| He was born in Milan on September 28, 1573.
His parents, Fermo Merisi (c. 1540-1577) and Lucia Aratori (died 1590),
had been married on January 14 of that year, and he was the first of
their four children. For several generations the Merisi family
had lived in the small Lombard town of Caravaggio, about equidistant
from Cremona, Brescia, and Bergamo; probably the artist adopted that
town name as his own when he went to Rome. His father worked as a builder
for the marchese of Caravaggio. Until Caravaggio was five, he
lived with his family in Milan, where the marchese maintained his principal
residence. But by 1576 he had been sent back home to Caravaggio
to escape the menace of the plague in the city. The rest of the
family followed the next year, and in October the boy’s father died.
Michaelangelo grew up in the town of Caravaggio. The family was neither poverty-stricken nor without some standing. The father had been a favorite retainer in the marchese’s household and had left considerable property in around the town of Caravaggio. His brother Ludovico was a priest in Rome and his second son, Giovanni Battista, studied theology at the Jesuit college there before being appointed subdeacon to the bishop of Bergamo in 1599. Caravaggio's artistic education began in April. 1584, when he was apprenticed to Simone Peterzano (active 1573-96), a competent Milanese painter who was moderately successful but so undistinguished that he would scarcely be remem- bered except for his pupil. Peterzano signed himself as a follower of Titian, but his style was as much Lombard as Venetian. In 1585 he was in Rome, and his young apprentice might have accompanied him, although no trace of such a visit has been discovered. Apprenticeship to an artist followed a long-established tradition, and there is no reason to suppose that Caravaggio’s was exceptional. He surely learned how to draw and to paint in oil and fresco; he would also have been taught anatomy -Disposition: form-data;and perspective, the representation of space, light, and shadow and the manipulation of color. When Caravaggio completed his apprenticeship, in 1588, he was seventeen years old, too young to expect to set up his own atelier. Docs pertaining to the family property place him in the town of Caravaggio annually from 1589 to 1592, but it was too small to provide a bright young artist much support, of much to interest him. So it is likely that he traveled in Lomvardy and the Veneto, even as far as Venice, as Bellori reported, picking up whatever jobs and commissions he could. On May 11, 1592, final division of Caravaggio’s parents’ estate was made, his mother having died in 1590. His share was 393 lire imperali,, a sum large enough to support him quite comfortably for a year or two. He must have taken it and set off for Rome, No attempt has ever been made to trace his route. Most travelers followed the ancient Via Emilia from Milan through Parma to Bologna, over the mountains to Florence, and then either through Siena or Arezzo to Rome. The Spanish painter Jusepe de Ribera was to follow this route in 1616, and probably Caravaggio did the same. Milan was a notably lawless city, and the adolescent artist may have acquired there the taste for violence and the disdain of authority that were to mar his adult years. Early in 1608 Caravaggio went to Malta and was received as a celebrated artist. Fearful of pursuit, he continued to flee for two more years. After receiving a pardon from the pope, he was wrongfully arrested and imprisoned for two days. A boat that was to take him to Rome left without him, taking his belongings. Misfortune, exhaustion, and illness overtook him as he helplessly watched the boat depart. He collapsed on the beach and died a few days later on July 18, 1610. |
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