Caravaggisti & Anti-Caravaggisti
It seems that Caravaggio's three latest biographers - Helen Langdon, Peter Robb and Andrew Graham-Dixon - agree on at least two fundamental points :
1) That he during his short life managed to become the most admired and famed painter in Europe;
2) That he was an aggressive, violent and downright dangerous man, living in a very violent and dangerous city - Rome around 1600 being probably much more dangerous than Chicago in the 1920s. Which also meant, that some of them who admired him the most as a painter, at the same time were his fierce enemies personally.
So let's talk a bit about Caravaggisti (those who admired him as a painter and emulated his style and artistic methods) and Anti-Caravaggisti (those who for one or another reason hated his guts).
Caravaggisti
In the years immediately following his death 1610, the other first rate painters in Europe were strongly influenced by him; Diego Velazquez, Peter Paul Rubens and Pietro da Cortona were all under his spell.
Diego Velazquez
Peter Paul Rubens
Pietro da Cortona
Anti-Caravaggisti
Giovanni Baglione
Among the leading Anti-Caravaggisti Giovanni Baglione - who wrote the second of Caravaggio's biography not long after his death - was probably the best example of a person who seriously hated Caravaggio's guts, but at the same time was deeply influenced as a painter by his style and artistic methods.
The following painting is an allegory named Sacred Love versus Profane Love, and it has two versions of which I give you the one most interesting concerning Baglione's personal relations to Caravaggio. Look at the dark figure in the paintings lower left hand corner! It's a portrait of Caravaggio as the Devil, soon to engage in fucking the butt of a beautiful boy - and everything painted in strongly caravaggistic style!
Nicolas Poussin
Among fierce adversaries of Caravaggio's painting, few were more influential than Nicolas Poussin, who said that Caravaggio had come to the world to destroy painting!
Vicente Carducho
Carducho's criticism directly aimed at Caravaggio's relentless naturalism and sung eulogies on neo-platonist idealism in art. Caravaggios art wanted to show the world and the human beings as they actually were - with all their dirty feet, callous hand, all the violence and bloody mess BUT AT THE SAME TIME also so damn beautiful, sexy, cute, sweet etc.
But according to Carducho the purpose of art was to show what the world SHOULD BE, and he stated, that Caravaggio was the Anti-Christ of art! Tough shit!