果物籠を持つ少年

Caravaggio painted this around 1593, not long after he arrived in Rome from Milan as a young man with no money and no reputation, taking work in other painters' workshops. The boy holding the basket is thought to be Mario Minniti, a Sicilian painter about 16 years old who was his friend and often modelled for him in these early years. What people noticed then, and still notice, is the fruit. Caravaggio painted every grape, apple and fig exactly as it was, blemishes and all. A leaf is curling and going brown at the edge, some of the fruit is bruised, one has a wormhole. Nobody idealised produce like this at the time. He worked for a while in a workshop painting flowers and fruit, and you can see that training here. The canvas ended up in that painter's collection, and in 1607 Cardinal Scipione Borghese seized the whole lot, which is how it came to the Galleria Borghese in Rome, where it still hangs.