Caravaggio A Life Sacred and Profane by Andrew Graham-Dixon

Description

Genius and violence, faith and fury — no artist lived closer to the edge. Andrew Graham-Dixon’s Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane is the commanding modern biography of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610), the painter who lived the darkest and most dangerous life of any of the great masters.

Delving into original Italian sources, Graham-Dixon explores the staggering achievement — the revolutionary naturalism, the dramatic chiaroscuro, sacred scenes painted with unflinching realism — while confronting the profane: the brawls, the scandals, the murder charge that sent the artist fleeing across Italy, painting masterpieces as he ran for his life.

In a bravura performance of scholarship and storytelling, he reveals how sacred and profane were inseparable in Caravaggio: the same hand that painted saints also drew a sword. Published in 2011 and still the definitive modern life, this is an unforgettable journey into Baroque Italy and the soul of art’s most electrifying rebel.

Genius and violence, faith and fury — no artist lived closer to the edge. Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane by Andrew Graham-Dixon is the commanding biography of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610), the painter who lived the darkest and most dangerous life of any of the great masters.

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Graham-Dixon delves into the original Italian sources to explore Caravaggio’s staggering artistic achievements: the revolutionary naturalism, the dramatic chiaroscuro, the sacred scenes painted with unflinching realism. But he also confronts the profane — the brawls, the scandals, the murder charge that sent the artist fleeing across Italy, painting masterpieces as he ran for his life.

n
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In a bravura performance of scholarship and storytelling, this biography reveals how the sacred and the profane were inseparable in Caravaggio: the same hand that painted saints also drew a sword. Published in 2011, it remains the definitive modern life of art’s most electrifying rebel.

n
n

For art lovers, biography readers, and anyone fascinated by genius at full throttle, this is an unforgettable journey into Baroque Italy and the soul of a tormented master.