Firstly, let me apologise. I've been absent for quite some time and I return and have nothing to offer you but a rant. A mega rant. Let me get this out of the way: I'm a huge fan of the Italian Baroque artist Caravaggio. His genre paintings are full of humour and ambiguity, his portraits have a real intimacy to them, and his religious paintings are breath-taking, daring, vicious and beautiful. He used grubby beggars and prostitutes and cast them as martyrs. He gave hope to the hopeless. He introduced darkness into painting. He was darkness. For Caravaggio has quite the reputation; not only as the master painter who changed the face of art forever, but ...  Read the complete review