Polidoro Caldara da Caravaggio
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Polidoro Caldara da Caravaggio (Caravaggio, 1495 or 1492 – Messina, 1543) was a mainly decorative painter of the early Renaissance, known best for his work in the Vatican. Most commonly known as Polidoro da Caravaggio.
[edit] Bigography
His merits were such that, while a mortar-carrier (non-artisan laborer), he attracted the admiration of Maturino of Florence, one of Raphael's main assistants in the ongoing decoration of the Vatican. He then employed to paint in the loggia of the palace. After the sack of Rome by the army of the Constable de Bourbon in 1527, Polidoro da Caravaggio fled to Naples, and from there to Messina, where he was much employed, and gained a considerable fortune. He was about to return to the mainland of Italy when he was robbed and murdered by an assistant, Tonno Calabrese, in 1543.
Two of Caravaggio's principal paintings are a Crucifixion, painted in Messina, and Christ bearing the Cross in the Naples Capodimonte Mueseum. His other works, as well as those of his life-partner, Maturino da Firenze, have mostly perished, but are well known by the fine etchings of PS Bartoli, C Alberti, etc. They were authors of the facade decoration in Graffito of several Roman houses, like those ones in Borgo and in Parione ( near Santa Maria della Pace and in Via del Pellegrino). In the gallery of the Palazzo Corsini, is a drawing of the History of Niobe.
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
- Polidoro (da Caravaggio) Caldara - Catholic Encyclopedia article
- Farquhar, Maria (1855). in Ralph Nicholson Wornum: Biographical catalogue of the principal Italian painters. Woodfall & Kinder, Angel Court, Skinner Street, London; Digitized by Googlebooks from Oxford University copy on Jun 27, 2006, page 34.
