Reviewed by: PEGGY BARNETT One of the pleasures of read ing fiction is meeting the

characters created by the author. We can have the same pleasure in reading biographies in the hands of a skillful writer, especially if the character being described is - well, a character.

Francine Prose is a writer of fiction and nonfiction; she has received numerous grants and awards. Her skill is not in doubt. Certainly the 16th Century painter Caravaggio qualifies as a "character." Caravaggio is one of the books in the "Eminent Lives" series, brief biographies of important figures, written by distinguished authors.

Prose begins with his death, a man has been in exile, who was wanted for murder, and who slept with a dagger by his side. Yet he was one of the most famous highly paid painters in the country. Born Michelangelo Merisi to a relatively prosperous family, he became known as "Caravaggio" because his home was in that town.

His father and grandfather died of the plague in 1576, when the painter was a child. He was a contemporary of Shakespeare, Galileo, and Rubens. He received at least some education and some religious training, but we know very little about his childhood. He left us no writing and no drawings or preliminary sketches of his work. "Police reports, legal dispositions, court transcripts, cross-examinations, public notices, promissory notes, and contracts for commissions give us what few facts we have about Caravaggio's biography."

In spite of the respect and interest his painting had in his own time, for almost three centuries, his art was denigrated or ignored. Even in his own time, many fellow artists and critics disliked his use of common people as models and subjects, his "vulgarity." The reader has an opportunity to judge for himself. This small volume contains 11 color pictures of some of the work described in his story.

Prose includes helpful explanations about these and other paintings and analysis of what made his work enduring. She comments on his "acute power of observation: the ability to see how age and gender, social status and occupation, expressed themselves not only in gesture and dress but in tendon and knuckle, elbow and wrist, in the depth of a furrow and the droop of an eyelid."

Although he continued to improve and develop his art, his personal life was pretty much a mess. Even as his popularity grew, his name was appearing in police and court records. At the same time, he was producing wonderful paintings on religious subjects, like The Rest on the Flight into Egypt and The Calling of St. Matthew. Reading about paintings cannot convey their power; if we cannot see the paintings themselves in a museum, at least pictures of them give us an idea.

Prose concludes, "Having spent his brief, tragic, and turbulent life painting miracles, he managed, in the process, to create one - the miracle of art. . . ."

Caravaggio is available at the Mary Willis Library.