Basket of Fruit

Basket of Fruit is widely considered the first major independent still life in Western painting. Caravaggio’s basket teeters on a stone ledge, its fruit rendered with such unflinching realism that overripe, blemished, and worm-eaten leaves sit alongside perfect grapes and apples. This refusal to idealize — the essence of Caravaggio’s Baroque revolution — gives a humble subject an almost monumental gravity.