1610

Andrew Graham-Dixon's Caravaggio is an exemplary biography, bringing together the turbulent life and the dramatic paintings in a well-organized, authoritative but always entertaining account.

Caravaggio is painting's bad boy in what is quite a competitive field. His regular involvement in street fights and his swords and daggers might not have been quite as extraordinary in Rome in 1600 but he takes part in more than his fair share. Neither is the mixture of 'sacred and profane', with his Bible story art, quite the contradiction it might seem to us by now because those stories were as familiar to people then as any film story would be today and the churches that employed him was central to the culture. He would have been at least as familiar with the gospels as I was with the Top 40 in 1971 or the work of Philip Larkin, Tamla Motown or the form of the top National Hunt horses now.

One thing often leads to another and I am reminded that I never did get round to reading A.N. Wilson's Paul. I have developed a morbid fascination with the unsympathetic, unrepentant, blindly self-interested right-wing types at least since the Leave campaign, continuing on through the calamitous careers of Boris, Liz Truss and their fellow travellers like Jacob, Nadine and, of course, Trump. Paul appears to be a similar sort of figure but Wilson's book looks like it presents an alternative view and if it's anything like as convincing as his Jesus, it should be invigorating.

Caravaggio, though, also makes me wonder which year had the greatest accumulation of creative genius alive at the same time.

I'm tempted by the years 1606-1610, between the birth of Rembrandt and the death of Caravaggio. Rembrandt might not have yet begun to contemplate his first self portrait by the age of 4 but he was there, toddling about in Leiden, in 1610. Shakespeare was in London coming up with Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale; Monteverdi in Venice presented his masterpiece Vespers and also at work were William Byrd, Cervantes, John Donne and Ben Jonson.

That's not a bad list.

I'm not sure that Bach, Handel and their many composer friends get enough support from literature and painting from 1720-1750 or whether 1910-ish - with James Joyce, Picasso, Virginia Woolf, Schonberg, Sibelius, T. S. Eliot, Hardy and all amounts to quite as much. Neither Shakespeare or Bach can claim their periods as winners on their own- I want a spread across all genres- but they certainly offer sure foundations.

What about now. It's less clear which names even constitute such 'greatness' while it's happening. Perhaps the equivalent of amateur internet commentators in 1610 weren't aware of what momentous times they were living in, or had more pressing things to attend to.

Is it James MacMillan, Tracey Emin, Julian Barnes, Maggi Hambling, Paul McCartney, Paul Muldoon and Joni Mitchell. Burt Bacharach was still alive earlier this year.

I don't imagine it being David Hockney, Roger McGough, Taylor Swift, Kae Tempest and Mark-Anthony Turnage but it isn't up to me. It's just not going to be 2023, though, is it.