I Confess? ‘David With The Head Of Goliath’ (1609–1610) By Caravaggio
Caravaggio’s last painting? A new interpretation.
It’s always dangerous to interpret an artist’s works in terms of his life, but in the case of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio the temptation is overwhelming, and every writer on Caravaggio seems to willingly surrender to it.
But some purists are still profoundly irritated by writers who fill in the large gaps in Caravaggio’s exploits and misdemeanours with personal details garnered from delving deep into Roman police records. Yes, they kept records in the 16th century and any good writer knows that the devil is always in the detail.
My first experience with the life and work of Caravaggio came through M: The Man Who Became Caravaggio, an incredible book by Australian author Peter Robb which caused great controversy when published in 2000 and received three of the most venomous reviews you are ever likely to encounter from Brian Sewell, in the London Evening Standard, Waldemar Januszczak, in the Sunday Times and Philip Hensher, in the Observer.
Sewell plunged his established art critic’s knife in deep,
“Manic and meandering, masquerading as a monument of scholarship, yet its illustrations paltry and poor, this useless prolix book deserves only…
