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A social history of reception, this study focuses on sacred art and Catholicism in Rome during the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The five altarpieces examined here were painted by artists who are admired today - Caravaggio, Guercino, and Guido Reni - and by the less renowned but once influential Tommaso Laureti and Andrea Commodi. By shifting attention from artistic intentionality to reception, Pamela Jones reintegrates these altarpieces into the urban fabric of early modern Rome, allowing us to see the five paintings anew through the eyes of their original audiences, both women and men, rich and poor, pious and impious.Because Italian churchmen relied, after the Council of Trent, on public altarpieces more than any other type of contemporary painting in their attempts to reform and inspire Catholic society, it is on altarpieces that Pamela Jones centers her inquiry.Through detailed study of evidence in many genres - including not only painting, prints, and art criticism, but also cheap pamphlets, drama, sermons, devotional tracts, rules of religious orders, pilgrimages, rituals, diaries, and letters - Jones shows how various beholders made meaning of the altarpieces in their aesthetic, devotional, social, and charitable dimensions.This study presents early modern Catholicism and its art in an entirely new light by addressing the responses of members of all social classes - not just elites - to art created for the public. It also provides a more accurate view of the range of religious ideas that circulated in early modern Rome by bringing to bear both officially sanctioned religious art and literature and unauthorized but widely disseminated cheap pamphlets and prints that were published without the mandatory religious permission. On this basis, Jones helps to illuminate further the insurmountable problems churchmen faced when attempting to channel the power of sacred art to elicit orthodox responses. ... Read more

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Michelangelo Merisi (1571-1610), known as Caravaggio, after his home town in Lombardy, was arguably not only the finest painter of the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods, but one of the great artists of all time. He must also rank among the most revolutionary of those who, from time to time, have sought to overthrow established artistic orthodoxy through a return to, or strengthening of, naturalism. His two principal innovations - his use of chiaroscuro and his practice of painting directly from posed models- imbued his picturesque genre scenes of cardsharps and fortunetellers and his groundbreaking religious paintings, so redolent of the spirit of the Counter Reformation, with an intense, crisply etched presence. While his capricious character, aggressive behavior, and bohemian way of life have intrigued the modern imagination, fueling the notion of him as an embattled outsider who channeled the complexities of his own make-up into an assertively iconoclastic art.In this new edition of his authoritative text, which places Caravaggio?s achievement squarely within the cultural and religious contexts of his time, John Gash has incorporated several recent documentary and pictorial discoveries. The book illustrates most of Caravaggio?s surviving paintings, executed in Rome, Naples, Malta and Sicily at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the majority of them in color. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent brief biography and large plates of Caravaggio.
Gash gives an excellent description of the period in which Caravaggio worked andbiography of his life.There are fifteen large (10"x15") high quality plates (thumbs up for the publisher) that are representative of Caravaggio's work. Gash also gives informative details about each of the paintings depicted in the plates. Due to the brevity of the book, Gash has also given an exhaustive list of further readings on Caravaggio ... Read more

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Nearly every extant work by Caravaggio is reproduced in color in this lavish, newly updated volume, the result of more than 20 years of research by a leading authority on the artist.

Placing Caravaggio within the broad panorama of society and ideas at the turn of the seventeenth century, John T. Spike sets a richly detailed stage for an artist who has been called "the first modern painter." Caravaggio(1571-1610) reflected in his canvases his own desires and spiritual crises to an extent no one ever had imagined possible, and he shocked his contemporaries by portraying the saints and virgins of Christianity with the faces and bodies of his companions and lovers in Rome's demimonde.

Accompanying the book is a new preface and a newly revised critical catalog on CD in which all of Caravaggio's extant paintings, as well as lost and rejected works, are thoroughly described. Each entry specifies the work's medium, dimensions, location, and provenance, and provides an annotated bibliography of sources. Most of the entries conclude with a brief technical analysis. Much of this scientific data, of prime importance for attribution and dating, has not been published previously.

With its fresh insights, as well as judicious readings of the documents and the physical evidence of the paintings themselves, Caravaggio is the most thorough study on the artist to date, and it will no doubt remain a definitive monograph for many years to come. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

A master realist at work
Caravaggio could be called the first realist painter; the people in his photographs are real people from the street of Rome, Naples and Sicily.This was a controversial choice and a dramatic change from mannerism.At times, he used the same model many times to portray different people, from saints to holy men.His paintings are life-like and detailed, from the muscles in the arms and legs, to the sunburns on the feet and neck.Caravaggio brought a realistic touch to his work.

This book is a second edition from one published in 2001, this edition coming out during the 400th anniversary of his death in 1610.It is a beautiful book with faithful reproductions of all his known works.From the beginning through the end with David holding Goliath's head.This is a true master at work.With a detailed biography, and accompanying CD, this book brings to life this master painter.

