Artworks

Fortune Teller

 Year 1594

 Oil on canvas

 Dimensions 115 cm x 150 cm

 Location Musei Capitolini, Rome

-dates from the period during which caravaggio had left the workshop of the Giuseppe Cesari to make his own way selling paintings through the dealer Costantino.

-Caravaggio's revolutionary impact on his contemporaries

- began with The Fortune Teller

- which served as replacing art with a representation of real life.

We picked the painting The Fortune Teller because it was a painting that served as a way of life for Caravaggio. He would sell this painting to make a living at the time being. It also tells a great story. The woman in the paint is a fortune teller and if you look into the painting you can see how the boy is staring into the gypsy woman eyes but fails to notice she is taking the ring off of his ringer. We found this to be amusing that Caravaggio can capture so many emations, thoughts, and stories onto canvas.

Narcissus

• Year : 1597-1599

• Oil on canvas

• Dimensions : 43 in x 36 in

• Location : Galleria Nazionale d´Arte Antica

• The attribution of this painting to Caravaggio has been discussed at length, and it is still questioned by some scholars.

• This is one of only two known Caravaggios on a theme from Classical mythology.

• The painting conveys an air of brooding melancholy.

• Caravaggio tested with this artwork the infinite possibilities of light and shadow.

The reasons we choose this artwork is because it represents his intensely emotional realism and dramatic use of lighting. The essence of his works was the realism instead idealistic figures. Narcissus combines the physical and psychological reality Caravaggio was trying to reach. We can also appreciate the chiaroscuro style; darkening the shadows and transfixing the subject in a blinding shaft of light.

Source : The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH.