The Resurrection

By 1619, Caravaggio had been dead for almost ten years, but his shadow still fell over every young painter in Rome. One of them was Francesco Buoneri, known simply as Cecco del Caravaggio, Caravaggio's Cecco, a former studio assistant and model who had absorbed the master's hard light and unsparing realism. This large altarpiece was ordered by Piero Guicciardini, the Tuscan ambassador, for his family chapel in Florence. But when Cecco delivered it, Guicciardini refused it. We do not know exactly why, though the awakening Christ, muscular and unidealized, and the strangely armed angel may have struck the patron as too raw for a place of prayer. The painting never reached Florence. It is the only work anyone can attribute to Cecco with real certainty.