Simone Peterzano

In 1584 a Milanese workshop took on a 13-year-old apprentice from the nearby town of Caravaggio, on a four-year contract. The boy was Michelangelo Merisi, who would make his name simply as Caravaggio, and the master he was bound to was Simone Peterzano.

Peterzano signed some of his own paintings 'Titiani alumnus', pupil of Titian, and he had indeed trained in Venice before settling in Milan, bringing north the rich colour and light of Venetian painting. He worked steadily on church altarpieces and frescoes through the late 16th century, a competent, sober Mannerist.

For a long time he was remembered only as a footnote to his famous student, but recent study has looked again at his own hand, and at the shared drawings that suggest how much of Peterzano's careful naturalism the young Caravaggio actually absorbed. He was still at work in Milan when he died around 1599.