Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571 - 1610)

• Was an Italian painter.
• Caravaggio trained as a painter in Milan before moving in his twenties to Rome. 
• His paintings combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting.
• During the final four years of his life he moved between Naples, Malta, and Sicily until his death.
• His paintings combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting.
• He was performing hack-work for the highly successful Giuseppe Cesari, Pope Clement VIII's favourite artist, "painting flowers and fruit" in his factory-like workshop. 
• In 1606 he killed a young man in a brawl, possibly unintentionally, and fled from Rome with a death sentence hanging over him. 
• In October 1609 he was involved in a violent clash, an attempt on his life, perhaps ambushed by men.
• Caravaggio had died of fever on his way from Naples to Rome.
• A poet friend of the artist later gave 18 July 1610 as the date of death, and a recent researcher claims to have discovered a death notice showing that the artist died on that day of a fever in Porto Ercole, near Grosseto in Tuscany.
• Human remains found in a church in Porto Ercole in 2010 are believed to almost certainly belong to Caravaggio.
• The displayed painting is a crop from: Saint Catherine of Alexandria, 1598/99.
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