'A proper so-and-so'

Michele Angelo Merigi da Caravaggio was not a moderate man. Neither in his art, with its naked realism, turmoil and startling lighting, nor in his short, rather villainous life. The artist appalled 16^th-century Rome with his love of brothels, homosexual liaisons and sword fights – one of which resulted in murder and exile.
 
We sat down with art historian, broadcaster and all-round Caravaggiophile Andrew Graham-Dixon, who recently gave an Arts Society Lecture on the subject.

The figure of Caravaggio captures the imagination perhaps more than any other in art history. Why do you think this is?

I think Caravaggio captures the imagination because of the sheer immediacy and vitality of his work, the way it seems still to live, even in our very different, modern world. I also think the tragedy of his life story moves people deeply.
 
Can we find evidence of the way he lived his life in his paintings?
 
His life, or shards of it, can be found everywhere in his work. The men and women he knew, and he himself, appear in his paintings, which also carry something of his own charged sense of existence: his sense of danger, of threat, of the difficulty of attaining salvation.
 
What do we know about his appetites?
 
He had a fondness for artichokes, if we are talking about food. When it comes to his sexual and emotional appetites, it is clear from his work, and from the information gleaned from the archives, that he was drawn to both men and women. It’s telling that he never settled with any one woman or man, however. I think Caravaggio suffered a lifelong sense of abandonment – a sense that the settled, secure life was not meant to be, for him.
 
What would have been the reaction to his paintings at the time?
 
Poor people, pilgrims and the like adored his paintings. So too did many high-born collectors and connoisseurs. But there was also a pervasive suspicion of Caravaggio in certain high circles within the Church – a feeling that he spoke too directly to the meek and the disinherited; a feeling that he gave too much encouragement to the lower orders to believe that one day they might inherit the Earth. Hence the constant accusations that his work was vulgar, mean, sensationalist.
 
Do you have a favourite Caravaggio work?
 
I love all his paintings, pretty much. I think the one that moves me most of all is the Nativity in the little museum at Messina: Mary as a refugee mother, surrounded by the figures of the shepherds who seem somehow unable to touch her, unable to help her, for all their love and good intentions. It’s one of the most tragic paintings in the world, all the more so because the scene it depicts is played out daily: in Syria, in Palestine, on the shores of the Mediterranean. 
 
Sophisticate or scoundrel?
 
Caravaggio behaved badly on many occasions, and he killed a man. But he was also an immensely sophisticated painter and thinker, who interpreted biblical stories with exceptional originality and sensitivity. He was violent in his life, and wonderfully tender and humane in his work. Such contradictions are neither as strange nor as uncommon as some people seem to think.
 
Who would be his contemporary equivalent?
 
I think of the words of Ray Davies, of the Kinks (I paraphrase): ‘I’ve been a proper so-and-so for much of my life, but I also wrote Waterloo Sunset; so there’s the worst of me and the best of me, but they’re all me.’ 

Andrew Graham-Dixon is an art critic, journalist, TV presenter and lecturer. His book Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane was released on 1 July 2010 by Penguin Books.