Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio) was born in 1571.He re-ceived his artistic training in Milan, in the circles of Lombard naturalism linked to the culture of nearby Veneto and influenced by Leonardo da Vinci investigations of natural phenomena, "motions of the mind" and the representation of expressions. In 1592 Caravaggio was in Rome where, in the art studio of the Cavalier d'Arpino, he painted flower paintings and fruit paintings, contributing in decisive fashion to the birth of a genre, the still life, that was to have a long and successful future. The painter's early works quickly attracted the attention of great collectors like Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, his first patron, and Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani. The Basket of Fruit in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, the Bacchus in the Uffizi and the Sick Bacchus in the Galle-ria Borghese date from his youth, as do the Rest on the Flight into Egypt and The Fortune Teller. At the end of the 16th century Caravaggio began, as a 17th-century biographer put it, "to strengthen the darks," in other words to accentuate the contrasts of light and shade, a transformation that was to culminate in the Scenes from the Life of Saint Matthew for the church of San Luigi dei Francesi, his first major religious commission. It was fol-lowed in 1600 by one for The Crucifixion of Saint Peter and The Conversion of Saint Paul for the Cerasi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo.
