Description

M is the name of an enigma. In his short and violent life, Michaelangelo Merisi, from Caravaggio, changed art for ever. In the process, he laid bare his own sexual longing and the brutal realities of his life with shocking frankness. Like no painter before him and few since, M the man appears in his art. As a book about art and life and how they connect, there has never been anything quite like it. “A great read; it grabs, it kicks, it lives. Feel the force of Caravaggio’s cutting edge” – “Guardian”. “Written in a vehemently passionate and colloquial style, M is an abrasive, flawed, idiosyncratic book, but it is full of energy. Peter Robb’s Caravaggio may not be entirely believable, but he is thoroughly alive, a being as full of mystery and contradictions as the painter once seemed to his contemporaries” – “Daily Telegraph”.

Publisher Review

"Recreates the mirror Caravaggio held up to nature with singular delicacy as well as passion and panache."-Hilary Spurling, "The New York Times Book Review" "[Robb's] biography . . . comes across almost like an eyewitness account. His commentaries on the paintings convey a kind of informed passion in confrontation with genius . . . His account achieves both intimacy and vibrancy because of the richness of layering, its nonstop accumulation of analyzed detail."-Richard Bernstein, "The New York Times" "Robb's ambitions are lofty and, plainly put, it is hard not to be seduced by his prose."-"The Washington Post" "Partisan, sharply personal, and well worth reading."-"The Wall Street Journal" "Passionate, perceptive . . . [Robb] succeeds brilliantly in bringing to life one of the handful of figures in art history whose genius blazed so brightly that it illuminated an entire age and changed forever the course of European art."-"The Baltimore Sun"