Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane

by Andrew Graham-Dixon

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393343434
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	11/12/2012
Pages:	544
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 2.40(d)

About the Author

Andrew Graham–Dixon is an art historian, biographer, and broadcaster. He was for many years the main art critic of the Independent and the Sunday Telegraph and is the author of the award–winning biography Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane. He lives in East Sussex.

What People are Saying About This

Peter Carey

A thrilling lesson in the art of seeing, a sensual exploration of the shadows of Caravaggio's sometimes violent but always Christian world, a detective story with a highly satisfying ending.

Robert Hughes

The most gifted art critic of his generation.

Anthony Quinn

Criticism that manages to be skeptical and humane, dryly witty and deeply serious ...

Editorial Reviews

"Graham-Dixon combed the criminal records of the era to glean extraordinary details about the artist’s run-ins with the law. He skillfully evokes the social and religious context of turn-of-the-17th-century Italy."

Associated Press - Ann Levin

"A rollicking take on the Counter Reformation painter, an autodidact prone to smashing plates in restaurants, challenging competitors with swords, and using prostitutes as models for the Virgin Mary."

Vogue - Megan O’Grady

"[Graham-Dixon] took ten years to come to terms with a very obdurate and highly original painter. Time well spent."

Economist

"A thrilling lesson in the art of seeing…a detective story with a highly satisfying ending."

Peter Carey

"Enthralling…reads like a historical-swashbuckler-cum-detective-story while also providing an up-to-date introduction to some of the most admired paintings in Western art."

Michael Dirda

"Graham-Dixon combines the rigor of a historian with the imaginative insight of a novelist to create a subtle and beautifully burnished portrait."

Mark Stevens

"Andrew Graham-Dixon brings the bad-boy genius of the seventeenth century to life as vividly as if he were one of today’s pop stars."

John Richardson

"Caravaggio has rarely been seen in such depth and such relief as in this marvelous biography."

Neil MacGregor

"This book [resees] its subject with rare clarity and power as a painter for the 21st century."

Hilary Spurling

…Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane reads like a historical-swashbuckler-cum-detective-story while also providing an up-to-date introduction to some of the most admired paintings in Western art…Graham-Dixon writes with verve and clarity about the work as well as the man and his times.
—The Washington Post

Michael Dirda

"I have never known an art critic in London who responds so well, year in and year out, to the challenge of subjects that cover the whole range of Western art."

John Russell

"Graham-Dixon's biography brilliantly illuminates the life of an artist who was no less shadowy than his canvases—a man capable of both committing murder and creating ineffable beauty."

Bookforum - Joseph Luzzi

"The most gifted art critic of his generation."

Robert Hughes

"Criticism that manages to be skeptical and humane, dryly witty and deeply serious ..."

Anthony Quinn

"[Graham-Dixon’s] achieved a masterpiece of his own: an informative, fresh account of the painter’s life and death. Even more impressive are the author’s powerful and accessible analyses of Caravaggio’s paintings, commentary that leaves readers eager to see the pieces at the heart of the story."

Dallas Morning News - Michelle Jones

"[Graham-Dixon] is an entertaining art historian. He took ten years to come to terms with a very obdurate and highly original painter. Time well spent."

Economist

Expansive life of the masterful yet mercurial artist.

Even though he apprenticed and served in several studios, Caravaggio (1571–1610) painted according to his own rules, updating Bible stories with his own vision of violence. He was an autodidact unencumbered by current artistic customs, and he painted what he saw in the pious realism fostered by Carlo Borromeo, reviving the empathic visualization of Francis of Assisi and the Sacro Monte of the Piedmont region. Regressing to the art that preceded the High Renaissance, Caravaggio established an entirely new genre of stark realism and visceral detail. He never did preliminary sketches and painted only from carefully set up models; he was unable to paint from imagination or memory. His virtuosity, mastery of chiaroscuro and ability to make the sacred profane established him as the ideal for painters as varied as Rubens, Velasquez, David and even Picasso, who invoked his use of realism as he paintedGuernica. British art critic Graham-Dixon (Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel, 2009, etc.) brilliantly points out how Caravaggio's paintings reflected a violent man in violent times, and self-portrait insertions in many of his paintings reflect the progression of the artist's agonies. As the artistic capital of the world, Rome quickly recognized his talent, providing many patrons to bail him out after his frequent violent encounters. His capacity for trouble mirrored his art, "a series of lightning flashes in the darkest of nights." Because he wrenched so much from the depths of his soul into his paintings, it's no wonder he lived such a short life.

An impressive web of biography, social history and art history.

Kirkus Reviews