Saraceni, Carlo

Saraceni, Carlo (b Venice, 1579; d Venice, 16 June 1620). Italian painter. Although he was born and died in Venice, he spent almost all his career in Rome. There he formed his style under the influence of Caravaggio and Elsheimer, painting small, luminous pictures of figures in landscapes as well as much larger altarpieces, including the replacement for Caravaggio's Death of the Virgin, which the church of S. Maria della Scala had rejected in 1606. Caravaggio's picture is now in the Louvre, Paris, and Saraceni's is still in the church. He painted several other smaller variants or versions of it, so the design was evidently popular. His style was sensitive and poetic, showing a delicate feeling for colour and tone. His liking for turbans, tasselled fringes, and stringy drapery folds may have influenced Dutch artists in Rome such as Lastman and Pynas, and through them Rembrandt. He also possibly had some influence in Lorraine, through his pupil, the French Caravaggesque painter Jean Le Clerc (c.1587–1633). Le Clerc was also an engraver; his prints include one of his master's Death of the Virgin (after a small version on copper, now in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, rather than the large altarpiece in Rome).