Customer Reviews

Doubting Thomas: A Novel About Caravaggio

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This is a great book for artists, specifically passionate,
cutting-edge artists who loathe the mundane. And it's a
wonderful 'detective' story, with surprise endings. Yes, that's
a plural - it delivers one-two-three K.O.'s right up to the
very end...don't miss the final "Editor's Note," either. I love
a literary roller coaster ride, and this book is one of those, with, as mentioned, a Big Finish.

The book made me want to jump on a plane to Rome,
as well. My mouth watered, thinking of all those
gorgeous Caravaggios I haven't seen. Or at least I'll go
searcing for a "complete works of..." art book with full color repros.

Where has Atl Naess been all my life? Plan to read more, if
I can get my hands on his work.

Atle Naess tells the fictionalized story of painter Michel Angelo Merisi da Caravaggio (known to us today simply as Caravaggio) using the device of a contemporary cleric's investigation into the events that led up to Caravaggio's exile from Rome: whoring, brawling, and finally a verbal argument that ends in another man's death. Different witnesses give their versions of the painter and his shocking exploits, such as attacking a waiter who serves him improperly cooked asparagus or sitting with a dying prostitute so that he can use her agony as a model for The Death of the Virgin. Finally, we discover the surprising details of Caravaggios own death.

Naess, in his "Concluding Unscholarly Comment by the Editor," says:

"I began work on this publication in search of a certain clarity. It was, of course, my interest in the art, ideas and social history of the seventeenth century that prompted it, but if I may be permitted a remark of a private nature: I was driven also by personal need.
"It was the need to describe and comprehend holiness. This could also be expressed as the wise to reconstruct this lost power, which we no longer understand and which thus causes large areas of our history to have become incomprehensible to us" (154, 155).

Doubting Thomas makes perfectly clear our human shortcomings, our inability to attain holiness, but I'm not any clearer, really, about what holiness is. I see that it is NOT collecting sensually appealing, gorgeous artworks that are ostensibly religious in nature; nor it is about the competition of high-ranking churchmen to possess the greatest collection of such art. Caravaggio paints works which inspire some to deep religious feeling, yet utterly fails in his human relationships to attain Christian ideals of self-control, forgiveness, and love. He uses everyone around him as pawns to his art, rejects his family, and sleeps with his models, who are generally prostitutes (but are sometimes young boys). In its quest to comprehend holiness, this novel may serve only to prove in the end that, as the prophet said, "There is none holy, no, not one."

And yet, on the fringes of our perception, there is something pure and holy, something that shines through Caravaggio's art and all the confusion that surrounds our lives. It would be difficult to formulate a simple "theme statement" about this novel after a single reading, as high school teachers often ask students to do, yet Naess does seem to suggest that, as flawed as human beings are, we may be able to create something that points toward the infinite glory of God.

Doubting Thomas was deservedly a best seller in Europe, and I read it with great attention and interest. Nevertheless, I did not I enjoy it in the way one enjoys a simple who-done-it. Doubting Thomas left me disturbed, raising more questions than it answered. I would recommend this thought-provoking book to readers looking for a post-modern, historical detective novel.

Engaging, quick read in the form of a mystery that tackles some weighty philosophical-religious issues and the timely (and timeless) matter of the need for certainty in a world that refuses to offer any. Proponents of using character witnesses at trials won't be too happy, but E. Loftus fans will howl at this one.