Caravaggio's David With Head of Goliath Reproduction

The copy of David With Goliath’s Head is complete (except for the sword). There are minor differences between my copy and the original, but that is to be expected. Overall I think got the mood of the painting just right, though I need a little work on light and shadow before I tackle Sacrifice of Isaac.

Who Was Caravaggio?

    * Michelangelo Merisi was born in the town of Caravaggio, trained in Milan, and moved to Rome in the 1590s. He is considered the first major artist of the Baroque period following the Renaissance and the greatest Italian painter of the 17th century.
    * As part of the Baroque period, which began from the Counter-Reformation, the majority of his later works were religious in nature. However, much of his work was criticized for a lack of decorum and idealization in portraying holy subjects- figures such as the Mother of God as well as saints all resembled the common street people he used as models.
    * Caravaggio is probably the first important painter to use tenebrism, a strong contrast between light and shadow, or chiaroscuro, attained by using artificial lighting which was borderline theatrical. Much of his works were composed of strongly lit figures set against a dark background.
    * Prone to violence and fits of rage, the artist was often in trouble with the law. He regularly scorned his contemporaries who he saw as below him, and frequently got into fist fights and brawls with everybody from the rough and tumble crowd he hung out with, and the serving boys of taverns.
    * Some of the documented complaints received from his victims help to shine light on Caravaggio's character- His belongings were forfeit to his landlady so as retaliation he smashed her window; when ordering artichokes he asked which were cooked in oil and which in butter and when he didn't get the answer he wanted he threw a fit, as well as the plate at the waiter; ultimately his rage would lead to the murdering of a tennis opponent and fleeing for his life- the last four years of his life he was on the run, sinking in despair, and losing his health (his downward spiral and his anxiety are evident in the last paintings).
    * In Port Ercole, while loaded up on a small ship carrying several paintings intended to seek a patron's good graces, and to ask for asylum for his crime, he fell ill with fever. When he lost his ship along with all his belongings, he wandered angrily along the coast of the port city in the July sun until he came upon a village where he became bedridden. Alone and abandoned, he died in 1610.