Short-tempered, rude to waiters, sword-wielding and vicious.

By all accounts, Michelangelo Merisi, aka Caravaggio, was not the kind of man you’d want to spend time with. He was prone to starting fights; once, when a waiter couldn’t explain which of his artichokes had been cooked in butter, and which in oil, he threw the entire plate in his face.

Yet he painted the most compelling paintings. Dark, brooding, tenebrous works that used strong illumination contrasted with shade to create theatrical drama. His work pushed European painting forward by introducing a realistic style, created by using working-class models that appear carved in light. The virgins in his paintings were certainly not virgins in real life. And this ruffled feathers.

But it was in 1606 when Caravaggio caused his biggest stir. After getting into a brawl during a tennis match, he reached boiling point and killed a man.

This Baroque boy was about as bad as it gets. We’ll explore his life and a selection of his most dramatic works in this talk.

About the Lecturer

Stella Lyons

‘Without sacrificing scholarship, Stella Lyons has a most engaging way of hooking an audience into sharing her passionate interest in art history, drawing three dimensional human stories and experiences from the two-dimensional canvas’ – Maev Kennedy, writer and Arts correspondent for The Guardian

Stella Grace Lyons is a freelance Art History lecturer, speaker and writer accredited with The Arts Society. She has lectured across the UK, Ireland, Spain, Norway, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Malaysia and will soon embark on a lecturing tour in Australasia. Stella gained her BA in the History of Art with a 1st class in her dissertation from the University of Bristol (2007-2011), and her MA in History of Art from the University of Warwick. She spent a year studying Renaissance art in Italy at the British Institute of Florence, and three months studying Venetian art in Venice. In addition, she attended drawing classes at the prestigious Charles H. Cecil studios in Florence, a private atelier that follows a curriculum based on the leading ateliers of nineteenth century Paris. Stella runs her own Art History lectures both in person and online. She is a regular lecturer in the UK and Europe for The Arts Society, Tour companies, and the National Trust, amongst others. Stella is also a part-time lecturer for the University of South Wales. She has written about art for several publications and her article on Norwegian art was recently featured on the front cover of The Arts Society magazine. In addition to her lecturing work, Stella works as an artist’s model for the internationally renowned figurative artist, Harry Holland.