Customer Reviews

Caravaggio: Painter of Miracles (Eminent Lives)

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This is a modest little biographical sketch of the turbulent life of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. The details of his life are too sketchy to justify a really thorough biography. Granted. My problem with Prose's book is that too little attention is given to the paintings. There are a few paintings reproduced in small color plates, but even these are not analyzed properly. Big fans of Caravaggio will be disappointed to find that 'Supper at Emmaus' for example is missing entirely. Also missing is an annotated index of the artist's works. Equally reprehensible is the mention in the text of paintings that are not represented in the plates at all. An artist's legacy is not his life, but his work, and it is his work that should have received more attention in this volume.

The series of books Eminent Lives being produced by General Editor James Atlas for Atlas Books, a division of Harper Collins is a true project that fills a vital need in the paucity of the arts education in this country at present. Coupling excellent writers with biographies of great people is long overdue and after reading Francine Prose's very fine but succinct evaluation of the life of painter Caravaggio the reader will want to collect all of the volumes of this educational and enlightening series.

Though there are many huge tomes readily available on the art and the wild life of Michelangelo Merisi (da Caravaggio) that offer a much more complete view of the great artist's artist output and more detailed accounts of his sexual life and his criminal life involving the church and the state throughout Italy during his relatively brief life (1571 - 1610). Francine Prose approaches her subject more as a novelist than as reportage. She covers the important aspects of Caravaggio's influences, his beginnings, his particular gifts of painting that incorporated models form the street to depict religious icons, his miraculous understanding and reproduction of light and shadow, and his propensity to follow his hedonistic needs in lieu of being faithful to his career.

This is a physically small volume (perfect for tucking into the jacket pocket or purse for reading away from home) and therein lays its main drawback: the few reproductions of paintings that serve to underline Prose's commentary are too small to satisfy the art lover. But for those images there are many monographs surveys available that may serve as adjuncts to this concise Eminent Life. Recommended. Grady Harp, January 06

I have had a long interest in Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio and over the years have had the pleasure of seeing the retrospective held at the Metropolitan Museum in New York in the late 1980's and seeing his paintings in Rome and Naples. I heard of Francine Prose's book in a review and was drawn to read it. I do not have any other books solely devoted to Caravaggio but have several on his time period.

First, the book is a small format which may be surprising but for me was not a huge drawback. The only problem with the size of the book is that the illustrations are smaller than some people may like. I found Ms. Prose's text to be the focus of this book, not the illustrations. I liked her writing and overall presentation. I did not find her adjectives redundant and the complaining quotations by other reviews I think are out of context. For me, Ms. Prose presents the life and times of Caravaggio with as full a presentation that I wanted, delving into what it was like to be a painter in his times and giving us as much detail as there is about her subject. I thought she created excellent work pictures of Caravaggio's paintings. The only problem is that many are not reproduced in her book so I had to go to other sources. However, I think that if one is interested in Caravaggio you will want to read Ms. Prose's book and find the missing paintings elsewhere. This book may not be an exhaustive study of Caravaggio but it is an excellent introduction to the painter with many thought provoking observations.

Francine Prose's charming brief introduction to the life and art of Caravaggio simply doesn't belong in the Eminent Lives series--not because he was unworthy. Rather, the spartan production standards of the series precluded including enough of his art to give a reader even a clue as to what the author was describing. For example, her descriptions and analyses of "The Fortune Teller" and "The Card Sharps" were really quite good, but without the paints near at hand, most readers will find it difficult to appreciate them. Obviously, anyone familiar with his art would hardly buy an introduction to it; lacking appropriate illustration, the volume is unlikely to add to the ranks of Caravaggio's admirers.

I knew nothing of Caravaggio except his name and approximate era of painting when I began this book. I read it because I admire all of Francine Prose's writing. Also, I didn't read the New York Times review carefully and expected a novel based on the artist's life.

So, I when I got to the library and found this thin book I was a bit disappointed, but read it anyway. At first it was confusing and the Italian names complicated, but I got into it and finished it in one day.

Of course, a slim volume cannot cover everything. Yes, only a few paintings are represented in color. But anyone who wants to see more can go online as I did and see plenty.

What I missed in the book was an index so that I could go back to the descriptions of all the paintings in the book and read them while looking at their online representations. As most of the artist's works are in Italy, I'm not likely to see them in person.

Those who complained in Amazon reviews that the book doesn't cover every painting in detail should take a look at the description of the Eminent Lives series of which the book is a part. It clearly states these books are "...ideal introductions designed to appeal to the general reader, the student, and the scholar."

