Caravaggio
Michelangelo Merisi (Michele Angelo Merigi or Amerighi) da Caravaggio (, , ; 28 September 1571 – 18 July 1610) was an Italian painter active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily from the early 1590s to 1610. His paintings combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, which had a formative influence on Baroque painting.
Boy Peeling Fruit (Caravaggio)
This is the earliest known work by Caravaggio, painted soon after his arrival in Rome from his native Milan in mid 1592. His movements in this period are not certain. According to his contemporary Giulio Mancini he stayed for a short time with Monsignor Pandulfo Pucci in the Palazzo Colonna, but disliked the way Pucci treated him and left after a few months. (Pucci fed his boarders exclusively on greens, and Caravaggio referred to him later as 'Monsignor Salad'). He copied religious pictures for Pucci, (none survive), and apparently did a few pieces of his own for personal sale, of which "Boy Peeling a Fruit" would be the only known example. The piece may also date from slightly later, when he was working for Giuseppe Cesari, the "cavaliere d'Arpino". As Caravaggio is said to have been painting only "flowers and fruit" for d'Arpino, this would again be a personal piece done for sale outside the workshop, but it was among the works seized from d'Alpino by Cardinal Scipione Borghese in 1607, together with two other early Caravaggios, the "Young Sick Bacchus" and the "Boy with a Basket of Fruit". It is not known how these works came to be in Cesari's collection at the time.