Basket of Fruit (1599)

Still lifes, and especially bowls of fruit, are traditionally a way for artists to show their skill.  Look at what I can do, my sense of detail, my understanding of form and texture.  Caravaggio's showing off in this painting too, but in a much more complex manner.  Basket of Fruit summed up his philosophy on painting reality in a way no previous work of his had.  The decay is key.  Up to this point in the Renaissance, art had unquestionably been about depicting perfection.  From Michelangelo's David, to the Hellinistic statues littering Rome, to every painting commissioned by the Church up to that time, the Form (and I mean that in the way Plato did, of To Kalon, of the hypothetically perfect version of everything to which we all strive) of the subject was the clear aim.  Caravaggio says no with Basket of Fruit, and he says it with rot, and welts, and imperfection.  Again, the light source is is powerful and diffuse, and it revealed withering leaves searching for sunlight.  An apple blemishing from bug damage, sitting on dried out grapes which brush against a trail of pear leaves languishing to the floor.  The perfect painting is not a depiction of perfection, Caravaggio seems to be saying, it is a believable depiction of life and death.  Of decay.