A book covering the complete works of the Old Master to celebrate the 400th anniversary of his death. The authority and expertise of a renowned art historian who made a chance discovery make this book quite exceptional.
A man of a wild, irascible temperament, quick to take offence and likely to react to an adversary with a quick knife-stab, Michelangelo Merisi, better known as ‘Il Caravaggio’ (1571-1610) was the first great painter, after the Renaissance, to free himself from the obsession with beauty without being afraid to search for truth. He was accused of being a ‘naturalist’, but neither then, nor today, has his work lost any of its audacity. To mark the fourth centenary of his death, the entire work of this great master is presented by Francesca Cappelletti, an author already known to the public at large as the key figure of a best-seller about the painter from Lombardy and the fact that, by chance, she discovered one of his lost paintings. In fact, in 1993, the author found the lost painting of The Taking of Christ in Dublin. The discovery caused a sensation and is described in Jonathan Harr’s book, “The Lost Caravaggio”. As a result, the book became a new seminal work about the great master, updated with recent studies, and examining the painter’s complex biographical and artistic profile based on new sources. The text, illustrated with all the works certainly attributed to him in spectacular detail – thanks to a special photographic campaign – contemporary images and comparisons, is written in a beautiful flowing style. The result: a work that is not only very readable but accessible to a non-specialist audience.