Caravaggism

Caravaggism refers to the international current of painting that followed Caravaggio's dramatic style after his death in 1610, spreading through Rome and then to Naples, Utrecht, Spain and France over the following decades. Its defining device is tenebrism, an extreme contrast of light and shadow that models forms with a single, often unseen light source, combined with an unidealized, sometimes startlingly plebeian naturalism in figure types drawn from ordinary models rather than classical ideals. The Utrecht Caravaggisti, including Gerrit van Honthorst and Hendrick ter Brugghen, carried the style north into the Dutch Republic, where it shaped Rembrandt's early chiaroscuro, while Jusepe de Ribera and Diego Velazquez extended it in Naples and Spain. Though never a formal school with a manifesto, the shared visual language of Caravaggism marks one of the most widely imitated painting styles of the early seventeenth century.