Book description
Of all Italian painters, Caravaggio (c. 1565-1609) speaks most
intensely to the modern world. His early works suggest a fascination
with his own youth and sexuality and the trancience of love and beauty
his later religious art speaks of violence, passion, solitude and death.
Ugly, almost brutal-looking, Caravaggio was constantly embroiled in
fights and entangled with the law; the prototype anti-social artist, he
moved between the worlds of powerful patrons and the street life of boys
and prostitutes. Helen Langdon uncovers his progress from childhood in
plague-ridden Milan to wild success in Rome, and eventual exile and
persecution in the South, and sets his work against the political,
intellectual and spiritual movements of the day. Fully illustrated, her
dramatic portrait shows Carravigio's life to be as sensational and
enigmatic as his powerful and enduring art. Helen Langdon was born in
Yorkshire. She has worked for the education department at the National
Gallery, British Museum and National Portrait Gallery. As well as
writing studies of Salvator Rosa and Claude Lorrain, she is editor of
the Italian Renaissance and Baroque sections of the
Macmillan Dictionary of Art
.
