The Inspiration of Saint Matthew

Caravaggio trained in Milan and arrived in Rome with nothing, painting fruit and boys with flowers for dealers until a cardinal took him up. The commission that changed everything was the Contarelli Chapel, finished around 1600. Nobody had lit a religious scene like that before. He worked without preparatory drawings, straight onto primed canvas, with models pulled off the street. Saints have dirty feet in his pictures. Clients occasionally refused delivery on those grounds. He was also violent. There are court records for assault, for throwing a plate of artichokes at a waiter, for carrying a sword without a licence. In 1606 he killed a man over what may have been a wager and fled Rome with a price on his head. The last four years were spent on the run through Naples, Malta and Sicily, painting fast and getting darker. He died in 1610 on the coast north of Rome, aged thirty-eight, trying to reach a pardon that had already been granted.