A brilliant essay about the founder of Baroque painting and a milestone in the development of modern art theory. The biography of the painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571 - 1610), which Giovanni Pietro Bellori began to write as part of his "Viten," presented him with a particular challenge: How can Caravaggio's forced novelty and his conscious break with the traditions of painting be described? What terminology is appropriate for the painter's visual language, and what metaphor is fitting? And finally: What mode should be chosen in writing the Vita: a theoretically neutral art critique or a more critical art perspective? Valeska von Rosen demonstrates in her essay that Bellori's Caravaggio Vita emerged from the impulse to adequately theorize an unusual artistic operare, as the author calls it.