Caravaggio: Bad Boy of Baroque

I'm starting to see a pattern here. Actually, I've been seeing this pattern for years, but it always amuses me when I get further confirmation of it: virtually every artist, musician, or painter I admire has, shall we say, issues of some sort. (Of course, most of the human race has issues of some sort, but that's another matter.)

Caravaggio, the Baroque genius and one of the most innovative, talented, technically and artistically proficient painters--and definitely one of my top three or four--of all time, was a rogue, a misfit, a rebel, and a criminal; the bad boy of Baroque.

Unlike many great artists, whose work was not appreciated until years, if not centuries, after their deaths, Caravaggio was much in demand and considered a genius during his lifetime. Like lots of spoiled celebrities of today, he did not handle success or fame well: he spent lavishly, bragged relentlessly, and was conceited, arrogant, and difficult to get along with. He lived hard and died young. But that's where the similarities between him and today's "bad boy" celebrities ends. Caravaggio was immensely gifted, and incredibly influential. His skill, particularly with light and shadows is, in my opinion, unequaled.
He took chances in ways no other artist would have dared. His Death of the Virgin, for instance, which was completed in 1603 (also the year Queen Elizabeth I of England died) and is housed in the Louvre (reason enough to visit France), portrayed the Virgin Mary barefoot, bloated, in rigor mortis, and supposedly modeled after a prostitute with whom Caravaggio was involved--much too realistic (and too vulgar) for the time and for the commission (it was, after all, commissioned by the Church). Still, it is a riveting, disturbing, and emotionally moving painting--and is, of course, infused with dramatic light and shadows.

Even if art is not your thing, Caravaggio is an artist whose subjects--not to mention his techniques, his shadows, light, folds, pleats, creases, and textures--you can look at for ages and never see them the same way twice. He's changed the way I look at art of all kinds.