There has been a lot of scholarship written about the painter Caravaggio over the past two decades as interest in his art has increased, and one book that I recently finished on his life is Caravaggio: A Passionate Life, by Desmond Seward.  The book is a relatively quick read and Seward provides a nice capsule of the artist's life and the times in which he lived.  Caravaggio's life was not lacking in excitement; he came to Rome after growing up in northern Italy, and as a true-to-life starving artist, he worked his way up to catch the eye of a few cardinals and then the pope himself.  But his erratic personal behavior seemed to constantly catch up with him, and fights and even a murder would force him to leave Rome and to wander around the Mediterranean.  Eventually, his run-in with one of the Knights of Malta in Malta would prove to be too much, as the incident left him a marked man and possibly contributing to his death back in Italy in 1610.Overall, I enjoyed the way Seward wrote his monograph, and it was interesting to see how he argued against modernist claims regarding some aspects of Caravaggio's life (such as the claim that he was a homosexual).  I do suggest this book for anyone who is interested in reading about the artist's life without investing too much time in one of the longer biographies (such as Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane, by Graham-Dixon).