Caravaggio

An early Caravaggio: a boy is cheated at cards by a pair of accomplices — one palming a card behind his back, the other reading his hand over his shoulder. A career-making genre scene.

Caravaggio's boyish, tipsy Bacchus — fingernails dirty, a decaying fruit basket in the foreground. Lost for three centuries, rediscovered in a Uffizi storeroom in 1913.

Christ points across a shadowed tavern. A shaft of light slides down the back wall. Matthew gestures at himself — "me?" — caravaggio inventing a whole new visual language.

Judith, arms extended to keep the blood off her dress, saws through the Assyrian general's neck. Caravaggio's first great biblical violence — the beginning of his reputation.