Caravaggio In Context: Learned Naturalism And Renaissance Humanism

Moffitt (art history, New Mexico State U.) finds that the well known tenebrismo (shadow style), also called chiaroscuro (light plus dark) in the work of Italian painter Michaelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1573-1610) to be a conflation of then standard topics, and the dark or melancholic temperament and visage then being attributed to the impassioned creative personality. The artist was thoroughly grounded, he says, in the humanist milieu of his erudite and at times witty patrons. Annotation 穢2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)