I agree.

Francine Prose's "Caravaggio: Painter of Miracles" is part of a series of short biographies called "Eminent Lives" in which famous authors write about great historical figures. The aim of the series is not be produce scholarly or definitive works; instead it is to offer the reader a gateway into the works and importance of the subject to inspire further exploration and thought.

Francine Prose is best-known as a novelist. She offers in this book an elegant short guide to the great Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1573 -- 1610). Caravaggio's story is one of the most romantic and tantalizing in art. He moved to Rome as a young man of 21 and established his reputation as a painter of importance, turning early in his career to paintings of religious themes. But Caravaggio's life was tumultuous, violent, and brutal. He was never without his dagger, even when he slept. He brawled and fought and consorted with the low life of Rome, and was forced to flee the city after killing a man in a dispute that involved a bet over a game of tennis. In exile, Caravaggio continued to live violently, to flee from place to place, and to paint masterpieces. Prose captures the tension between Caravaggio's tortured life and his artistry. She writes:

"The life of Caravaggio is the closes thing we have to the myth of the sinner-saint, the street tough, the martyr, the killer, the genius -- the myth that, in these jaded and secular times, we are almost ashamed to admit that we still long for, and need. .. Each time we see his paintings, we are reminded of why we still care so profoundly about this artist who continues to speak to us in his urgent, intimate language, audible centuries after the voices of his more civilized, presentable colleagues have fallen silent". (p. 13)

Prose did not get me very far into Caravaggio's life. She is much more successful in describing the paintings, which she does in good detail for a short book. The book includes 11 color plates of some of Caravaggio's masterpieces, from the beginning to the end of his career. Prose has helpful things to say in helping the reader to understand these works and the circumstances of their creation -- she helps the nonspecialist learn to look at and respond to a painting. I found her especially good in discussing Caravaggio's paintings of the "Calling of Saint Matthew" -- where she eloquently shows the artist depicting a conversion experience -- and its companion work, "The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew." Prose also discusses well many paintings that are not reproduced in the book. In order to get the most from these discussions, the reader will need to find these paintings in another source -- this book has as its goal, after all, encouraging further exploration of Caravaggio.

Prose finds Caravaggio's greatness lies in his honesty, directness, and naturalism. She stresses how is works communicate directly with the viewer. Prose also emphasizes how Caravaggio used common people and places and the tough street life with which he was familiar in his paintings, including the use of rough laborers, common dwellings, gypsies, and prostitutes. Caravaggio's work combined elements of violence and low life with deep spirituality as he explored the mysteries of faith, conversion experiences,loneliness, and martyrdom. Caravaggio's brilliance as a painter, and the highly modern tension his work suggests between the spiritual and the mundane, are reasons why many people will continue to be fascinated by his work.

Prose's book doesn't capture fully the reasons why Caravaggio's work continues to live and to move people. But her book will encourage reflection upon and further exploration of the work of this great and troubled artist.

Robin Friedman

Francine Prose writes well and with a light ironic touch but this slim volume adds little to what we already know about Caravaggio. At a little over 100 pages and with only a handful of color illustrations the book amounts to little more than an extended essay of Ms. Prose's reactions to Caravaggio's major works. There are very many better books showing the paintings and Prose doesn't go into the camera obscura technique that Caravaggio undoubtedly used, giving his paintings an almost photo-realistic representation of his subjects.

That Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was a brawler with a passion for picking fights worthy of "Fight Club" who combined erratic behavior with some sublime paintings is hardly an insight. A much better treatment of the life and psychology of the artist appears in Peter Robb's 1998 "M: The Man who Became Caravaggio" which curiously is unreferenced by Prose.

Although Prose notes that Caravaggio broke away from the stylized poses and unearthly lighting of the mannerists, I don't think she clearly explains his genius.

This is one of several volumes in the HarperCollins Eminent Lives series. Each offers a concise rather than comprehensive, much less definitive biography. However, just as Al Hirschfeld's illustrations of various celebrities capture their defining physical characteristics, the authors of books in this series focus on the defining influences and developments during the lives and careers of their respective subjects. In this instance, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610). Because I think so highly of this volume, I think it would be most helpful to others who have not as yet read it to provide a few brief excerpts. Hopefully this will encourage them to obtain a copy.

