Boy with a Basket of Fruit [SEP] collection
Boy with a Basket of Fruit
Boy with a Basket of Fruit, c.1593, is a painting generally ascribed to Italian Baroque master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, currently in the Galleria Borghese, Rome.
The painting dates from the time when Caravaggio, newly arrived in Rome from his native Milan, was making his way in the competitive Roman art world. The model was his friend and companion, the Sicilian painter Mario Minniti, at about 16 years old. The work was in the collection of Giuseppe Cesari, the Cavaliere
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.
The fruit being peeled by the boy is something of a mystery. Sources indicate it may be a pear, which is probably correct but has