Cue Harpsichord...

Plink plink plink plink plink-plink, plink plink plink-plink... "Ah, Mr Ambassador, with this fine writing you are really spoiling us!"

The second really well-written book inside six months. Remarkable.

I'm currently reading Andrew Graham-Dixon's biography of Caravaggio, and am thoroughly enthused about it. It places the artist's life and work in a richly evocative social/historical context, an approach that works really well - partly because the historical learning is worn lightly, such that it never feels like an 'academic' treatment. The writing is fluent, varied and unobtrusive.

The section I read today dealt with a visitation of the plague in Milan when Caravaggio was a child - two years of death, suffering and misery: all Caravaggio's male relatives died, and the city streets were full of corpses and carts carrying the dead. You can't help but see the twisted, pained bodies of some of Caravaggio's paintings in this light...especially the sickly, greenish hues of the dead bodies therein.

Amid the plague, the city's most powerful cleric organised a series of 'spectacles of penance', one aspect of which was to set up miniature shrines throughout the city. Graham-Dixon writes beautifully about how "On a multitude of outdoor altars 'there burned a great quantity of candles and much incense'. Flame and shadow: Milan had become a city of chiaroscuro."

Caravaggio chiaroscuro

Splendid book - I recommend it.