POLIDORO CALDARA DA

CARAVAGGIO (1495 or 1492-1543)  , a celebrated painter of frieze and other decorations in the Vatican . His merits were such that, while a mere mortar-carrier to the artists engaged in that work, he attracted the admiration of Raphael, then employed on his great pictures in the Loggie of the palace . Polidoro's works, as well as those of his master, Maturino of Florence, have mostly perished, but are well known by the fine etchings of P . S . Bartoli, C . Alberti, &c . On the sack of Rome by the army of the Constable de Bourbon in 1527, Polidoro fled to Naples . Thence he went to Messina, where he was much employed, and gained a considerable fortune, with which he was about to return to the mainland of Italy when he was robbed and murdered by an assistant, Tonno Calabrese, in 1543 . Two of his principal paintings are a Crucifixion, painted in Messina, and " Christ bearing the Cross " in the Naples gallery .