MattRees.net

About the time Caravaggio was painting his masterpieces in Italy, Miguel de Cervantes observed that “Good painters imitate nature. Bad ones spew it up.” Forging seems to me more accurate than imitation. As I researched my Caravaggio novel A NAME IN BLOOD, I realized I had to learn how to paint with oils if I [...]

My wonderful German publisher CH Beck Verlag has once again produced a sumptuous version of one of my novels. Published this week as “Mit Blut signiert,” it’s translated by the noted German novelist Klaus Modick. Read more about it on Beck’s site. Read a “Leseprobe“. If you prefer to listen to it in German, go [...]

A great review by Kathy Stevenson in The Daily Mail of my new novel A NAME IN BLOOD: “The well-known image of Caravaggio is of a great artist but a deeply flawed man, a profligate and uncouth murderer. Matt Rees’s novel adds the light and shade that were so characteristic of his work to the [...]

“The Nativity with Sts. Francis and Lawrence” plays an important role in my new Caravaggio novel “A Name in Blood.” In 1969, it was stolen from the Oratory in Palermo, Sicily, where it had been displayed for 350 years. Naturally the Mafia was suspected. Various mafiosi have offered explanations for what happened. The Christian Science [...]

A couple of Italian art historians claim to have found 100 sketches done by Caravaggio when he was an apprentice in Milan in the 1580s. Other Italian art historians say it’s all uno schifo. (Look it up. Figuratively it’s something you might be unhappy to find on your shoe…) I like the idea of getting [...]

My novel about Caravaggio, A NAME IN BLOOD, is out this week in the UK. It has sold to publishers in various countries where it’ll be out soon — Italy, for example, in the autumn. However, the US publication date is some way off and I’ve been asked by a number of readers if it [...]

On the upper floor of the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in central Madrid, I wandered into a broad room where the masterpieces were arrayed like chocolates in a box. Just as with an assortment of sweets, I knew immediately and innately which one attracted me. I stepped into the arms of Caravaggio’s Saint Catherine of Alexandria. She [...]

Describes the challenges of researching and writing about the great Italian artist Caravaggio for my novel A NAME IN BLOOD. I deliberately took my research too far, not only learning to fence with a rapier and to paint with oils, but dying my beard and cutting my hair in Caravaggio’s style and using New Age [...]

My new novel A NAME IN BLOOD is out in the UK this weekend. To introduce it, I’m giving away five copies of the hardcover edition to the winners of this competition. Ten lucky runners up will get a paperback copy of my last novel MOZART’S LAST ARIA. To enter, go to any page on [...]

As Willy Wonka says in “Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator,” the wisest men know that they need to indulge in some nonsense from time to time. Which is why I like to take my research for my novels just a bit too far. For A Name in Blood I did more than just read [...]