Word: caravaggioã
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That is exactly what novelist and Wall Street Journal arts critic Francine Prose tries to do in “Caravaggio.” In this work, she often refers to the words of Caravaggio??s 16th century biographers (and more recent ones, too), and integrates all opinions about his work and his life, in order to paint her own admiring and sometimes contagiously enthusiastic portrait of a brilliant, yet quite shady, character...
According to the author’s interpretation, Caravaggio??s modernity lies in his ambitious manner of portraying “a flawed and imperfect nature.” He grabbed “Gypsies” or courtesans on the street and made them his models. He painted overripe fruits and people with down-to-earth faces and expressions. His saints almost stepped out of the canvas, into the art galleries of the rich patrons who commissioned his paintings. The style she finds, of flaws leading to near-perfection, almost mirrors the portrayal of the artist?...
...Caravaggio??s paintings speak to a modern audience more than the work of many of his contemporaries, perhaps because Caravaggio??s characters are not drowning in a sea of “baby-blue skies, clouds and cherubs.” Yet it might be an exaggeration to say that he speaks to us “without any need of translation from a distant century.” Does the painting of Judith killing Holofernes, for example, really “speak” that much to someone who has never heard the story? Doesn?...
...theme of fights and flights. He collapsed on a beach at Port Ercole, while trying to run after the ship that had left with all of his most recent work. While the 39 year-old’s body remained on that beach, his paintings sailed away: Caravaggio??s work outlived him. For centuries, his art was largely criticized as vulgar and lacking imagination. Only in the 1950s, after an exhibit of his work in Milan, was Caravaggio rediscovered...
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