Reviewed by: Kevin Winter

CARAVAGGIO'S GREAT PAINTINGS ABJECTLY MISREPRESENTED
I make no apologies for upsetting those who have heaped ecstatic praises on this large volume (which for some reason was printed in China).After purchasing it I instantly knew not one 5-star reviewer has ever seen an original Caravaggio.

But surely their instincts told them Caravaggio might have been the greatest expert in chiaroscuro effects but he would never cover 50% of his later paintings in black oil?If they had looked at only a couple of small Caravaggio books they'd know Abbeville's printers' black ink consistently obliterates virtually all Caravaggio's incidental details - especially the usually faint background architecture. Plus it's truly weird that every flesh tone (even on the cover) is predominately "sickly yellow". Is it likely any Italian artist would deliberately alienate his client's preference for attractive human beauty?

Caravaggio in his 400th anniversary year deserves a far better fate than to be so abjectly misrepresented by both Abbeville (and Taschen in their monumental equally innacurate jumbo volume).If converts to his art are really interested in seeing fairly accurate copies of his best paintings they need only buy a medium-sized Skira paperback sold by Amazon for $24.95.Or visit Skira's website for a video preview of their new book being published in September.

For those who have doubts as to who to believe regarding the value of this Spike book I'm uploading two 60's Italian reproduction of his Saint Matthew series to be compared with those in Abbeville's book.My quarrel with these near black digital reproductions will immediately become obvious.

It has never arrived.Hard to review what doesn't come.
Amazon completely dropped the ball on this.We ordered from a secondary supplier, and they haven't delivered it yet either, said it was in the mail.We think both of them promised a price they can't meet and both are trying to get out of the order.Amazon never billed, so it just dropped it.The secondary supplier says it hasn't arrived because of the post office and will try to find another copy or refund our payment.We still want the book and have asked them to send it.We'll see what happens.MCrenshaw

Beautiful edition
This is a lovely book filled with incredible detail of Caravaggio's work and ample text discussing the works and the artist. Simply gorgeous and worth every penny.

Excellent Biographical and Critical History
The text of this beautiful and generally excellent book is, as others have noted, outstanding in both its biographical coverage and its critical analysis of Caravaggio's major works--an all too rare combination in this field.Beyond presenting a thorough account of the artist's life and explicating concisely but acutely many of his paintings, however, the book also presents the historical and cultural background in which Caravaggio created those works. It weaves that background into its discussion of his life and paintings with deft economy, which results in a rich but never tedious portrayal of 17th century Roman society, political, philosophical and religious currents, and prominent figures.This in turn greatly augments the effectiveness of the central portrayal of Caravaggio's life and works.It's a splendid, informative and insightful read.Indeed the book's only defect, as others have also observed, is the inferior quality of a number of the plates.It is evident that the photos of the paintings are largely if not entirely preexisting ones, and the variation in quality is plain.Color distortion is thankfully fairly minimal at worst, but clarity of image at times suffers.That being said, however, the book remains a masterful and fascinating work that, the occasional dull plate aside, never disappoints. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Caravaggio: Realism, Rebellion, Reception-- an excellent scholarly addition to Caravaggio studies by leading Seicento scholars!
While the previous reviewer is quite right in stating that this book lacks color plates-- one should hardly dismiss this book because of this fact. This monograph is written by a formidable group of leading Seicento scholars-- and is therefore an invaluable resource for those interested in the study of Caravaggio. While it certainly would be preferable to look at lovely color reproductions it should be remembered that these essays were written primarily for an audience of art historians and students of art history who are intimately familiar with the works of art being discussed, and therefore the color plates aren't entirely necessary. Producing color plates can be prohibitively expensive and these costs are passed on to the consumer, and this book would have likely cost a great deal more if the plates weren't black and white.

Interesting text, the paingtings are not in color!
How can you talk about Caravaggio's art in a book where the reproductions from post cards have been xeroxed in black and white and shoved at the end of this not very large book? It's like discussing technicolor films in black and white, and asking an audience to imagine color! And the price for this foolish book!

Forget it. ... Read more

Product Description
Rembrandt - Caravaggio highlights the two geniuses of baroque painting: Rembrandt, the preeminent artist of the Dutch Golden Age, and his Italian counterpart Michelangelo Merisi (also known as Il Caravaggio). Both artists are considered revolutionary innovators in Northern and Southern European art, respectively. With their origins in different painting traditions, each developed an original and striking visual language. The juxtaposition in pairs of paintings by the two artists intensifies the comparison of their work.

Although they never met – Caravaggio (1571-1610) died four years after the birth of Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) –many parallels can be drawn between the two master painters and their oeuvres. This is the first publication tocomprehensively compare the works of Rembrandt with those of Caravaggio. Exploring the use of contrasting colors andchiaroscuro, both artists achieved unexpected realistic detail. The stories conveyed in their paintings benefited from theirinnovative approaches to expressing emotional intensity. Caravaggio pioneered the use of intense light-dark contrast toheighten the drama of his paintings. Benefiting from Caravaggio’s ingenious use of light, Rembrandt developed his own use of light and shadow to underscore the inner emotions of the individuals he depicted.

