Caravaggio
Description
“Matching gorgeous prose to gorgeous artworks, Prose responds to each image as a moment of theatrical revelation, sensual or spiritual, and frequently both.” — Boston Sunday Globe
In Caravaggio, New York Times bestselling author Francine Prose offers an enthralling account of the life and work of one of the greatest painters of all time. Caravaggio defied the aesthetic conventions of his time; his use of ordinary people, realistically portrayed—street boys, prostitutes, the poor, the aged—was a profound and revolutionary innovation that left its mark on generations of artists. His insistence on painting from nature, on rendering the emotional truth of experience, whether religious or secular, made him an artist who speaks across the centuries to modern day.
Called “racy, intensely imagined, and highly readable” by the New York Times Book Review, Caravaggio includes eight pages of color illustrations, and is sure to appeal to art enthusiasts interested in one of history’s true innovators. Caravaggio is part of the “Eminent Lives” series from HarperCollins, a selection of biographies by distinguished authors on canonical figures.
Prose paints a portrait of a man torn between the sacred and the profane—a master whose life was a whirlwind of genius, violence, and exile.
- A Revolutionary Vision: Discover the master who defied convention, using street boys and prostitutes as models for saints and rendering biblical scenes with an unflinching, dramatic realism.
- The Sacred and the Profane: Delve into the paradox of a man who created some of the world's most profound religious art while living a life of brawls, scandal, and duels in 17th-century Rome.
- A Life of Genius and Turmoil: Follow Caravaggio from his position as the most sought-after painter in the city to a fugitive wanted for murder, forced into a desperate, turbulent exile.
- Master of Light and Shadow: Understand the revolutionary use of chiaroscuro that gave his paintings their signature theatrical intensity and emotional power.
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Person
Francine Prose is the author of twenty-two works of fiction including the highly acclaimed The Vixen; Mister Monkey; the New York Times bestseller Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932; A Changed Man, which won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize; and Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her works of nonfiction include the highly praised 1974: A Person History, Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer, which has become a classic. The recipient of numerous grants and honors, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, a Director’s Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, Prose is a former president of PEN American Center, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College.