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.

"The Italian artist Caravaggio (1571-1610) had a profound impact on a wide range of baroque painters of Italian, French, Dutch, Flemish, and Spanish origin who resided in Rome either during his lifetime or immediately afterward. This captivating book illustrates the notion of "Caravaggism," showcasing 65 works by Peter Paul Rubens and other important artists of the period who drew inspiration from Caravaggio. Also depicted are Caravaggio canvases that fully exhibit his distinctive style, along with ones that had a particularly discernible impact on other practitioners. Caravaggio's influence was greatest in Rome, where his works were seen by the largest and most international group of artists, and was at its peak in the early decades of the 17th century both before and after his untimely death at the age of 39. Not since Michelangelo or Raphael has one European artist affected so many of his contemporaries and over such broad geographic territory. Essays by an array of major Caravaggio scholars illuminate the underlying principles of the exhibit, reveal how Caravaggio altered the presentation and interpretation of many traditional subjects and inspired unusual new ones, and explore the artist's legacy and how he irrevocably changed the course of painting."--Publisher's description.

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.

The renowned Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) established his career in Catholic Rome, making paintings that placed particular importance on sacred relics and the glorification of martyred saints. Beginning with his early works, Caravaggio was intensely engaged with the physical world. He not only interrogated appearances but also experimented with the paint's material nature. Caravaggio's Pitiful Relics explores how the artist's commitment to materiality served and ultimately challenged the Counter Reformation church's interests. In his first ecclesiastical commission, Caravaggio offered an unconventional representation of martyrdom that collapsed the borders between art, contemporary religious persecution, iconoclasm, and relics in early Christian catacombs. Yet his art controversially and eventually led to a criminal trial. After he had fled from Rome in disgrace, his major altarpiece depicting the death of the Virgin Mary, portraying her mortality rather than her sanctity, was removed. Caravaggio's materiality came into conflict with changing notions of the sacred; thereafter, the sacred object became a secular work of art, marking the displacement of the relic.

Told with consummate skill by the writer of the bestselling, award-winning A Civil Action, The Lost Painting is a remarkable synthesis of history and detective story. An Italian village on a hilltop near the Adriatic coast, a decaying palazzo facing the sea, and in the basement, cobwebbed and dusty, lit by a single bulb, an archive unknown to scholars. Here, a young graduate student from Rome, Francesca Cappelletti, makes a discovery that inspires a search for a work of art of incalculable value, a painting lost for almost two centuries. The artist was Caravaggio, a master of the Italian Baroque. He was a genius, a revolutionary painter, and a man beset by personal demons. Four hundred years ago, he drank and brawled in the taverns and streets of Rome, moving from one rooming house to another, constantly in and out of jail, all the while painting works of transcendent emotional and visual power. He rose from obscurity to fame and wealth, but success didn’t alter his violent temperament. His rage finally led him to commit murder, forcing him to flee Rome a hunted man. He died young, alone, and under strange circumstances. Caravaggio scholars estimate that between sixty and eighty of his works are in existence today. Many others–no one knows the precise number–have been lost to time. Somewhere, surely, a masterpiece lies forgotten in a storeroom, or in a small parish church, or hanging above a fireplace, mistaken for a mere copy. Prizewinning author Jonathan Harr embarks on an spellbinding journey to discover the long-lost painting known as The Taking of Christ–its mysterious fate and the circumstances of its disappearance have captivated Caravaggio devotees for years. After Francesca Cappelletti stumbles across a clue in that dusty archive, she tracks the painting across a continent and hundreds of years of history. But it is not until she meets Sergio Benedetti, an art restorer working in Ireland, that she finally manages to assemble all the pieces of the puzzle. Praise for The Lost Painting “Jonathan Harr has gone to the trouble of writing what will probably be a bestseller . . . rich and wonderful. . . . In truth, the book reads better than a thriller. . . . If you're a sucker for Rome, and for dusk . . . [you'll] enjoy Harr's more clearly reported details about life in the city.”—The New York Times Book Review “Jonathan Harr has taken the story of the lost painting, and woven from it a deeply moving narrative about history, art and taste—and about the greed, envy, covetousness and professional jealousy of people who fall prey to obsession. It is as perfect a work of narrative nonfiction as you could ever hope to read.”—The Economist

Published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028. The catalog (with a lengthy essay and scholarly paraphernalia) for an exhibition of a newly identified work by Caravaggio and other paintings by the artist or related to the musical theme. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR