"Bodies and Shadows: Caravaggio and his Legacy" exhibit has opened at LACMA. Michelangelo Merisi was born in Milan, Italy in 1561. His parents were from the town of Caravaggio. He painted in a style that brought him commissions from the aristocracy and the Catholic Church. He is noted for his striking use of light and dark backgrounds enhancing the figures in the foreground. He included realistic details such as a peasant Virgin Mary with dirty feet.
He is known also for his ill temper. In 1606, a ball game turned into a fight and he killed someone. He fled from Rome to Naples and then Malta where he was involved in another brawl thus escaping back to Naples. He died from the fever in 1610.
His style of painting was so powerful that he was copied by artists from all over Europe. The exhibit has about a half a dozen paintings by Caravaggio and dozens more by other painters of the era who used his style.
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| "Smoker" by Dirck van Baburen, Utrecht, Netherlands, 1623 |
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| "Herodias Carrying the Head of Saint John the Baptist," by a French Artist 1625-30 |
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| "The Magdalen with the Smoking Flame," 1636, by Georges de La Tour, France |
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| Self Portrait as Bacchus by Caravaggio |
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| "The Denial of Saint Peter," by Gerard Seghers, Antwerp, Belgium, 1620-25 |
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| "Herodias with the head of St. John the Baptist," Caravaggio, 1610 |
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| Diego Velazquez "Apostle Saint Thomas," 1619, Seville, Spain |
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