Caravaggio

The young Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610) created a major stir in late-sixteenth-century Rome with the groundbreaking naturalism and highly charged emotionalism of his paintings. One might think, given the vast number of books that have been written about him, that everything that could possibly be said about the artist has been said. However, the author of this book argues, it is important to take a fresh look at the often repeated and widely accepted narratives about the artist’s life and work. Sybille Ebert-Schifferer subjects the available sources to a critical reevaluation, uncovering evidence that the efforts of Caravaggio’s contemporaries to disparage his character and his artwork often sprang from their own cultural biases or a desire to promote the artistic achievements of his rivals. Contrary to repeated claims in the literature, the painter lacked neither education nor piety, but was an extremely accomplished technician who developed a successful marketing strategy. He enjoyed great respect and earned high fees from his prestigious clients while he also inspired a large circle of imitators. Even his brushes with the law conformed to the behavioral norms of the aristocratic Romans he sought to emulate. The beautiful reproductions of Caravaggio’s paintings in this volume make clear why he captivated the imagination of his contemporaries, a reaction that echoes today in the ongoing popularity of his work and the fierce debate that it continues to provoke among art historians.

In Caravaggio, Varriano uncovers the principles and practices that guided Caravaggio's brush as he made some of the most controversial paintings in the history of art. He sheds an important new light on these disputes by tracing the autobiographical threads in Caravaggio's paintings, framing these within the context of contemporary Italian culture.

Surveys the artist's life and his works - Analyses the masterpieces and puts them in their historical and social context.

Edited and text by Rossella Vodret.

This volume considers Caravaggio's revolutionary realism from a range of perspectives, presenting new avenues for research by a plurality of leading scholars. First, it advances our understanding of Caravaggio's relationship with the new science of observation championed by Galileo. Second, it examines afresh the theoretical nature and artistic means of Caravaggio's seemingly direct realism. Third, it extends the horizons of research on Caravaggio's complex intellectual and social milieu between high and low cultures. Genevieve Warwick is Senior Lecturer in the Art History department at the University of Glasgow.

Gilbert devotes separate discussions to the Marquis and to Cardinal Mattei in developing his argument that each of them influenced Caravaggio in different ways. A collector of classical sculpture, the Marquis is connected to the classical mythological themes that are here identified in specific paintings. A study of Cardinal Mattei indicates that he was outstandingly devout, which was true of only a small number of cardinals during the period. Gilbert shows that the artist's two paintings for the Cardinal alter the previous patterns of representing their religious themes, in ways related to Counter-Reformation ideas. Scholars have long searched for the specific religious figure who inspired this quality in Caravaggio's work, resolved here by Gilbert's meticulous scholarship and carefully drawn connections.

Notorious bad boy of Italian painting, Caravaggio is now considered one of the greatest influences in all art history. This neat catalogue raisonné reproduces all of Caravaggio's paintings as well as a number of dramatic details of his boundary-breaking realism. Five accompanying chapters trace Caravaggio's artistic daring and his equally...