Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

Second revised, updated and enlarged edition of Caravaggio documents. Three documentary sections permit the reader to trace the artistic production and historic events of Caravaggio's life. The first section is composed of 1100 archival documents (as compared to the 700 records collated in the first edition). These span the earliest references to the Merisi family in the mid-sixteenth century, to the last records concerning the history of individual paintings in the mid-nineteenth century. The second section is composed of transcriptions of the most important biographic records and descriptions of the artists work. In the third section, a close reading of seventeenth and eighteenth century inventories of notable Roman and European collections allows us to trace the individual history of every Caravaggio painting.