This is a groundbreaking examination of one of the most important artists in the Western tradition by one of the leading art historians and critics of the past half-century. In his first extended consideration of the Italian Baroque painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1573-1610), Michael Fried offers a transformative account of the artist’s revolutionary achievement. Based on the A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts delivered at the National Gallery of Art, The Moment of Caravaggio displays Fried’s unique combination of interpretive brilliance, historical seriousness, and theoretical sophistication, providing sustained and unexpected readings of a wide range of major works, from the early Boy Bitten by a Lizard to the late Martyrdom of Saint Ursula. The result is an electrifying new perspective on a crucial episode in the history of European painting.
Focusing on the emergence of the full-blown “gallery picture” in Rome during the last decade of the sixteenth century and the first decades of the seventeenth, Fried draws forth an expansive argument, one that leads to a radically revisionist account of Caravaggio’s relation to the self-portrait; of the role of extreme violence in his art, as epitomized by scenes of decapitation; and of the deep structure of his epoch-defining realism. Fried also gives considerable attention to the art of Caravaggio’s great rival, Annibale Carracci, as well as to the work of Caravaggio’s followers, including Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, Bartolomeo Manfredi, and Valentin de Boulogne.
Please note: All images in this ebook are presented in black and white and have been reduced in size.
Awards and Recognition
- One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2011
- Winner of the 2010 PROSE Award in in Art History & Criticism, Association of American Publishers
- A ARTFORUM T. J. Clark Best Book of the Year for 2010
"[An] infinitely erudite investigation of, among other things, the pervasiveness of violence in Caravaggio's painting."—Holland Cotter, New York Times
"Fried's study argues across radically different artistic periods . . . the better to construct an argument that is as big as it is granular."—Angus Trumble, Times Literary Supplement
"Fried encapsulates Caravaggio's tempestuous personality, his place within the religious and political intrigues of the Baroque era, and his primary significance as an artist."—Globe & Mail
"My book of the year. . . . It took me by storm. . . . The book's key analyses are beautiful and, pace the critics, often profoundly surprising. . . . [Fried's] book has robbed me of the common-sensical ground on which and from which I thought I could see—could 'place'—a major artist. It made me aware of what Caravaggio's excessiveness might have been about. And it reminded me of the sheer strangeness—the preposterousness—of European painting's commitment to the real."—T. J. Clark, Artforum
"So much has been written about the High Renaissance artist Caravaggio, it is hard to believe more could be said. But the illustrious Michael Fried, of Johns Hopkins University, manages to say considerably more in his trenchant re-examination of the dynamic painter's art. . . . Fried astounds the reader with thoughts about Caravaggio's use of the mirror in art, his fascination with the 'immersive' or 'specular' moment."—Tracey O'Shaughnessy, Republican-American
"Fried is a persistent spectator, and his careful eye produces remarkable analysis that make for a thrilling read. . . . His process of looking should be an inspiration to students of art history at many levels, and his observations about how viewers respond to paintings are thought-provoking."—Choice
"Seldom does one encounter a profoundly surprising yet rigorously historical reading of a very familiar work; in The Moment of Caravaggio this happens with painting after painting. Though an account primarily of Caravaggio and his circle, Fried's discussions of address, of autonomy, of interiority, and of the dispositif of easel painting, among other topics, will resonate across the field. Every scholar of early modern art should read this book."—Michael W. Cole, Columbia University
"No one sees paintings better than Michael Fried, or thinks as persistently or with such philosophical depth about such seeing, about the very possibility of pictorial meaning. The Moment of Caravaggio is a spectacular, compelling addition to his oeuvre. An engrossing and often simply thrilling read, the book is a triumph."—Robert B. Pippin, University of Chicago
"This is a dazzling tour de force. Michael Fried's readings of a series of Caravaggio's most fascinating and enigmatic pictures keep one turning the pages with the greatest pleasure. Fried's arguments are compelling, muscular, and graceful."—Leonard Barkan, Princeton University
