A fascinating examination of Caravaggio and others who adopted his dramatic style of painting The Italian painter known as Caravaggio (1571-1610) claims a place among the most revolutionary figures in the history of art. His intense naturalism, almost brutal realism, and dramatic use of light had a wide impact on European painters, including Orazio Gentileschi, Valentin de Boulogne, and Gerrit van Honthorst. Each of Caravaggio's followers absorbed something different from his work, propagating his stylistic legacy across Europe. In this extensively illustrated catalogue, Letizia Treves introduces the international Caravaggesque movement and traces the distinct artistic personalities of its leading players. Even now, Caravaggio's name overshadows the other talented artists who adopted his approach to narrative painting: the use of theatrical lighting to illuminate a story encapsulated in a single, dramatic moment. Treves explains the innovative and unifying features of these painters' work and how, despite resistance to their style and subject matter, many outstanding Caravaggesque pictures found their way into important collections. Published by the National Gallery Company/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: National Gallery, London (10/12/16-01/15/17) National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin (02/11/17-05/14/17) Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh (06/17/17-09/24/17)

HMSBA is Harvey Miller Studies in Baroque Art.

Following Caravaggio's death in 1610, the French artist Valentin de Boulogne (1591-1632) emerged as one of the great champions of naturalistic painting. The eminent art historian Roberto Longhi honored him as "the most energetic and passionate of Caravaggio's naturalist followers." In Rome, Valentin—who loved the tavern as much as the painter's pallette—fell in with a rowdy confederation of artists but eventually received commissions from some of the city's most prominent patrons. It was in this artistically rich but violent metropolis that Valentin created such masterworks as a major altarpiece in Saint Peter's Basilica and superb renderings of biblical and secular subjects—until his tragic death at the age of forty-one cut short his ascendant career. With discussions of nearly fifty works, representing practically all of his painted oeuvre, Valentin de Boulogne: Beyond Caravaggio explores both the the artist's superlative depictions of daily life and the tumultuous context in which they were produced. Essays by a team of international scholars consider his key attributions to European painting, his devotion to everyday objects and models from life, his technique of staging pictures with the immediacy of unfolding drama, and his place in the pantheon of French artists. An extensive chronology surveys the rare extant documents that chronicle his biography, while individual entries help situate his works in the contexts of his times. Rich with incident and insight, and beautifully illustrated in Valentin's complex, suggestive paintings, Valentin de Boulogne: Beyond Caravaggio reveals a seminal artist, a practitioner of realism in the seventeenth century who prefigured the naturalistic modernism of Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet two centuries later.

Now in paperback, an accessible and beautifully illustrated account of Caravaggio as a catalyst for modernity. Undeniably one of the greatest artists of all time, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio would develop a radically new kind of psychologically expressive, realistic art and, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, would lay the foundations for modern painting. His paintings defied tradition to such a degree that the meaning of his works has divided critics and viewers for centuries. In this original study, Troy Thomas examines Caravaggio’s life and art in relationship to the profound beginnings of modernity, exploring the many conventions that Caravaggio utterly dismantled with his extraordinary genius. Thomas begins with an in-depth look at Caravaggio’s early life and works and examines how he refined his realism, developed his obsession with darkness and light, and began to find the subtle and clever ambiguity of genre and meaning that would become his trademark. Focusing acutely on the inherent tensions, contradictions, and ambiguities within Caravaggio’s paintings, Thomas goes on to examine his mature religious works and the ways he created a powerful but stark and enigmatic expressiveness in his protagonists. Lastly, he delves into the artist’s final hectic years as a fugitive killer evading papal police and wandering the cities of southern Italy. Richly illustrated in color throughout, Caravaggio and the Creation of Modernity will appeal to all of those fascinated by the history of art and the remarkable lives of Renaissance masters.

M is the name of an enigma. In his short and violent life, Michaelangelo Merisi, from Caravaggio, changed art for ever. In the process he laid bare his own sexual longing and the brutal realities of his life with shocking frankness. Like no painter before him and few since, M the man appears in his art. As a book about art and life and how they connect, there has never been anything quite like it.