Sybille Ebert-Schifferer

Caravaggios 'Früchtekorb' und sein Kontext

An article based on a lecture delivered at Philipps-Universitat in Marburg, Germany, on January 12, 2000. A painting of a fruit bowl by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, now in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan, Italy, may represent the earliest modern, autonomous still life in Italy. For a new genre to break through, there has to be an interplay between art production and viewer/client interest. This historical constellation was evidently present in Milan and Rome in the case of Caravaggio and his first, humanistically educated patrons, collectors who set the tone. In any case, Caravaggio can be said to have played a kind of inventor role in the development of the modern, autonomous Italian still life.