Caravaggism Essay

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Caravaggism was a style created by Caravaggio that includes characteristics such as tenebrism, chiaroscuro, and dramatism. Tenebrism is the different shades of light used in paintings. Chiaroscuro is the extreme contrasts between lightness and darkness. Caravaggism imposed a dramatic view on its paintings as it showed the point of death or an attack rather than showing what happened after or before. This style originated in Italy during the Baroque period. This style was created as a result of the Counter Reformation and the Council of Trent, which set guidelines to which Baroque paintings were supposed to follow. The Counter Reformation was an era in which the church relied on religious orders like the Jesuits to guide them. The Council of Trent created these rules to help spread their art ideas and to influence other periods to come. In Caravaggio’s painting of The Martyrdom of Saint Mathew he uses a violent contrast of light to keep the eye of the viewer on the subject of the painting. Caravaggio uses his own experience of suffering to portray the scene with painful of realism; the painting makes you focus as the angel is coming down and sweeping Saint Mathew away. Caravaggio also influenced other painters such as Gentileschi, which through her painting Judith and Holofernes, shows elements of Caravaggism as it shows the dramatic point in which Holofernes is being beheaded. She also shows influence of Caravaggio in the dark background and the dramatic effect of light on the three figures in the

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