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Caravaggio Painted the Supper at Emmaus Twice: What Changed
In 1601 Caravaggio painted the moment Christ is recognised at Emmaus with drama and bright colour. Five years later, after fleeing Rome, he painted it again, quieter and darker.
Caravaggio
1571–1610
Italian painter (1571–1610), born Michelangelo Merisi, whose dramatic light and realism transformed painting in Rome around 1600. His violent life ended in exile in 1610.
Michelangelo Merisi was born in 1571 in Milan and apprenticed to Simone Peterzano in 1584. He arrived in Rome around 1592 and from 1597 to 1601 lived in the household of Cardinal del Monte; in 1599–1600 he painted the Contarelli Chapel.1
In 1606 he killed Ranuccio Tomassoni and fled to Naples, then Malta in 1607 and Sicily in 1608–1609. He died at Porto Ercole on 18 July 1610.1
Sources
- 1Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi): biography. Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza
