Painting with demons: the art of Gerolamo Savoldo

Abstract

The achievements of Italian Renaissance painter Giovanni Gerolamo Savoldo were, even during a period of unprecedented artistry, out of the ordinary. Born in Brescia around 1480, he radically reimagined Christian subjects. His surviving oeuvre of roughly fifty paintings--from the intensely poetic Tobias and the Angel to sober self-portraits--represents some of the most profound work of the period. In Painting with Demons, a beautifully illustrated book and the first in English devoted to the painter, Michael Fried brings his celebrated skills of looking and thinking to bear on Savoldo's art, providing a stunning contribution to our understanding both of the early modern European imagination and of the achievement of this underappreciated artist.

Contents

Introduction -- Part One -- 1. Death of St Peter Martyr -- 2. Hands -- 3. Faces -- 4. Magic -- 5. The Brescia Adoration of the Shepherds -- Part Two -- Breathing the Same Air -- Savoldo and the Self-portrait -- Faces, Masks, Northern Art -- 'Magic', 'Influence', Demons -- Who, then, was Savoldo? -- Savoldo and Caravaggio: the Inescapable Relation -- Afterword -- References -- Index