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Michelangelo Merisi, known as simply Caravaggio, was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life. His paintings have been characterized by art critics as combining a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, which had a formative influence on Baroque painting. He developed a considerable name as an artist and as a violent, touchy and provocative man. A brawl led to a death sentence for murder and forced him to flee to Naples. There he again established himself as one of the most prominent Italian painters of his generation. He travelled to Malta and on to Sicily in 1607 and pursued a papal pardon for his sentence. In 1609 he returned to Naples, where he was involved in a violent clash; his face was disfigured, and rumors of his death circulated. Questions about his mental state arose from his erratic and bizarre behavior. He died in 1610 under uncertain circumstances while on his way from Naples to Rome. Reports stated that he died of a fever, but suggestions have been made that he was murdered or that he died of lead poisoning. 
To celebrate the 450th anniversary of the birth of Michelangelo Merisi (29 September 1571), better known as Caravaggio, the Vatican City issued a single stamp of €5,40 as part of a larger sheetlet. The denomination pays the postage for a first-step registered letter to destinations in Italy. The subject is the stamp is the painting of the "Martyrdom of St. Matthew" by Mauro Coen, produced around 1600. It was found in the Contarelli chapel in the church dedicated to St. Luigi dei Francesi in Rome. The artist signed this work by painting an image of himself on the bottom of the dramatic representation, as if protruding from the backdrop of a theater. The executioner is placed in the center of the scene in the act of killing the evangelist, who is lying under him with his gaze turned to the sky in the direction of the angel who offers him a palm branch, a sign of the reward that awaits him in Heaven.

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