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 Late at night, the painter Caravaggio is joined in his studio by his Sicilian friend Mario Minniti and the prostitute Fillide Melandroni. The studio has been provided by Caravaggio’s great patron of the arts, the Cardinal del Monte. That the three of them are relaxing in the realm of the clergy is having an effect: Fillide has taken on the unlikely task of posing for a painting of the Christian martyr Catherine. Minniti, however, seems skeptical as he sips from his glass of wine. “She’s something of an unconventional saint,” he says. Caravaggio picks up the decanter of wine and pours a glass of his own. “I wouldn’t want it any other way,” he tells Minniti. Fillide, meanwhile, holds their gaze. “My dear, the saints will know a sinner when they see one,” she says.   

That I can imagine this scene at all is a result of having read Andrew Graham-Dixon’s great book, “Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane.” In it, the author uses the techniques of a literary master to bring the life of the controversial Italian painter into focus. Graham-Dixon concedes at the outset that Caravaggio “is a man who can never be known in full because almost all that he did, said and thought is lost in the irrecoverable past.” The writer concludes that “Anyone attempting a biography of Caravaggio must play the detective as well as the art historian.” The reader, therefore, must decide if it’s worth it to trust Graham-Dixon as a guide.   

I can only speak for myself, but I am grateful to have made the journey. To read this work is to move quite vividly through all of Caravaggio’s worlds. Here is the elusive artist in the late Counter-Reformation world, but influenced by the Renaissance world as he swaggers through his street-life world in a world informed by myth. And as Caravaggio, Minniti and Fillide found out that night in the studio, what matters is that which you can see. Graham-Dixon tells us, “Caravaggio could turn Fillide into Mary Magdalen, into Judith, into St. Catherine, but the transformation could never be absolute. After all, it was Fillide that he saw in the room, Fillide with her damaged hand, breathing softly and looking back at him, with her wide appraising eyes, as she tried to hold the pose.” 

Review by Todd Robins

Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane (Hardcover)

By Andrew Graham-Dixon

$39.95

ISBN-13: 9780393081497
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: W. W. Norton & Company, 9/2011

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