The first 'Caravaggio' in history?

In the autumn of 1592, Caravaggio , an unknown and, at the time, untalented painter, arrived in Rome at the age of 20. Eight years later, the Jubilee of 1600 was to be celebrated, and the city, with some 2,000 artists and a population of 100,000, was preparing for the event. New churches were built, old palaces were restored. But complaints about the poverty of painters were constant. Caravaggio, anything but a precocious prodigy, had to survive. He moved from low-level workshop to low-level workshop. He copied and created cheap devotional images. He was a modest Lombard creator of fruits and flowers. Thanks to family connections, he obtained accommodation in the Palazzo Colonna . One of his contemporary biographers, Giulio Mancini (1558-1630) , recounted in Considerations on Painting that he painted at market price—which demonstrates his financial hardship—“a boy screaming because he has been bitten by a lizard he is holding in his hand, a boy peeling a pear with a knife, and the portrait of an innkeeper who had given him lodging.”

Despite dying at just 39, the Lombard master's oeuvre seems inexhaustible. Every so often, a painting attributed to the genius appears. It is estimated that around 60 canvases were by his hand, although he only ever signed The Beheading of the Baptist in Malta, so controversy always arises when a possible new painting appears. The Ecce Homo discovered in Madrid in 2021 was certified by the expert Maria Christina Terzaghi , who also claims to have found the original version of the Young Man with a Jug of Roses in Paris, of which at least five versions are known. Caravaggio, like many artists past and present, repainted the same subject several times. It was a matter of survival.

Surprisingly, last week, Gianni Papi—one of the world's leading experts on the artist—announced the discovery of what he believes to be the earliest known painting by the genius: Boy Peeling a Pear ( Ragazzo che monda un frutto ). The work, an oil on canvas measuring 66 x 51.5 centimeters, was acquired by a private individual in 2024 at a northern European auction as a supposed "Caravaggio copy" and lent to Papi for study. "I don't exclude that the painting could have been painted by the master before his arrival in Rome and that he carried it with him as a kind of calling card. The master, who was born in 1571, could have been around 24 years old at that time," explains the expert.

The initial doubts were evident. There are about 10 known copies. And it has not yet been possible to trace the painting's origin. However, Giani has no doubts, having subjected the canvas to an X-ray and a reflectography study. But what did he see? “The quality of some of the better-preserved pieces, such as the shirt, the hands, and the still life [a recurring theme when the Lombard artist worked in the Knight of Arpino's workshop], indicate a high level of skill, and gave me hope.” He adds: “However, there was one essential element in establishing authorship, above the rest of the versions. It appears in the X-ray of the work. A dark addition is clearly visible at the bottom, in the area that insinuates itself between the child's hands and the fruit and reaches the shirt.” It is easy to recognize, in the dark shadow, a small dog with its snout turned upwards, towards the child's face, its mouth half-open.

This means the canvas was reused. There are areas that resemble a landscape, and the support was cut on at least three sides to adapt it to the painter's intentions. "Perhaps the dog was part of a previous composition. It could have been the result of Caravaggio's initial idea, and it brings to mind the allegorical image of Happiness: the black dog, Cornacchia , which the genius's biographer, Giovanni Baglione (1563-1643), claimed was inseparable from Caravaggio," explains Gianni Papi. It is the upturned snout, therefore, that holds the key to the originality of this work. Caravaggio considered partially utilizing this dark area, painted previously, to create the two small, unlit areas on the shirt, which, according to the painter's intention, should be the shadows of the hand and the fruit, which, at first glance, seem somewhat forced. Perhaps due to his inexperience. "Now we understand why those same shadow areas are repeated in the rest of the different variations and what their origin is," Papi argues.

This youthful productivity follows the logic imposed by poverty. Moving from one studio to another, perhaps, given his character, without ever finding a place of his own, “he settled with a Sicilian painter who had a shop full of crude works,” writes art critic Giovanni Pietro Bellori (1613-1696) in The Lives of Modern Painters, Sculptors, and Architects . He adds: “Because he was so needy and desperate, he painted portraits for four pence each, and did three a day.” These were canvases generally acquired by noble patrons and men of letters. In addition to the penury, the equation can also be justified with other statements. “The Mondafrutto recovers iconographies that Caravaggio could have seen in Lombardy or Veneto, although there is no precise precedent. Perhaps, for Rome, it was a novelty and that is why it was so widely replicated,” the Italian expert emphasizes.

Another, later, autograph version is known from Hampton Court , in the British royal collections, which he may well have used to sell and survive. There would, then, be two Boy Peeling Fruit . During the 14 years he spent in Rome, he was able to rise above the mediocrity of an apprentice and embrace genius.