Caravaggio[88] had carefully studied the impressionistic manner of late Titian but finally adopts a harsh and resolute chiaroscuro with the light restricted and the canvas mostly black. Thus his modelling is both brutal and academic. His real fight was with the nobility of Raphael. His saints are taken from the streets and often from the gutters. He loves character above all, and wants it proletarian. Within his chosen limitations he is a powerful and sincere artist. His masterpieces are the Entombment in the Vatican, and the Death of the Virgin in the Louvre, Figure 309, which created so much disapproval that it had to be removed from its altar. Both pictures take the theme out of the realm of legend, making it drastic and contemporary. Both, while rejecting all grandeur in the figures, preserve the tradition thereof in the composition. One gets Caravaggio in epitome in The Peter denying his Lord of the Vatican. Figure 311. It is a powerful character study from low life. Indeed character is his watchword. One finds it extravagantly over-emphasized in his famous pothouse and gambling scenes, a revolutionary innovation. The most famous and one of the best is The Card Players, at Dresden, Figure 312. It is the symbol of the painter’s love of low life. He killed his man in a duel, and died himself when turned out of prison into the August sun. Before that fitting end he had fled to Naples where amid the corruption of the Spanish overlordship his proletarian ideals became generally contagious. They were taken up eagerly by the Valencian, José Ribera, who with an equal sense for character and a more genuine religious feeling transmitted the manner to Seville and eventually to Velasquez. So Caravaggio became the founder of the modern realistic and impressionistic schools, a precursor of Courbet and Manet. Except for a surplusage of too emphatic character studies, smiling and weeping philosophers, Ribera was a true and most skilful artist. Having no quarrel with an earlier grand style, he had the grace of simplicity. [Illustration: FIG. 311. Caravaggio. St. Peter denying his Lord.—_Vatican._ ] [Illustration: FIG. 312. Caravaggio. The Card Players.—_Dresden._ ]