Caravaggisti is a group of painters from Utrecht who travelled to Rome at the beginning of the 17th century and were profoundly influenced by the work of Caravaggio. On their return to the northern Netherlands, they developed these new artistic ideas into a style known as Utrecht Caravaggism. This trend had a short-lived but intense development that lasted from 1620 to 1630. The first generation and initiators were Hendrick ter Brugghen, Gerrit van Honthorst and Dirck van Baburen, who introduced Caravaggism into Utrecht painting circle 1620s with immediate success Such older painters as Abraham Bloemaert, Paulus Moreelse and even the Mannerist Joachim Wtewael were affected. The Utrecht Caravaggisti painted predominantly history scenes and genre pieces These are life-size paintings with economical and powerful compositions; the impact of the scene is heightened by contrasting areas of light and dark, and a small number of figures who are abruptly cropped so that they seem to be portrayed in close-up.
The Caravaggisti (or the “Caravagesques”) were stylistic followers of the 16th-century Italian Baroque painter Caravaggio. His influence on the new Baroque style that eventually emerged from Mannerism was profound. Caravaggio never established a workshop as most other painters did, and thus had no school to spread his techniques. Nor did he ever set out his underlying philosophical approach to art, the psychological realism which can only be deduced from his surviving work. But it can be seen directly or indirectly in the work of Rubens, Jusepe de Ribera, Bernini, and Rembrandt.
Famous while he lived, Caravaggio himself was forgotten almost immediately after his death. Many of his paintings were reascribed to his followers, such as The Taking of Christ, which was attributed to the Dutch painter Gerrit van Honthorst until 1990. It was only in the 20th century that his importance to the development of Western art was rediscovered. In the 1920s Roberto Longhi once more placed him in the European tradition: “Ribera, Vermeer, La Tour and Rembrandt could never have existed without him. And the art of Delacroix, Courbet and Manet would have been utterly different”. The influential Bernard Berenson stated: “With the exception of Michelangelo, no other Italian painter exercised so great an influence.”
History
Few artistic revolutions have been so explicit and striking. In the context of the Counter-Reformation, where the Council of Trent recommended a simpler and more legible painting than that of the artists of the classical Renaissance and mannerist, Caravaggio will have carried out, respecting its sponsors, a series of innovations which were almost successful immediate. Scholarly research, pursued since Roberto Longhi, has brought up a whole intellectual environment and a whole current of thought in which Caravaggio participated, through his family, his protectors, his relationships and his friends.
At Milan, he spent his youth in a family that keeps him informed of new ideas of Archbishop Charles Borromeo, which is inspired by the asceticism and mysticism of the 16th century, Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila and Philippe Néri. In Rome, Caravaggio, poet and musician at his hours, lives in a very cultivated environment and more or less directly involved in the Catholic Reformation. He listens to the debates that animate this environment, because let’s not forget that each important order, thought during many debates, is explained to the artist. He thus succeeds in respecting the expectations of Charles Borromée, the main initiator of this reform in Milan (the place of his apprenticeship), that is to say: the return to a simplified iconography which is moving while respecting theology. Much more he deepens the message by energizing his paintings by the symbolic intensity of the shadow, associated with misery and sometimes ugliness. He uses the dynamics of the bodies cut out in this shadow by the “divine light”.
The example, perhaps the most explicit, brings together, in the Vittrice chapel,, in Rome, the Conversion of Saint Paul (1600-1601) by light (eyes closed) and the inscription in the marble of the tomb for which the order had been placed at Caravaggio and which makes the deceased say these words: post tenebras spero lucem “, that” after the darkness (of this earthly life) I hope for the light “. With this religious context carrying precise orders Caravaggio knows how to draw, in the space of its artistic culture, the lessons of its predecessors who already refused conventions whose meaning no longer seemed relevant. Light treatment was a matter in the air. Some, such as Jacopo Bassano, from the middle of the 16th century, had chosen theluminism. But by its revolutionary sense of the sacred, Le Caravage replaces direct lighting, a metaphor for direct, mystical contact with the divine, for reflected and diffused light. It replaces a naturalistic vision focused on the world of men, the artifices of mannerism and all the overloads of color, the accumulation of accessories and the illusions of perspective that prevailed before.
