The Moment Caravaggio Became Caravaggio

"My visit to the one-room exhibition Caravaggio's "Boy with a Basket of Fruit" in Focusat the Morgan Library & Museum suggests: Yes. The painting is modest in size - a little more than two feet (~61 cm) across - smaller, even, than some of the works that surround it. Its lighting isn't dramatically different from the others. And yet it has this immense gravitational force."

"The painting was, in a way, about nothing and for no one. It was not a commission, as most works at that time were, nor did it depict a god or an allegory, like many contemporaneous artworks. It is just a painting of a boy, holding this basket bursting with almost overripe fruit, his shirt slipping off his shoulder, looking past but not through you, the subtlest modulation in those dark eyes."

Caravaggio's early painting "Boy with a Basket of Fruit" exerts remarkable presence despite modest size and unremarkable lighting. Painted circa 1593 while Merisi trained in Giuseppe Cesari's workshop, the work was neither a commission nor an allegory but a direct depiction of a boy holding nearly overripe fruit. The painting captures delicate details—slipping shirt, nuanced eyes—and achieves intense realism and gravitational force. The Morgan Library & Museum presents the work in a focused one-room display that emphasizes its scale and immediacy and situates it within Rome's gallery culture and the artist's formative years.

Read at Hyperallergic