The First Caravaggio

by Gianni Papi

It is said that among the paintings Caravaggio produced in his early years to support himself, there was one depicting a young man peeling a piece of fruit. The Boy Peeling Fruit presented here is now recognized as the earliest and most authentic version of the celebrated Caravaggesque subject, predating all other known variants. It may have been painted while the artist was still in Lombardy, before his arrival in Rome, thus representing the oldest known surviving work by the painter.

Gianni Papi’s attribution is based on the quality of the painting: the shirt, the young man’s absorbed expression, and the still life reveal a fresh yet already distinctive hand. The ‘autumnal’ light and the more archaic appearance of the fruit point to a connection with the Lombard pictorial milieu. A decisive discovery comes from the X-ray: beneath the figure of the boy, the presence of a dog emerges – evidence of an initial compositional idea later abandoned. The shadows on the shirt, repeated in all subsequent versions, stem precisely from the reuse of this earlier underlayer.

The history of the work is complex: having passed through English collections between the 18th and 20th centuries, it now emerges – thanks to technical and stylistic analysis – as the prototype from which all other versions derive, a precious witness to Caravaggio’s first steps toward the naturalism that would change the history of art.

The appendix includes the technical analyses and restoration reports that contributed to achieving this important attribution.