Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi da, kar uh VAH joh, my kuhl AN juh loh muh REE zee dah (1573-1610), was an Italian painter known for the powerful realism of his religious pictures. Caravaggio refused to idealize his religious figures in the tradition of earlier European art. He supposedly used peasants and people from the streets as models for his unorthodox interpretations of Biblical stories.