Canalside

K minus 1.  Just a few last minute tasks and one final proper meal to cook before the current kitchen is removed tomorrow.

Caravaggio's full name was Michelangelo Merisi, from the small town of Caravaggio in Lombardy, near to Milan.  Aged 21 he moved to Rome in 1592 and soon took up with a crowd of rough and tough individuals, living a dissolute and at times violent life.  Already recognised as a talented painter, he started to do what we might today call "marketing" himself.

One of his early paintings was Sick Bacchus (1593-4) in which the usually vibrant and cherubic Roman god of agriculture, wine and fertility is presented as a very ill looking, jaundiced wreck. The model for this work was Caravaggio himself.  It is understood that at that time he had been ill with malaria. It is one of the earliest examples of what was to become known as his particular style, employing a strong single light source, shaping his subjects with light and shade, against a dark, blank background.