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Caravaggio: A Passionate Life

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As a longtime fan of Caravaggio's works, I found Desmond Seward's biography to be fascinating and informative. Seward fills his book with wonderful details that help flesh out the social milieu of the artist's lifetime, a picture of a world as violent and yet fervently religious as Caravaggio himself. The writing is crisp and colorful, never failing to evoke the various settings in which Caravaggio lived. I thought perhaps Seward was a bit too fastidious about the possibility of Caravaggio's homosexual side, but on the other hand I appreciate the way Seward rescues Caravaggio from the PC types who would try to claim Caravaggio as a gay icon when he was certainly not exclusively so; nor did the artist live in an era when such personality distinctions were made. I also like the emphasis Seward placed on Caravaggio's faith and his struggles with his temperamental personality, giving us a more rounded picture of a man with many contradictory elements in his character.

Firstly an admission, I had no prior knowledge of Caravaggio or his paintings. My main area of interest is military history but after seeing the beautiful cover on this book I picked it up and browsed through the wonderful colour plates. I had to have the book to read and after ordering it from Amazon.com and sat and waited. It was worth the wait! I enjoyed the story of this most interesting man, yes its a bit short (200 odd pages) but to a person like me who had no prior knowledge or interest in this subject it filled a gap in my education. This was an interesting book to read and I just loved the colour plates of the artists work (16 colour pictures). The book has sparked an interest to learn more of this man, his times and his art. For that alone the book was worth it and the author has done his job. I would recommend this book for those who want to learn a little bit more about this man and his art.

This may be the best of the new Caravaggio books. As a painter and a student of art history, I found this book by Seward to be absolutely absorbing. Seward not only gives insight about Caravaggio's life, but also delves into the events that may have inspired his paintings. Please read this exciting book!

It is no secret among my friends that Michelangelo Merisi da Carvaggio is among my favorite painters. Because Caravaggio's paintings have a narrative quality, an almost universal appeal and real drama, they have long spoken to me. When the National Gallery of Ireland loaned its newly discovered Caravaggio - one of the best and notably, one that hasn't suffered at the hands of overzealous restorers of past centuries - to our own National Gallery of Art, I flew to Washington to see it. Even hanging in the gallery of Baroque masterpieces, it stood out as a sublime work of art. Like his paintings, Caravaggio's life was a study in contrasts. While he painted soaring religious masterpieces, he lived his life in the gutter, fighting, killing, gambling and whoring. So, enjoying his work as much as I do, it is with pleasure that I share a elegantly crafted, well-written little monograph titled "Caravaggio: A Passionate Life." The author, Desmond Seward, is not an art historian but a historian of the Middle Ages and because of the number of art historians with an agenda; this is almost certainly a good thing...instead of being filled with jargon or far fetched theories, he has provided readers with a consise, well-written monograph on a epoch creating artist!

Any biography of Caravaggio is bound to be immensely interesting because he was far from ordinary, someone who will never fail to shock and amuse modern readers. While several reviews I have read complain about the brevity of the book, I found its length appropriate-it did the artist justice without bogging the reader down with too much analysis and irrelevant details. It assumes some familiarity with Italy and European history, but it has several chapters devoted solely to discussing the time period, while always making a connection to Caravaggio's life. I found it particularly nice that nearly all of Caravaggio's paintings were discussed and analyzed within the biography. The book has several copies of paintings inserted in its middle, but lacks the majority. Therefore, I found it incredibly helpful to have my Caravaggio anthology nearby so that I could follow the author's discussions. Undoubtedly, anyone that is not a Caravaggio fan would find these sections tremendously boring, but I loved the opportunity to pore over his paintings with a new understanding of their significance and context.

I am fascinated by the combination in one person, of great creativity, in the service of religious ideals, with uncontrolled sexuality, violence and criminality, and depression. The relationship between these two extremes may be the modern temperament writ large. Thus, in the company of many people, I have long been interested in the art and character of the great Italian baroque artist, Michelangelo de Caravaggio (1571 -- 1610). Desmond Seward's short and readable biography, "Caravaggio: A Passionate Life" (1998) offers a good overview of a remarkable artist and deeply flawed and troubled person. Seward is an English historian who has written on the medieval and renaissance periods. He is a member of the Knights of Malta, as was Caravaggio for a brief time; and Seward's religious perspective undoubtedly has much to do with how he sees the artist. I was not convinced by parts of Seward's understanding of his subject. But he presents his materials well with room for his readers to disagree.

