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Nominated ISBN: 0720610826

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Synopsis of Doubting Thomas and author photograph

Brief author biography

At the centre of Doubting Thomas are the events of a May evening in Rome in 1606 when the painter Caravaggio was challenged to a duel and killed a man. What was the cause of the fight that resulted in him fleeing Rome into exile? Evidence found in the Vatican archives provides some clues in the form of first-person witness statements of nine people who came in contact with the artist before his flight and subsequent mysterious death in exile.
Doubting Thomas explores destiny, sensuality, love, brutality, unquestioning religious faith and the line between the scared and the profane as well as the reliability of memory. It asks how far an artist may go and how an aggressive, self-destructive and heavy-drinking libertine could create an art of genius that united a passionate, sensual nature with a keen sense of observation, an intense aesthetic sensibility and an unorthodox kind of religious devotion.