Eugenio Volpe is the author of the new novel I, Caravaggio. It focuses on the artist Caravaggio (1571-1610). Volpe is a professor of rhetoric at Loyola Marymount University, and he lives in Los Angeles.
Q: What inspired you to write I, Caravaggio?
A: I don’t think it’s possible to lay eyes on a Caravaggio and not want to write a novel about the man who painted all that heroic darkness: the shine of his chiaroscuro, the Biblical bloodshed, his sexualization of the Madonna and John the Baptist (to name a few).
He was the simultaneous harbinger and apex of modernity. He was an aesthetic and political revolutionary. He innovated selfies. He invented chiaroscuro. He was the first artist to paint from live models. He not only painted from reality, he hired laborers, peasants, and prostitutes (Christ’s people) to model as the Bible’s most holy characters.
Caravaggio didn’t Photoshop their appearances like his contemporary mannerist painters. He painted their bad teeth, dirty feet, and grimy fingernails.
Caravaggio was proto-democratic. He was proto-Hollywood. He was psychological three-hundred years before Freud. He painted human consciousness decades before Descartes said I think therefore I am.
Caravaggio was already so modern by 1604, that he was postmodern. He was sexually fluid. He beat up cops and pimps. I had to write about this dude. He very much reminded me of my parents.
Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?
A: I was surprised by the humor, slapstick at times, in Caravaggio’s work. My favorite TV shows and films depict violence in absurd and laughable contexts. During or after some of its most brutal moments, Raging Bull and The Sopranos deliver laugh-out-loud dialogue and/or physical humor.
I grew up in a working class Italian American family. There were always wisecracks or punchlines around an ass-kicking, or the retelling of one. I’m not saying that’s cool. But I was honored to find the same dark humor in Caravaggio’s work.
Q: What did you see as the right balance between the historical Caravaggio and your own take on the artist?
A: Caravaggio is the alpha of all enigmas. He didn’t keep a diary. He didn’t write letters. We only hear his voice in documented court testimonies while he’s facing charges of assault and slander. He is also quoted by other witnesses, defendants, and plaintiffs during those trials.
Caravaggio and his friends were eloquent foul mouths. My mother was too, so I knew I could replicate an authentic voice, but I wanted the novel to be as modern as possible because as I’ve said Caravaggio was the simultaneous harbinger and apex of modernity.
I wanted my novel to sound and feel like that. I wanted it to sound and feel like the late 1970s and early 1980s NYC. The Rome and Napoli that nurtured Caravaggio was already serving coffee, donuts, and pizza, which sounded like NYC to me.
It was easy to be historically accurate because the NYC of that time was very near to the Rome and Napoli of 1604.
I, Caravaggio is a Velvet Underground album with big-haired, sexually fluid dudes dressed in frilly velvets, but instead of switchblades, they’re carving each other up with rapiers.
Q: The writer Caroline Leavitt said of the book, “Volpe's outrageously inventive novel recreates Caravaggio and early modern Rome with a post-modern spin, all the while asking shockwave questions: Who is art really for, the masses or ourselves? Are we our own Gods? Whiplash smart, this novel did what the best books do: it changed the way I see not just Caravaggio, but the world.” What do you think of that description?
A: Caroline is a great writer and reviewer, so I was honored by her response to the novel. She definitely picked up on its themes.
In terms of inventiveness, I, Caravaggio has no peers. It’s in a class of its own. The novel’s voice. Its narrative design. Its thematic patterns. I don’t mean to flex here. I’m stating facts.
The novel is an actual original, which, in terms of publishing, isn’t necessarily a good thing. Agents and editors need comps. They are sinking in the muck of familiar territory. Lucky for me, CLASH Books is a publisher who truly seeks out unique voices.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am working on myself and a film adaptation of I, Caravaggio.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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