuscan coast?

Porto Ercole. He had sailed from Naples with paintings meant as gifts, was separated from the boat that carried them, and died within days of reaching the little harbour.

Researchers who claimed in 2010 to have found Caravaggio's bones suggested what helped kill him?

Lead from his paints. Pigments of the day were rich in lead salts, and the team said the levels in the bones were high enough to have disturbed his mind.

Letters on a sword in one Caravaggio are read as a Latin motto meaning what 'kills pride'?

Humility. The letters H-AS OS are read as 'Humilitas occidit superbiam', and the severed head in the picture is a self-portrait: the painter gave his own face to the one brought low.

Caravaggio's The Taking of Christ was rediscovered in 1990 in which Dublin building?

A Jesuit residence. The priests had hung it in their dining room for decades under another painter's name, until their superior asked a restorer from Ireland's state gallery to look over the house's pictures.

The Dutch painter long credited with Caravaggio's Taking of Christ was nicknamed Gherardo 'of the' what for his candlelit scenes?

Nights. Gerard van Honthorst was known in Italy as Gherardo delle Notti, Gerard of the Nights, and for some two centuries this Caravaggio passed as one of his.

In The Taking of Christ, the figure thought to be Caravaggio holds up what?

A lantern. The bystander peering at Judas's kiss is believed to be a self-portrait, as if to advertise the contrast of light and dark that had made his name.

Which Caravaggio altarpiece has hung in the same Naples church since he painted it there as a fugitive?

The Seven Works of Mercy. He packed all seven good deeds into one dark, crowded scene, from burying the dead to clothing the naked.

Which Gospel meal did Caravaggio paint twice, in 1601 and again as a fugitive in 1606?

The Supper at Emmaus. The first version is brightly lit and theatrical; the second, painted in hiding after he had killed a man, is darker, barer and far more sombre.

Caravaggio's Conversion on the Way to Damascus hangs in which Roman church?

Santa Maria del Popolo. The papal treasurer Tiberio Cerasi hired him for his burial chapel there in 1600, within months of the Saint Matthew pictures that made his name.

Which British director was shortlisted for the 1986 Turner Prize on the strength of his film Caravaggio?

Derek Jarman. His designer Christopher Hobbs painted every 'Caravaggio' seen on screen himself, and the Tate singled out the film's look when it shortlisted Jarman that summer.

An early Caravaggio self-portrait is known as the 'Sick' version of which Roman god?

Bacchus. The picture stayed with his employer Giuseppe Cesari until the pope's nephew Scipione Borghese seized Cesari's collection, and it has been in the Borghese Gallery ever since.

Which two Dutch masters, who never visited Italy, still show Caravaggio's influence?

Vermeer and Rembrandt. His manner reached them at second hand, through Utrecht painters who had worked in Rome and carried his dramatic lighting home to Holland.

Caravaggio preferred to paint how?

Directly on canvas from live models. He skipped the preparatory drawings that convention expected, and X-rays show he sometimes abandoned a composition and painted a new one over it.