Caravaggio’s life was a giddy succession of patrons and lovers, intrigues and stratagems, but above all he worked incessantly to create some of the world’s greatest masterpieces of art. By nineteen he had finished his apprenticeship, escaped from murderers, survived the plague, and lived both in luxury and in poverty.
His genius brought him the admiration and lavish patronage of nobles and churchmen, but his recklessness ultimately brought him suffering and exile.
More than a story of the extraordinary and adventurous life of a great artist and the great, brawling city of Renaissance Rome, Caravaggio is a novel about the beauty, pain and complexity of being human.