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Caravaggio and the Creation of Modernity
Undeniably one of the greatest artists of all time, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio would develop a radically new kind of psychologically expressive, realistic art and, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, would lay the foundations for modern painting. His paintings defied tradition to such a degree that the meaning of his works have divided critics and viewers for centuries. In this original study, Troy Thomas examines Caravaggio’s life and art in relationship to the profound beginnings of modernity, exploring the many conventions that Caravaggio utterly dismantled with his extraordinary genius.
Thomas begins with an in-depth look at Caravaggio’s early life and works and examines how he refined his realism, developed his obsession with darkness and light, and began to find the subtle and clever ambiguity of genre and meaning that would become his trademark. Focusing acutely on the inherent tensions, contradictions, and ambiguities within Caravaggio’s paintings, Thomas goes on to examine his mature religious works and the ways he created a powerful but stark and enigmatic expressiveness in his protagonists. Lastly, he delves into the artist’s final hectic years as a fugitive killer evading papal police and wandering the cities of southern Italy.
Richly illustrated in color throughout, Caravaggio and the Creation of Modernity will appeal to all of those fascinated by the history of art and the remarkable lives of Renaissance masters.
Thomas begins with an in-depth look at Caravaggio’s early life and works and examines how he refined his realism, developed his obsession with darkness and light, and began to find the subtle and clever ambiguity of genre and meaning that would become his trademark. Focusing acutely on the inherent tensions, contradictions, and ambiguities within Caravaggio’s paintings, Thomas goes on to examine his mature religious works and the ways he created a powerful but stark and enigmatic expressiveness in his protagonists. Lastly, he delves into the artist’s final hectic years as a fugitive killer evading papal police and wandering the cities of southern Italy.
Richly illustrated in color throughout, Caravaggio and the Creation of Modernity will appeal to all of those fascinated by the history of art and the remarkable lives of Renaissance masters.
272 pages, Paperback
Published September 17, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 8, 2022
"the empty spaces in the top half of his religious scenes must have struck his contemporary observers as strange, perverse and in a way frightening, since they were used to seeing heavens overflowing with divine personages" (Thomas: 217)
This book describes the life and works of Caravaggio as well as how his paintings were received in his own time and later on.
The author defends how Caravaggio created modernity by means of ambiguity or a subjective and personal manner of making art. Therefore, the book demolishes previous ideas that based Caravaggio's modernity on his use of dirty feet or dark blackgrounds. The book shows how these two aspects were already common when Caravaggio started his career.
The author places a great emphasis on Caravaggio's unusual way of depicting religious scenes, where humans are privileged over the divine or saints can look indecorous or powerful.
This constant emphasis on the strangeness of his religious paintings could seem repetitive at first. However, the author expands it with new information every time he goes back to it. In this way, we are told right in the middle of the book that these pictures aren't negative but follow religious texts and conventions of the time. The author even suggests that creating such images was a marketing strategy.
Defending Caravaggio as the creator of modernity, this is discussed at the end of the book but somehow vaguely and with just a few examples that are not really convincing (in my opinion). The author could have offered more specific examples to support his idea, like Manet's Le Déjeuner with his juxtaposition of genres.
Despite the shortness of the book, this is a well-written text that shows a particular and interesting analysis of Caravaggio artistic production. Although the main emphasis is on the uniqueness of his religious paintings, the book also has time to comment on other aspects, such as the meaning of light or why Caravaggio left for Messina. All in all, it is a convincing and easy-to-read introduction for anyone that does not know much about Caravaggio and his art.
This book describes the life and works of Caravaggio as well as how his paintings were received in his own time and later on.
The author defends how Caravaggio created modernity by means of ambiguity or a subjective and personal manner of making art. Therefore, the book demolishes previous ideas that based Caravaggio's modernity on his use of dirty feet or dark blackgrounds. The book shows how these two aspects were already common when Caravaggio started his career.
The author places a great emphasis on Caravaggio's unusual way of depicting religious scenes, where humans are privileged over the divine or saints can look indecorous or powerful.
This constant emphasis on the strangeness of his religious paintings could seem repetitive at first. However, the author expands it with new information every time he goes back to it. In this way, we are told right in the middle of the book that these pictures aren't negative but follow religious texts and conventions of the time. The author even suggests that creating such images was a marketing strategy.
