In room 8 of the Galleria Borghese, the same room that holds David with the Head of Goliath, there are two small paintings almost nobody stops in front of. One is a young man with grey skin and a lopsided crown of ivy. The other is a young man holding a basket of fruit, and the fruit is painted better than the boy.
They are among the first things Caravaggio ever painted in Rome, and they hang in the same museum for a reason that has nothing to do with art: a judicial seizure in 1607, carried out against another painter, for illegal possession of firearms.
How Scipione Borghese got hold of them
The owner of the two paintings was Giuseppe Cesari, known as the Cavalier d’Arpino, one of the most established painters in Rome and the man in whose workshop Caravaggio, newly arrived in the city and penniless, had worked as an assistant. The two paintings had stayed there.
In 1607 the agents of Pope Paul V turned up at Cesari’s door with a charge: illegal possession of firearms. To get out of trouble the painter had to surrender his collection, one hundred and seven paintings, to the Apostolic Chamber. The pope passed it on shortly afterwards to his nephew, Cardinal Scipione Borghese.
It is worth pausing on that for a moment. It was not a purchase, not a gift, not a bequest: it was a collection taken from a man in exchange for his freedom and handed to the nephew of the person who had taken it. The firearms pretext is documented in the museum’s own catalogue entry, and anyone who has written that the two paintings arrived «for fiscal reasons» has told a more elegant version than the real one.
Since then the two paintings have not moved: the inventories of 1693 and 1790, the Borghese entail list of 1833, and finally the purchase of the collection by the Italian state in 1902.
The Sick Bacchus
The title the museum catalogues it under is Self-portrait as Bacchus, and the nickname everyone knows it by came later. It is an oil on canvas of 67 by 53 centimetres, inventory 534, datable to around 1595.
A bare-chested young man, a white cloth knotted over his shoulder, holds a bunch of grapes and looks out of the picture with a half-smile that is not cheerful. The crown of leaves on his head has already wilted. The lips are not the colour of health, the fingernails are dirty, the complexion pulls towards green.
This is Bacchus, the god of wine and abundance, painted as someone who is unwell. A young painter who gives a deity the face of a convalescent is already doing the opposite of what is expected of him, and he is doing it in his early years of independent work.
The illness, Longhi and the 2001 analyses
There is a small piece of critical history here worth telling in full, because technical examination has at least settled one part of the question.
Scholars have recognised the subject as a possible self-portrait of the painter, and have linked it to a documented episode: Caravaggio’s stay at the Ospedale della Consolazione in Rome, in circumstances the sources do not clarify. Roberto Longhi read the colour of the skin and lips as the direct trace of that convalescence.
Ranged against this reading was Maurizio Marini, for whom that complexion said nothing about the painter’s health: it was the result of a bad restoration, that is, of later damage. It is a serious objection, because if he were right the whole autobiographical reading would collapse.
The diagnostic analyses of 2001 definitively ruled out the restoration hypothesis. That green is Caravaggio’s, not the restorer’s. Debate over the identity of the face and the meaning of the picture remains open, but it no longer concerns the origin of that colour.
The Basket of Fruit
The other painting, catalogued as Boy with a Basket of Fruit, is an oil on canvas of 70 by 67 centimetres, inventory 136, also datable to around 1595.
The boy has a bare shoulder, his head tilted, his lips parted, and he holds a wicker basket pushed forward towards you. He is not looking at the fruit: he is looking at you. But the painting is not about him.
The withered leaves, which are the real subject
Step close to the basket and look at the edges, where the leaves spill out of it.
There are autumn leaves and fruit: apples, bunches of pale and dark grapes, split figs, a peach. And then, with no attempt at concealment, a vine leaf yellowed and curled on the right, brown dried leaves on the left, holes in the blades, an apple with a bruise.
In 1595 this was not done. Fruit in paintings was ideal fruit: round, glossy, flawless, because its job was to signify abundance. Caravaggio instead paints the fruit actually in front of him, with what the museum’s catalogue calls the «typical imperfections of nature», and he paints it with a precision that makes every leaf identifiable.
A warning, if you read elsewhere about this painting: a precise number of identifiable botanical species in the basket does the rounds, and that number changes from source to source. The museum does not give it, and neither will I. What can be said from looking is that the species are many and can be identified one by one, which is the real point.
Why they belong together
The two paintings are not paired for hanging convenience. They were made at the same moment, in the same place, by the same young painter, and they reached the Borghese together, in the same seizure.
Side by side they say one thing: that before he was the painter of night scenes and saints with dirty feet, Caravaggio was someone who knew how to look. The sick skin of a god and the mould on a leaf are the same gesture, that is, the refusal to correct what is in front of you.
If you want to see where that gesture leads fifteen years later, the same room holds David with the Head of Goliath, where the thing Caravaggio refuses to correct is his own severed face. The rest of the collection, with the Bernini sculptures and the paintings in the other rooms, is in the guide on what to see at the Galleria Borghese.
Practical information
Both paintings are in room 8, the Sala del Sileno, together with the gallery’s other four Caravaggios.
You cannot enter the Galleria Borghese without booking, for any kind of ticket, not even a free one, and capacity is 180 people per slot.
The gallery is open Tuesday to Sunday, 9am to 7pm. Entry is by timed slot and the visit lasts two hours. The last slot is at 5.45pm, costs less than the others and is shorter. The only two annual closures are 25 December and 1 January.
The full ticket costs 16 euros, the 5.45pm slot costs 11 euros, the reduced ticket for ages 18 to 25 costs 2 euros and under-18s go free. Every ticket carries a further 2 euros of compulsory booking fee. Details checked on 29 August 2026 on the official Galleria Borghese ticket page.
Book at least a week ahead and turn up half an hour early. If you would rather secure your place without going through the museum site, the ticket is also available online with an audioguide and an optional guided tour.
One tip on how to look at them: they are two small paintings in a room that holds six, and David with the Head of Goliath swallows them whole. Look at them first, while your eyes are still fresh, and get close enough to the basket to make out the veins in the leaves. That is where everything is.
