Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, more commonly known just as "Caravaggio" (1571-1610) was one of the greatest pioneers in painting despite his brief and controversial existence. His very personal conception of art and his dark personality explains, to a certain extent, why he chose to surround himself with only unskilled workmen and why he refused any painters interested in and influenced by his work. He did not therefore establish a school as such. However, the power of his art, on display in churches and on the walls of famous contemporary aristocratic collectors in Rome, indelibly influenced all his peer artists living in the eternal city.
Among his main admirers were Bartolomeo Manfredi, Orazio Gentileschi (1563-1639) and Carlo Saraceni (1579-1620). Apart from characters taken from the streets of Rome, it was the very idiosyncratic atmosphere in Caravaggio's paintings that contemporaries sought to emulate; the dark backgrounds, the interplay of glances, the violence of the martyrdom scenes that we see in the King David writing the psalms (London, Walpole Gallery). Some of Tournier's works were thus even mistaken for those of the master himself, such as the The dice players housed in Attingham Park.
None however attained the degree of depth and humanity of the master. All the satellite painters inexorably tended towards a lighter more Classical style. The Caravaggesque era that touched the whole of Europe lasted no longer than twenty after Caravaggio's death.
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