Paintings attributed to Caravaggio

Immensely popular in his own lifetime, he fell into neglect almost immediately upon his death, with the result that now, four hundred years later, it is often extremely difficult to distinguish works by the master from copies or from original creations by his most gifted followers.

The case in favor of recognizing The Tooth Puller as was first advanced by the scholar Mina Gregori in 1992, and discussed by John Gash in an article in Melita Historica in 1998.

On the side of arguments for genuineness, almost every figure in the painting is based on figures in other, genuine, works by Caravaggio, and from such a variety of sources and cities that it is almost inconceivable that any Caravaggisti could have seen them all; the style is typical of Caravaggio's late style, specifically his Maltese stay in 1607/1608; and he had begun his career in Rome with broadly similar genre works.

A comparison with Carlo Sellitto shows how well the more gifted of Caravaggio's followers absorbed not only the superficial tricks of style but the underlying ethos as well, to the point of becoming virtually indistinguishable from the work of the master.

The Basel Baptist, despite being a very attractive painting in its own right, is a quite forthright and traditional piece of Counter-Reformation iconography (the Baptist is holding out roses, symbol of the Passion, before the sheep, representing Christ's future sacrifice), and has none of the deep pathos and ambiguously mingled sensuality and spirituality that Caravaggio brought to his long contemplation of John the Baptist.