Customer Reviews

Masters of Art: Caravaggio

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Though this Harry N. Abrams 1989 monograph on Caravaggio is dated and not at all the thorough investigation of a fascinating painter's influence on the history of making and living art, Alfred Moir's CARAVAGGIO does offer an exception introduction to the painter's work. The biography is confined to the opening forty pages and contains enough of the highlights of Caravaggio's career to pique the interest. But the real pleasure of this 'old standard' book is the presentation of the color plates of many of Caravaggio's most interesting works. These are not crowded, each painting being given its own single page opposite which is a fine discussion of the painting both technically and about the subject.

For a fine quick reference book for the paintings addressed in the continuing stream of biographies of Caravaggio written today, this volume is a perfect foil. Just don't expect a scholarly volume or excessive detail. Grady Harp, December 05

Wonderful slick pages. Clear, realistic colors and appropriate collection in black and white. I recommend this book as an intro to Caravaggio's paintings, but in substance I recommend as comparative reading to Peter Robb's The Man Who Became Carravaggio. OUTSTANDING comparisons of this master's life and works can be considered. Together, this was my favorite read of the year.

His "Incredulity of St Thomas," with the focus on Thomas's prodding and Christ's reassuring hands, and his "Madonna of Loreto," with the Virgin and Child approachably compassionate to the muddy-footed pilgrims in rumpled clothing, have been much copied. His "Entombment" has been unanimously acclaimed: with only Christ's and Mary Cleophas's faces fully illuminated; with Nicodemus supporting the dead legs while hunching over to look straight into viewer eyes; and with the Virgin blessing all. But it was his "Lute Player" that CARAVAGGIO called his most beautiful picture: with the tenor score to 16th-century madrigalist Jacques Arcadelt's "Voi sapete ch'io v'amo [You know that I love you]" open for the tenor lute; with the unique horizontal balancing of boy and freshly blooming bouquet of vividly colored flowers; and with the window light source reflected on the carafe. The colorplates in Art History Professor Alfred Moir's book are of such photographic quality that readers clearly see the 17th-century artist's studio window light source reflected in the carafe within his "Boy Bitten by a Lizard." The compellingly thorough text and the author's ANTHONY VAN DYCK prepare readers to go on to the other giants of his time, with Jose Alvarez Lopera's EL GRECO, Kristin Lohse Belkin's RUBENS, Jonathan Brown's VELAZQUEZ, Ludwig Munz's REMBRANDT, and Arthur K. Wheelock's JAN VERMEER.

Caravaggio (1571-1610) is the Baroque period's black sheep. The tenebrism that so succsessfully glamorises his canvases is perhaps the metaphoric shadow stirred by his own haunting emotional tumult. The artist's private pain. The homoerotic quality of his early paintings is not mentioned today in the Encyclopedia Britannica. But, like Ganymede and Narcissus, his adolescents charm a print that evokes an age long gone. While at Rome he continued his superb though idiocyncratic profession. The genius of his work at odds with the ignominy in his life. To this book Alfred Moir lends an scholarly and savvy article. Detailing Caravaggio's brilliant if bizarre progress. Mr Moir evokes the vivid milieu of this, Baroque's rascal artist, immensily gifted, though always his own worst enemy. Or, was he? Obscure for some time, now Caravaggio shines. And as we also celebrate the James Deans and Orson Welles, buddies from the same pantheom. Pictorially, the text is full of riches, my favorite the 'St Matthew" series. My other favorite is when..."he threw a plate of artichokes onto the face of a waiter..." I was moved, I'm happy to own this book.