According to Francine Prose, "Caravaggio speaks to us directly, without any need of translation from a distant century or a foreign culture. His voice is eloquent and strong, resonant with emotion. We feel we understand him, though we can never paraphrase what we intuit he is saying....Yet only lately, since we have learned to accept the idea of art without conventional beauty, art that is rough and strange and disturbing, can we tolerate art that is this [in italics] honest [end italics] about the nature of suffering and divinity, about the way in which a painting is created, about human nature, and the nature of art itself."

How modern he now seems centuries later. Consider these remarks: "The life of Caravaggio is the closest thing we have to the myth of the sinner-saint, the street tough, the martyr, the killer, the genius -- the myth that, in these jaded and secular times, we are almost ashamed to admit that we still long for, and need." As I read that passage and as Prose then examined more closely Caravaggio's personal life, I saw similarities between him and the character Tony Montana as portrayed by Al Pacino in Brian De Palma's film Scarface (1983). For example: "Belligerent, contemptuous, competitive, Michelangelo Merisi would soon be drawn into the whirlwind of insults, attacks, retaliations, and vendettas that passed for nightlife in the Campo Marzio, the raffish neighborhood in which many artists, including Caravaggio, lived." Indeed, he was only thirty-nine when he died in the summer of 1610 and had been a fugitive in exile for the last four years of his life.

In an article which appeared in the Wall Street Journal (October 15 and 16, 2005), Prose discusses "The Martyrdom of St. Peter" (1600), noting that "Caravaggio not only rejected the idealizations of his contemporaries but set his religious scenarios in dark rooms and alleys much like the ones in which ordinary Romans lived, and cast these sacred dramas with local prostitutes and laborers costumed as holy virgins and martyrs....The key to the painting's power lies in the horrifying naturalism of the way in which Peter holds his body, resting awkwardly on one elbow, and his head, lifted slightly off the cross." I include this quotation to indicate that Prose is quite capable of discussing in detail each of Caravaggio's major paintings but that is not her purpose in this brief biography. (A representative selection of those works -- reproduced in full-color -- is provided within the volume, including "The Martyrdom of St. Peter.") Caravaggio seems to have been most comfortable in "dark rooms and alleys" while living and expressing what Prose characterizes as an "empathy for the aged saint [in this instance Peter] and, by extension, for all of suffering humanity." Caravaggio's own sufferings were extensive, with most of his wounds self-inflicted.

Another brief excerpt with which Prose concludes: "Having spent his brief, tragic, and turbulent life painting miracles, [Caravaggio] managed, in the process, to create one -- the miracle of art, the miracle of the way in which some paint, a few brushes, a square of canvas, together with that most essential ingredient, genius, can produce something stronger than time and age, more powerful than death."

Obviously, this is not a definitive biography nor did Prose intend it to be. Rather, her purpose is to share what little information there is about Caravaggio's life and career, doing so within the social and cultural context of late-16th and early-17th century Italy. Her portrait is compared with Caravaggio's painting "David with the Head of Goliath." Who was the model for the decapitated giant? The artist himself. "It is, we find ourselves thinking, the face of a man so reckless and desperate that, just a short time later, he would imagine that it was possible to travel in the heat of July, through the miles of swampland" in pursuit of the boat that sailed without him. His "lonely and miserable death" at an early age seems inevitable and so sadly appropriate.

A great little book that covers what is known about a true bad boy of art, a tormented genius that challenged the accepted art of his time and changed the direction of painting, not something lightly done in those times. For this he was applauded, sought out, paid very well; he respond with bad judgment and madness. This book hits all the highlights and story points a non-art professional would want with being bogged down in too much 'art philosophy' that books on artists sometime drop into making it hard for an amateur to wade through. This is an excellent intro to Caravaggio. You should read this and then follow it up with The Lost Painting: A Quest For A Caravaggio Masterpiece, the amazing and true story of how one of Caravaggio's lost paintings was found in the 1990s.

the author does presume a bit of knowledge on the part of the reader about social life, politics and religion in Italy during the time of Caravaggio's life. But this book is a breezy and interesting account of this fascinating and troubled artist. It makes one want to move on to something more comprehensive, and of course then go to Rome, Sicily etc.... to look at the actual pictures.

One aspect of this book that is somewhat bothersome is this: there are only a handful of reproductions of Caravaggio's paintings contained in the book. But the author spends considerable time describing in detail not just the ones in the book but many others. For those not in the book, the reader should have a computer handy so those can be viewed while reading. Believe me, this makes the experience of reading the book much more enjoyable.