Unsettling to their contemporaries, the realism of the works of Rembrandt and Caravaggio remains exceptionally compellingto this day. Both painters scrutinized humanity in their own way, amplifying the power and enigmatic qualities of major human themes, such as love, religion, sexuality and violence. Rembrandt and Caravaggio changed not only the course of painting, but also our perception of the world. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

The text's the thing; the images are accessories
Of the 201 reproductions (mostly color), 134 are by OTHER artists, and only 67 are by Caravaggio (including repeats and details) and reference only 39 of his paintings. Fried's lectures concentrate on 25 of these 39. (Sebastian Schutze's catalogue raisonne, The Complete Works of Caravaggio, 2009, comprises 67 paintings.) Fried chooses to discuss only Caravaggio's portable gallery or easel paintings and excludes works installed in churches.

Though the present volume measures 8 in. W x 11 in. H, the reproductions are about 8 in. H x 6 in. W, 5 in. x 6 in., 3 in. x 4 in., and smaller. Color accuracy is fine. These items comprise the slides in Fried's six Andrew W. Mellon Lectures at the National Gallery of Art in 2002. In the book, Fried preserves his lecture format, but he embellished the originals (and much expanded lectures 4 and 5) during manuscript preparation in 2007-2008.

LECTURES

(1) Boy Bitten by a Lizard [ca. 1595-96, National Gallery, London]. One of the most discussed canvases of the master. Usually considered to be Caravaggio himself. A "mirror" painting in which the hands and arms are deftly deprived of the brush and palette. Mirror self-portraits of many other artists are examined, up to Max Liebermann (1930).

(2) Immersion and Specularity. The self-portraitist engages in an ongoing, repetitive, partly automatistic act of painting--that is, immersion. Then he recoils, becomes detached from it, sees the image-artifact--thus, the experience of specularity.

(3) Invention of Absorption. In French paintings from the mid-eighteenth century on, there is the problematic of absorption--the depiction of figures so deeply engrossed in what they are doing, feeling, and thinking that they seem wholly unaware of anything else, including the presence of the viewer before the painting. Absorption fast became a major resource for Western painting in certain works by Caravaggio.

(4) Skepticism, Shakespeare, Address, Density. Caravaggio's canvases are fraught with new significance--psychological, epistemological, ontological--that bear an intimate and complex relation to the stakes of Shakespearean tragedy, underpinned by skepticism. "Absorption" in the 1590s-1600s was accompanied by an antithetical or polar emphasis on "address," the depiction of figures not only facing the viewer but seemingly confronting him with great force and specificity. As early as 1596-1597, Caravaggio's "The Rest on the Flight into Egypt" shows the artist's ability to confer on a gallery painting only about 4 feet high x 5 feet wide a "density" of depicted and implied relationships.

(5) Severed Representations. The repulsing or "severing" of the beholder from the painted image implies a very particular relationship, often associated with death-dealing violence as sublimated in Caravaggio's "Narcissus" or explicit in "Judith and Holofernes." Fried discusses the artists of the Carracci family, including the use of ellipsis, which cuts out the pictorial artifact from its surroundings by occluding some figures, as by the straight edge of the canvas. Fried also turns his attention to Orazio Gentileschi and his daughter Artemisia, and some artists classed together as Caravaggisti.

(6) Internal Structure of the Pictorial Act. As exemplified in The Calling...and The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, The Taking of Christ, The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula.

In his Introduction and his Conclusion, Fried says he can hardly compress the subject matter of this book: Read on. I found the text manageable by eye, but maybe rather complex for the ears of the lecture audience.

A poet himself, Michael Fried, Ph.D., ends the book with a lengthy anecdote about Paul Celan, Georg Buchner, J. M. R. Lenz, and J. F. Oberlin. Just so he can say that Caravaggio, with his antagonism toward idealism and the puppets of mannerism, was prompted to go beyond what is human, into a realm which is turned toward the human, but uncanny, as done with greatest lucidity in The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula.

AUTHOR

Born 1939 in New York City, Michael Fried is a wide-ranging art historian, critic, and theorist with extensive writing credits. But controversial, as evidenced by Amazon reviews of his previous books. His trilogy--Absorption and Theatricality (1980), Courbet's Realism (1990), Manet's Modernism (1996)--influence the present Caravaggio book.

READERS

Many of us are immediately gripped by the obvious: the artist's chiaroscuro, decapitations, sexual orientation, troublesome temper, tragic death. But Fried takes us well beyond such, into the dozens of perceptions that the paintings yield up (such as small distorted reflections of the artist's face in a glass object or polished armor, or the subtle clues in the darkened milieu of The Calling of Saint Matthew). Andbe reminded: Over the centuries, some of these paintings have undergone multiple repairs or cleanings, possibly sometimes not to best effect; for example, in the eighteenth century some were varnished, resulting in a yellowing. Surprises await you.



