Book 67 - Andrew Graham-Dixon "Caravaggio"
Nov. 9th, 2015 10:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzy_daveAndrew Graham-Dixon "Caravaggio : A Life Sacred and Profane" (Penguin)
A highly enjoyable biography about Michelangelo Merisi called Caravaggio who lived in an age where painters. writers and composers were of the same social class as prostitutes and servants. It also looks like that he owed the start of his career more to a cardinal's interest in him as a boy toy than his art. Andrew Graham-Dixon makes a good case that Caravaggio's violent life was partly due to his involvement in prostitution and acting as a pimp, dueling with competitors in the streets of Rome.
His cinematic, dramatic art is mirrored in his equally dramatic and violent short life whose scenes merited their own Caravaggio paintings. How would he depict his imprisonment in a cell of the Knights of Malta? Or mortally wounding his opponent in the groin in Rome? Graham-Dixon brings both the stories and discussions of his paintings to the table. Recommended.
A highly enjoyable biography about Michelangelo Merisi called Caravaggio who lived in an age where painters. writers and composers were of the same social class as prostitutes and servants. It also looks like that he owed the start of his career more to a cardinal's interest in him as a boy toy than his art. Andrew Graham-Dixon makes a good case that Caravaggio's violent life was partly due to his involvement in prostitution and acting as a pimp, dueling with competitors in the streets of Rome.
His cinematic, dramatic art is mirrored in his equally dramatic and violent short life whose scenes merited their own Caravaggio paintings. How would he depict his imprisonment in a cell of the Knights of Malta? Or mortally wounding his opponent in the groin in Rome? Graham-Dixon brings both the stories and discussions of his paintings to the table. Recommended.
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