During the 16th century, rival religious beliefs weakened the power of Catholic dogma and papal authority across Europe. The Counter-Reformation attempted to thwart the rise in anti-Catholic sentiment through institutional reform and by reinvigorating the mystical and evangelical ideals of Catholic theology. While it is clear that heavy patronage of the arts enabled the overt emotional content displayed in Baroque artwork to be used as a form of religious propaganda by the Counter-Reformation, there is also strong evidence to suggest that the artists' of the time created these images as a personal artistic response to this religious climate. By analysing and comparing both the early and later works of the early period Baroque artist Caravaggio
