ABSTRACT
Giulio Mancini, our earliest informant, lists a Boy Bitten by a Lizard and then a Boy Peeling a Pear as Caravaggio's first paintings, but we cannot be sure that either of them has survived. For stylistic reasons the Boy Bitten can hardly be among Caravaggio's first works. The two earliest paintings usually attributed to Caravaggio, apart from the Boy Peeling, were taken from the Cavalier d'Arpino by the greedy new cardinal-nephew, Scipione Borghese, in 1607. Mancini tells us that Caravaggio's early pictures were painted to sell, which is to say that he had no commissions. One of the many problems surrounding Caravaggio's early works is the small number that remains from the time before his first recorded commission in mid 1599. Andrea Alciati's Emblemata, a learned emblem book, proclaimed that the Elegaic Poet is pale and crowned with ivy, but Caravaggio's figure was more probably meant as a melancholy Bacchus.