... Read more

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Understanding Caravaggio and his Art in Malta is a guidebook about the artists stay in Malta in early 17th century. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio's art single-handedly revolutionalized artistic concepts and ideas. His artistic career and turbulent life were over before he reached 40 years of age, but he successfully managed to achieve much in so little time. His art was a source of inspiration for numerous followers and Malta still cherishes his legacy long after the few months he spent on the island 400 years ago. ... Read more

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Dramatic shifts from foreboding dark to probing light, with minimal gradation in between; a realism that exposes all the flaws and folds of human flesh, eschewing Michelangelo's idealized bodies; a surgical explication of almost unbearably tense emotion; and the poised depiction of crucial moments at the very lip of their unfolding: these were among the innovations of Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio. Without them, as the great Italian art writer Roberto Longhi once noted, "Ribera, Vermeer, La Tour and Rembrandt could never have existed... and the art of Delacroix, Courbet and Manet would have been utterly different." It was Longhi who rescued Caravaggio's painting for the twentieth century, prior to which it had lain dormant since the painter's mysterious death in 1610. During Caravaggio's lifetime, however, his work was enormously influential and controversial. Each of his innovations in some way upset the prevailing tendencies of the day--not least when his insistence on physical realism led him to paint Saint Matthew as a bald peasant with dirty legs (attended upon by an irreverently intimate boy angel). Nonetheless, Caravaggio was never short of commissions or patrons, and left to posterity around 80 masterpieces. This monograph is published on the fourth centenary of Caravaggio's death, and documents his complete paintings in high-quality reproductions. Authored by renowned scholar Rossella Vodret, it is the must-have monograph on the artist.
Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio, was born in 1571 and made his debut in 1600 with two public commissions on the theme of Saint Matthew. He soon became notorious for his temper, and killed a young man in 1606; two further contretemps in Malta and Naples are recorded--the latter, in 1609, involving an attempt on his life--and by 1610 he was dead, after a brief but extraordinary career. ... Read more

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Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio lived the darkest and most dangerous life of any of the great painters. The worlds of Milan, Rome, and, Naples through which Caravaggio moved and which Andrew Graham-Dixon describes brilliantly in this book, are those of cardinals and whores, prayer and violence. On the streets surrounding the churches and palaces, brawls and swordfights were regular occurrences. In one such fight, Caravaggio killed Ranuccio Tomassoni, a pimp, and fled to Naples and then Malta, home to the Knights of St John, where he escaped from prison following his conviction for another vicious assault. Shortly afterwards he died while returning to Rome to seek a papal pardon for his crimes. He was thirty-eight years old. In the course of this desperate life, Caravaggio created the most dramatic paintings of his age, using ordinary men and women - often prostitutes and the very poor - to model for his depictions of classic religious scenes.Andrew Graham-Dixon's exceptionally illuminating readings of Caravaggio's pictures, which are the heart of the book, show very clearly how he created their drama, immediacy and humanity, and how completely he departed from the conventions of his time. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

An educational tour de force
A marvelous work.The life of the painter is seen through his art, which is discussed with a formidable virtuosity.A book that was hard to put down.

The New Standard
As a specialist in Baroque art--and author of books on Rubens and Bernini--I have read every serious book published about Caravaggio.Graham-Dixon's is quite simply not only the best book ever written about this towering artist, but also the best biography I have ever read about ANY artist.He sets a new standard, with his engaging, elegant style, his thorough--ten years!--research, and his astute judgments and reasoning.It is magical, and sets a new standard for cultural biography.It also affirms the British playwright Sir Terence Rattigan's observation that 'What makes magic is genius; and what makes genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.'

A most serious work...
The result of an incredible detective and historic research is written in a most pleasant and "novelistic" fashion. No doubt that Mr. Graham-Dixon found the time to make a lot of sense in describing an obscure life in an even darker milieu. Congratulations !

"Caravaggio : A Life Sacred & Profane",a book by Andrew Graham-Dixon.
This is a great biographical book on the life of the great Italian artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio titled "Caravaggio : A Life Sacred And Profane" by Andrew Graham-Dixon.Caravaggio's life was brief & disreputable and seems to be lit with the dramatic effects so characteristic of his paintings. Caravaggio was born outside Milan in 1571,but moved to Rome in his early age & was apprenticed to a painter at the age of 13 years with his skills soon improving/budding from painting "pretty-boy cupids and Bacchi" to great realistic masterpieces such as "Judith Beheading Holofernes".His life,however,was increasingly marked with with violence, leaving Rome in 1606 to escape a murder charge.Caravaggio died in Porto Ercole on the Tuscan coast at the age of 38 years. Rome at the time of Caravaggio was a thriving centre of religious & artistic life.But Rome was also a haven of vice & crime;and this combination did seem to have suited Caravaggio very well : by day he created great works of art & by night he stalked the streets dressed in black,on the look-out for sex,violence or both!Andrew Graham-Dixon also gives an excellent account of Caravaggio's great art works : his brilliance in paintings often using tarvern boys & barefooted women as his models,depicted with near-photographic realism!This book is a thorough & elegant protrayal of Caravaggio's brief, violent & great artistic life.There is however some criticism of Andrew Graham-Dixon's language e.g. his over-use of the adjective "sexy" that seem to cheapen an otherwise excellent book.

