ABSTRACT
No other Italian painter of the seventeenth century has Caravaggio's power and conviction. His heirs were the younger, perhaps greater painters of other countries: Rubens, Rembrandt, and to some extent Velázquez. Caravaggio was unusually dependent on his models, especially before 1606, yet his compositions are not particularly lifelike. He was not a true genre painter, and he never painted what he actually saw in the street, piazza, or tavern. Caravaggio began his career in Rome as a painter of mythology and allegory who was also concerned with still life and genre, interests that seem to have been encouraged by his first great patron, Cardinal Del Monte. The dominant themes of the paintings of the 1590s are often conveyed by effeminate boys who seem to be on sensuous display. The darkness of Caravaggio's paintings, which becomes night-like by 1600, may have several causes. It helped him to hide problems of composition, and the highlighting of foreground figures increased the drama.
