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.
Amor Vincit Omnia (Caravaggio)
Sandrart described "Amor" as "A life size Cupid after a boy of about twelve...[who] has large brown eagle's wings, drawn so correctly and with such strong colouring, clarity and relief that it all comes to life.". Richard Symonds, an English visitor to Rome about 1649/51, recorded the Cupid as being "ye body and face of his (Caravaggio's) owne boy or servant thait (sic) laid with him". The Italian art historian Giani Pappi has put forward the theory that this Cecco may be identical with Cecco del Caravaggio ('Caravaggio’s Cecco'), a notable Italian follower of Caravaggio who emerged in the decade after the master’s death. While this remains controversial, there is more widespread support for Pappi's further proposal that Cecco del Caravaggio should be identified as an artist known as Francesco Boneri. Cecco Boneri, if this is his name, appears in many of Caravaggio's paintings, as the juvenile angel supporting Christ in "The Conversion of Saint Paul", (1600–1601) possibly as the angel offering a martyr's palm to the saint in "The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew" (1599–1600) (although seen only as the top of a curly head of hair), as the young Isaac about to have his throat cut in "The Sacrifice of Isaac" (1603), as an adolescent David in "David with the Head of Goliath (Caravaggio, Rome)" (ca. 1610 – the head is Caravaggio's), and as the John the Baptist now in the Capitoline gallery in Rome.