Caravaggio in black and white
I must admit that I am not a huge fan of Graham-Dixon as a television presenter. To me his delivery comes across as slightly supercilious and I am not always persuaded of his judgement. He reminds me a little of figures such as the historian Paul Johnston who jump around subjects so much that you begin to wonder whether they have had the time to really study one figure in sufficient depth and to add anything which is really new. Nevertheless, I am a huge Caravaggio fan and have read most of what is in print, so I approach this book in that spirit. Though there are some good things here, overall I found this a disappointing read. I find it difficult to put my finger on the exact problem but I think it lies in fact that to me Graham-Dixon lacks the humanity of, say, a Kenneth Clark. He seems at times to be preaching a message in the style a moralising evangelist. His mind has already been firmly made up. There is little in the way of humour and, again, his judgement is in my view suspect. There are so many better books on this subject on the market. Save your money for something with a little more humanity. ... Read more

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A new English version of the third edition (1963) of Longhi's seminal work on the Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (4)

Almost nothing to do with Caravaggio
Long story short: this is a spectacularly pretentious book that says precious little about Caravaggio or his art.

90% of the book is the kind of vapid talk, talk, talk that has meaning only to the kind of phony "artists" who populate our cities and museums with ugliness and nonsense. Though a very few pieces are shown to "quote" from Carvaggio, most have nothing to do with his art. So why are they discussed in this book? Is this book nothing more than a marketing gimmick for lousy artists?

There's the artist who copies a small section of Caravggio's "Christ and Saint Thomas," and below it displays a square filled with red Jello. OK, at least the "work" has something do with the great master. But how about the installation that consists of 7 benches that have leaky red gelatin atop them in the place of cushions? And where do Andre Seranno's morgue photos or his "P*ss Christ" fit in -- except perhaps to shock the reader?

This book is a complete load of nonsense. But it *is* expensive. Do avoid this if you are looking for a serious look at more than a handful of Caravaggio's works, accompanied by a sensible discussion of his craft and subjects.

visual narratology
This is a joy to read for someone who loves Caravaggio and who's interested in modern art. The book is full of wonderful prints of art works and reading the comparisons between baroque masterpieces and modern installation art and paintings increases my pleasure in both.

In addition, Mieke Bal is a prominent narratologist, and her discussions of the narrative aspects of the visual art she discusses are fascinating. She proposes a narratology that surpasses the limited formalist categories, and theorises a narration in visual art, both in art with textual components and seemingly abstract, or at least non-figurative art. This interdisciplinary is very valuable at a time when discussions of narrative in visual art and new media generally are divided into an exaggerated formalist denial of narrativity or a naive assumption that "everything is narrative".

Spectacular images, intelligent writing
I've never seen such high quality color reproduction in an academic text. Chicago UP should be congratulated for doing such a fine job. Gorgeous images. And the choice of images is thought-provoking - a wonderful arrayof artists. Bal's argument made me think about artists like Serrano in anew way. I wasn't familiar with Ken Aptekar, but I'll definitely try tofind out more about his work. Bal's writing is lucid, intelligent -stimulating stuff.

gorgeous provocative book
a terrific study of history and questions of influence in the arts...spectacular design and color illustrations. ... Read more

Product Description
For hundreds of years the Piarist Order of priests has been known for its history of important contributions to education, science, and culture. Throughout Italy, Spain, and central Europe, the order’s schools evolved from shelters created to educate poor children into exclusive private academies. Thousands of children were educated at Piarist schools, including Mozart, Goya, Schubert, Victor Hugo, Johann Mendel, and a host of astronomers, kings, emperors, presidents, even a pope. Yet in 1646, the Piarist Order was abruptly abolished by Pope Innocent X, an unprecedented step not seen since the Knights of Templar were suppressed for heresy in the fourteenth century. Fallen Order is the stunning story of the scandal that led to the Piarists’ collapse. Karen Liebreich spent several years researching in the order’s archives and in the Vatican Secret Archive, discovering a chain of complicity that went as far as Pope Innocent X himself. Although the Piarist Order was suppressed when the scandal eventually became public, it was later revived and is still in existence today, its turbulent past ignored. Fallen Order is a brilliant portrait of seventeenth-century Rome and the politics, personal rivalries, and Byzantine workings of the Vatican and the Catholic Church. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

The More Things Change...
I selected this book based on the title, and sub-title.I thought it was about arts and science and their controversial role in the 17th century Catholic Church ... silly me.Actually, this is to the credit of the publisher. This could have been marketed as a Grove Press sensational something.

This is an early history of the Piarist Order which was the first provider of public education. Unfortunately it's also a story of a pedophile who is connected to a powerful family who was essentially kicked upstairs. There is a lot more to the story than this, but this action wormed its way through the system such that at an advanced age the founder who made this personnel decision saw the almost total demise of his schools.

