Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

The most revolutionary painter of the early Baroque. His blinding chiaroscuro — extreme contrasts of light and shadow — and his insistence on painting biblical figures as dirty-footed Roman plebeians shocked patrons and transformed European painting. He killed a man in a brawl (1606) and spent his last four years as a fugitive, dying at 38, pursued by a Papal pardon that arrived days after his death.

• Roles: Painter