Defending Caravaggio as the creator of modernity, this is discussed at the end of the book but somehow vaguely and with just a few examples that are not really convincing (in my opinion). The author could have offered more specific examples to support his idea, like Manet's Le Déjeuner with his juxtaposition of genres.
Despite the shortness of the book, this is a well-written text that shows a particular and interesting analysis of Caravaggio artistic production. Although the main emphasis is on the uniqueness of his religious paintings, the book also has time to comment on other aspects, such as the meaning of light or why Caravaggio left for Messina. All in all, it is a convincing and easy-to-read introduction for anyone that does not know much about Caravaggio and his art.
January 28, 2024
Caravaggio, one of the painters that keeps fascinating us (to the extent of making him immune to cancel culture, even though he checks many boxes to qualify for it) was way ahead of hos time. This is what this book is about, in a nutshell.
On a more serious note, the book explores more than just what made Caravaggio so forward thinking in his craft compared to the cohort of great artists that makes Renaissance and early baroque such a compelling epoch. It links it with his personality, his traumas and frustrations for which the solutions and outlets were very different compared to what we have at our beck and call these days.
Caravaggio was a bon-vivant hothead with a drinking and gamblig problem. Add into the mixture the airs and entitledness of the issue of a family of minor and impoverished nobility. And you end up with a person you probable would not have enjoyed being friends with.
But the talent. The vision. The creativity. The mere genius of not adorning a surface with images and figures, but painting it black (some 400 years before the Stones would make that a hit) and then coaxing, cajoling and invoking these images out of that blackness... Expressivity finally becoming humane and human. The traces real life leaves on humans who are not blessed with being born into privilege and wealth: dirty feed, knotty fingers, rough features, ragged clothes, exhausted postures... Using real people marked by the burden of life to incarnate saints and madonnas (the scandal of that!)
And this is where humanity and humaneness is manifest in his work: he is so aware ultimately of his flaws (he often insinuates himself in his paintings in very unflattering roles, it's mea culpa, it's sin-purging, it's a cry for redemption. Think of his face on decapitated heads.)
It all makes him very modern - he sort of laid out the ground and started paving the way for those artists who found in art the vehicle to express themselves and their world.
A book that is not only a treat as an object, but an effort to round out the personality of a man who is forever a titan of art, but at the same time so human, oh, too human.
I gave it 4 stars for the author's writing style which somehow struck me as not very uniform - sometimes he was a "unputdownable", and sometimes the read would be clinically flat.
On a more serious note, the book explores more than just what made Caravaggio so forward thinking in his craft compared to the cohort of great artists that makes Renaissance and early baroque such a compelling epoch. It links it with his personality, his traumas and frustrations for which the solutions and outlets were very different compared to what we have at our beck and call these days.
Caravaggio was a bon-vivant hothead with a drinking and gamblig problem. Add into the mixture the airs and entitledness of the issue of a family of minor and impoverished nobility. And you end up with a person you probable would not have enjoyed being friends with.
But the talent. The vision. The creativity. The mere genius of not adorning a surface with images and figures, but painting it black (some 400 years before the Stones would make that a hit) and then coaxing, cajoling and invoking these images out of that blackness... Expressivity finally becoming humane and human. The traces real life leaves on humans who are not blessed with being born into privilege and wealth: dirty feed, knotty fingers, rough features, ragged clothes, exhausted postures... Using real people marked by the burden of life to incarnate saints and madonnas (the scandal of that!)
And this is where humanity and humaneness is manifest in his work: he is so aware ultimately of his flaws (he often insinuates himself in his paintings in very unflattering roles, it's mea culpa, it's sin-purging, it's a cry for redemption. Think of his face on decapitated heads.)
It all makes him very modern - he sort of laid out the ground and started paving the way for those artists who found in art the vehicle to express themselves and their world.
A book that is not only a treat as an object, but an effort to round out the personality of a man who is forever a titan of art, but at the same time so human, oh, too human.
I gave it 4 stars for the author's writing style which somehow struck me as not very uniform - sometimes he was a "unputdownable", and sometimes the read would be clinically flat.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews