Art Lecture with Thomas Germano - Caravaggio and his "Boy with a Basket of Fruit"

The Morgan Library exhibition (January 16-April 19, 2026) features an extraordinary loan from the Galleria Borghese in Rome of the painting Boy with a Basket of Fruit, an important early work by Caravaggio (1571–1610). 

Trained in his native Lombardy, Caravaggio brought to Rome a tradition of naturalism that can be traced through Venetian Renaissance painting and back to Leonardo da Vinci’s work in Milan. Caravaggio contributed a uniquely realistic approach to painting that turned away from mannerist painting’s artificiality. 

Far from the idealized figures typically depicted in Roman mannerist painting at the time, Caravaggio transformed painting by presenting a noted stark directness along with details in the overripe fruit the boy holds. Caravaggio’s Bolognese contemporary, Annibale Carracci also created realist genre subjects derived from similar precedents, yet Caravaggio proved to have the greatest lasting impact on Roman and European Baroque art. Gianlorenzo Bernini’s portrait drawing of Scipione Borghese, the early owner of the Boy with a Basket of Fruit painting and the collector largely responsible for the Galleria Borghese is among the works displayed at the Morgan putting into context the important breakthrough Caravaggio’s art had in late 16^th century at the dawn of the Baroque era.  

Professor Thomas Germano will present a visual lecture about Caravaggio and his “Boy with a Basket of Fruit.”