On May 28, 1606, the painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio stabbed another man, Ranuccio Tomassoni, during a brawl during a tennis match in Rome. Tomassoni was killed and the wounded Caravaggio received a death sentence, which could be carried out at any time by anyone. The already famous painter fled Rome for his life, beginning his travels through southern Italy and Malta, which were to alter his painting style and shape the history of Western art. He died in 1610 at the age of 38 during a desperate attempt to return to Rome.
Having been involved in several brushes with the law and serving jail time during his time in Rome - ultimately killing a man and coming close to death himself - Caravaggio brought his experiences in the underworld into his forced exile. But he also brought his notoriety as a superb master of realism whose radical departure from the popular mannerist style had won him the favor of nobles, cardinals and others influential in the art world. After a brief period in hiding in the estates of the Colonna family south of Rome, Caravaggio traveled to Naples, then capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and ruled by Spanish viceroys.
Naples in the Time of Caravaggio
In 1606, Naples was one of Europe's largest and wealthiest cities - cosmopolitan and international, its people possessed a fierce individualism that remains to this day. Its population was three times that of Rome and was continuing to grow. Architecturally, the city was exploding with the construction of imposing baroque palaces for the wealthy and noble, and an ever-expanding warren of squalid slum dwellings where the lazzaroni or underclass lived.
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