Caravaggio and the antique

This book is comprised of a series of essays on some of the artist's best-known works. The general theme is the central influence which the classical tradition had on Caravaggio's language of form and gestures and the expressive physiognomic characterisation of his figures. The author identifies various antique statuses and reliefs which were available to the artist in contemporary collections and discusses the ancient Greek and Latin texts and humanistic writings relevant to an iconological understanding of Caravaggio's imagery. All this is in Caravaggio's anti-classicism and his contempt for antique masterpieces allegedly expressed in his down-to-earth realism.