Amor

“No hope, no fear.”

The wise-ass young apprentice Cecco Boneri shares the brazen truth about his life as pupil to the greatest painter in 17th century Rome, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. The brilliant, ill-tempered artist sleeps with both sexes, defies his patrons, assaults his enemies, and practically lives in prison. When not assisting the artist, wily Cecco makes money selling his body to wealthy Romans and corrupt priests. Caravaggio sets Rome ablaze with his defiant paintings, posing Cecco as a cocky Cupid and daring the Vatican’s wrath. Meanwhile, Caravaggio’s enemies plot revenge against him.

Street kid Cecco is too smart to let Caravaggio fall in love with him. But as years pass, the painter’s life spirals brutally out of control into jealousy and murder, and Cecco discovers the searing truth about why he’s bound to Caravaggio’s unsettled, violent spirit. When their edifice finally crumbles, will there be anyone left to pick up the pieces?

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"How Caravaggio saw in the dark"

A fascinating look at the recent growth in popularity of my favorite artist, Caravaggio:

But there is a more profound reason still for the fascination Caravaggio exerts over the 21st century: he carried out one of the most startling revolutions in the history of art, and one that still seems strangely modern. The visceral violence and eroticism of his work are only an aspect of the extraordinary realism he achieved. His painting was utterly different from that of his predecessors and contemporaries. It looks, to put it in modern terms, like a film noir. As David Hockney has put it: “He invented a black world that had not existed before, certainly not in Florence or Rome. Caravaggio invented Hollywood lighting.” And that resemblance may be no accident.

Much more vivid detail in the article itself, including discussion of a technique possibly used by Caravaggio to project images of his models onto the canvas that fell afoul of the anti-science Inquisition, with the Church banning books and burning heretics as a result.

Caravaggio lived quite a life – scandal! Murder! Gay sex! Someday Hollywood is going to tackle this one with (I hope) a director who can do it justice. Meanwhile, I should go see if Derek Jarman’s intelligent and fascinating film about Caravaggio is on DVD – it’s been years since I saw it.

“How Caravaggio saw in the dark” (The Telegraph)

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An Italian Antihero’s Time to Shine

I have long admired Caravaggio -- he's my favorite painter. I love the earnest reality of his works, their power and emotion and beauty. I love Michelangelo, too, but I understand how Caravaggio might speak with greater strength to this day and age.

Caravaggio, on the other hand, exemplifies the modern antihero, a hyperrealist whose art is instantly accessible. His doe-eyed, tousle-haired boys with puffy lips and bubble buttocks look as if they’ve just tumbled out of bed, not descended from heaven. Coarse not godly, locked into dark, ambiguous spaces by a strict geometry then picked out of deep shadow by an oracular light, his models come straight off the street. Cupid is clearly a hired urchin on whom Caravaggio strapped a pair of fake wings. The angel in his “Annunciation” dangles like Chaplin’s tramp on the high wire in “The Circus,” from what must have been a rope contraption Caravaggio devised.

Was Caravaggio gay? The idea meant nothing back in his day; there were acts, not identities, as James Saslow so masterfully relates in his book Ganymede in the Renaissance. But, since I agree with Harry Hay's notion that gays differ from straights in more than just the people we find attractive, I think Caravaggio's rebel status says more to his "identity" than any catalog of sex acts might reveal.

The painting above is Caravaggio's St. John the Baptist, which calls the Nelson Gallery in Kansas City home. I've seen this painting, and no picture can do justice to the brushwork and the colors you see in real life. Anyway, I like this article. It's stirring to think that Caravaggio died 400 years ago this very year.

An Italian Antihero’s Time to Shine (NY Times)

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