The Counter-Reformation Church is building huge new…

The Counter-Reformation Church is building huge new churches in Rome and paintings are needed to fill them, and likewise the enormous new palazzi.

The artificial conventions of Mannerism, which have ruled art for almost a century, seem inadequate to the task of countering the threat of Protestantism, and the search is on for authentic religious art.

Caravaggio's radical naturalism combines close physical observation with a theatrical shift from light to dark with little intermediate value.

This is tenebrism, a very pronounced chiaroscuro style that Caravaggio is generally credited with inventing, although his predecessors Tintoretto and El Greco are sometimes described as tenebrists.