The story is told without sensation and provides lessons for today. By an incomplete browse through the cover jacket I stumbled upon it. If you read it, look for just a mention of Caravaggio and a tiny cameo for Galileo. I recommend it for church historians who are interested in this topic.

An eye-opening, revealing social analysis
Intrigue, heresy and scandal in Galileo's Rome is a suitable topic for fiction but Karen Liebreich provides all the trappings of action and high drama in her nonfiction Fallen Order: Intrigue, Heresy, And Scandal In The Rome Of Galileo And Caravaggio. This portrait of 17th century Roman politics and Church issues provides many surprises; from the story of how sexual abuse of children (practiced by some of the leading priests in the Piarist Order) led to its collapse to how bishops and cardinals participated in the cover-up in an effort to protect the church. An eye-opening, revealing social analysis.

Child Abuse By Priests, 17th Century Style
It is a story drearily familiar from the headlines: priests abuse children, the bishops and cardinals in charge of the priests know it and "solve" the problem by moving the priests around to other locations, and finally the story breaks and causes embarrassment and disruption within the church.It is news, but it is not new; the same thing was happening in the seventeenth century.In _Fallen Order: Intrigue, Heresy, and Scandal in the Rome of Galileo and Caravaggio_ (Grove Press), Karen Liebreich has found a scandal of priestly pedophilia that ruined and eventually closed a Catholic teaching order, the Piarists.The order was eventually restarted, and still exists.It is justifiably proud of making contributions to education (Mozart, Mendel, and Goya, to name just a few, were products of Piarist schools).It is proud of its founder, Father José de Calasanz, who was eventually beatified and became the patron saint of Catholic schools.It is quiet about the scandal that caused the suppression of the order, however, and Liebreich only stumbled upon the story in an ancient Florentine archive when she was doing a doctorate on public education.Looking through the thousands of letters from Calasanz (she grimly notes that there are no jokes and no lightness within them), she came across a euphemism: _il vitio pessimo_, "the worst sin."Her curiosity up, she went through difficult searches at the Vatican Secret Archive; the Inquisition Archive only opened six years ago, and she thereupon hunted there, too.There is much more to the story than pedophilic priests and a cover up, but sadly, the patron saint of Catholic schools quite clearly performed the same sort of cover-up that has brought disgrace to his contemporary equivalents.

St. Joseph Calasanz had seen the need for schools for poor children.He founded the Piarist Order in 1592, insisting that his Piarists had to live austere lives, dressing simply, wearing sandals in the winter, eating bad food and little of it.The rules included that they could not swim, play games, play guitar, or kiss even their mothers.The rules were broken with zeal by Father Stefano Cherubini, originally headmaster of the school in Naples.Father Stefano enjoyed sodomizing the pupils, and this became known to Calasanz, who could do little since Father Stefano came from a powerful family of lawyers.Calasanz therefore promoted Father Stefano, to get him away from the scene of the crime, citing only his luxurious diet and failure to attend prayers.However, he knew what Cherubini had really been up to, and he wrote that the sole aim of the plan "... is to cover up this great shame in order that it does not come to the notice of our superiors."Cherubini was even made head of the order in 1643 and the elderly Calasanz was pushed aside.Upon this appointment, Calasanz publicly documented Cherubini's long pattern of child molestation, a pattern that he had known about for years.Even this did not block Cherubini's appointment, but other members of the order were indignant about it, although they may have objected to Cherubini's more overt shortcomings.With such dissention, the Vatican took the easy course of suppressing the order.

Liebreich has written a strong yet detached and unemotional account of the events, with a broad look to political and religious forces of the times.She knows that 21st century horror about how priests abuse children is not going to be the same as supposed 17th century sensitivity about it, but she also shows that this does not really matter.The church had clear teachings on the subject at the time, but concentrated more on how pedophilia endangered the souls of the priests who engaged in it; throughout the correspondence in the book, Calasanz and other priests fretted about public scandal first, and offense to God second, with no mention at all to the wrong done to the victims of the abuse.In one of the parallels that Liebreich effortlessly draws to our own times in her final chapter, Pope John Paul II issued a quiet papal directive in January 2002 to say that priests were afflicted by these sins of their brethren and that such scandals made other fine priests look bad; the victims are still being ignored.The question of whether the church could have made a difference if it had learned from the Piarist scandal may be argued back and forth, but that it did not learn and that it continued to shield priests who habitually victimized their young charges is sadly beyond dispute.
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The dramatic realism of Caravaggio's art has fascinated viewers since the seventeenth century. Yet, no prior monograph presents the thorough investigation of Caravaggio's 'realism' ventured in John Varriano's remarkable book. Forgoing the 'life and works' format of most earlier monographs, Varriano concentrates on uncovering the principles and practices - the intellect and imagination - that guided Caravaggio's eye and brush, as he made some of the most controversial paintings in the history of art. Caravaggio's irascible personality, libertine sexual preferences, and lawless, even murderous, behavior have attracted as much heated commentary as his realism. Varriano sheds important new light on these disputes, by tracing the autobiographical threads in Caravaggio's paintings and framing these within the context of contemporary Italian culture. Ultimately, Varriano links Caravaggio's aggressive persona and innovative methods to epistemological changes taking place throughout early seventeenth-century Europe. 'Caravaggio: The Art of Realism' begins with a highly original investigation of the artist's studio practices. In subsequent chapters, Varriano discusses Caravaggio's response to the material culture of his day, his use of gesture and expression, and his eroticism and violence, as well as other issues central to the painter's legendary realism. 'Caravaggio: The Art of Realism' will appeal to students and the general reader, as well as to specialists in the field. Varriano has a gift for presenting complex scholarship in a clear, accessible way. The book contains numerous color illustrations that will help readers experience Caravaggio's art and follow the author's informative discussion of such famed paintings as 'Love Victorious' and 'David with the Head of Goliath.' ... Read more

