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Notorious bad boy of Italian Baroque painting, Caravaggio (1571-1610) is finally getting the recognition he deserves. Though his name may be familiar to all of us, his work has been habitually detested and forced into obscurity. Not only was his theatrical realism unfashionable in his time, but his sacrilegious subject matter and use of lower class models were violently scorned.

Caravaggio's great work had the misfortune of enduring centuries of disrepute. It wasn't until the end of the 19th century that he was rediscovered and, quite posthumously, deemed a great master. He is now considered the most important painter of the early Baroque period; without him there would have been no Ribera, Zurbarán, Velázquez, Vermeer or Georges de la Tour. Franz Hals, Rembrandt, Delacroix, and Manet would have been different.

In this anniversary edition you'll find over 50 of Caravaggio's best paintings; we think you'll agree that he was a genius beyond his time.

The editor:
Gilles Néret (1933–2005) was an art historian, journalist, writer and museum correspondent. He organized several art retrospectives in Japan and founded the SEIBU museum and the Wildenstein Gallery in Tokyo. He directed art reviews such as L'Œil and Connaissance des Arts and received the Elie Faure Prize in 1981 for his publications.

About the Series:
Every book in TASCHEN's Basic Art Series features:

* a detailed chronological summary of the artist's life and work, covering the cultural and historical importance of the artist
* approximately 100 color illustrations with explanatory captions
* a concise biography

Every extant work by Caravaggio is reproduced in color in this lavish newly updated volume, the long-awaited result of more than 20 years of research by a leading authority on the artist.

In an engaging and informed text, John T. Spike explores in detail Caravaggio's scandalous life and provocative work. Placing Caravaggio within the broad panorama of society and ideas at the turn of the 17th century, the author sets a richly detailed stage for an artist who has been called "the first modern painter." Caravaggio (1571-1610) reflected in his canvases his own desires and spiritual crises to an extent no one ever had imagined possible, and he shocked his contemporaries by portraying the saints and virgins of Christianity with the faces and bodies of his companions and lovers in Rome's demimonde.

Accompanying the book is a critical catalog on CD-ROM in which all of Caravaggio's extant paintings, as well as lost and rejected works, are thoroughly described. Each entry specifies the work's medium, dimensions, location, and provenance, and provides an annotated bibliography of sources. Most of the entries conclude with a brief technical analysis. Much of this scientific data, of prime importance for attribution and dating, has not previously been published.

With its fresh insights, as well as judicious readings of the documents and the physical evidence of the paintings themselves, Caravaggio is the most thorough study on the artist to date, and it will no doubt remain a definitive monograph for many years to come.

Revised Second Edition

A revolution in painting. The Baroque genius who electrified art history

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610) was always a name to be reckoned with. Notorious bad boy of the Italian Baroque, the artist was at once celebrated and controversial, violent in temper, precise in technique, a creative master, and a man on the run.

Though famed for his dramatic use of colour, light, and shadow, it was above all Caravaggio's boundary-breaking naturalism which scorched his name into the annals of art history. From the dirtied soles of feet to the sexualised languor of bare flesh, the artist allowed even sacred and biblical scenes to unfold with a startling, often visceral humanity. This vivid pictorial world was accompanied by an equally intense personal biography, scored by gambling, debts, drunken brawls, and even a murder charge.

This book brings together Caravaggio's most famous and revolutionary works to explain why this artist is now considered the most important painter of the early Baroque period and one of the defining influences of art history, without whom Ribera, Vermeer, Rembrandt, Delacroix, Courbet, and Manet could never have painted the way they did.

About the series:

Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art series features:

- a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance
- a concise biography
- approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

