The Greek sculptor Demetrios was so captivated with resemblance that it gave him more pleasure to imitate things than to represent their beauty. It was the same for Michelangelo Merisi, who admitted no other master than the model itself and did not favour the most beautiful forms. It is surprising to note that without cultivating artistic style, he managed to make art emerge. The village of Caravaggio in Lombardy, where the artist was born, witnessed his growing reputation. Caravaggio was also the home of the famous painter Polidoro, and both painters devoted themselves in their youth to the art of the fresco and had to confront the technical difficulties posed by the use of lime or plaster.
As Caravaggio worked with his father, who was a mason, he often had to prepare the plaster for painters who painted frescos and, seized by the desire to use colour too, he followed them and dedicated himself to this style of painting.
He developed his craft over four or five years, a period during which he dedicated himself to painting portraits. Thereafter, because of his quarrelsome temperament, he was accused of being involved in brawls and had to flee from Milan, where he was studying. He went to Venice where he was able to study the palette of Giorgione which would inspire him thereafter. It is for this reason that in his first works, he offered us soft and pure colours not yet darkened by the effects of shadow he would use in his later work. And among all the Venetian painters who excelled in the art of colour, Giorgione was the best, using a limited number of colours to represent natural forms, and it was this manner of painting that Caravaggio borrowed when he began representing nature at the beginning of his career. Once in Rome, with no patrons, protection, or recommendations and with no means, he was unable to employ a model, and a model was indispensable for his painting.