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Caravaggio: A Life
by: Helen Langdon

List Price: £16.99

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Used Price: £9.24
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Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 759.5
EAN: 9780712665827
ISBN: 071266582X
Label: Pimlico
Manufacturer: Pimlico
Number Of Pages: 448
Publication Date: November 04, 1999
Publisher: Pimlico
Studio: Pimlico
Sales Rank: 12095

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Editorial Review:

Amazon.co.uk Review:
Nicholas Poussin once said that Caravaggio had come into the world to destroy painting. Helen Langdon's marvellous new biography Caravaggio: A Life suggests that rather than destroying painting the Milanese painter gave it a new lease of life. Upon his arrival in Rome Caravaggio boldly ended a tradition of Italian Renaissance painting, and created a radically new naturalistic style which continues to dazzle and influence today. Beautifully poised between biographical scholarship and artistic appreciation, Langdon's biography provides the reader with a complex, fascinating Caravaggio, still the rebel and outsider of the popular imagination, but also immersed in the Roman world of art, politics and patronage. Some of the finest sections of the book vividly bring to life the streets and brothels of early 17th-century Rome, which provided Caravaggio with the inspiration for so many of his early works. By contrast, the later sections which deal with Caravaggio's exile and commissions in Naples, Malta and Sicily seem rather brief and truncated, giving the final third of the book a rather unbalanced feel. This is however partly due to the elusiveness of Caravaggio himself--with little direct contemporary documentation on the painter, he often slips into the shadows, evading the scrutiny of the biographer.

But Langdon's achievement is to produce a compelling portrait of the artist which throws new light on his paintings. Here is a painter who is proud, difficult and arrogant, yet highly intellectual in his appreciation of the changing face of both Catholicism and scientific enquiry. Written with great historical clarity, and supplemented by 42 magnificent colour illustrations, Helen Langdon's Caravaggio is a worthy contribution to scholarly study of this artist. --Jerry Brotton

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- An interesting read into his life
This is a very well-written book about the life and times of Caravaggio, paying a considerable amount of attention towards even the smallest details. Although I did find this book paid more attention towards what happened in his life as opposed to his paintings, this is a biography and not an art book. Although the level of detail is astounding and anybody looking into Caravaggio should consider this book an absolute must.

Rating:

- Interesting read
This is a good read - both for students of art history and for the more casual reader interested in the rugged and unusual life of an art superstar. I would have preferred a few more illustrations and Langdon's editor could have helped her out more with her sentence construction - she can sometimes be a little ambiguous due to clumsy phrasing. But overall an interesting, readable and not too 'high brow' work.

Rating:

- An excellent biography of Caravaggio
I enjoyed reading this book immensely. Caravaggio's life was an exciting roller coaster of intrigue and adventure and the author has managed to convey this throughout the book. The history is very well researched and written with a good level of detail.

One useful aspect of the book is that it is small enough to be carried onto a plane which is unusual for a book about art and being a frequent traveller I read this book while travelling.

On the other hand the illustrations are rather poor. Most of the painting's are only shown in black and white. The colour pages are grouped together in 3 sets and this means that you nedd to keep flipping through the pages to refer to the painting that you are reading about.They are also ... Read More:

Books : Caravaggio: A Life