Caravaggio always moved between opposite poles. The celebrated bad boy of the Italian Baroque was a painter of precise technique and violent temperament. Today he is considered one of the most influential artists of all time. This book provides an accessible introduction to the life and times of this master of dramatism, a survey of his most famous and revolutionary works as well as his intense biography.

A revolution in painting

The Baroque genius who shook the world of art

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) always moved between opposite poles. The bad boy of the Italian Baroque was at once an admired and controversial figure, a revolutionary artist of violent temperament and precise technique, a master, a fugitive.
Although celebrated for his vibrant use of colour, light and shadow, Caravaggio will go down in the annals of art history for the shattering naturalism he infused into his works and his radical pictorial innovations. From the dirty soles of feet to the sensual languor of naked flesh, the artist infused even biblical and sacred scenes with an astonishing, often visceral humanity. To this expressive creative universe must be added an intense personal biography, dominated by gambling addiction, debt, drunken brawls and even a murder charge.
This book brings together Caravaggio's most famous and groundbreaking works, which explain why he is now considered one of the most important artists of the early Baroque and why he has played such an important role in the history of art; without his work other artists such as Ribera, Vermeer, Rembrandt, Delacroix, Courbet and Manet would never have painted as they did.

About the author

Born in Paris, Gilles Lambert (1928-2011) spent his whole life between Paris and Rome. In addition to translating numerous works on the Seicento from Italian, in the 1950s he founded the magazine Constellation with André Labarthe and later worked for Le Figaro Littéraire and Paris Match. He is the author of monographs on Auguste Mariette and Caravaggio.

About the editor

Gilles Néret (1933-2005) was an art historian, journalist, writer and museum curator. He founded the SEIBU museum and the Wildenstein gallery in Tokyo, edited the art magazines L'ŒilyConnaissance des Arts, and received the Élie Faure prize in 1981. The numerous books he wrote for TASCHEN includeDalí The Pictorial Work, MatisseyErotica Universalis.

Publisher: Taschen