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Many critics have explored the homoerotic message in the early portraits of the Baroque painter Michelangelo Caravaggio (1573-1610). In Caravaggio's Secrets, Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit emphasize instead the impenetrability of these portraits. The tension between erotic invitation and self-concealing retreat leads Bersani and Dutoit to conclude that the interest of these works is in their representation of an enigmatic address that solicits intimacy in order to block it with a secret.Bersani and Dutoit offer a psychoanalytic reading of the enigmatic address as initiating relations grounded in paranoid fascination. They study Caravaggio's attempts to move beyond such relations, his experiments with a space no longer circumscribed by the mutual and paranoid, if erotically stimulating, fascination with imaginary secrets. In his most original work, Caravaggio proposes a radically new mode of connectedness, a nonerotic sensuality relevant to the most exciting attempts in our own time to rethink, perhaps even to reinvent, community.Amazon.com Review
Caravaggio's Secrets begins with the painter'ssupposedly homoerotic work and moves from there into a discussion hisart in a psychoanalytic context. One of the coauthors is a professorof French, the other, a teacher of film, and they join many othernon-art historians who have offered critical commentary onCaravaggio's work. "Castration/decapitation has left David in a stateof between-ness," they write of David with the Head of Goliath(1609-10), "not only between gendered identities but also betweenexistential violence and what Caravaggio appears to conceive of as theaesthetic consequence of that violence.... In Goliath's head,David-Caravaggio has painted his own castration."

This book is probably not for general readers, but those whoseinterest in Caravaggio is not fully sated by some of the other, moregeneral books on the market will likely find their fillhere. --Peggy Moorman ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Fascinating
This is a smart, beautifully written book about a most intriguing painter. Bersani and Dutoit present some fascinating arguments about secrecy and seduction; you don't have to be an expert on art history to follow them or agree with their insights. Highly recommended.

Critics are the Custodians of Culture
Well, at least this book, which really has fallen out of circulation and is not often-read even among students of seventeenth-century Italian painting, is still being discussed in this forum. I add my voice to the list of the unenthused. The book insists on psychoanalytic readings and imports a decidely dated 1990's post-modern vocabularly that lowers a seductive, gauzy veil around Caravaggio's paintings, but absolutely does not serve to illuminate them in any way. The last reviewer, a painter, expresses a muted disregard for the work of critics; I would remind this reviewer that writers and critics are the custodians of culture, and that the job of the writer on art is to illuminate, perhaps through description, which is a form of interpretation, how a work of art lives in the world; and the job of the critic is to make distinctions. (All art is not popular culture, subject to equalizing democratic standards.) For this clear, crafted prose -- prose that is accessible both to the scholar and an intelligent audience interested in art -- is always best. Perhaps one of the reasons this book is laregly overlooked is that written for neither of the above it has failed to find an audience.

Creative meditation on sociality
It is sad to see how this book has been misunderstood. This book is not about "art history" or even "criticism." But it is a creative attempt to affirm one's experience through Caravaggio's paintings as inventing different "forms" to relate to others (both human and non-human).

Bersani and Dutoit, in such a poetic way, challenge how we look at art in general--. We interpret it instead of experiencing it. As a practioner of painting, I feel that they wrote this book NOT from the position of a critic, who often tries to be a custodian of culture.

