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.
Caravaggio
Caravaggio's sexuality also received early speculation due to claims about the artist by Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau. Writing in 1783, Mirabeau contrasted the personal life of Caravaggio directly with the writings of St Paul in the Book of Romans, arguing that "Romans" excessively practice sodomy or homosexuality. The twenty-sixth verse of the first chapter contains the Latin phrase: ""Et fœminæ eorum immutaverunt naturalem usum in eum usum qui est contra naturam."" The phrase, according to Mirabeau, entered Caravaggio's thoughts, and he claimed that such an "abomination" could be witnessed through a particular painting housed at the Museum of the Grand Duke of Tuscany – featuring a rosary of a blasphemous nature, in which a circle of thirty men ("turpiter ligati") are intertwined in embrace and presented in unbridled composition. Mirabeau notes the affectionate nature of Caravaggio's depiction reflects the voluptuous glow of the artist's sexuality. By the late nineteenth century, Sir Richard Francis Burton identified the painting as Caravaggio's painting of St. Rosario. Burton also identifies both St. Rosario and this painting with the practices of Tiberius mentioned by Seneca the Younger. The survival status and location of Caravaggio's painting is unknown. No such painting appears in his or his school's catalogues.