“Because Vasari was the very first art historian, his notion of art as essentially progressive has proved peculiarly persistent. But the idea that an Italian artist born in the sixteenth century might have thought it worthwhile to look back past the art of Michelangelo and Raphael, not to the classical world but to the art of the earlier Renaissance, and even to the popular arts of the Middle Ages – that would have shocked and bewildered Vasari. He would have regarded such a preference, for the old and the popular over the new and sophisticated, absurd and perverse. Yet Caravaggio exhibited and proclaimed just such a preference. Graham-Dixon, Andrew. Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane (p. 39). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition. Graham-Dixon, Andrew. Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane (p. 39). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition. ”
