(Michael Angelo da), a celebrated painter, born at Caravaggio, a village in Milan, in 1596. He was at first only a day-labourer: but having seen some painters at work upon a wall which he helped. helped to raise, he was so charmed with their art, that he applied to the study of it; and made so considerable a progress in a few years, that he was admired at Rome, Venice, and other parts of Italy, as the author of a new style in painting. Upon his first going to Rome, he was compelled by his necessities to paint flowers and fruit, under Gioseppino; but growing tired of that subject, and returning to histories, he made use of a method quite different from that of Gioseppino, and followed nature as much too closely as the other departed from her, by imitating her defects as well as her beauties. Thus cramping his invention, he understood but little either of design or decorum in his compositions: he had however as good a gift in colouring as he had a bad one in design. His pieces are to be found in most of the cabinets of Europe; and there is a picture of his drawing in the Dominican church at Antwerp, which Rubens used to call his master.