It's moment has already passed
I looked forward to this book with much anticipation, and readit carefully twice and I am not convinced by their argument, but feelthat in its trendiness it will not be a long-lasting addition to Caravaggio scholarship. In many ways, after only a few years on the market, it remains fairly unnoticed by the academy, and remains relatively untaught in graduate seminars. I can't image it is a book that will interest the general reader with its physcoanalytic interpretations and academic lingo. I feel compelled to give it one star in order to balance out the scales and alert prospective readers that there are those of us who did not find it worthwhile.END

Absolutely worth reading.
I disagree with the other reviewer -- this *is* art history.Yes, art history relies on documents, history, even x-radiography, but it is equally reliant on models of analysis and new ways of looking.Caravaggio's workhas begged a critical approach like this one, and while I may not agreewith the authors' conclusions, their discussion is provocative andinspiring.If you want a survey of Caravaggio's career, choose one of themany books out there that satisfy this niche.If you want to deepen yourperspective of Caravaggio, and of art in general, read this book.It willgive you something to think about. ... Read more

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Under a searing Calabrian sky, detective Daniel Wright is shown the world's most famous stolen painting ; Caravaggio's Nativity. As a Caravaggio lover and expert in art recovery, he is determined to rescue it from the mafia bosses who use it as payment for drug deals and assassinations. Risking his marriage, his career and his life, Daniel defies his superiors and goes beyond the law with the help of Uffizi Gallery curator Francesca Natali in a desperate bid to save the Caravaggio before it is lost forever. But will he become the hero of the art establishment, or has he dangerously underestimated its mafia underworld?\n\nSaving Caravaggio is a thrilling story of intrigue and personal crusades, that combines the dark atmosphere of Naples with a determined pursuit of passion. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Evoking Caravaggio
Coming fresh to this novel from reading several biographies of Caravaggio, I find his troubled life skilfully evoked by Neil Griffiths. Daniel Wright has Caravaggio's vanity, obsession with art, contempt for others' opinions, violent propensities, envy and emulation of his class betters, and not least, inner demons that propel him into escalating violence. This allows Griffiths to make subtle points about art, obsession, love and betrayal. It also leads the knowing reader to expect a tragic end and indeed Wright comes to grief in Naples, not far from Porto Ercole where Caravaggio reportedly met his lonely death. Griffith's sideways evocation, homage even, works better for this elusive, schizophrenic artist, than some more direct reworkings such as Christopher Peachment's 'Caravaggio'. ... Read more

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Inspired largely by Leonardo's brilliant naturalistic work for the Sforza court in Milan, Lombard artists of the late fifteenth century began to use direct observation to investigate the natural world. This heritage was of considerable importance in northern Italian art for two centuries, finding its greatest expression in the works of Caravaggio and influencing the course of Baroque painting in Rome and eventually elsewhere in Europe. Painters of Reality identifies the salient characteristics of this naturalistic strand in Lombard art. Building on the scholarship of renowned art historian Roberto Longhi, the authors reexamine the subject in light of subsequent literature. Essays range from broad discussions of naturalism in Lombard paintings and drawings (including a fresh consideration of works by Caravaggio) to more specialized treatments of Leonardo's influence, the schools of painting centered in Brescia, Bergamo, Cremona, and Milan, and Caravaggio's most notable successors in northern Italy. In addition to Leonardo and Caravaggio, masters such as Lotto, Savoldo, Moroni, and Ceruti and other significant but less widely known figures are represented. With its devotion to recording the unvarnished truth of daily life, its meticulously observed still lifes and landscapes, and its dramatic use of highly focused light to define form, Lombard art was hugely influential in its time and still holds much appeal today. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

When a Catalogue Becomes More Then A Catalogue!
PAINTERS OF REALITY: THE LEGEND OF LEONARDO AND CARAVAGGIO IN LOMBARDY may have been design to accompany an exhibit by the same name in both Italy and in the United States, but the quality of this publication goes far beyond the usual museum catalogue into the realm of important art history books for the permanent library.

Curator Andrea Bayer has assembled plentiful examples of the drawings of Leonardo and the paintings of not only Leonardo and Caravaggio along with painters less well known to the public such as Savoldo, Ceruti, Moroni and others, and in doing so she opens the windows of artistic light that resulted form the new vision of painting the real in the region of Lombardy.Not only are the reproductions of the paintings and drawings of the highest caliber, the accompanying essays by Bayer, Mina Gregori, Martin Kemp, Linda Wolk-Simon, Enrico De Pascale, Giulio Bora, Mario Marubbi, Keith Christiansen, Laura Lanzeni, and Robert S. Miller are elegantly and resourcefully written and add tot he stature of this beautiful book.

Even for those who feel they have sufficient material on this exciting time of painting will want to add this exemplary volume to their libraries. Highly Recommended for art lovers at every level.Grady Harp. January 2004
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Two important innovators in representing the human being, compared here for the first time. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Carvaggio Bacon: So close and yet so far
Received the Caravaggio/Bacon catalogue I had pre-ordered and was so excited about.Extremely disappointing, neither descriptive nor illustrative of the exhibition.If this was a comparative sampling, the book missed the concept altogether.

Mostly regurgitated text, a lot of it said many times before by many of the same authors; some interesting speculation, most of it stretched; and gorgeous illustrations, but I had hoped to see the pairings.

There is ONE example of images juxtaposed.Instead, the Caravaggios are bunched together, subdivided thematically; the Bacons separate, which makes no sense whatsoever.It is the pairings that make the exhibit.I'm sure this is not the way it hung at Rome's Galeria Borghese.

The magnificent reproductions notwithstanding, I don't need yet another Caravaggio or Bacon book.I'm returning it. ... Read more