120 illustrations

It took a mid-twentieth century art show in Milan to rediscover this Italian artist, emblematic of the Baroque period, who lived during the second half of the 16th and first half of the 17th centuries.
Michelangelo Merisi was born to a family of modest means in 1571 near Milan. At the age of thirteen, he became an apprentice of the painter Simone Peterzano, who taught him artistic techniques and the use of colours. But he was atracted by Rome, with its fast pace of life and its loose morals. In 1597, he became the protégé to a noble cardinal who assisted him in securing important orders, such as The Martyrdom of St. Matthew, but he turned many of the offers down because of the vulgarity of the subject. Rejecting mannerism in favour of realism, this artist of the Counter- Reformation restored to the saints their humanity. Paradoxically, this mystical painter gives the saints a sensuality which goes beyond veneration and opens the door to an ambiguous eroticism.
Caravaggio also experienced the taste of dishonour and prison. After the murder of Tomasi, he was condemned to exile. He died on the 18th of July 1610 as he had lived – unexpectedly, like a character in a novel, far away from his beloved Rome, on the eve of his pardon by Pope Paul V.
His work remains tremendous – both his themes and his techniques became an inspiration for Rubens, Velázquez, and Rembrandt, inspiring especially the technique of chiaroscuro, of which he was one of the precursors.
With the help of numerous colour reproductions, this book retraces the life of Caravaggio and analyses his work while illustrating the scope of his influence on the greatest artists.

Caravaggio in Detail is the fourth title in our successful In Detail series, following Van Eyck, Bruegel and Bosch. The Italian genius Caravaggio is considered one of the most important artists of the Baroque era. The Italian master’s painting style was groundbreaking, not only because of his unique treatment of light and shade, but above all for his unprecedented realism: instead of the customary idealised figures, he painted everyday, working-class people, even in religious scenes.

This book allows you to explore Caravaggio’s turbulent life and his equally dramatic work in a surprising way. The book is divided into themed chapters: Still Lifes, Hidden Self-Portraits and Stimulated Senses, and shows the paintings as never before, in stunning, full-page details.

About the Author:

The author, art historian Stefano Zuffi, offers new insights in an original and accessible way into the work of the Pasolini of painting. He takes us on a journey from detail to detail, with beautiful visual material from masterpieces including Medusa, David and Goliath, Judith and Holofernes and The Fortune Teller.

The works of Caravaggio and his followers and contemporaries in early 17th-century Rome.

Caravaggio was an unquestioned genius who eclipsed all other artists of his time. But just who were these fellow travellers? Bringing together 200 works from world collections, Caravaggio's Rome is the first work to reconstruct the connective tissue of the Eternal City where the great genius lived and worked. In the vibrant and exhilarating years of the reassertion of Catholic Papacy after the Lutheran scare, celebrated in the Holy Year 1600, Rome became the cultural capital of Europe, drawing in thousands of artists from Italy (Caravaggio among them) and also from other great European nations: Spain, France, Germany, the Netherlands.

In the period 1595-1635, Rome was characterized by a creative ferment which may be considered to mark the beginning of truly European art. Yet to be studied in sufficient depth, the city at the time was a crucible in which artists of different backgrounds, cultures and tongues worked side by side exchanging techniques, stimuli, experiences, styles and iconographies. In the space of a few years, they swept away the late Mannerist stereotypes and ushered in the most extraordinary artistic rebirth ever witnessed in Rome. The results would be felt all over Europe throughout the seventieth century.

The catalogue relates this poorly known story to a broad audience, rendering justice and visibility to talented artists who had the misfortune of living in Rome in the early decades of the sixteen hundreds and have languished into modern times in the shadow of the incredibly popular Caravaggio.

Caravaggio's Rome 1600-1630: Volume I: Works , Volume II: Essays

Caravaggio, or more accurately Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610), was a legend even in his own lifetime. Celebrated by some for his naturalism and his revolutionary pictorial inventions, he was considered by others to have destroyed painting. Few other artists have provoked such controversy and so many contradictory interpretations right up to modern times.

Just in time for the Caravaggio year 2010, this work offers a comprehensive reassessment of Caravaggio's entire oeuvre, with a catalogue raisonné of his works. Five introductory chapters analyse his artistic career from his training in Lombard Milan and his triumphal rise in papal Rome, up to his dramatic final years in Naples, Malta and Sicily. The spotlight thereby falls upon the radical nature and innovative force of Caravaggio's art and its influence in all of Europe.

