- Hardcover: 560 pages
- Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; First Edition edition (Feb 10 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0805063560
- ISBN-13: 978-0805063561
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16 x 4.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 1 Kg
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#403,189 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #15 in Books > Arts & Photography > Artists, A-Z > ( A-C ) > Caravaggio, Michelangelo
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Recognized now as a peer of 17th-century masters Rembrandt and Vermeer, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) painted notoriously provocative religious and classical tableaux, yet left few traces ("no letters, no table talk, no notebook or treatise") of his life beyond his art. Australian -born Robb, whose ex-pat tour-de-force Midnight in Sicily: On Art, Food, History, Travel, & La Cosa Nostra took readers through that fascinating island, has created an idiosyncratic but dazzling biography of Caravaggio by exploiting almost every extant fragment, including a handful of sightings by friends and enemies, and the scanty Italian police files. More audaciously, Robb spreads through the life many pages on every known canvas, leaving appropriately theatrical description in his wake. Robb's Caravaggio--or "M," as he insists on calling the multimonikered and aliased painter--was a violent man of "hairtrigger touchiness," who fueled the passionate intensity of his painting with his professional and emotional frustrations, managing to register raw life in a religious culture that demanded, according to Robb, vapid holiness. Bisexual, he painted and loved pubescent boys, and patronized the female prostitutes he used as models. To great effect, Robb inserts reflections by the painter's contemporaries within his own sentences, offsetting them with italics rather than quotation marks: "M's repeated and humiliating requests for small advances from Masetti confirmed the need. That wasn't his style and he reddens whenever he sees me." He studs his own descriptions with odd words, obscenities and anachronistic, out-of-place contemporary references ("... like Ronald Reagan playing the cowboy"). Yet it all works--Robb's flawed, melodramatic, swollen biography is crammed with more about the dark, driven Caravaggio than any previous life. Just as Caravaggio took art to the edge, Robb takes biography there. 16 pages of illus., 8 in color, not seen by PW.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Of books about the art and life of the great Caravaggio, there are apparently no end. Unfortunately this comprehensive consideration of the master's life and oeuvre neither particularly expands our understanding nor further illuminates our appreciation. Attentive as he is to the immediate world around the artist, Robb's hostility to Catholicism and his insensibility to the religious content and emotion of Caravaggio's mature paintings vitiates not only the sometimes perceptive value of his analyses but also the quality of his contextual reconstruction. His evocation of qualities in the paintings are not always apparent and are at times dubiously inferred from problematic biographical data. Similarly troubling are his sexualization of the artist's content and the sometimes feverish conspiratorial nets that are educed from a limited body of documentation. "Caravaggesque" provocations, vulgarity, neologisms, colloquial jargon, Australian slang, and smart-alecky allusions mar the verve of Robb's prose. Collections desiring a contextual approach will be better served by Helen Langdon's Caravaggio: A Life (LJ 6/1/99), while those concerned with accessible formal elucidation and comprehensive illustration will wish to acquire Catherine Puglisi's Caravaggio, LJ 4/1/99.
---Robert Cahn, Fashion Inst. of Technology, New York
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
---Robert Cahn, Fashion Inst. of Technology, New York
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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First Sentence
ON 14 JANUARY 1571 Francesco Sforza da Caravaggio, who was maybe not yet twenty, attended the wedding of an employees who was ten or so years older than himself. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
ON 14 JANUARY 1571 Francesco Sforza da Caravaggio, who was maybe not yet twenty, attended the wedding of an employees who was ten or so years older than himself. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Innovation does not always guarantee success,
By
This review is from: M: The Man Who Became Caravaggio (Paperback)
Brimming with historical detail and clearly well researched, it is a shame this book is not more artfully written and furnished with more reproductions of the mentioned art. In his enthusiasm to plunge his readers into Caravaggio's unsavoury environment, Mr. Robb takes on a street talk vernacular, even renaming the painting titles. But, Caravaggio often painted more than one work with the same or very similar title and the author habitually neglects to mention enough details to identify the correct work. Instead, the reader must constantly thumb back and forth toward the end of the book, where they are listed chronologically. Using the location of the works, provided in this list, is the key to cross referencing, for locating them in other sources. Adding to these glaring inconveniences, one is forced to hunt through other sources like picture art books or webpages to understand what he is talking about, since so much of what he says is based on the paintings themselves, of which, few reproductions are provided. What is the point of reading about a painting you are not currently viewing? Attempting creativity in his biography of an historical figure is a good idea except he does not blend this with his other goal of retaining the depth from his research. As a result, it is not the light read as promoted, but rather an academic read with some innovative writing tricks which "might've" worked had they been combined with a less laboured writing style.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting, but a Pain to Read,
By Frank Martini "Mac, iPhone, Database Programmer" (Houston, Texas United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)
This review is from: M: The Man Who Became Caravaggio (Hardcover)
In short, a well-researched and interesting book written in a virtually impossible-to-read style. Caravaggio's life holds your attention, but the double-contractions, lack of punctuation and single-character reference to Caravaggio as 'M' (including such mechanical feats as "M'd've" (i.e. "Caravaggio would have" (I think.)) make for an unnecessarily long read. Robb's insight into Caravaggio's style is impressive, but hampered by the lack of plates in the book (only 8 full works). (I was driven to use a second book as a reference.) Perhaps Robb was attempting a fresh and realistic take on the English language- much like Caravaggio's take on art. A second printing after a good editing could make _this work_ a masterpiece.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A thrilling story and a great art book,
By
This review is from: M: The Man Who Became Caravaggio (Paperback)
Peter Robb has managed to achieve a miraculous symphony in this long (500 + pages) book: It's a biography, a detective story (little is known about Caravaggio's life), a social history of Rome, and a definitive art book. As a result, you can read this book on many levels. I read it first as a "beach book" for the story, and then again, when I took a vacation to Rome and tried to see as many of his remaining paintings as I could.Robb explains how Caravaggio was a breakthrough painter in his use of light, and in his use of recognizable local models (almost all of whom Robb has been able to identify) to express the religious art of the day. Mannerism died at his hands. Moreover, Peter Robb builds a credible portrait of Caravaggio's brittle personality--it's easy to see why people were out to kill him. At first I thought the title "M" was a little contrived, but by the end of the book, I realized that it's cipher for the real man behind the familiar name. (Calling someone "Caravaggio" after the town is like giving someone the nickname "Boston"). The reproductions are carefully chosen and richly presented. You'll enjoy reading--and re-reading--this wonderful book.
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