Models and Props

Nicholas Penny

• Caravaggio by Catherine Puglisi
  Phaidon, 448 pp, £24.95, May 2000, ISBN 0 7148 3966 3
• Caravaggio' Secrets by Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit
  MIT, 118 pp, £18.50, September 1998, ISBN 0 262 02449 7
• M by Peter Robb
  Bloomsbury, 567 pp, £25.00, January 2000, ISBN 0 7475 4599 5
• Quoting Caravaggio: Contemporary Art, Preposterous History by Mieke Bal
  Chicago, 305 pp, £28.50, October 1999, ISBN 0 226 03556 5
• Doubting Thomas: A Novel About Caravaggio by Atle Naess, translated by Anne Born
  Owen, 159 pp, £14.95, June 2000, ISBN 0 7206 1082 6
• Caravaggio: A Life by Helen Langdon
  Pimlico, 447 pp, £15.00, November 1999, ISBN 0 7126 6582 X

Even before Caravaggio’s premature death in violent and mysterious circumstances in 1610, pictures influenced by his work were to be found in many different parts of Europe. There were paintings of card parties inspired by his youthful canvases, typically featuring a gay pink plume against a buff wall. Even more of them imitated the grimmer scenes he adopted in the second half of his career, in which a scrawny arm and corrugated brow are sharply lit against deep shadow. His art was subjected to stern strictures by some of the most eloquent critics and theorists in Italy, yet it continued to be prized by collectors and valued by connoisseurs. By the end of the 17th century, however, Caravaggio’s work was increasingly being confused with that of inferior imitators, and he became the victim of his own influence. It is ironic that Catherine Puglisi’s monograph, which provides an admirable, up-to-date and very well illustrated account of Caravaggio’s work should be encumbered with plates of dubious works in which she doesn’t believe.