Boy Peeling Pears

Boy Peeling Pears, at the Fondazione Roberto Longhi, is among the earliest works attributed to Caravaggio, painted around 1592 shortly after his arrival in Rome. The humble domestic subject — a servant boy preparing fruit — announced the democratic naturalism that would overturn Italian painting. Oil on canvas — by the sixteenth century the dominant medium for ambitious works — allowed successive glazes of transparent color and freedom to rework the composition.

The boy's absorption in his mundane task is captured with an immediacy that suggests direct observation. The pear's skin, half-peeled and curling, demonstrates the close attention to still-life detail that would become a hallmark of Caravaggio's revolutionary approach.