This revolution then leads many artists to be inspired by it because it is based on a vast movement back to the study of nature: the initiator Michel-Ange but also the Bolognese and the Carrache academy, the school Lombard including Moretto and Vincenzo Campi, after the mannerist parenthesis. By focusing on human nature, his passions and his dramas, Caravaggio, seeming to compete with Michelangelo, went beyond all his contemporaries in radicalism and made the human body the subject, apparently unique because clearly visible, of his painting.
Caravaggio opens the way, through a meditative and intimate painting, to an anxious exploration of the soul (an approach that Rembrandt will pursue in the more austere context of Dutch Protestantism). Wanting to testify to human emotions, he seeks to make tangible the religious events which he will therefore represent as genre scenes. Humanizing sacred art, his raw vision and his intimate piety totally oppose the approach advocated during this period. Even if these paintings are sometimes refused, the artists and intellectuals of his time recognize him as an inventor of genius.
Freeing artists from Mannerist stereotypes and initiating a new approach to the physical reality of things, Caravaggio’s painting will spread rapidly and widely in Europe. Caravaggism is therefore not confined to a stylistic framework and can be compared to the references and the classic rigor of a Georges de La Tour as well as to the baroque emphases of Rubens.
Style
Caravaggists painted large paintings, in oil, on canvas. They preferentially dealt with religious themes, particularly the most violent and dramatic, such as the history of Judith and Holofernes, or the martyrdoms of saints. However, they adopted a realistic iconography, taking from nature the models of their saints and virgins. Few elements were added to the composition apart from the central character, but these elements (such as pots or baskets) were highly realistic.
This trend permeated the public, which in this way was better represented in the works, which incited piety; for this reason it became the first pictorial style of the Counter-Reformation. The risk, however, was in falling into excessive vulgarity, causing respect for these holy images to be partially lost, which caused, for example, some of Caravaggio’s works to be rejected by his clients.
In addition to this, gender charts were frequent, representing scenes from everyday life, such as taverns or card games. This trend led to works in which the picturesque prevailed, called bambochadas, being known the painters who made them with the term bambochantes, a word derived from the Italian Bamboccio (“stick figure”), nickname of the Dutchman Pieter van Laer. These painters represented street scenes starring popular characters such as gypsies or beggars. Although they used the tenebrist technique, the truth is that there is a certain concern for the landscape, absent in most of the works of this trend.
Less frequently, mythological themes and still lifes were cultivated.
The compositions are simple: the figures, represented in full size, half or full length, on a dark background. The most characteristic feature of this school is the use of chiaroscuro: they did not work the background, which remained in the dark, and they concentrated all their attention, with a very intense light, on the figures that occupy the foreground. This dramatic contrast was cultivated above all by Neapolitans and Spaniards, who are most often called tenebrists.
In Italian and Spanish paintings, light is of undetermined origin; on the other hand, in painters like Georges de La Tour or the Utrecht school, it comes from a specific source that appears in the painting. This introduction into the box of a visible light source is called luminism.
The predominant colors are red, ocher and black. It was applied directly, without preparatory sketch or previous drawing, which in Italian is called alla prima.
Stylistic evolution
A native of Milan, Caravaggio was formed there by Simone Peterzano but moved to Rome in 1592. Rome is indeed the great Italian artistic center where artists of all origins meet (Annibal Carrache is Bolonese, Simon Vouet is French, José de Ribera is Spanish, etc.) who come to debate at the Academy of Saint Luke (founded in 1593) and take advantage of the important religious patronage (popes and cardinals).
There are three periods in the art of Caravaggio:
La Manière claire: first Roman period between 1594 and 1600. You can still feel the Mannerist influence with a clear palette, a smooth and shiny finish. However, we observe the implementation of the caravaggesque scheme in the framing and composition (detailed in the following part). The Fortune Teller (c. 1595) kept at the Louvre is an excellent example. Note that this period is that of the creation of many subjects and themes that will experience great sustainability in Western painting.
The Black Manner: between 1600 and 1606, the role of light asserted itself and the play of contrasts with the development of “caravaggish chiaroscuro”.
