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Boy with a Basket of Fruit (1593–94) by Caravaggio

Boy with a Basket of Fruit (1593–94) is a painting by Caravaggio. The model was his friend and lover, the Sicilian painter Mario Minniti, about 16 years old at the time. At one level the painting is designed to demonstrate the artist's ability to depict everything realistically, from the boy's skin to the folds of the robe to the weave of the basket. A closer look however reveals that, as in another painting by him from that time (Basket of Fruit), the peaches have spots and the leaves are diseased, perhaps a comment by the artist on the closeness of beauty and decay in life.