Caravaggio. (Reviews).

Catherine Puglisi, Caravaggio

London: Phaidon Press Ltd., 2000. 448 pp. $39.95 (pbk). ISBN: 0-7148-3966-3.

Since he was brought to the attention of the modern English speaking world by Roger Hinks in 1953, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) has loomed ever larger not only in art historical importance but also in the popular imagination. Beginning with his contemporary biographers, Caravaggio's violent temper, unsettling treatment of religious subjects, and uncertain sexual orientation coupled with the unquestionable power and influence of his scarce paintings -- no more than 89 authentic or attributed works according to Puglisi -- have endowed the artist with a mythic persona. Even while they affirm his iconic stature as a disreputable genius and romantic outcast, scores of popular and scholarly biographies, works of popular fiction, and movies threaten to overshadow the dramatic artistic innovations that have been the subject of scholarly analysis for the past half century.

While adding little that is novel in terms of information or interpretation -- even the documents that accompany the text and brief catalogue have been translated elsewhere -- Puglisi successfully rescues the artist's works from the cult of personality and admirably accomplishes her primary aim, "to characterize Caravaggio's artistic development, define the uniqueness of his art, and understand its historical role in the renewal of painting ca. 1600" (10). The result is a monograph that offers the real intellectual rewards traditionally associated with this seemingly unfashionable genre.

The story of Caravaggio's accomplishment is divided into seven chapters. The first describes the artistic environment that influenced the young Caravaggio's development in his native Lombardy. The following two chapters are devoted to his early works in Rome, emphasizing his association with the cultivated circle of Cardinal Francesco del Monte. The extraordinary religious works Caravaggio created in Rome are examined in part two and those painted in Malta, Sicily, and Naples are the focus of the final three chapters. Throughout, Puglisi deftly weaves information culled from historical sources with the results of recent archival research and modern analysis. In creating her own narrative, Puglisi's focus is on the art rather than the artist. The Caravaggio that emerges is neither a religious visionary nor anti-social romantic nor even a passionate genius, but simply a truly great and inspired painter whose technique was as innovative and influential as his compositions. Throughout, the author acknowledges the variety of differing, often competing interpretations of the work, evaluates their relative merits in an evenhanded manner and by constant reference to the evidence of the paintings themselves, and offers her own well-considered conclusions (though these are notably rare in the difficult arena of attribution).

Altogether I found Puglisi's volume a laudable accomplishment. Caravaggio offers a balanced synthesis of fifty years of study in a well-illustrated, if somewhat over-designed volume that makes the 1999 hardback edition more generally affordable. If I have a quibble it is that the clarity of Puglisi's writing is marred by the publisher's choice of an eye-straining sans serif font.