This is an examination of one of the most important artists in the Western tradition by one of the leading art historians and critics of the past half-century. In his first extended consideration of the Italian Baroque painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610), Michael Fried offers a transformative account of the artist's revolutionary achievement. Based on the A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts delivered at the National Gallery of Art, this book displays Fried's unique combination of interpretive brilliance, historical seriousness, and theoretical sophistication, providing sustained and unexpected readings of a wide range of major works. The result is an electrifying new perspective on a crucial episode in the history of European painting.--[book cover].