The Wandering Period: between 1606 and 1610, where the bill became more and more vibrant and obscure. Sometimes called “caravaggish pietism”, the painter abandons his irony and his insolence probably because of the guilt which assailed him following a duel having turned to murder. This period seems marked by a search for divine absolution.
Note that the most recent research tends to relativize, even if it is undeniable, an evolution of his painting towards the dark.
Characteristics
The “caravaggesque scheme” was put in place very early. The compositions, mainly in width, present life-size characters, often cut to half-length. This organization allows, by the succession of shots, to create the illusion of depth without having to deal with the problem of perspective. In addition, the artist directly introduces the viewer to the scene. This seems even closer due to the neutral background. These artifices of composition which one observes in the table of the museum of the Louvre quoted above will be taken again by the majority of its imitators (except for Orazio Gentileschi).
Light is also an essential element of his compositions. First bathing the whole picture (The Fortune Teller, 1594, The Flight into Egypt, c. 1596), it tends to focus on certain areas creating a chiaroscuro contrast which gives an increasingly dramatic dimension to his works. Almost always outside the painting, the light bursts into the scene and guides the eye to the essential. Bringing a symbolic and spiritual dimension, it participates as much in the understanding of the scene as in its sacralization. Note that, in Caravaggio, the divine character of the characters is literally “brought to light” rather than represented by symbolic and artificial attributes. These two elements are very visible in the tableThe Vocation of Saint Matthew from the cycle of the Contarelli Chapel in Rome (1599-1600).
Reds, browns and blacks dominate. The color is applied alla prima, without preparatory drawing.
With regard to the themes treated, Caravage allows a renewal perpetuated by its imitators. We generally observe a double reading of his works, with a strong moral dimension. In order to achieve this goal, it searches for the archetype and frequently uses the same models. These two characteristics will diminish within the Caravaggio current, to tend towards a more anecdotal and decorative style, as illustrated by the works of Nicolas Régnier (Fortune teller, Louvre museum, 1626). Among the subjects represented by Caravaggio and taken up by the Caravaggesques, let us quote:
The Cheaters: a work by Caravaggio (preserved in Texas, 1595), two works by Georges de La Tour (a version in the Louvre, one in Texas).
The Lute Players and the Concerts: two lute players by Caravaggio (a version kept at the State Hermitage Museum and one at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1596), a version by Bartolomeo Manfredi (at the Hermitage, 1615), one version of Gentileschi (in Washington, 1615), as well as the numerous concerts of caravagists from the north (Le Concert par Gerrit van Honthorst, 1620, Louvre museum).
The Fortune Teller: two versions of Caravaggio (a version at the Louvre museum and a version at the Capitole museum), a version by Simon Vouet (1617, kept in Ottawa), one by Nicolas Régnier (1620, Louvre), one by Valentin de Boulogne (1628, Louvre museum) and a version by Georges de La Tour (1640, Metropolitan Museum of Art).
David winner of Goliath: three versions of Caravaggio (one in Madrid, one in Vienna and one in Rome), a version of Bartolomeo Manfredi (triumph of David, 1615, Louvre museum) and a version of Guido Reni (1606, museum of the Louvre).
Caravaggisti in Italian
Rome
At the height of his popularity in Rome during the late 1590s and early 1600s, Caravaggio’s dramatic new style influenced many of his peers in the Roman art world. The first Caravaggisti included Mario Minniti, Giovanni Baglione (although his Caravaggio phase was short-lived), Leonello Spada and Orazio Gentileschi. In the next generation, there were Carlo Saraceni, Bartolomeo Manfredi and Orazio Borgianni as well as anonymous masters such as the Master of the Gamblers. Gentileschi, despite being considerably older, was the only one of these artists to live much beyond 1620, and ended up as court painter to Charles I of England. His daughter Artemisia Gentileschi was also close to Caravaggio, and one of the most gifted of the movement, including the work Judith Slaying Holofernes. Yet, in Rome and in Italy, it was not Caravaggio, but the influence of Annibale Carracci, blending elements from the High Renaissance and Lombard realism, which ultimately triumphed. Other artists active in Rome, worth mentioning, include Angelo Caroselli, Pier Francesco Mola, Tommaso Salini and Francesco Buoneri. Giacinto Brandi was active mainly in Rome and Naples. Dutch painter David de Haen was active in Rome between 1615 and 1622.
