caravaggio went out into rome's streets and put people he found there in his paiings.e came to rome from northern italy in the last decade of the 16th century. a range, violent, driven man, he was in permanent revolt against authority. caravaggio was always in trouble with police. he killed a man in a quarrel and fled the city. he was a carouser and a libertine and painted himself that way. but the way he painted religious subjects was as shocking to his contemporaries as his behavior. he painted saint peter as a confud and frigened old man... the virgin, in life, a neighborhood housewe. the virgin in death he painted as a swollen, careworn corpse. the painti was rejected by monks who commissioned it. never had they seen the virgin mary represented as dead rather thaing. caravaggio was relli against idealized dections such as this conversion of saint paul by taddeo zuccaro. this was the conventional way in which divine intervention on earth was portrayed, like a fabulous dream, but caravaggio sought to draw the beholder in, to make the worshiper a participant in the dr

caravaggio placed miraculous events in a familiar, naturalistic setting. velazquez fused the real and the mythological to create a new psychologically penetrating reality. in the forge of vulcan, he chooses the moment when the god apollo tells vulcan that his wife venus is making love to mars, the god of war. velazquez combines theatrical gesture with the astonished faces of real workmen, set in an authentic forge. he quickly became a favorite portrait painter of king philip. as court painter, velazquez would make a portrait of one of the royal family. assistants then made copies, which were sent to foreign courts. this was an important part of the diplomatic process and the business of finding marriage partners for royal offspring. secure in his position as court painter, velazquez turned his attention to formal and painterly innovation. in his portraits of jesters and dwarfs, velazquez was free to experiment. he understood that paintings made according to the classical rules produced something other than what the eye sees. the eye cannot focus simultaneo