New Book: Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane
THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Hilary Spurling
Several recent and increasingly authoritative accounts of Caravaggio’s life and work have helped precipitate the current revival, including two excellent reconstructions by the novelists Peter Robb and Francine Prose. Given the near-total lack of documentary evidence and the elusive nature of the subject himself, it is hardly surprising that fictional techniques have penetrated in some ways further and more surely than the sterner disciplines of art history. Graham-Dixon, the author of “Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel,” ably combines the two in “Caravaggio.” CARAVAGGIO: A Life Sacred and Profane, By Andrew Graham-Dixon, Illustrated. 514 pp. W. W. Norton & Company. $39.95. [link
By Hilary Spurling
Several recent and increasingly authoritative accounts of Caravaggio’s life and work have helped precipitate the current revival, including two excellent reconstructions by the novelists Peter Robb and Francine Prose. Given the near-total lack of documentary evidence and the elusive nature of the subject himself, it is hardly surprising that fictional techniques have penetrated in some ways further and more surely than the sterner disciplines of art history. Graham-Dixon, the author of “Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel,” ably combines the two in “Caravaggio.” CARAVAGGIO: A Life Sacred and Profane, By Andrew Graham-Dixon, Illustrated. 514 pp. W. W. Norton & Company. $39.95. [link
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