Caravaggio’s Roman Period

Caravaggio’s Roman Period, within Paris’s Musee Jacquemart-Andre, focuses on 1592–1606, when Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio upended Roman painting with radical naturalism and sharp chiaroscuro. In works such as Judith Beheading Holofernes , saints and sinners share the same unforgiving light, turning biblical violence, repentance, and doubt into scenes of startling human presence. Shown in a former private mansion designed for close viewing, this section traces the Roman breakthrough that helped define the Baroque and reshaped European painting.