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Title: Caravaggio: A Life by Helen Langdon ISBN: 0-8133-3794-1 Publisher: Westview Press Pub. Date: August, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.33 (3 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: As clear a portrait as we can hope for, currently...
Comment: Langdon's research payed off in this beautiful look at one of the Late Renaissance's most powerful (and mysterious, and notorious) painters. Sadly, most of what we know of Michelangelo Caravaggio's life is through second-hand sources -- police records and such -- but Langdon seems to have pored through every bit of esoterica related to the painter's relation to his time, his culture, and his peers. What we get for her troubles is a portrait of a man whose devotion to religion was so strong that he would do anything -- including lying about his lineage -- to maintain a secure place as a "defender of the faith."
Sadly, the one-star review on this page has a point: many of Langdon's statements are qualified with "perhaps", "almost certainly," etc. This, however, is one of the prices we pay for any attempt to pin down an elusive person who lived on the fringes of a society which passed four hundred years ago. I much preferred this reading to, for example, Desmond Seward's CARAVAGGIO of the same year, in which the author ranted against any recent interpretations of homoeroticism in Caravaggio's sensual paintings, and even against the concept of Caravaggio -- a notoriously violent and tumultuous figure in the history of painting -- having actually earned his lifetime reputation as a criminal!
Beautifully illustrated, well documented, and written with both a sensitivity towards the subject and a refusal to let that sensitivity obscure "the dirt". ..this is a significant addition to the study of one of painting's more fascinating figures. I highly recommend it.
Rating: 1
Summary: Hedging as a Writing Stype
Comment: Ms.Langdon has impressive credentials but the book is exasperating for anyone who is interested in Caravaggio the man. There is hardly a comment she makes that isn't qualified. The text drips with phrases like quite possible, perhaps, it may be that, could it be that, etc. When so little can be known for certain about a figure in history, why not just write a novel--historical fiction is a more honest genre and less frustrating for the reader.
Rating: 5
Summary: Light inside the Shadows
Comment: I found this book to be very entertaining as well as educational. The author did a great job of recreating the setting of Carravaggio's life; the important characters and atmosphere of all the places the artist lived in his nomadic life. Also, I look at Carravaggio's paintings in a new light and am even more impressed and moved by them than previously. Carravaggio's was a tragic life. The author captures the sense of impending doom that hanged over the artist's head like an executioner's sword. The author did a great job of bringing the artist to life with what little is actually known about him, through records, accounts, and most of all his paintings. Through it all there is the sense of an awesome talent and fragile ego, that both humbles and angers all who knew him. I came away realzing that Carravaggio was a man of his times as well as an artist of all time.
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Title: Caravaggio by Catherine Puglisi ISBN: 0714839663 Publisher: Phaidon Press Inc. Pub. Date: 03 January, 2000 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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Title: Diego Velazquez: 1599-1660, The Face of Spain (Basic Art) by Norbert Wolf ISBN: 3822863246 Publisher: TASCHEN America Llc Pub. Date: November, 2000 List Price(USD): $9.99 |
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Title: M : The Man Who Became Caravaggio by Peter Robb ISBN: 0312274742 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 10 February, 2001 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: Baroque & Rococo: Art & Culture by Vernon Hyde Minor ISBN: 0131833634 Publisher: Prentice Hall Press Pub. Date: October, 1999 List Price(USD): $75.00 |
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Title: Bernini (Penguin Art and Architecture) by Howard Hibbard ISBN: 0140135987 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: January, 1991 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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