Naples
In May 1606 after the killing of Ranuccio Tomassoni, Caravaggio fled to Naples with a death sentence on his head. While there he completed several commissions, two major ones being the Madonna of the Rosary, and The Seven Works of Mercy. His work had a profound effect on the local artists and his brief stay in Naples produced a notable school of Neapolitan Caravaggisti, including Battistello Caracciolo, Bernardo Cavallino, Carlo Sellitto, Massimo Stanzione, Francesco Guarino, Andrea Vaccaro, Cesare Fracanzano and Antonio de Bellis. Giacinto Brandi was active mainly in Rome and Naples. The Caravaggisti movement there ended with a terrible outbreak of plague in 1656, but at the time Naples was a possession of Spain and the influence of Caravaggism had already spread there.
Northern Italy
Marco Antonio Bassetti is known to have been in Rome in 1616, and may have arrived there two years earlier. In Rome he came under the influence of the paintings of Caravaggio and Orazio Borgianni. On his return to Verona he painted a St. Peter and Saints for the church of San Tomaso and a Coronation of the Virgin for Sant’ Anastasia. He died from the plague in Verona in 1630.
Bernardo Strozzi, born and mainly active in Genoa and later Venice, is considered a principal founder of the Venetian Baroque style. In the 1620s Strozzi gradually abandoned his early Mannerist style in favor of a more personal style characterized by a new naturalism derived from the work of Caravaggio and his followers. The Caravaggist style of painting had been brought to Genoa both by Domenico Fiasella, after his return from Rome in 1617–18, and by followers of Caravaggio who spent time working in the city.
Italian painter Biagio Manzoni was active in Faenza. Italian painter from Reggio Emilia Bartolomeo Schedoni, Daniele Crespi from Milan and Luca Cambiasi, also known as Luca Cambiaso and Luca Cangiagio, the leading artist in Genoa in the 16th century, often depicted brilliantly lit figures set against a dark background. Felice Boselli, active in Piacenza, used contrast Caravaggisti lighting for his still-lifes. Tanzio da Varallo (or simply il Tanzio) was active mainly in Lombardy and Piedmont, including the Sacro Monte at Varallo Sesia, where he worked contemporaneously with Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli (il Morazzone). The Italian painter and engraver Bernardino Mei worked in his native Siena and in Rome, finding patronage above all in the Chigi family.
Central Italy
Pietro Ricchi (or il Lucchesino), born in Lucca, also often depicted brilliantly lit figures set against a dark background (see St. Sebastian).
Sicily
Mario Minniti was an Italian artist active in Sicily after 1606. He, at the age of 16, even posed for Caravaggio’s painting Boy with a Basket of Fruit.
Caravaggisti in Dutch
The Netherlands Institute for Art History lists 128 artists labelled “Caravaggisten”. Dutch painter David de Haen was active in Rome between 1615 and 1622. Another artist worth mentioning is Paulus Bor, who initially painted rather Caravaggisti-like history paintings, but his works fast became marked by a classicism related to that of his townsman van Campen. Abraham Lambertsz van den Tempel is worth mentioning for his realism and contrasting lighting. Flemish born painter Frans Badens was active in Amsterdam.
Utrecht
In the early 17th century Catholic artists from the Netherlands travelled to Rome as students and were profoundly influenced by the work of Caravaggio. On their return to the north this group, known as the “Utrecht Caravaggisti”, had a short-lived but influential flowering in the 1620s among painters like Hendrick ter Brugghen, Gerrit van Honthorst, Andries Both and Dirck van Baburen. The brief flourishing of Utrecht Caravaggism ended around 1630, when major artists had either died, as in the case of Baburen and Terbrugghen, or had changed style, like van Honthorst’s shift to portraiture and history scenes informed by the Flemish tendencies popularized by Rubens and his followers. In the following generation the effects of Caravaggio, although attenuated, are to be seen in the work of Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Gerrit Dou’s “niche paintings”.
