Caravaggio: 1571-1610: a Genius Beyond His Time (Taschen Basic Art Series)

The perfect introduction to this painter, a hardback with 96 pages, larger than an A4 sheet, with 47 full page plates and lots of smaller ones. The plates are razor-sharp and the colour very good; a high-quality book with a solid text. Seriously well-produced, and so much more than the basic (and smallish) Taschen basic art edition I bought of Friedrich - I thought Amazon had made a mistake and sent me a much more expensive book! Only niggles I have is that the cover reproduced here is not the one on my book; I don't mind (it is in fact the same model) and the author is Gilles Lambert - not mentioned in the write-up. But what a beautiful book for much less than a tenner...

a Complimentary book for Andrew Graham Dixon's Tome Cararvaggio - A life sacred and profane . It has bigger pictures of the artist's work and helps to illustrate Dixon's comments

To me Caravaggio was the greatest painter that every lived and to see a lot of his painting up close and in detail shows just what an accomplished painter he actually was........... pity he died so early otherwise what else could he have achieved ?

This is an impressive book that provides a biography of the artist, explanations to his paintings and of course a large number of excellent colour reproductions of his works. Caravaggio was a bit of a bad lad , getting involved in fights and murders , associating with the lower classes and having to move from town to town (and country to country) after repeatedly falling foul of the authorities. However he had a number of influential patrons and a ready market for his artistic works. Caravaggio paintings are mostly in the chiaroscuro style ; mainly dark works lit up by outside sources of light. I liked most of them. His works on a religious theme were very good and I have actually seen a few of them in real life on my travels to Rome , Paris and Valletta. I generally prefer more modern art, but I enjoyed reading about this colourful artist and looking at his paintings in this good quality ,inexpensive ,Taschen book.

ARRIVED FINE AND LOVELY ILLUSTRATIONS VERY WELL DONE,THANKS.

Basic guide to Caravaggio but good value.

A very good introduction to the work of this often-overlooked artist. A little flimsy (Taschen do a far more voluminous, but expensive!, edition) but a well-produced volume at an excellent price. Buy, and if you like the artist, go for the bigger volume.