Title:
The passions of Caravaggio: a fictional account of the baroque artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, based on his paintings
Author:
Denise Weeks
Committee Member:
Devin Laib
Degree Granting Institution:
Notre Dame of Maryland University--School of Arts, Sciences, and Business
Place:
Baltimore (Md.)
Publisher:
Loyola University Maryland
Date Created:
2005
Type of Resource:
text
Genre:
thesis
Language:
eng
Format:
application/pdf
Physical Form:
electronic
Digital Source:
born digital
Abstract:
The opposite of love is not hate, it is apathy. Love encompasses many human passions, and conversely, lack of love or affection creates soulless voids. A person, who loves deeply, knows lust, excitement, joy, bliss and happiness as well as anger, jealousy, fear and hate. Apathy is an existence without feelings. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was an artist who was not with feelings. The fires in his life emitted great works of art. This story will focus on the passions of the baroque artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. I will write with his passion towards his art, the passion for the women in his life, the passion for the men in his life; and his ultimate passion for respect, as the underlying story. Caravaggio was a troubled man and had many erratic and violent encounters in short life, he was only thirty-nine at the time of his death. Even for so short a life, to cover all the highlights of his life would probably read as an epic novel, with no less than 500 pages. Caravaggio had established a style with his paintings that many artists that followed emulated. Many of the Renaissance artists created paintings with perfect, idealized people in calm, balanced compositions, with harmonious colors and soft even lighting. Caravaggio led the charge of Baroque artists who created emotionally charged paintings with naturalistic portrayals (down to the dirty fingernails, 1 clothing and unwashed feet of the models) of real life events. They usually had a theatrical quality about them with deep shadows and light and dark emphasis. Caravaggio painted from models, which was unusual at the time. Most artists would sketch from models and then build their creations alone. Through research, I have discovered that most of his models can be identified as people that were intertwined in his life. Using some of Caravaggio’s paintings as a backdrop, my goal is to tell a story of a man, who may have felt abandoned as a child and how that played a part in his adult life. Caravaggio was orphaned as a child and sent to be an apprentice with a painter. Caravaggio’s temper and wild behavior is legendary. But there has to be a reason for the man he became, and I want to show that it was his constant search for a person that would not abandoned him. Ultimately, it was his paintings that would bring him his greatest comfort. This search would also lead him to sexual escapades of many approaches and styles; anything that would make him feel less alone. Also, I will show how his anger was not necessarily a bad thing; that sometimes his explosions would lead to major creative outputs. But this is fiction, and I will be taking creative license. Using found information (research) and created information (philosophy of a man in this environment with said history), my goal is to share a new perspective on the artist that many felt destroyed himself with rage. There are so many contradictory accounts of Caravaggio’s life, even down to the year of his birth (either 1571 or 1573), in collecting data, I have come to realize that Caravaggio could have been both a misguided and misunderstood 2 young man. It appeared that he did not established close relationships with many people, although there were many of great affluence, who felt a need to protect him. Caravaggio remained in and out of trouble because of his unpredictable behavior. This will be a novel; one that is not biographical in nature. Instead, the backdrop to this story will deal with Caravaggio’s issues of abandonment and ways that it influenced his art. Caravaggio was orphaned at a very young age and apprenticed with Simone Peterzano in Milan, a city known at that time for chaos and violence. At a young age, he learned to adapt to his environment. Caravaggio played many roles in his life, and many times he alternated them during the same occasion. Alasdair MacIntyre’s essay “After Virtue,” tells us that it is the sum of our individual experiences that helps to make the collective being. It is the unity of the many “selves” that establishes one’s true virtue. I will utilize MacIntyre’s perspective that the various components in one’s life, both negative and positive, intertwines and helps to create the “being” that we ultimately become. It is the history of the man that leads to his present existence. Man can never “be” without being affected by all that he encounters. This is how I will present Caravaggio: a man whose erratic behavior is not without reason, and whose drive is not without purpose.
Degree:
Master of Arts
Level:
Master
Discipline:
Contemporary Communication
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Identifier:
WeeksD-05