3. Apprenticeship
Whether Caravaggio was sent to Milan because he was too unruly or not, 12 was a daunting age to make the move away from his family to a big city. He was sent to Milan to be apprenticed to a minor Milanese master, Simone Peteranzo. Although he was in no sense a famous artist, Peteranzo had been apprenticed himself to the great Titian in Venice, and so possessed considerable artistic pedigree. Peteranzo was chiefly known as a painter of frescos, a technique of painting a mural onto wet lime plaster, and Milan was full of examples of his work.
Peteranzo painted frescoes in churches, and so his work was chiefly religious in character. Although religious scenes were to be a dominant feature of Caravaggio’s own oeuvre, he never mastered the art of fresco painting, which perhaps suggests that he was not a particularly attentive student. It also seems that he fundamentally disagreed with Peteranzo’s Mannerist style, which was a highly stylised and unrealistic method of painting. Instead, he learned the realist style of the Lombard and Venetian schools, which was to characterise his later work. However, with Peteranzo he learned how to mix paint, choose brushes, and make frames.
An equally important influence on Caravaggio during his early years in Milan was the ferocious Archbishop Charles Borromeo. Borromeo was part of the Counter-Reformation, and believed that the Catholic world had fallen in to sin. Thus he preached fire-and-brimstone sermons, and favoured the direct message of the realist art that Caravaggio preferred over the works of Peteranzo and his Mannerist peers. Borromeo had a near-monastic love of poverty and humility, and preached that the poor were the image of Christ who needed to be helped. Caravaggio’s many depictions of the poor may stem from this aspect of Borromeo’s message.