Michelangelo Merisi, a genius named Caravaggio
Caravaggio was born in Milano in 1571. His family moved to Rome a few years later.
Formatives years of young Michelangelo Merisi are still covered by shadows uncertainties. Caravaggio had been working for about eight years in Giuseppe Cesari’s workshop, the last exponent of the late Roman Mannerist culture.
In this period Caravaggio painted flowers and fruits compositions: works considered at the time of little significance, but very much in demand on the market practiced especially by Flemish. His working relationship with Cesari was interrupted soon and Caravaggio decided to work by himself. Before getting into relationship with cardinal del Monte, he painted “some pictures from him in the mirror portraits”. This is Baglione’s opinion, a famous art critic. It’s about a technique remembered mostly from the sources regarding the instance of some Nordic artists.
The reflection in the flat mirror circumscribes the fragment of nature and allows us to better understand its relationship with the atmosphere in terms of light and shadow.
Compositions of mythological-allegorical character have been attributed to this practice (with allusions to the transience of life or youth or to disillusionment), as the Ragazzo con la canasta di frutta (Galleria Borghese, Roma), the Bacchino Malato (Galleria Borghese, Roma) and the Ragazzo morso da un ramarro (Uffizi, Firenze).
In these paintings Caravaggio represents, with passionate adhesion to the optical and natural "truth" of the image, figures of adolescents in attitudes sometimes taken from ancient or Michelangelo models, with flowers, basket fruits and crystal decanters.
