A revolutionary Italian artist living in a corrupt, brutal era is the focus of the historical novel The Artist and the Assassin.

In Mark Frutkin’s historical novel, an assassin is hired to kill a celebrated Italian Renaissance artist.

As a child, Caravaggio exhibited a brilliant eye for color and a prodigious talent for painting. Thus, his uncle sent him to apprentice with an established artist in Milan. But Caravaggio fast grew bored of painting still lifes; he felt stifled by rules around color and composition. His own style was radical, playing with light and dark to create intense, visionary images.

Though Caravaggio’s relationship with his mentor deteriorated, he gained the patronage of a wealthy cardinal in Rome, who brought Caravaggio to live in his palazzo. There, Caravaggio painted The Calling of St. Matthew-and met Luca, an indigent, impoverished assassin who became his model and muse.

He also fell in love with a prostitute.

The novel follows these developments with care, revealing Caravaggio as a man with a volatile temper who carried a rapier-foreshadowing how, in a fit of jealousy over the prostitute, he killed the son of a powerful Roman man. Though he was banished from Rome for the murder, he struggled to return to the city. Meanwhile, the father of the murdered man hired Luca to assassinate the artist, bringing Luca into Caravaggio’s life for a second time.

Alternating between its removed focus on Caravaggio and its direct narration by Luca, the novel develops the artist’s story from the time when he was eleven, through to his arrival in Rome, his various commissions, and his rise to fame. It highlights his infamy following his so-called heretical presentations of biblical stories, too.

Luca’s narration is more dramatic, detailing his involvement with the artist both in terms of his struggles as model, and as Caravaggio’s predator. Tension builds as Luca pursues Caravaggio from Rome to Naples, trading focus between palazzos and houses of prostitution, and moving from the land to the sea.

Though it is committed to historical accuracy, the prose is often poetic, resulting in a clear sense of the mindsets of the artist and his would-be assassin. And the squalor and splendor of Italy in the 1600s are juxtaposed to great effect: Caravaggio’s life is described in all its glory and tawdriness, while Luca’s is captured in terms of filth and extreme want. What emerges is an affecting portrayal of seventeenth century Italy that contrasts darkness and light in much the same way that Caravaggio’s paintings themselves did. Charming but anachronistic nineteenth century engravings appear throughout the book to complement the tale.

The Artist and the Assassin is a dramatic historical novel about the life of a troubled, groundbreaking artist.

Mark Frutkin’s The Artist and the Assassin immerses the reader in Caravaggio’s Rome. Thoroughly researched, well plotted, and beautifully written, this historical novel is a poetic page-turner. Its familiar and strange world is fully realized in lush detail-we walk the streets, mix the paints, and follow the light and darkness of its volatile main characters.

`Frutkin’s descriptions of Renaissance Italy blend opulence with seediness, just like Caravaggio used light and darkness for dramatic effect. The author’s attention to historic details and insights into art make his novel not only enjoyable but instructive. This certainly incited me to pause my reading of the story to do some additional research on the Grand Master and the art milieu and society he lived in. It is Frutkin’s ability to perk the curiosity of his readers that is certainly one of his greatest strengths.’

`This is a great crime story based on in-depth research on a man and his time. Frutkin’s prose is elegant and precise. His passion for Italy and for Caravaggio’s work shines through. I am now really interested in seeing more of Caravaggio’s masterpieces. I highly recommend this book.’

`Frutkin has a gift for writing about visual art, focusing on the way an artist sees the world and how that world is brought to life with pigment, brush and an inner vision.’

`Like Caravaggio’s art, The Artist & the Assassin has dramatic elements as well as a high degree of realism. Frutkin paints a compelling picture of an interesting time in Italian history and has produced a historical page-turner. Of particular note is his ability to get inside the heads of the two troubled characters, one an artist and the other an assassin. A master of dialogue, Frutkin creates conversations that seem genuine and makes us want to know what happens to each of them.’

`While the author’s painstaking research is evident in historical accuracy, biography, and true-to-life characters, his poetic prose and meaningful metaphors effortlessly paint a riveting portrait of Caravaggio as ”the light that still falls on the world.”’