Boy with a Basket of Fruit

One of Caravaggio's earliest surviving paintings, from his hungry years in Rome. The model is his friend and probable lover Mario Minniti. The real subject is the fruit: every leaf spotted with disease, apples bruised, grapes overripe. Caravaggio painted decay with the same fidelity as the boy's exposed shoulder — an early sign that his realism would refuse to look away from anything.