Caravaggio painted Judith Beheading Holofernes in Rome in about 1602, at the height of his Roman fame. The picture is the most violent biblical scene in the entire Caravaggio canon — Holofernes pinned to a bed with his throat half-sliced, Judith pulling the sword in the second of two strokes, the elderly servant Abra holding the linen cloth for the head. The painting set the template for every European Judith of the next century, including Artemisia Gentileschi's career-defin

Caravaggio's Boy Bitten by a Lizard, painted in Rome around 1594, is the first major European painting to use surprise as its primary subject. A handsome young man recoils as a lizard hidden among the cherries on the table sinks its teeth into his finger — and the picture's whole structure exists to make the viewer feel the bite. The 1594 commission, the iconography, the early Caravaggio boys, and how the picture announced the visual grammar of the entire Baroque.

A pointing hand. A shaft of light through a tavern window. Five tax collectors at a table looking up. Caravaggio painted the founding scene of European Baroque in 1599, and every painter for the next forty years tried to figure out how.

Searching for Caravaggio's Narcissus? This is the painting: roughly 110 by 92 centimetres of oil on canvas, painted in Rome at the start of his career. A young man kneeling at a dark pool, looking at his own reflection. What the painting shows, why it is so dark, and how to bring the fine print home.

A young widow, a sword, a single light source. Reading Caravaggio's most uncomfortable masterpiece — the biblical story, the tenebrism, and why his Judith looks reluctant.