by Jon Lackman | 10 March 2010 | Baroque/Neoclassical, Renaissance
From The New York Times:
By at least one amusing new metric, Michelangelo’s unofficial 500-year run at the top of the Italian art charts has ended … That’s according to an art historian at the University of Toronto, Philip Sohm. He has studied the number of writings (books, catalogs and scholarly papers) on both of them during the last 50 years. Mr. Sohm has found that Caravaggio has gradually, if unevenly, overtaken Michelangelo. He has charts to prove it … Mr. Sohm, who announced his findings during a talk at the College Art Association conference in Chicago last month, focused on publications, not tourist revenues or exhibition attendance figures, and his study says nothing about how Michelangelo and Caravaggio stack up against box-office greats like Rembrandt and van Gogh.
Caravaggio’s work is definitely more interesting that Michelangelo’s, but I don’t think it had the same technical prowess…
I disagree, having seen the Supper at Emmaus.
I think Michelangelo is more an art historian’s artist, and Caravaggio more of an artist’s artist. You have to look at painting emotionally to love Caravaggio, and since I learned to block emotions at grad school, I love Michelangelo.
(And in a brutal plug of my own work, check out my Mike itinerary of Florence: http://ow.ly/1mQ9W – your comments would be most welcome!)