Caravaggio

Caravaggio was an Italian painter active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Trained in Lombardy, he developed a naturalistic style marked by dramatic contrasts of light and shadow, a technique later termed tenebrism, and used ordinary people as models for religious subjects. His commissions included altarpieces for Roman churches. In 1606 he fled Rome after killing a man in a brawl, working thereafter in Naples, Malta, and Sicily while seeking a papal pardon. During his Sicilian sojourn he produced major altarpieces in Syracuse, Messina, and Palermo before returning to Naples. He died in 1610 at Porto Ercole on the Tuscan coast. His work strongly influenced Baroque painting across Europe.