Caravaggio received only one commission to paint for St Peter's and the work was rejected.
There are also abundant strong works by Caravaggio followers from Utrecht, including Hendrick ter Brugghen.
The central figures are two plumed boys, types we associate with Caravaggio's early secular pictures.
WSJ: The Calling of St. Matthew | A Dramatic Enlightenment | Masterpiece by Willard Spiegelman
From left to right, Caravaggio's pictures depict that life: Matthew summoned, Matthew writing, Matthew murdered.
WSJ: The Calling of St. Matthew | A Dramatic Enlightenment | Masterpiece by Willard Spiegelman
The influence of Caravaggio, though he had died 20 years earlier, was still strongly felt.
The lush pattern "Caravaggio, " based on a 17th-century Italian motif, upholsters walls throughout the exhibition.
WSJ: The Rich Pleasures of Pleats | Fortuny | Spanish Institute | By Laura Jacobs
The picture had been destined for the Caravaggio blockbuster that opened at London's National Gallery last month.
Appropriately, it also houses the largest number of Caravaggio's pictures in the world.
WSJ: The Calling of St. Matthew | A Dramatic Enlightenment | Masterpiece by Willard Spiegelman
The lofty, classic dimensions have been softened and lent quirkiness with moth and thistle carpets and blowsy Caravaggio murals.
Caravaggio's artistic style, self-taught and hugely inventive, is instantly recognisable stark, vivid and naturalistic, with emphasis on light and shadow, or chiaroscuro.
Do not neglect to nip in to nearby San Luigi dei Francesi (Piazza San Luigi dei Francesi), to see its Caravaggio paintings.
Caravaggio's art responded to the city's brutal beauty with a new harshness.
Like Borromini, but to a far greater extent, he has suffered in comparison with another artist: in his case, with his immediate predecessor, Caravaggio.
The background of the painting is mostly dark, which art historians say was probably because Caravaggio was in a hurry to complete the commission.
But the reason why art historians are so fascinated is the conviction that Caravaggio was one of the most original and influential of all painters.
One thing is certain: Caravaggio has become big business, a 17th-century Van Gogh whose mystique draws in visitors who are not normally interested in art.
To see Caravaggio's brushwork up close, head to the Borghese Gallery.
WSJ: The Calling of St. Matthew | A Dramatic Enlightenment | Masterpiece by Willard Spiegelman
Cardinal del Monte, Caravaggio's patron, for whom he'd previously painted mostly secular pictures of androgynous boys, got him a commission for his first major religious work.
WSJ: The Calling of St. Matthew | A Dramatic Enlightenment | Masterpiece by Willard Spiegelman
Caravaggio has begun here to master what became one of his celebrated hallmarks, the use of chiaroscuro (light and shadow) for both theatrical and formal effects.
WSJ: The Calling of St. Matthew | A Dramatic Enlightenment | Masterpiece by Willard Spiegelman
In them, he pleaded for the contemporary vitality of painting that was spatially expansive and dramatic, like the art of the Baroque, particularly his beloved Caravaggio.
Highlights include the Sistine Chapel, featuring Michelangelo's famed ceiling fresco series and "Last Judgment, " works by Raphael, da Vinci, Caravaggio, and ancient wonders from Rome and Egypt.
This can be seen most strongly in these later works in which Caravaggio identifies so clearly with the darker fears and desires of the classic bible stories.
Martin Scorsese cites Caravaggio as an essential influence, both because of his lighting and because he painted religious subjects based on people he knew from the streets.
He suggests studying the role of violence through history instead or analysing why the knife-carrying Baroque painter Caravaggio is still valued as an artist despite his frequent brawling.
In the Contarini Chapel the picture hangs under a real window whose light, depending on the time of day, does to the painting exactly what Caravaggio's light does within it.
WSJ: The Calling of St. Matthew | A Dramatic Enlightenment | Masterpiece by Willard Spiegelman
That simple summons and the astonished response to it are dramatized in "The Calling of Matthew, " one of a trio of paintings by Michelangelo Merisi, called Caravaggio after his native town.
WSJ: The Calling of St. Matthew | A Dramatic Enlightenment | Masterpiece by Willard Spiegelman
Caravaggio came to Rome, a young man, in 1592.
WSJ: The Calling of St. Matthew | A Dramatic Enlightenment | Masterpiece by Willard Spiegelman
"During this period of his life, Caravaggio was forced to finish his paintings very quickly, and therefore he refined his technique in order to achieve this objective, " said restorer Anna Maria Marcone.
Once in Naples, Caravaggio fitted in like a native, embracing the metropolis that was three times the size of Rome, riven by extremes of wealth and poverty, light and dark, palazzi and shantytowns.
Should we care that Caravaggio was a killer?
WSJ: The Betrayal of Art by Artist-Vandals | Postmodern Times by Eric Felten
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