Caravaggio Author:Robert Payne Sixteenth-century Rome was a dangerous place for a man to live in… — Especially a man who made enemies easily. — Caravaggio’s life in 16th-century Rome was a giddy succession of patrons and lovers, intrigues and stratagems, but above all he worked incessantly to create some of the world’s greatest masterpieces of art. — His geniu... more »s brought him the admiration and lavish patronage of nobles and churchmen, but his recklessness ultimately brought him suffering and exile.
‘He was nothing but a swashbuckler!’ according to the Viceroy of Naples, but Caravaggio’s friend, Fra Bartolomeo, had no doubt that the hand of this arrogant young painter was ‘divinely appointed by God for His own purposes.’
Indeed, Caravaggio sought always to exalt God by exalting man.
Throughout his short life, Caravaggio’s egocentric and unruly temperament provoked varied opinions.
In this novel, Robert Payne evokes the setting masterfully: the clatter of carts on cobblestones, the heavy tread of soldiers, the tumult of brightly dressed crowds, the glitter of power and opulence, the smell of fear and sudden death.
Living in such a city, Caravaggio could say that at nineteen a painter knew as much as he ever would. Already he had finished his apprenticeship, escaped from murderers, survived the plague, and lived both in luxury and in poverty.
More than a story of the extraordinary and adventurous life of a great artist and the great, brawling city of Renaissance Rome, Caravaggio is a novel about the beauty, pain and complexity of being human.« less