450th Birthday of Caravaggio

Caravaggio's 1593 painting 'Fanciullo con canestro di frutta' (Boy with a Basket of Fruit) depicts the sixteen-year-old Mario Minniti (1577–1640), who modelled for many of Caravaggio's early works. Above the design, the issuing state 'CITTA’ DEL VATICANO'; to the left, the mint mark of the Rome Mint; below, the commemorative inscription 'CARAVAGGIO' and '1571 – 2021', along with the initials of designer Uliana Pernazza and the abbreviation of Chiara Principe.

Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio after his birthplace in Lombardy, was born in 1571 in Milan or nearby Caravaggio and died in 1610 under unresolved circumstances in Porto Ercole. In barely four decades, he fundamentally transformed European painting: his use of extreme light-and-dark contrasts — known today as chiaroscuro or, in its most radical form, tenebrism — and his turn towards realistic, unidealised figures broke with the Mannerist conventions of his time. This break appears in concentrated form especially in his early works in Rome, created in the 1590s. Works such as Boy with a Basket of Fruit, which depicts Mario Minniti as its model and is now housed in the Galleria Borghese in Rome, already reveal his unmistakable approach: physicality, light as drama, no idealisation.

Caravaggio's influence was immediate and far-reaching. His visual language shaped Artemisia Gentileschi, Gerrit van Honthorst, José de Ribera and, indirectly, even Rembrandt — a network of imitators and successors that stretched from Naples and Malta to the northern Netherlands. The Vatican, which holds several of Caravaggio's original works in its churches, including The Calling of Saint Matthew in the Contarelli Chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi, has a direct connection to the artist's work. In 2021, Italy — and with it the international art world — celebrated the 450th anniversary of Caravaggio's birth, an occasion the Vatican marked with its own issue.