Caravaggio: Painter of Miracles (Eminent Lives) - Hardcover

Francine Prose

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0007230664 ISBN 13: 9780007230662

Publisher: Harper press, 2007

Synopsis

Unusual book

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Francine Prose's life of Caravaggio evokes the genius of this great artist through a brilliant reading of his paintings. 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, makes him an artist who speaks across the centuries to our own time.

Born in 1571 near Milan, Michelangelo Merisi (da Caravaggio) moved to Rome when he was twenty-one years old. He became a brilliant and successful artist, protected by the influential Cardinal del Monte and other patrons. But he was also a man of the streets who couldn't seem to free himself from its brawls and vendettas. In 1606 he fled Rome, apparently after killing another man in a dispute. He spent his last years in exile, in Naples, Malta, and Sicily, at once celebrated for his art and tormented by his enemies. Through it all, he produced masterpieces of astonishing complexity and power. Eventually he received a pardon from the Pope, only to die, in mysterious circumstances, on the way back to Rome in 1610.

Francine Prose presents the brief but tumultuous life of one of the greatest of all painters with passion and acute sensitivity.

About the Author:

Francine Prose is the author of fifteen books of fiction and the nonfiction New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer. She lives in New York City.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0007230664
• ISBN 13: 9780007230662
• Binding: Hardcover