In Rome there are 26 pictures by Caravaggio...

In Rome there are 26 pictures by Caravaggio, and another 7 which were attributed to him until recently. The twenty-year-old Michelangelo Merisi of Caravaggio, master of light and of the realistic portrayal of common people, came to Rome at the end of the sixteenth century. In his first years in Rome, Caravaggio led a miserable existence, until he entered the atelier of Giuseppe Cestari, Cavalier d'Arpino in 1593, where he began his adventurous career.

In order to have a better understanding of the period in which he operated and the incomprehension encountered by his works, we must remember that the Council of Trent had ended only a few decades earlier, and that the idea that science should be considered as a means of interpreting reality was still to be affirmed. The thirty-year-old Galileo Galilei was still to move to Rome, while protestant Kepler was constantly fleeing all over Europe on account of his ideas. On 17 February 1600, by order of the pope, the philosopher Giordano Bruno was burnt alive (see Iter 5) .

This was the period in which Caravaggio's works became ever more monumental and dramatic, including Crocifissione di San Pietro, Conversione di San Paolo, and Deposizione di Cristo. ( St Peter's Crucifixion , St Paul's Conversion and Deposition of Christ ). Caravaggio died violently and mysteriously on the coast at Porto Ercole in 1610.