Lives of Caravaggio

A new title in the successful Lives of the Artists series, which offers illuminating, and often intimate, accounts of iconic artists as viewed by their contemporaries.

The most notorious Italian painter of his day, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) forever altered the course of Western painting with his artistic ingenuity and audacity. This volume presents the most important early biographies of his life: an account by his doctor, Giulio Mancini; another by one of his artistic rivals, Giovanni Baglione; and a later profile by Giovanni Pietro Bellori that demonstrates how Caravaggio's impact was felt in seventeenth-century Italy. Together, these accounts have provided almost everything that is known of this enigmatic figure.

About the Author: Giulio Mancini (1559-1630) was an Italian physicist, art collector, art dealer, and writer. His Considerazioni sulle pitture was an important source on the art world in seventeenth-century Italy, and his biographies of his contemporaries such as Caravaggio and Annibale Caracci offer the earliest sources on the lives and work of important artists in Baroque Rome.

Giovanni Baglione (1566-1643) was an Italian painter and art historian. Although many of his works can be found in Roman churches and European collections, he is perhaps best known for his contentious relationship with Caravaggio, which resulted in Baglione suing Caravaggio and other artists in his circle for libel over a claim that Baglione had plagiarized Caravaggio's style. Baglione's book The Lives of Painters, Sculptors, Architects and Engravers active from 1772-1642 (Le Vite de'pittori, sculturi, architette ed intalgliatori...) published in Rome in 1642, includes the biographies of over two hundred artists and is still considered an important historical source for information about artists living in Rome during Baglione's lifetime.

Giovanni Pietro Bellori (1613-1696) was an Italian painter and antiquarian, but was in fact most well known as a biographer of seventeenth-century artists. His book Le Vite de'Pittori, Scultori et Architetti Moderni, published in 1672, was influential in promoting classical idealism in art rather than the Mannerist or Baroque styles on the rise at the time. Bellori revered the classicizing work of Annibale Caracci and his circle over the realism and naturalism of Caravaggio, whom he repudiated.