an eminent painter, born at Caravaggio in the Milanese in 1492. He went young to Rome, where he worked as a labourer in preparing flueco for the painters; and was so animated by seeing them at work in the Vatican, that he solicited some of them to teach him the rules of designing. He attached himself particularly to Maturino, a young Florentine; and a similarity in talents and taste producing a disinterested affection, they associated like brothers, laboured together, and lived on one common purse, until the death of Maturino. He understood and practised the chiaro-scuro in a degree superior to any in the Roman school: and finished an incredible number of pictures both in fresco and in oil, few of the public buildings at Rome being without some of his paintings. Being obliged to fly from Rome when it was stormed and pillaged, he retired to Messina, where he obtained a large sum of money with great reputation, by painting the triumphal arches for the reception of Charles V. after his victory at Tunis: and when he was preparing to return to Rome, he was murdered, for the sake of his riches, by his Sicilian valet with other assassins, in the year 1543.