Sanguine / Bloedrood

Caravaggio probably painted this image shortly after arriving in Rome from Milan. It is a work that he made of his own accord; at the time, he was still looking for customers, clients and patrons. Together with 'Self-portrait as Bacchus', 'Boy with a fruit basket' and 'The lute player', it is one of the early works – often combinations of portrait and still life – with which he quickly made his name and fame in Rome. All the elements that characterise his art were already present: an astonishingly accurate brush technique, an original theme choice (or very idiosyncratic interpretations of known themes), a powerful chiaroscuro, and an almost cinematic theatricality that nevertheless seems 'life-like'.

The boy who is bitten is probably Mario Minitti.

For almost ten years he was Caravaggio's favourite male model, and for five of those ten years they also lived together. Mario is the androgynous figure who infuses works such as 'The musicians' (1595) and 'The lute player' (1596) with homoerotic overtones, and also the fantastic actor who turns 'Boy bitten by a lizard' into an almost modern painting. The scream he utters upon being bitten is almost audible.

Mario Minitti broke with Caravaggio after 1600 because he could not cope with the incessant binges and benders and longed for a quieter life. He married, returned to his native Sicily and became a successful commercial painter in Syracuse.

There are two fairly identical versions of 'Boy bitten by a lizard'. One is in the National Gallery in London. The version exhibited in Antwerp is rougher and more schematically painted, with harder contrasts, accentuating the boy's startled reaction. It belongs to the Fondazione Longhi collection in Florence, the collection of the legendary Italian art critic Roberto Longhi (1890 - 1970).