Caravaggio, or more accurately Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (Milan 1571 - Porto Ercole 1610), was a legend even in his own lifetime. Celebrated by some for his naturalism and his revolutionary pictorial inventions, he was considered by others to have destroyed painting. Few other artists have attracted such controversial and contradictory interpretations right up to modern times and to the latest art historical research. The book offers a comprehensive new examination of the whole of Caravaggio's oeuvre with a catalogue raisonee of his works. Five introductory chapters analyse his artistic career from his training in Lombard Milan and his triumphal rise in papal Rome up to his dramatic final years in Naples, Malta and Sicily. The spotlight thereby falls upon the radical nature and innovative force of his art and its influence in all of Europe. Our understanding of Caravaggio's work has been substantially broadened in recent decades by major exhibitions, restoration campaigns, new attributions and archival discoveries. The new catalogue raisonee offers a detailed overview of Caravaggio's entire oeuvre on the basis of the latest research. All the paintings are documented in large-scale reproductions and spectacular detail illustrations that set new standards in their scope and quality.

Sebastian Schutze was a longtime research fellow at the Bibliotheca Hertziana (Max Planck Institute for Art History) in Rome and currently holds the Bader Chair in Southern Baroque Art at Queen's University, Kingston. He has published widely on Italian art and culture in the early modern era and is a member of the scientific board of the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici in Naples and of the Institut europeen d'histoire de la Republique des Lettres in Paris.