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50 free Caravaggio trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Caravaggio painted saints with dirty feet, used a well-known Roman prostitute as his Judith and his Virgin Mary, threw a plate of artichokes at a waiter, killed a man over a tennis match or a woman, was knighted in Malta and expelled as a 'foul and rotten member', and died of a fever on a Tuscan beach at 38. Along the way he invented the lighting that defined Baroque painting and, in one historian's words, 'modern painting' itself. These 50 questions track the life and the pictures: the Milan apprenticeship with a pupil of Titian, the arrival in Rome 'naked and extremely needy', Cardinal del Monte's chamber pieces, Boy Bitten by a Lizard and the Medusa shield, the Contarelli Chapel Matthews, the rejected Death of the Virgin that Rubens told Mantua to buy, the horse in the Conversion of Saint Paul, the Tomassoni brawl, the Beheading of Saint John in Valletta with its signature in blood, the Palermo Nativity stolen in 1969, the Taking of Christ found in a Dublin Jesuit dining room, and the 2010 bones at Porto Ercole. Every answer is cited to a page we checked and each explanation adds one more detail. Play it solo or print it for an art-history night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was Caravaggio's real name?
Michelangelo Merisi
He is named after the Lombard town where he grew up, 35 km east of Milan.
Q 02In which city was Caravaggio born in 1571?
Milan
It was long assumed he was born in Caravaggio, where the family fled plague in 1576.
Q 03Caravaggio's dramatic form of chiaroscuro came to be known as what?
Tenebrism
It shifts from light to dark with little intermediate value; followers were called tenebrosi.
Q 04Caravaggio's Milanese master Simone Peterzano was described as a pupil of which painter?
Titian
The four-year apprenticeship began in 1584, the year Caravaggio's mother died.
Q 05Caravaggio fled Milan for Rome in 1592 after 'certain quarrels' and the wounding of whom?
A police officer
He arrived in Rome 'naked and extremely needy'.
Q 06In Rome, Caravaggio painted flowers and fruit in the workshop of which papal favourite?
Giuseppe Cesari
Cesari was Pope Clement VIII's preferred artist; Caravaggio left after a serious illness.
Q 07What is Caravaggio's earliest known painting?
Boy Peeling a Fruit
The Basket of Fruit boy's produce was later analysed by a horticulture professor, down to a fungal leaf lesion.
Q 08Which cardinal became Caravaggio's first major patron after seeing his work in a shop?
Francesco Maria del Monte
For his circle Caravaggio painted The Musicians, The Lute Player and Boy Bitten by a Lizard.
Q 09Which painting does Wikipedia call 'perhaps Caravaggio's first true masterpiece'?
The Cardsharps
It shows a naive youth of privilege falling victim to card cheats.
Q 10In The Fortune Teller, what does the Romani girl steal as she reads the boy's palm?
His ring
It was Caravaggio's first composition with more than one figure; the boy is likely Mario Minniti.
Q 11Boy Bitten by a Lizard exists in two versions, in London and which Florence foundation?
Fondazione Roberto Longhi
Both are thought to date from 1594–96; the model may be Mario Minniti.
Q 12Caravaggio's Medusa was painted on what kind of object?
A shield
Del Monte planned it as a gift to Ferdinando I de' Medici; the face is a self-portrait.
Q 13In which Florence museum does the Medusa hang?
Uffizi
Caravaggio's Bacchus is in the same gallery.
Q 14Caravaggio's Basket of Fruit hangs in which Milan library?
Q 21Which Paris museum holds Caravaggio's Death of the Virgin?
The Louvre
It entered the French royal collection in 1671.
Q 22The Grooms' Madonna, painted for St Peter's Basilica, hung there for how long?
Two days
It is also known as the Madonna dei Palafrenieri.
Q 23Amor Vincit Omnia (1602) was painted for which collector in del Monte's circle?
Vincenzo Giustiniani
Giustiniani also bought the rejected first Saint Matthew, now in Berlin.
Q 24The model for Judith Beheading Holofernes is thought to be which Roman courtesan?
Biblioteca Ambrosiana
X-rays show it was painted over grotesques in the style of his friend Prospero Orsi.
Q 15Caravaggio's Saint Matthew cycle decorates which Roman church's Contarelli Chapel?
San Luigi dei Francesi
The Calling and the Martyrdom, delivered in 1600, were an immediate sensation.
Q 16The Calling of Saint Matthew shows Jesus summoning a man of which trade?
Customs official
Matthew sits at a table with four other men; the commission was dated July 1599.
Q 17What offended the patrons in Caravaggio's first version of Matthew and the Angel?
The saint's dirty peasant legs
The second version became The Inspiration of Saint Matthew; the first went to Vincenzo Giustiniani.
Q 18In the Conversion on the Way to Damascus, what dominates the picture rather than Paul?
A horse's haunches
Asked why, Caravaggio reportedly answered 'Because!'
Q 19The Death of the Virgin was rejected partly because the model was thought to be what?
A prostitute
Giulio Mancini said she was possibly his mistress; others blamed Mary's bare legs.
Q 20On whose advice did the Duke of Mantua buy the rejected Death of the Virgin?
Peter Paul Rubens
It later passed to Charles I of England and is now in the Louvre.
Fillide Melandroni
The gore may draw on the 1599 public execution of Beatrice Cenci, which Caravaggio could have watched.
Q 25A disputed second Judith and Holofernes turned up in 2014 in an attic in which city?
Toulouse
It went on sale in 2019; some scholars attribute it instead to Louis Finson.
Q 26In 1603 Caravaggio was arrested for defaming which fellow painter with offensive poems?
Giovanni Baglione
Baglione sued him along with Orazio Gentileschi and Onorio Longhi.
Q 27A tavern waiter sued Caravaggio for throwing a plate of what in his face?
Artichokes
His police records and trial transcripts fill many pages; he was often jailed at Tor di Nona.
Q 28Whom did Caravaggio kill in a brawl in 1606, earning a death sentence?
Ranuccio Tomassoni
Tomassoni was a gangster from a wealthy family; Caravaggio fled to the Colonna estates and then Naples.
Q 29One rumour held the fatal 1606 duel stemmed from jealousy over whom?
Fillide Melandroni
Tomassoni was her pimp; Vatican papers suggest a botched castration after the duel.
Q 30After the killing, Caravaggio sheltered on the estates of which powerful family?
Colonna
Costanza Colonna Sforza, whose late husband's household had employed his father, kept a palace in Naples.