Caravaggisti in Flemish
Rubens was likely one of the first Flemish artists to be influenced by Caravaggio. During the period 1600-1608, Rubens resided in Italy. He settled in Mantua at the court of Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga but also spent time in Rome. During his stay in Rome in 1601 he became acquainted with Caravaggio’s work. He later made a copy of Caravagio’s Entombment of Christ and recommended his patron, the Duke of Mantua, to purchase The Death of the Virgin (Louvre). Rubens was after his return to Antwerp instrumental in the acquisition of Caravagio’s Madonna of the Rosary (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) for the St. Paul’s Church in Antwerp. During his stay in Italy Rubens broadened his interest in Caravaggio’s work to include the 1606 Supper at Emmaus in Milan (Pinacoteca di Brera) and the 1600 The Calling of St Matthew as well as the more recent work in the Santa Maria in Vallicella and the Basilica of Sant’Agostino.
Although some of this interest in Caravaggio is reflected in his drawings during his Italian residence, it was only after his return to Antwerp in 1608 that his works show openly Caravaggesque traits such as in the Cain slaying Abel (1608-1609) (Courtauld Institute of Art). However, the influence of Caravaggio on Rubens’ work would be less important than that of Raphael, Correggio, Barocci and the Venetians. Artists, who were influenced by Rubens, such as Pieter van Mol, Gaspar de Crayer and Willem Jacob Herreyns, also used certain stark realism and strong contrasts of light and shadow, common to Caravaggisti style.
Rubens’ contemporary Abraham Janssens was another Flemish painter who travelled to Italy (from 1597 to 1602) where he became acquainted with the work of Caravaggio. His work after his return to Antwerp shows the influence of Caravaggio. The composition Scaldis and Antwerpia of 1609 derives its expressive power from the use of strong contrasts of light and shadow (chiaroscuro) as was pioneered by Caravaggio.
It is mainly the Flemish artists from the generation after Rubens coming on the art scene in the 1620s who were most influenced by Caravaggio. It can even be said that there was a Caravaggist craze in Flanders from about 1620 to 1640. The artists are often referred to as the Ghent Caravaggisti and the Antwerp Caravaggisti after the city in which they were principally active. There is, however, no discernible stylistic distinction between these two movements other than individual ones. Among the Ghent Caravaggisti can be listed Jan Janssens, Melchior de la Mars and Antoon van den Heuvel. The list of Antwerp Caravaggisti is significantly longer reflecting the importance of this city as the pre-eminent artistic centre of Flanders. They include Theodoor Rombouts, Gerard Seghers, Jan Cossiers, Adam de Coster, Jacques de l’Ange and Jan van Dalen.
In Bruges, Jacob van Oost painted genre and history paintings showing the influence of the work of Caravaggio and Manfredi whose work he had studied in Rome. Some Flemish Caravaggisti left their homeland for Italy where they were influenced by the work of Caravaggio and his followers and never returned home. This is the case of Louis Finson of Bruges who after stays in Naples and Rome spent most of his career in France. Another example of an expatriate Flemish Caravaggist is Hendrick de Somer of Lokeren or Lochristi who spent most of his life and career in Naples where he painted in a Caraviggist style influenced by the Spanish painter Jusepe de Ribera.
What most of these artists shared in common is that they likely visited Italy where they had first-hand contact with the work of Caravaggio or his Italian and Dutch followers. The influence of Caravaggio and his followers on their work can be seen in the use of dramatic light effects and expressive gestures as well as the new subject matter such as card sharps, fortune tellers, the denial of St Peter, etc. Some of the artists focused on certain aspects of Caravaggio’s oeuvre. For instance, Adam de Coster was referred to as the Pictor Noctium (painter of the nights) because of his preference for the use of stark chiaroscuro and the repeated motif of half-length figures illuminated by a candle which is covered.
Many of these artists such as Rombouts, Cossiers and Seghers later abandoned their strict adherence to the Caravaggist style and subject matter and struck out in different directions often under the influence of the older generation of Flemish artists who had such a dominant influence on Flemish art in the 17th century, i.e. Rubens and van Dyck.
