San luigi italy

Michelangelo, Caravaggio's father, was the first of the three children born to his father, Fermo Merisi, and mother Lucia Aratori, who married in the same year as Caravaggio's birth, 1571.

Although no records exist to clarify the exact date of birth, Caravaggio was probably born on the 29th of September, the feast day of the archangel Saint Michael.

The Merisis were fortunate enough to lead a relatively comfortable, middle-class life: Fermo was the ambiguous major domo/architect/mason for the enormously powerful Sforza family of Milan and Lucia had some familial ties to nobility as well as some properties of her own.

The Sforza family apparently held the Merisis in high esteem, Francesco Sforza even acting as a witness for their wedding.

Although his family was fairly well-off, as a boy Caravaggio would have witnessed intense pain and suffering all around.

He was born in the midst of wretched poverty and famine, as described by contemporary diarist Gi