Excerpt from Caravaggio Preface to the Second Edition A decade has passed since the first publication of this book in 2001, twice reprinted in the interim. During that time, a steady stream of exhibitions and scholarly conferences has kept Caravaggio in the forefront of Italian art research. The quatercentenary of the artist's death and 1610 seems an appropriate moment to assess new information in the field and issue a second revised edition. This new edition updates the text and notes with archival findings that have clarified a number of details in the artist's biography. It is now certain that Michelangelo Merisi was born in Milan on September 29, 1571, rather than in his family's home town of Caravaggio. The mystery surrounding his precipitous arrest and imprisonment in Valletta, Malta, and 1608 has been dispelled: he was caught in an armed brawl. As this book goes to press, however, the most intriguing threads of Caravaggio's story--the date, place, and cause of his death--remain untied, despite recent theories such as those surrounding the loose slip of paper that was hopefully announced as the artist's death notice. The odd circumstances of its discovery in the archives of the same Port'Ercole parish for which the Liber Mortuorum for 1610 is extant and complete has left specialists unconvinced as to its authenticity. Readers will find that a two-page supplement has been added with photographs of two newly discovered sources for Caravaggio's compositions, together with some unpublished x-rays from the archives of Editech Laboratory, Florence (pp. 244-45). Queen Elizabeth II's Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew has been included in the text, as a result of its recent restoration. Bibliographies, both general and for the catalogue entries, have been brought up to date on the CD-ROM, usually with parenthetical annotations as to date and attribution. Recent research can be divided into two main lines of inquiry. The first concerns Caravaggio's patronage and the passage of his paintings through successive collections to the present. In addition to contributions in scholarly journals and conferences, the publication of the Giustiniani and Costa inventories were major events in Caravaggio provenance. Inventory references, documents, and sources were collected in an indispensable anthology by Stefania Macioce in 2003. The first edition of this catalogue raisonné marked a turning point in the provenance studies, presenting divergent proposals in parallel and clearly identifying the gaps in the historical chain between the early descriptions and the actual works of art, many of which were untraced during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This approach has been influential, encouraged no doubt by the unprecedented global distribution of the catalogue raisonné in easily copied, completely searchable, digital text. The decision by publisher Robert Abrams to transfer its 100,000 words to a CD-ROM, rather than printed two additional volumes, was visionary as well as generous. Wherever I travel, I encounter curators, professors, and students who carry the catalogue in their computers. The second line of research concerns the connoisseurship of Caravaggio's paintings. It is safe to say that current opinion on attributions, on what is to be regarded as autograph and what a school piece, or a copy, is very much divided. The Narcissus, for example, seems to enter and exit by revolving door. Copies of previously disputed pictures are now being weighed as additional originals. Current inquiries into provenance and replicas are closely related. Compelling evidence has been found in documents that Caravaggio's collectors also owned his copies, that Caravaggio provided copies to supporters like Philippe de Béthune, and that picture dealers like Prospero Orsi, Giulio Mancini, and Michelangelo Vanni energetically sought to make and sell copies as early as 1611. Some of these paintings have re-emerged from obscurity and her being appreciated, without attempting to identify them with the copies described in the archives. And finally, an update is in order for the references in the first edition to David Hockney's, Charles Falco's, and the present writer's research into whether Caravaggio made studio use of projected images. Back in 2001, questions were being raised as to why such projections were not discussed in early writings and whether the necessary optical equipment would have been available. The subsequent outpouring of literary references, from sources as early as the medieval Roman de la Rose and contemporaries such as Giambattista Della Porta and Cigoli, has answered these questions with a confident affirmative. John T. Spike Excerpted from Caravaggio by John T. Spike All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
