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.

"Caravaggio as a Modernist: What is Modernism?" presents seventeenth-century Caravaggio as a modernist artist. In this book, modernism is perceived not as a style dependent on time and space but as an essential system of values connected to a subjective view of the world. This book examines the meaning of the artist's realism, the reflection of the artist's individuality in his work, from the points of view of both content and form, as well as Caravaggio's religious approach, which is interpreted as an existentialist protest. The reader is exposed to perceive Caravaggio as an artist rebelling against his times' conventions, while also opening up to a focused, concise comprehension of modernism. The book and its unique, original thesis are based on Kedar's MA dissertation, available for the first time in English, with a new editor's foreword.

Edited and text by Rossella Vodret.

As this collection makes clear, the paths to grasping the complexity of Caravaggio’s art are multiple and variable. Offering new or recently updated interpretations of the works of Caravaggio and the Caravaggisti, this book deals with all the major aspects of Caravaggio’s paintings: technique, creative process, religious context, innovations in pictorial genre and narrative, market strategies, biography, patronage, reception and new hermeneutical trends.

In 1905, Caravaggio was resurrected as a figure of historical importance when art critic Roger Fry designated him as the harbinger of modern art. In his commentary on the artist, Fry declares that: "He was, indeed, in many senses the first modern artist; the first artist to proceed not by evolution but by revolution; the first to rely entirely on his own temperamental attitude and to defy tradition and authority." Fry's assertion of Caravaggio's modernity is derived from early-modern biographies on the artist, which claim that Caravaggio self-consciously broke from the art of the past in a deliberate act of artistic revolution. The conflation of the artist's biography with his work has remained a constant in Caravaggio scholarship since its inception. Modernity's Caravaggio is a character with many guises - a painter, a sodomite, a pimp, a murderer, a fugitive, and a knight - all of which have molded our perception of a man who died centuries ago. Caravaggio's modern appeal is evident in the numerous exhibitions, movies, miniseries, novels, and even a ballet, produced in celebration of the artist Fry proclaimed "one of the most interesting figures in the history of art." This dissertation traces Caravaggio scholarship, as well as popular manifestations of the artist, through the twentieth century to present day by probing the theoretical and methodological trends that have shaped the discourse. My aim is to demonstrate that modernity's Caravaggio is a construction derived from the most prevalent historical, aesthetic, and philosophical debates of the twentieth century.

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year "This book resees its subject with rare clarity and power as a painter for the 21st century." —Hilary Spurling, New York Times Book Review Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610) lived the darkest and most dangerous life of any of the great painters. This commanding biography explores Caravaggio’s staggering artistic achievements, his volatile personal trajectory, and his tragic and mysterious death at age thirty-eight. Featuring more than eighty full-color reproductions of the artist’s best paintings, Caravaggio is a masterful profile of the mercurial painter.