La folie Baudelaire

In this lavishly illustrated book, Calasso turns his attention to the poets and writers of Paris in the 19th century who created what was later called 'the modern'. His protagonist is Charles Baudelaire: poet of nerves, art lover, pioneering critic, man about Paris. With Baudelaire's critical intelligence as his inspiration, Calasso ranges through his life and work, focusing on the painters - Ingres and Delacroix - about whom Baudelaire writes acutely, and then turns to Degas and Manet, who followed in the tracks Baudelaire laid down in his great essay 'The Painter of Modern Life'.— Google Books