Michelangelo merisi da caravaggio biography books

The Italian painter Caravaggio () depicted insolent boys and rough peasants in the guise of Roman gods and Christian saints. They are often portrayed as if emerging out of darkness, with part of their faces and bodies strongly illuminated.

Michelangelo Merisi is called Caravaggio after the tiny town in Lombardy where he was born on Sept.

8, His father, Fermo Merisi, who was a master builder for the local lord, died in , and the young boy was apprenticed to Simone Peterzano, a mediocre painter in Milan.

Michelangelo merisi da caravaggio biography books

Caravaggio's contract with Peterzano ran until April He probably stayed on in Milan for another year, studying the paintings in his native Lombardy. By about he was in Rome.

During Caravaggio's first year in Rome he was desperately poor.

For a brief period he worked for a certain Pandolfo Pucci, whom he called "Mr. Salad" since he said that was all Pucci ever gave him to eat. We know too that during his first years in Rome Caravaggio worked in the studio of Giuseppe