Caravaggesque

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Resembling the dramatic chiaroscuro lighting and realistic, theatrical style associated with the Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio
2. Having the tenebrist contrasts of deep shadow and sudden light that characterize the work of the Baroque artist Caravaggio
3. Describing paintings or images that imitate the naturalistic, dramatically lit manner of the seventeenth-century Italian master Caravaggio

Etymology: Caravaggesque is simply Caravaggio plus the suffix "-esque", meaning "in the manner of". The painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610) is named after Caravaggio, the Lombard town near Milan where his family came from, so the name points to a place rather than to the artist's own surname. The suffix comes from Italian "-esco", which passed into English through French, and it has long been used to turn a proper name into an adjective describing a style, as in Kafkaesque or Dantesque. The term describes the painter's signature technique: dramatic contrasts of light and shadow, known as chiaroscuro, set against densely dark backgrounds, with figures pressed close to the viewer in raw, realistic detail. Any artwork showing these traits, whether by his followers or by later painters, can be called Caravaggesque.