Caravaggio’s Artwork Judith Beheading Holofernes

For this essay, you needed to decide on a painting, Sculpture and other selected types of art work by which ever artist that created them before the 1900’s.Select a topic out of the selection given to do research about the topic and art work to complete the essay. The art work I have selected is Caravaggio’s Judith Beheading Holofernes.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was from Milan and had not a great upbringing in his youth. His father was an architect in Milan. The Caravaggio family had fled Milan in 1576 due to the plague hitting the city but Fermo Merisi his father didn’t survive. He did an apprenticeship under Simone Peterzano for four years and it is seen that in Caravaggio’s earlier works of art that there was influence in his works from Simone Peterzano. Caravaggio had learned a great amount working in the studio and had left Milan to go to Rome.

Caravaggio was great artist and was famous for some of his unpleasant pieces of art work but he was also quite a violent man, would get into street fights, drinking also he was arrested for walking around with a sword without having a permit then he was brought to court for an alteration with a waiter, prison because he threw stones at police. Caravaggio had killed a man in 1606 and it was thought they had a disagreement on a tennis match but a later historian said they could have possibly been fighting over a women so it led to Caravaggio getting the death sentence from the pope and ran away to avoid the sentence.

Caravaggio’s work can be easily identified because of the darkness in his paintings from the dark dull background to what’s happening in the foreground when he messed with the light and the realistic forms. The official term is chiaroscuro which is an Italian phrase for the difference in the light (chiar) and the dark (oscuro) in an art piece also had a way of extending the painting in the viewer’s space and also his work was always oil on canvas.

It was believed that many artists including Caravaggio used optics to get a more correct and more realistic image on their paintings but with an x-ray it is shown that Caravaggio did not use optics to make his paintings more realistic. Compared to many other artist who did a rough sketch before painting to get an idea of composition, Caravaggio did not do any of that, went straight away with the paint and with his first layer of paint he made indications before continuing on with his work. Also used the end of his brushes to remove paint to make an effect that something is raised.