Guide Tour by Leonardo Catucci ( Scuderie del Quirinale - Roma ) - 8 May 2010
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) (1571–1610) and his Followers

Trained in Milan and active in Rome (1592–1606), Naples (1606–7; 1609–10), Malta (1607–8), and Sicily (1608–9), Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610) was one of the most revolutionary figures of European art. His practice of painting directly from posed models violated the idealizing premise of Renaissance theory and promoted a new relationship between painting and viewer by breaking down the conventions that maintained painting as a plausible fiction rather than an extension of everyday experience. In early work such as The Cardsharps (ca. 1594; Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth), Caravaggio appropriated a scene of street life—a gullible, well-dressed youth being taken in by professional cheats—and, by abstracting it against a plain background and focusing on the expressions and actions of the various figures, gave it an artistic as well as moral interest.


The analogy is with contemporary popular theater. This much-copied picture was purchased by Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, who gave Caravaggio quarters in his palace and promoted the artist, securing for him his first ecclesiastical commission—the crucial step to fame.
Source: Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) (1571–1610) and his Followers Thematic Essay Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Caravaggio's two canvases, the Calling of Saint Matthew and the Martyrdom of Saint Matthew (San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome), were unveiled in 1600, and established his reputation. The combination of figures in contemporary dress inhabiting a religious scene was not new, but the impression the picture made of an event from the distant past unfolding before the viewer's own eyes was unmatched. Caravaggio pushed the figures up against the picture plane and used light to enhance the dramatic impact and give the figures a quality of immediacy. These devices were much imitated. As a contemporary critic noted, "a characteristic of this school [of painting] is to use a focused light source from high up, without reflections, as though in a room with a [single] window and the walls painted black. In this fashion the lit and shadowed areas are very light and very dark and give enormous three-dimensionality to the painting, but in an unnatural fashion neither done or even conceived before by such artists as Raphael, Titian, Correggio, or others." What was at issue was not a descriptive naturalism, but a provocative insistence on the physical reality of the scene portrayed.


This new approach to painting was sometimes at odds with the function of the altarpieces as the focus of devotional practice. Should a depiction of the death of the Virgin emphasize the theological importance of the event and show the Madonna as the ageless mother of Christ, as worshippers had come to expect, or should it emphasize the physical reality of death—as Caravaggio's painting seemed to do (Death of the Virgin, Musée du Louvre, Paris)? Should Christ's burial be depicted as a tragic drama or as a sacred event? Much of Caravaggio's work, such as his spellbinding Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, reveals the artist dealing with these crucial issues. In his last paintings, such as The Denial of Saint Peter (1997.167), he revealed the psychological rather than merely physical dimension of the narrative.
Source: Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) (1571–1610) and his Followers Thematic Essay Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Caravaggio's key Italian propagator was Bartolomeo Manfredi, whose gambling and drinking scenes (Bacchus and the Drinker, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome), and gypsy fortune tellers were widely imitated. Caravaggio's art was particularly popular among foreign painters in Rome—the Dutchmen Hendrick ter Brugghen (56.228) and Gerrit van Honthorst, the French painters Valentin de Boulogne (Fortune Teller with Drinkers, Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, and The Luteplayer, (2008.459) and Nicholas Tournier, and the Spaniards Juan Bautista Maino and Jusepe de Ribera (copies of his work may have been known by Velázquez [14.40.631] and Zurbarán. Through them, Caravaggism became an international movement and one of the keystones of Baroque painting.


Source: Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) (1571–1610) and his Followers Thematic Essay Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Urbis Salvia, roman town of the Regio V (Picenum) was probably founded in the first half of the first century B.C. in a site where were not found any traces of settlements previous to the Roman time, even if the surroundings are full of Picene remainings.
As it happened in the Roman habit, the reasons for the foundation of the town are to be sought in its strategic position: at the crossroad of two important roads, the one linking Firmum (Fermo ) to Septempeda (San Severino Marche) and the road that via Ricina (Villa Potenza) lead from Asculum (Ascoli) to Auximum (Osimo).
Urbs Salvia was a municipality under the Republican period and it became a Colony under Augustus. It was part of a tribe named Velina.
Its colony status is confirmed by two inscriptions found on the outer walls of the Anphytheatre during the excavations. During the first half of the first century B.C. the town was at its greatest splendour. By that time many important descendants of some famlilies coming from the territory of Urbs Salvia, had taken over in key positions in Rome and contributed with many donations to the artistic development of the town.
After the town was destroyed by the Barbarians in the sixth century A.C., it was abandoned and for defensive reasons the people went to settle on the hilltop where Urbisaglia stands today.
This prevented that the ruins of the old Roman town were completely replaced by the new settlement. In this way Urbs Salvia has reached the present days as the most important archaeological site of the region, in a landscape not very dissimilar from the ancient one.
Urbisaglia was founded by the survivors of the destroyed roman city who settled on the surrounding hills giving birth to the "Castro di Orbesella".


In the thirteenth century the town was dominated by the Abbraciamonte family. Gualtiero Abbraciamonte in 1195 gave Villamagna to Matteo and Forte Offone.
This deed was the cause of all the future evils. In 1199 Matteo and Forte Ottone gave Villamagna to Tolentino.In 1213 Gualtiero gave Tolentino also his share of the Castle of Urbisaglia.


This was an habit that even all Gualtiero'sons were to take: they all gave away their share of the Castle. The first was Rosso in 1252, than his son named Rosso as well in 1290, Gualtiero in 1293 and again in 1296 Silimbene di Marino. The action of complete submition was accomplished by Fildesmido. The great Urbisaglia under the dominion of Tolentino, fell in awful conditions. Even Dante in the "Paradise" (chant XVI) writes of the town decadence:

Se tu riguardi Luni ed Urbisaglia
Come sono ite, e come se ne vanno
Di retro ad esse Chiusi e Sinigaglia,
Udir come le schiatte si disfanno
Non ti parrà nuova cosa né forte,
Poscia che le cittadi termine hanno.

For a century and a half the people from Urbisaglia bore the tirany of Tolentino, until 1436, when they passed under the more acceptable Lordship of Elena Tomacelli, the niece of Bonifacio V, and the wife of Taliano Furlano, a captain of mercenary troops.


Once the Lordship of Francesco Forza (of whom Furlano was a captain) in the Marche region was over, the town of Urbisaglia was restored to the rule of Tolentino. This lasted until 1569, when the noble Giulio Fedeli from Macerata could take possession of the town for the Apostolic See.
In 1696 the peace was established between the towns of Urbisaglia and Tolentino.