Caravaggio
Michelangelo Merisi (Michele Angelo Merigi or Amerighi) da Caravaggio (, , ; 28 September 1571 – 18 July 1610) was an Italian painter active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily from the early 1590s to 1610. His paintings combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, which had a formative influence on Baroque painting.
Leonello Spada
Whether Spada either met or became an assistant of Caravaggio, like Manfredi, is unclear. The biographer Malvasia makes plain in his "Felsina pittrice" his distaste for Caravaggio, and apparently describes Spada and Caravaggio as equally "dissolute" and "precipitous"; and there are suggestions that for Caravaggio, Spada was a man "close to his heart", and perhaps not metaphorically.
Malvasia also tells the story of Spada posing for Caravaggio's ‘’Death of John the Baptist’’: afraid that Spada might flee and, that without a model the painting would be incomplete, Caravaggio imprisoned him in a room until he had finished. However, it is unclear if Spada ever physically encountered Caravaggio in Rome. Spada supposedly was in Rome after 1608-9, when Caravaggio had fled to Malta. Malvasia suggests the Spada followed Caravaggio to Malta. This is possible since Spada himself painted frescoes in the Magisterial palace of Valletta in 1609-1610; but Caravaggio again had fled to Sicily by 1608, thus their overlap in Malta must have been short. The dark violence of a painting such as the "Cain Killing Abel" (Museo di Capodimonte) and his derivative realism "Musical Concert" garnered him in Bologna, the maligning appellation of "scimmia del Caravaggio" (ape of Caravaggio).