Caravaggio: ett liv mellan ljus och mörker

Abstract

In 1592, the 21-year-old Michelangelo Merisi of Caravaggio, "a stout youth with a thin black beard, strong eyebrows and dark eyes", came to Rome with the ambition of becoming the city's foremost painter. The description fits well with the many self-portraits found in his paintings - everything from a seductive Bacchus to the severed heads of Medusa and Goliath. Other models were his friends among painters, poets, prostitutes, soldiers, workers and craftsmen. They were faithfully reproduced in the contemporary settings of Rome and wore the clothes of the time even when he painted historical, biblical or mythological scenes. In Caravaggio's paintings, we often see the people and events surrounded by a shifting darkness that arises through a light, which often comes obliquely from above. In the same way, he himself seemed to live in a shifting obscurity between light and darkness. His character was described as haughty, sarcastic, violent and quarrelsome, but also daring and fearless. Caravaggio was forced to flee Rome after killing an opponent. His "guardian angel" Marquise Costanza Colonna of Caravaggio and her powerful nobility helped him to the Spanish Kingdom of Naples where he was celebrated and later on to the Republic of the Knights of Malta where his dream of becoming a Knight of Malta was fulfilled. After further acts of violence, Caravaggio had to flee again, this time to Sicily and then back to Naples. In the summer of 1610, he began a final journey which he believed would lead to Rome.