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This master of dramatic darkness was of course Michelangelo Merisi o Amerighi da Caravaggio. Waldemar Januszczak, Baroque! – From St Peter’s to St Paul’s I, BBC 2013
Caravaggio’s art was so tangible, so vivid, so cinematic, that the Roman clergy … found him a challenge. ibid.
Caravaggio: Supper at Emmaus c.1601. Arena: Sister Wendy and the Art of the Gospel, BBC 2012
Of all the great artists Caravaggio seems to speak most intensely to the modern world. A man whose art seems obsessed with sexuality and sensuality, youth and beauty, fear and violence, loneliness and intense self-awareness. He lived a brief and tumultuous life, mocking authority, even murdering a man. Great Artists with Tim Marlow s1e17: Caravaggio, Sky Arts 2003
The painting which caught the eye of the Roman art world and announced the dramatic arrival of a new talent was this one called The Card Sharps. It’s a piece of theatre on canvas. ibid.
His [Caravaggio’s] death has fuelled conspiracy theories ever since. (Artists: Caravaggio & Conspiracies) ibid.
He left a body of work that has had perhaps more influence on Western painting over the last four-hundred years than any other single artist. ibid.
Caravaggio is on the run again ... This time it’s different; this time he’s wanted for murder. Simon Schama’s Power of Art: Caravaggio, BBC 2006
This was Caravaggio’s Rome: cheap rooms and drunken nights ... Make something sacred out of the lives of the sordid. ibid.
Even his closest friends couldn’t work out how the painter of religious marvels and the psycho could inhabit the same person. ibid.
Sick and sober by what he’s done Caravaggio makes paintings. ibid.
Caravaggio gives us death twice over: The Death of John the Baptist, and the death of our most cherished illusion about art: that it can make us finer, more humane. Dream on, says Caravaggio. ibid.
David and Goliath: It’s a self-portrait unlike any painted before ... Decapitated head is Goliath, a bloody grotesque, a monster ... Here is Caravaggio who is the embodiment of wickedness ... The two sides of the painter painted here. ibid.
The remains of one of the greatest artists of all time: one who had turned the art of painting on its head, and then disappeared without trace. Masterpieces: Caravaggio’s Masterpiece, Sky Arts 2012
He courted controversy by portraying religious scenes in contemporary settings. ibid.
For him light was the key to everything. ibid.
In Caravaggio’s time lenses were not so reliable. ibid.
He painted five explicit beheadings. ibid.
Caravaggio [is] the first artist in history whose paintings seem directly concerned with his own life. Ten years before Shakespeare invented Hamlet, Caravaggio painted Saint Francis in solitary dialogue with a skull. Caravaggio introduced soliloquy into painting at the same time that Shakespeare perfected it in drama. John T Spike
There was art before him and after him, and they were not the same. Robert Hughes, art critic Time magazine
Never before had an artist presented religious drama as contemporary life ... Nor had any earlier painter dared to break so dramatically with long established studio traditions, painting his figures from nature, directly onto the canvas, with complex effects of studio lighting. It was the figures having been painted from life that most fascinated Caravaggio’s contemporaries. Helen Langdon, Caravaggio: A Life
Caravaggio’s revolution was to treat biblical and mythological subjects with realism. He completely eschews idealization. That runs completely counter to the tradition of his day. He is also a very great storyteller. He’s brilliant at digesting the stories and picking the moment that encapsulates the story. (Artists: Caravaggio & Story) Dawson Carr, curator of Caravaggio Retrospective at National Gallery London
What begins in the work of Caravaggio is, quite simply, modern painting. Andre Berne-Joffroy
Caravaggio: The Basket of Fruit is recognised as the first major work of Western still life. Apples, Pears and Paint: How to Make a Still Life Painting, BBC 2014
Caravaggio was a bisexual murderer with major anger management issues … but if he acted like a devil he painted like an angel. Simon Schama, Civilisations V: The Triumph of Art, BBC 2018
Bernini arrived in Rome in 1605 just at the time Caravaggio’s punchy street dramas were electrifying the Church. Giving it a new vision of how to move the flock. Simon Schama’s Power of Art: Bernini
Caravaggio fled to Sicily in the seventeenth century. Andrew Graham-Dixon & Giorgio Locatelli, Sicily Unpacked 2/3, BBC 2012
Carivaggio vanished from his rock-cut cell and from the island of Malta. Bettany Hughes’ Treasure of the World s1e2: Malta, Channel 4 2021