Our understanding of Caravaggio's work has been substantially broadened in recent decades by major exhibitions, restoration campaigns, new attributions and archival discoveries. The new catalogue raisonné offers a detailed overview of the artist's entire œuvre based on the latest research. Every painting is reproduced in large-scale format, with spectacular details that offer dramatic close-ups and set new standards in print quality. A new photographic campaign has been undertaken, enabling the smallest details to be reproduced on a large scale for the first time. They reveal all the more clearly Caravaggio’s virtuosity and his enormous ability to capture the viewer’s attention and to build a communicative bridge between the worlds of picture and viewer. Sequences of spectacular details grouped by subject allow us to experience Caravaggio’s ingenious rhetoric of looks and gestures and their theatrical staging in paint.

A Revolution in Painting. The mysterious genius who transformed European art

Caravaggio, or more accurately Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610), was always a name to be reckoned with. Notorious bad boy of Italian painting, the artist was at once celebrated and controversial: violent in temper, precise in technique, a creative master, and a man on the run. Today, he is considered one of the greatest influences in all art history.

This edition offers a neat and comprehensive Caravaggio catalogue raisonné. Each of his paintings is reproduced from recent top-quality photography, allowing for a vivid encounter with the artist’s ingenious repertoire of looks and gestures, as well as numerous detail shots of his boundary-breaking naturalism. Five accompanying chapters trace the complete arc of Caravaggio’s career from his first public commissions in Rome through to his growing celebrity status and trace his tempestuous personal life, in which drama loomed as prominently as in his canvases.

The author:

Sebastian Schütze was a longtime research fellow at the Bibliotheca Hertziana (Max Planck Institute for Art History) in Rome. He is a member of the academic board of the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici in Naples, and a member of the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften. From 2003 to 2009 he held the Bader Chair in Southern Baroque Art at Queen’s University in Kingston. In 2009 he was appointed professor of early modern art history at Vienna University.

About the series:

TASCHEN is 40! Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible publishing, helping bookworms around the world curate their own library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia at an unbeatable price. Today we celebrate 40 years of incredible books by staying true to our company credo. The 40 series presents new editions of some of the stars of our program — now more compact, friendly in price, and still realized with the same commitment to impeccable production.

Caravaggio. Bad Boy of the Baroque

Realist revolutionary: The painter who brought the heavenly down-to-earth Caravaggio, or more accurately Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610), was always a name to be reckoned with. Notorious bad boy of Italian painting, the artist was at once celebrated and controversial: Violent in temper, precise in technique, a creative master, and a man on the run. 

This work offers a comprehensive reassessment of Caravaggio's entire oeuvre with a catalogue raisonne of his works. Each painting is reproduced in large format, with recent, high production photography allowing for dramatic close-ups with Caravaggio's ingenious details of looks and gestures. Five introductory chapters analyze Caravaggio's artistic career from his early struggle to make a living, through his first public commissions in Rome, and his growing celebrity status. They look at his increasing daring with lighting and with a boundary-breaking realism which allowed even biblical events to unfold with an unprecedented immediacy before the viewer. 

An accompanying artist chronology follows Caravaggio's equally tumultous personal life, tracing his history of debts, gambling, drunken brawls, and murder.

This is a fascinating re-evaluation of the life and works of a hugely talented yet controversial artist.

The young Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) created a major stir in late-sixteenth-century Rome with the groundbreaking naturalism and highly charged emotionalism of his paintings.

"Caravaggio" is a sumptuously illustrated and engagingly written volume that takes a fresh look at Caravaggio's life and works, uncovering evidence that the efforts of Caravaggio's contemporaries to disparage his character and his artwork often sprang from their own cultural biases or a desire to promote the artistic achievements of his rivals, and that contrary to repeated claims, Caravaggio lacked neither education nor piety, but was an extremely accomplished technician who developed a successful marketing strategy.

A Revolution in Painting 

The mysterious genius who transformed European art Caravaggio, or more accurately Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571—1610), was always a name to be reckoned with. Notorious bad boy of Italian painting, the artist was at once celebrated and controversial: violent in temper, precise in technique, a creative master, and a man on the run. Today, he is considered one of the greatest influences in all art history. 

This Bibliotheca Universalis edition offers a neat yet comprehensive Caravaggio catalogue raisonne. Each of his paintings is reproduced from recent top-quality photography, allowing for a vivid encounter with the artist s ingenious repertoire of looks and gestures, as well as numerous detail shots of his boundary-breaking naturalism, whether a grubby foot or the soft folds of a sagging stomach. Five accompanying chapters trace the complete arc of Caravaggio s career from his first public commissions in Rome through to his growing celebrity status, while the book s detailed chronology traces his tempestuous personal life, in which drama loomed as prominently as in his chiaroscuro canvases

About the series:

Bibliotheca Universalis — Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe at an unbeatable, democratic price!

Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible, open-minded publishing. Bibliotheca Universalis brings together more than 100 of our all-time favourite titles in a neat new format so you can curate your own affordable library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia.

Bookworm’s delight — never bore, always excite!

Treasures of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Eight centuries of European applied arts

When Kunstwerke und Geräthschaften des Mittelalters und der Renaissance (1852–1863) was published, what purchasers in fact bought was a small printed museum of unusual treasures. With 216 hand-coloured copperplate engravings, the publication gives a comprehensive overview of applied arts in Europe from the 9th to the 16th centuries. The objects presented comprise furniture, metalwork, jewellery, tapestries, and works of bookbinding. Carefully selected masterpieces such as the gilt Corvinus goblet, an enamelled saltcellar, and medieval ivory combs are depicted, along with a decorative sword, now lost.

The editor Jakob Heinrich von Hefner-Alteneck (1811-1903) was head of the Royal Cabinet of Prints and Drawings in Munich and later director of the Bavarian National Museum. His work helped influence the creation of new museums of art and design – the South Kensington Museum in London (today the Victoria and Albert Museum), founded in 1852, being the very first – in which artists could study the hand-crafted masterpieces of earlier epochs.
Although the co-editor Carl Becker (1794-1859) commissioned various artists to make drawings of the historical originals for Kunstwerke und Geräthschaften, the signatures on the plates show that most of the illustrations stem from the hand of artist Jakob Heinrich von Hefner-Alteneck and he can, therefore, be considered as the work’s main draughtsman; considering that Becker died before the completion of the work, the most influential figure behind it was undoubtedly Hefner-Alteneck. Before his collaboration with Becker, Hefner-Alteneck had previously published Trachten des christlichen Mittelalters (Costumes of the Christian Middle Ages).

With their publication, Jakob Heinrich von Hefner-Alteneck and Carl Becker gave expression to the 19th century’s revived interest in the art of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. By selecting masterpieces from public and private collections, and reproducing them faithfully in pictures, they created a document of artistic quality in itself, which also provides evidence of works which have since been lost.

With this new edition, which includes a commentary, TASCHEN is making an important publication accessible once more, giving a glimpse of the treasure chambers of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This complete reprint was created on the basis of an original copy in the Württembergische Landesbibliothek in Stuttgart.

The author:

Carsten-Peter Warncke studied art history, classical archaeology, and literature in Vienna, Heidelberg, and Hamburg, and received his doctorate from the latter in 1975. He is a professor of art history at the University of Göttingen.

Carlos Cruz-Diez (Caracas, 1923) promotes experimentation with color and is one of the most relevant examples of the Kinetic Art Movement. The catalogue covers Cruz-Diez´s career including his beginnings as a graphic designer. The 1950s and 1960s are presented through a carefully selected group of unedited documents including magazines and catalogues that he illustrated and designed during that time period. This chapter in Cruz Diez´s career directly correlates with his unique artistic language, which he continues to apply in his works today. The catalogue illustrates almost thirty works by Carlos Cruz-Diez. Their presentation takes into account the original series in which they were first exhibited. These series allow insight into the artist´s personal concept and organization of his body of work. At the same time, the series reflect his incredible ambition and eagerness to experiment. His invented jargon stands out in all of the series with titles so typically Cruz-Diez such as Chromatic induction , Physichromie Chromosaturation .

'Carlos Cruz-Diez: Colour Happens' is the title of the first individual Spanish exhibition, an official institution, dedicated to the work of Carlos Cruz-Diez (Caracas, 1923). His work has been present in the greatest European exhibitions dedicated to Kinetic Art since the 60's, as well as in the most important collective exhibitions devoted to Latin American art. Carlos Cruz-Diez has worked in many of the most dignified museums worldwide, including, Musee National d'Art Modern Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, of which loaned works of Cruz-Diez for this exhibition, as with the private Foundation Allegro, the Altelier Cruz-Diez and MUGAB (Diputation of Alicante).