Darkness and light
Caravaggio’s art is made from darkness and light. His1
pictures present spotlit moments of extreme and often agonized
human experience. A man is decapitated in his bedchamber,
blood spurting from a deep gash in his neck. A woman is shot4
in the stomach with a bow and arrow at point-blank range.
Caravaggio’s images freeze time but also seem to hover on the
brink of their own disappearance. Faces are brightly7
illuminated. Details emerge from darkness with such uncanny
clarity that they might be hallucinations. Yet always the
shadows encroach, the pools of blackness that threaten to10
obliterate all. Looking at his pictures is like looking at the
world of flashes of lightning.
Caravaggio’s life is like his art, a series of lightning13
flashes in the darkness of nights. He is a man who can never be
known in full because almost all that he did, said and thought
is lost in the irrecoverable past. He was one of the most16
electrifying original artists ever to have lived, yet we have only
one solitary sentence from him on the subject of painting —
the sincerity of which is, in any case, questionable, since it was19
elicited from him when he was under interrogation for the
capital crime of libel.
When Caravaggio emerges from the obscurity of the22
past he does so, like the characters in his own paintings, as a
man in extremis. He lived much of his life as a fugitive, and
that is how he is preserved in history — a man on the run,25
heading for the hills, keeping to the shadows. But he is caught,
now and again, by the sweeping beam of a searchlight. Each
glimpse is different. He appears in many guises and moods.28
Caravaggio throws stones at the house of his landlady and
sings ribald songs outside her window. He has a fight with a
waiter about the dressing on a plate of artichokes. His life is a31
series of intriguing and vivid tableaux — scenes that abruptly
switch from low farce to high drama.
Andrew Graham-Dixon. Caravaggio: a life sacred and profane.
New York – London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010 (adapted).
Based on the text, judge if the following items are right (C) or wrong (E).
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In the second paragraph, the author suggests that information collected under duress is not reliable.
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The text is built on images associated with darkness, which suggests that Caravaggio’s life, as well as the quality of his art, was shadowy and shady.
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The author provides the opening paragraph with a cinematic quality for he attempts to create dynamic scenes.
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From the passage “He is a man who can never be known in full because almost all that he did, said and thought is lost in the irrecoverable past.” (R.14-16) it can be correctly inferred that the author is of the opinion that the study of history is a futile attempt to reconstruct events from the past.