How Caravaggio destroyed (and saved) painting

Jerry Saltz | Vulture | 24th September 2020

In praise of the emotional expressiveness of the Baroque and one of its stars, Caravaggio. Commissioned in 1600 to produce three paintings for a Rome church, he “shattered Renaissance wholeness, clarity and abstruse optical effects … [with] a new, unideal naturalism. The Baroque feels vital now in the way it refuses to accept … rule-bound theoretical art and instead probes deeper into the core of lived experience.”