Caravaggisti in French
One of the first French artists to studio in Rome during the Caravaggio Years was Jean LeClerc, who studied under Saraceni during the early 17th century. Simon Vouet spent an extensive period of time in Italy, from 1613 to 1627. His patrons included the Barberini family, Cassiano dal Pozzo, Paolo Giordano Orsini and Vincenzo Giustiniani. He also visited other parts of Italy: Venice; Bologna, (where the Carracci family had their academy); Genoa, (where from 1620 to 1622, he worked for the Doria princes); and Naples.
He absorbed what he saw and distilled it in his painting: Caravaggio’s dramatic lighting; Italian Mannerism; Paolo Veronese’s color and di sotto in su or foreshortened perspective; and the art of Carracci, Guercino, Lanfranco and Guido Reni. Vouet’s success in Rome led to his election as president of the Accademia di San Luca in 1624. Despite his success in Rome, Vouet returned to France in 1627. Vouet’s new style was distinctly Italian, importing the Italian Baroque style into France. Other French artists enamored by the new style included Valentin de Boulogne, who was living in Rome by 1620, and studied under Vouet and later Boulognes pupil Nicolas Tournier.
Georges de La Tour is assumed to have travelled either to Italy or the Netherlands early in his career. His paintings reflect the influence of Caravaggio, but this probably reached him through the Dutch Caravaggisti and other Northern (French and Dutch) contemporaries. In particular, La Tour is often compared to the Dutchman Hendrick Terbrugghen. Louis Finson, also known as Ludovicus Finsonius, was a Flemish Baroque painter, who also worked in France.
Caravaggisti in Spanish
Francisco Ribalta became among the first followers in Spain of the tenebrist style. It is unclear if he directly visited either Rome or Naples, where Caravaggio’s style had many adherents, although through its Naples connection Spain was probably already exposed to Caravaggisim by the early 17th century. His son Juan Ribalta, Vicente Castelló and Jusepe de Ribera are said to have been his pupils, although it is entirely possible that Ribera acquired his tenebrism when he moved to Italy. The style garnered a number of adherents in Spain, and was to influence the Baroque or Golden Age Spanish painters, especially Zurbarán, Velázquez and Murillo.
Even the art of still life in Spain, the bodegón was often painted in a similar stark and austere style. Orazio Borgianni signed a petition to begin an Italianate academy of painting in Spain and executed a series of nine paintings for the Convento de Portacoeli, Valladolid, where they remain. Giovanni Battista Crescenzi was an Italian painter and architect of the early-Baroque period, active in Rome and Spain, where he helped decorate the pantheon of the Spanish kings at El Escorial. He rose to prominence as an artist during the reign of Pope Paul V, but by 1617 had moved to Madrid, and from 1620 on, he was active in El Escorial. Philip III of Spain awarded him the title of Marchese de la Torre, Knight of Santiago. His pupil Bartolomeo Cavarozzi was active in Spain.
Developments
Luminism
The Luminism at the end of the first half of the 17th century is a Caravaggio whose peculiarity lies in the accentuation of light in the atmosphere calm the table. The colors become warm with the light source. Its main representatives are Georges de La Tour in France and Gerrit van Honthorst in Holland; Genoese Luca Cambiaso is the forerunner.
Darkness
In Darkness, appeared around 1610, the contrasts of light and shadow are more violent, the effect is darker. The Tenebrosi movement, grouped for the most part in this great artistic center that is Seville in the “Golden Age”, is represented by José de Ribera (1591-1652) or Mattia Preti (1613-1699), perhaps influenced by the Neapolitan Battistello Caracciolo, one of the first Italian caravageurs. Indeed, the kingdom of Naples was then under Spanish domination and the exchanges were numerous between the artists of the one and the other country. Francisco de Zurbarán(1598-1664) adopted a Darkovist style which earned him the nickname “Spanish Caravaggio” in its first period. Francisco Ribalta (1551-1628) illustrated himself in Valence in religious paintings where the influence of Caravaggio is very noticeable.
The Spanish painters Juan Sánchez Cotán (1560-1627) and Juan van der Hamen (1596-1631), specialists in still lifes called bodegones, assimilate the lessons of Dutch painting and caravaggism.