Caravaggio was born in the small Italian village for which he is named, and his father died a victim of the plague early in life. From 1588 -1592 he served an apprenticeship as a painter in Milan but fled to Rome, most likely as a result of killing a policeman. In Rome, Caravaggio ultimately received recognition for his extraordinary paintings but was forced to flee the city in 1606 after killing a man named Tommasoni in a duel. (He had earlier accumulated a long police record in Rome.) He received a dispensation to join the Knights of Malta but was expelled and forced to flee after another duel in which he severely wounded a superior in the Order. Caravaggio had strong defenders in Rome, greatly aware of his extraordinary gifts, and received a papal pardon. But, knowing that he had been pardoned, in 1610 Caravaggio died a miserable death en route to Rome after drinking contaminated water. During his years in Rome and thereafter, Caravaggio was an astonishing painter, creating many masterworks, mostly on religious themes. Many of his works have been lost, but some have resurfaced in recent years.

Seward gives a brief treatment of the little that is known about Caravaggio's life and makes an effort to separate knowledge from speculation in the original source material. He does a good job in putting the artist's life in the context of the Italy of his day, with its many states, cultures of endemic and pervasive violence, and susceptibility to natural disasters, such as floods, and plagues. He also discusses effectively the counter-reformation in the Catholic Church; and he places Caravaggio's paintings squarely within the goals and religious outlook of the attempt to revitalize Catholicism from the challenges of Protestantism. For all the violence and difficulties in his life, Seward stresses, Caragaggio never had doctrinal difficulties that might have interested the Inquisition.

Seward also discusses Caravaggio's major paintings (the book includes good color reproductions of 16 of them) emphasizing their naturalism -- Caragaggio's attempt to paint people and things as they were -- and, increasingly, their mysticism and religiosity. He is good at pointing out the violence in many of the paintings -- especially the scenes of beheadings -- and their use of light and of dark shadings. Seward is far less convincing on issues of sexuality. He is dismissive on issues of eroticism in Caravaggio's art, and on the artist's likely bisexual or homosexual orientation. The historical record may be sparse, but many viewers have found compelling evidence of eroticism in the paintings -- including the paintings reproduced in his book. Seward properly emphasizes, I think, the religious, mystical nature that finds expression in Caravaggio's art, but he downplays the violent, demonic, and sexual nature of the artist. Thus, while he properly subtitles his book "A Passionate Life", he gives the reader less than the whole of it.

As Seward points out, in many respects Caravaggio, with his great talent and equally great human flaws, is the prototype of the modern antihero. Undoubtedly, this combination accounts for much of the fascination the artist and his works continue to exert. Seward's book sets the stage for considering the tortured relationship between Caravaggio's life and his art; but in the end he fails to do his subject complete justice.

Robin Friedman

Desmond Seward's look at the life of Caravaggio, a genius with a problematic personality, is well enough written as a string of facts, if far from passionate in its prose or its insights. But beyond the ABCs of the life, Seward offers virtually nothing. His major motivation seems to be "rescuing" Caravaggio from his reputation as a homosexual, which reputation he attributes ludicrously to Derek Jarman's recent film rather than the stark sexuality of Caravaggio's male nudes. Mr. Seward is of the opinion that the painter could not have been homosexual, because he was devoutly religious, in fact a quotidian exemplar of counter-Reformation Catholicism. Apparently it has not occurred to Mr. Seward that Caravaggio could have been *both* homosexual and devoutly Christian, or that his difficulties as a person--his numerous duels, brawls, conflicts, assaults--may have arisen from the conflict between his sexuality and his faith, or between his sexuality and the dictates of his Inquisition-period church. But other than repeating his assertion endlessly, Seward offers no particular evidence one way or the other as to Caravaggio's sexuality, and no meaningful explanation of his own for the painter's repeated confrontations with his peers. In fact, the author's take on the pictures is as superficial as his understanding of human sexuality. He repeats fairly ludicrous proto-Christian interpretations of the paintings, then dismisses contrary interpretations out of hand. Seward pooh-poohs post-Freudian analysis of the pictures without, apparently, stopping to consider the psychosexuality of the paintings themselves. Of course, Seward is himself a post-Freudian, if not a psychological critic, and he seems himself to be obsessed with the notion that Caravaggio was obsessed with decapitation. (Could Caravaggio possibly have been obsessed with the idea that he himself could be decapitated if his homosexuality were known?) All in all, the book is useful only as a recitation of the facts of the painter's life. It absolutely fails the promise of its subtitle: "A Passionate Life."

Caravaggio was without peer in his time, and it was many years before Rembrandt produced anything comparable to the majesty and beauty of Caravaggio's work. Caravaggio's short and turbulent life is not well documented and we are fortunate that Seward directed his attention to this subject. Seward is an accomplished historian who managed to assemble a plausible life story from the sparse information that is available, and to lend some insight into what may have motivated this genius. The detailed portrait of life and faith in early Baroque era Italy was an added bonus and a pleasant surprise.