Painting from Life

Abstract

To review these two studies together makes a baroque pairing of opposites. Raw Painting is a small volume on one painting, in a series devoted to single ‘masterpieces’ in the Kimball Museum of Art. The Moment of Caravaggio is a massive tome reinterpreting an entire oeuvre, placing it as much in relation to modernism as to early modern painting. There are contrasts within contrasts in the juxtaposition. Raw Painting is the first book by a young curator who works in a conservative tradition of art history. The Moment of Caravaggio is by an author who has been a radical within both art criticism and art history, although he is now so celebrated that he speaks from the heart of the establishment, presenting these chapters as the Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts. The two books undoubtedly carry different intellectual weight. But despite the play of antitheses, it makes sense to write about the two books together. Studies of Carracci and Caravaggio are too often isolated from one another, perhaps simply because the former is not a household name, while the latter is too popular for his own good.