Completed in 1608 in Malta, the painting had been commissioned by the Knights of Malta as an altarpiece;
it was the largest altarpiece which Caravaggio would ever paint. It still hangs in St. John's Co-Cathedral, for which it was commissioned
and where Caravaggio himself was inducted and briefly served as a knight. Caravaggio's service to the Order was brief and troubled,
however, as he was soon a fugitive from justice, having escaped while imprisoned for an unrecorded crime. When Caravaggio was defrocked
in absentia as a "foul and rotten member" by the Order about six months after his induction, the ceremony took place in the Oratory, before
this very painting.
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Year 1608
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 370 × 520 cm (150 × 200 in)
Location St. John’s Co-Cathedral, Valletta
Unlike many of Caravaggio's works, it can be dated accurately. It was commissioned for Fra Francesco dell'Antella,
Florentine Secretary for Italy to Alof de Wignacourt, Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, and an old inscription on the back records that it was painted in Malta in 1608.
The subject of a sleeping Cupid, bowstring broken and arrows cast aside, usually signifies the abandonment of worldly pleasures, and dell'Antella may have commissioned it as a reminder of his vow of chastity.
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Year 1608
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 72 × 105 cm (28 × 41 in)
Location Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina, Florence
By the time that Caravaggio painted The Adoration of the Shepherds in 1609, the subjects in his
paintings had acquired a more spiritual expressiveness. His figures were isolated against vast, empty backgrounds.
This was a contrast to the Renaissance technique of employing decorative backgrounds.
The Capuchins were among the few religious patrons and critics who were fond of Caravaggio's brutal realism. Many were critical
of Caravaggio's approach to his religious paintings and called it “vulgar” to represent biblical figures as ordinary peasants. The focal
point of the scene is Mary in the center. She is swathed in bright red. One of the three shepherds closest to her also has a little bit of
what appears to be the same red robe draped along his arm. This might be symbolic of the gesture he is making to touch the Virgin
as she is holding Christ. All three shepherds, as well as Joseph identified by a faint halo, look on with amazement and complete adoration
at this infant child born in a barn.
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Year 1609
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions314 × 211 cm (124 × 83 in)
LocationMuseo Regionale, Messina
The early Caravaggio biographer Giovanni Bellori, writing in 1672, records the artist sending a Salome
with the Head of John the Baptist from Naples to the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, Fra Alof de Wignacourt,
in the hope of regaining favour after having been expelled from the Order in 1608. It seems likely that this is the work,
according to Caravaggio scholar John Gash. Gash also notes that the executioner, looking down at the severed head,
helps transform the painting "from a provocative spectacle into a profound meditation on death and human malevolence."
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Year 1609
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 116 × 140 cm (46 × 55 in)
LocationPalacio Real de Madrid
David is perturbed, "his expression mingling sadness and compassion." The decision to depict him as
pensive rather than jubilant creates an unusual psychological bond between him and Goliath. This bond is further complicated
by the fact that Caravaggio has depicted himself as Goliath, while the model for David is il suo Caravaggino ("his own little Caravaggio").
This most plausibly refers to Cecco del Caravaggio, the artist's studio assistant in Rome some years previously, recorded as the boy
"who lay with him." No independent portraits of Cecco are known, making the identification impossible to verify, but "[a] sexual
intimacy between David/model and Goliath/painter seems an inescapable conclusion, however, given that Caravaggio made David's
sword appear to project upward, suggestively, between his legs and at an angle that echoes the diagonal linking of the protagonist's
gaze to his victim." Alternatively, based on the portrait of Caravaggio done by Ottavio Leoni, this may be a double self-portrait.
The young Caravaggio (his own little Caravaggio) wistfully holds the head of the adult Caravaggio. The wild and riotous behavior
of the young Caravaggio essentially had destroyed his life as a mature adult, and he reflects with a familiar hermeticism on his
own condition in a painting of a related religious subject.
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Year 1610
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions125 × 101 cm (49 × 40 in)
Location Galleria Borghese