The painting of Michelangelo Merisi called Caravaggio (Milan, 1571 - Porto Ercole, 1610) had such a vast influence that, according to modern scholars, it constituted an "epochal turning point" not only in Italian but also European art. This volume recounts the master's life through lights and shadows, masterpieces and scandals, presenting the paintings that scholars have unanimously acknowledged to be autograph works on the basis of documentary evidence that has emerged in recent years. It analyzes his revolutionary painting skills at a technical and creative level, and depicts a remarkably alive and realistic picture of Caravaggio the "man" and his journey: the move from Lombardy to Rome, followed by his dramatic flight to Naples, Malta,Sicily and back to Naples again, ending with his tragic death.

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.