Michelangelo Caravaggio Biography:
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, revolutionary naturalist painter, was born in Caravaggio near Milan, the son of a mason. He showed his talent early and at the age of sixteen, after a brief apprenticeship in Milan, he was studying with d'Arpino in Rome. During the period 1592-98 Caravaggio's art, prints and posters were precise in contour, brightly colored, and sculpturesque in form, like the Mannerists, but with an added social and moral consciousness. By 1600 when he had completed his first public commission the St. Matthew paintings for the church of San Luigi dei Francesi, he had established himself as an opponent of both classicism and intellectual Mannerism.
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