Caravaggio

Born Michelangelo Merisi, Caravaggio arrived in Rome in his early twenties. He used ordinary people from the streets as models and combined them with violent contrasts of light and dark, making religious painting more real and startling than ever before.

He was violent and often in trouble with the law; in 1606 he killed a man and fled Rome, spending his last years on the run in Naples, Malta and Sicily. He died at thirty-eight on his way back to Rome. His style spread across Europe, and his followers became known as the Caravaggisti.