Caravaggio's Life

“Nec Spe, hec meto, without hope and without fear” was the famous motto of Michelangelo Caravaggio noted by Schama in his film, Simon Schama’s Caravaggio. This statement was Caravaggio’s life in five words; although bold and brash these words were steadily held true. Caravaggio was a man of vexation and it often was expressed with acts of hostility and violence. There could be many reasons for the artist’s estranged life, one being that his father and grandfather died during a critical part of Caravaggio’s development as a young child leaving him without the important figure of a male or it could have been because of the death of his mother leaving him and his siblings to go separate ways and develop a life of their own. Independent of the cause of the artist’s behavior his art was what most displayed his displaced emotional, rebellious, and irrational mental
His paintings were of sinners and Jesus was never cast in the illumination of light, but instead intertwined in the darkness of the sinners. This portrayal of Jesus blending into the sinners of the earth and not painting him as a heavenly saint shows even the sinners of that time that Jesus was with them and they too are capable of forgiveness. This forgiveness for his sins is what Caravaggio himself strived to possess and it is a constant reoccurring theme in his paintings. Much like the artists of the Northern Renaissance Caravaggio’s art was extremely melancholic and daunting. Caravaggio being rebellious did not wish to show the beauty or idealism in art like that many of his predecessor and competitors. Overall, Caravaggio’s art to me was a cry for help and a way to channel his aggression. I was not surprised that the struggles Caravaggio endured were much the same as the struggles faced in today’s modern era. There are people everyday that suffer from various forms of mental