Bartolomeo Manfredi

Bartolomeo Manfredi (baptised 25 August 1582 – 12 December 1622) was an Italian painter, a leading member of the Caravaggisti (followers of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio) of the early 17th century.

Manfredi was born in Ostiano, near Cremona. He may have been a pupil of Caravaggio in Rome: at his famous libel trial in 1603 Caravaggio mentioned that a certain Bartolomeo Cristofori, accused of distributing scurrilous poems attacking Caravaggio's detested rival Baglione, had been a servant of his. Certainly, Bartolomeo Manfredi, known to art history, was a close follower of Caravaggio's innovatory style, with its enhanced chiaroscuro and insistence on naturalism, with a gift for storytelling through expression and body language.

Caravaggio, in his brief career – gaining fame in 1600, exiled from Rome in 1606, and dead by 1610 – had a profound effect on the younger generation of artists, particularly in Rome and Naples. And of these Caravaggisti (followers of Caravaggio), Manfredi seems in turn to have been the most influential in transmitting the master's legacy to the next generation, particularly with painters from France and the Netherlands who came to Italy.