Caravaggio - Fruits of genius

The earliest known painting by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio is a fairly sedate portrait of a boy peeling fruit.

Created some time between 1592 and 1593 (when the artist himself would have only been 21 or 22 years old) - it is a work which, with all due respect, is not quite on the level of his later masterpieces.

Yet still, it set the precedence for…