A Set Of Popular Italian Painters

By Darren Hartley


Early Caravaggio paintings were paintings of flowers and fruits, including Boy Peeling a Fruit, also known to be the earliest of Caravaggio paintings, Boy with a Basket of Fruit and Young Sick Bacchus. They demonstrated physical particularity, an aspect of Caravaggio realism, for which he became famous for.

Michelangelo Merisi o Amerighi da Caravaggio was an Italian artist who was active in Rome, Naples, Malta and Sicily. The first of Caravaggio paintings with more than one figure was The Fortune Teller. It carried the theme that was quite new for Rome, that of Mario Minniti, a 16 year old Sicilian artist, being cheated by a Gypsy girl. The theme proved to be immensely influential over the next century and beyond.

The Cardsharps, an example of the more psychologically complex Caravaggio paintings was considered the first true Caravaggio masterpiece. It featured a boy falling prey to card cheats. Other Caravaggio paintings followed suit, namely, The Musicians, The Lute Player, a tipsy Bacchus and Boy Bitten by a Lizard. These paintings became a center of dispute among scholars and biographers due to the homoerotic ambiance they carried with them.

The first Caravaggio paintings on religious themes were a return to realism and showed an emergence of remarkable spirituality. These paintings included Penitent Magdalene, Saint Catherine, Martha and Mary Magdalene, Judith Beheading Holofernes, Sacrifice of Isaac, Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy and Rest on the Flight into Egypt.

Raphael paintings celebrated perfection and grace with serene and harmonious qualities. Raphael Sanzio was an Italian High Renaissance painter and architect. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he formed the traditional trinity of great masters of the period.

The 3 phases and 3 styles to which Raphael paintings fall naturally are Raphael's early years in Umbria, a 4 year period of absorption of the artistic traditions of Florence and his last triumphant but hectic 12 years in Rome.

Early Raphael paintings included a brilliant self-portrait drawing showing Raphael's precocious talent. Their technique showed thick paint application with the use of an oil varnish medium, in shadows and darker garments, but thin paint application on flesh areas.

The Baronci altarpiece for the church of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino was the first documented work among Raphael paintings. In the following years, Raphael paintings consisted of painted works for other churches. Among these large works, some done in fresco, are the Mond Crucifixion, the Brera Wedding of the Virgin and Oddi Altarpiece.

Small and exquisite cabinet Raphael paintings during the period included the Three Graces and St. Michael. There was also the beginning of Madonna and portrait paintings among Raphael paintings in the same period.




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