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The Man Who Became Caravaggioby Peter Robb
Henry Holt and Co., 570 pp., $30
With all their flesh and cool suspension of breath, the paintings of Caravaggio are a call to sheer intoxication. But Peter Robb, in his attempt at piecing together the mysterious plot lines of the artist’s scandalous life as a real-life man who was originally named Michelangelo Merisi, or Amerighi, or Morisius, depending on who you asked, adopts a fanciful and overly flamboyant pose that does not move past this giddy stage of fascination with the historically elusive subject. To Robb’s credit, the book is well-researched and often makes solid arguments for the author’s conjectures as to the reality of the painter’s 16th-century life (arguing, for instance, that his death was the result of murder). Thankfully, Robb also makes clear at the outset of his work that for so long, so little of the information surrounding the painter’s rebellious life has even been available for debate. So only with new research and patient scholarship has the opportunity to undertake a work such as this been possible. But what makes the book so frustrating in its many trying moments is Robb’s empty showmanship, his secret-agent-on-the-prowl talk that tends not to read like the accomplished academic work that hides beneath it. Even if the reader can bear Robb’s ever-unsubtle presence in each line of the text, the book ultimately disappoints with its paltry offerings of Caravaggio’s brilliant work. With Helen Langdon’s 1999 biography of the artist so highly acclaimed and Desmond Seward’s 1998 work offering more satisfying glimpses at the actual works of art, this recent and ambitious attempt by an obviously gifted scholar simply falls short.
This article appears in May 19 • 2000.