Michelangiolo Amerighi, or Morigi da Caravaggio, is memorable in this epoch, for having recalled the art from mannerism to truth, as well in his forms, which he always drew from nature, as in his colours, banishing the cinnabar and azures, and composing his colours of few but true tints, after the manner of Giorgione. Annibale Caracci extolling him, declares that he did not paint, but grind flesh, and both Guercino and Guido highly admired him, and profited from his example. He was instructed in the art in Milan, from whence he went to Venice to study Giorgione; and he adopted at the commencement of his career that subdued style of shadow, which he had learnt from that great artist, and in which some of the most highly prized works of Caravaggio are executed. He was however afterwards led away by his sombre genius, and represented objects with very little light, overcharging his pictures with shade. His figures inhabit dungeons, illuminated from above by only a single and melancholy ray. His backgrounds are always dark, and the actors are all placed in the same line, so that there is little perspective in his pictures; yet they enchant us, from the powerful effect which results from the strong contrast of light and shade. We must not look in him for correct design, or elegant proportion, as he ridiculed all artists who attempted a noble expression of countenance, or graceful foldings of drapery, or who imitated the forms of the antique, as exhibited in sculpture, his sense of the beautiful being all derived from visible nature. There is to be seen by him in the Spada palace a S. Anne, with the Virgin at her side, occupied in female work. Their features are remarkable only for their vulgarity, and they are both attired in the common dress of Rome, and are doubtless portraits, taken from the first elderly and young women that offered themselves to his observation. This was his usual manner; and he appeared most highly pleased when he could load his pictures with rusty armour, broken vessels, shreds of old garments, and attenuated and wasted bodies. On this account some of his works were removed from the altars, and one in particular at the Scala, which represented the Death of the Virgin, in which was figured a corpse, hideously swelled.