The Love Artist, by Jane Alison <br></br>Caravaggio, by Christopher Peachment

Some cultural heroes appeal to us as much for what they did (and to whom) as what they created. Jane Jakeman looks at fiction that follows in giants' footsteps

Some writers and artists – Byron, Van Gogh – become cultural celebrities, more famous for their lives than their work. Both these first novels have similar charismatic figures as inspiration, taking a fictional licence with the facts – though the resulting books must be judged on their own merits.

Jane Alison's The Love Artist is seen largely through the eyes of a solitary female narrator, an exotic being, perhaps a sorceress, who meets her destiny when a ship bearing a Roman aristocrat sails into a Black Sea port. The man, handsome, sophisticated, irresistible, is a poet who will carry her off to his city, for this is a story built around the mysterious exile of Ovid.

It is historical fact that the writer of the Metamorphoses and The Art of Love was banished from Rome by Augustus for reasons that have never been satisfactorily discovered, though there have been many theories. Did he enrage a strait-laced emperor with the intense sensuality of his poetry? Did he surprise the sexagenarian empress in her bath? Did he get entangled with Augustus's daughter, Julia, or even with his granddaughter?

Alison's novel suggests a new narrative of betrayal and, like most previous explanations, assumes that the poems were an extension of the life. And she links the exile mystery to another classical conundrum: Ovid's tragedy, Medea, of which only two lines survive.

The story that unfolds is an ancient one of love, treachery and revenge, but what is new and haunting is not so much the narrative as the poetic prose, the concentrated sensuality, which reflects Ovid's verse in its fantastic and glittering imagery of peacocks, drugs, fish-skins, grapes, tigers, amber tears.

At first, I thought the writing was far too rich, but opening this book is rather like being given a box of luxury chocolates. I found myself dipping in again and again, first for a taste and then as a craving, till I found I had gobbled everything. It's lusciously enjoyable. Ovid did write a very effective little poetic treatise, Cures for Love, which is recommended for anyone suffering from la maladie d'amour. He might have followed his own invaluable counsels and kept out of trouble. Still, what fun would there have been in that?

The painter Caravaggio has had an extensive make-over, notably by Derek Jarman, who claimed him as a gay icon. Undisputed facts are scanty, though they are suggestive of a stormy life, allowing plenty of scope for imagination. The image of the artist that has emerged unashamedly uses his paintings, especially his semi-naked beautiful boys posed with luscious fruit or suggestive reptiles, as documents for biographical material – as if Caravaggio were recording his own sexuality.

Christopher Peachment is the latest to recycle the artist for our own age, pursuing a more risky course than Alison by adopting a first-person narrative. It is always dangerous to put words into the mouth of a genius, especially in giving him a rollicking tale of duels and bonking. They are not all homosexual encounters, since this Caravaggio is not above brutally raping a woman, but that's your average Renaissance genius for you, tearing off the doublet and hose at every chance he gets. This Jack-the-lad is also supposed to find time to be a creative genius. I'm surprised he didn't invent football instead.

Peachment's book comes two years after Peter Robb's notorious semi-fictitious biography, M, which caused a furore with its rumbustious portrayal of the artist. Peachment largely follows the narrative constructed by Robb, including the gratuitously introduced episodes of the executions of the Cenci and Giordano Bruno, and the theory that Caravaggio was pursued on the orders of the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta because he had sex with a favourite page.

This version makes a fast-moving adventure, but if the works of Caravaggio are evidence of anything in the artist's personality, they attest to a brooding intelligence far removed from the wham-bam merchant described here. There's sex in the book, but no sensuality. The paintings are far more erotic than Peachment's prose, but they are not reproduced, so you'll need to buy another work about Caravaggio if you want to go in for a leisurely page-turning seduction scenario (no pun intended, though they seem to be inescapable: Caravaggio's patron was called Del Monte) and make with the old phallic lizards and bunches of fruit. Definitely not recommended for that candlelit evening.

Jane Jakeman's novel 'In the Kingdom of the Mist' is published by Doubleday in July