Caravaggio Probably the most revolutionary artist of his time, the Italian painter Caravaggio abandoned the rules that had guided a century of artists before him. Through the use of his revolutionary techniques of selective lighting, Caravaggio became a prominent painter in the Baroque period. Discarding the traditional rendering of religious subject matter, he brought to his painting a sense reality as it was in his time. In his paintings he simplifies the classic religious themes and breaks them down into something that could have taken place anywhere, at any time amongst the common people. Michelangelo Merisi was born in the village of Caravaggio