"St. John the Baptist with the Ram" after Caravaggio In 1602 Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) created his painting "Saint John the Baptist - Boy with a Ram", which is now kept in the Capitoline Museums in Rome. The painting was commissioned for the private collection of the Roman Marchese Ciriaco Mattei, who mentioned the painting in the inventory of his collection and his will (1623) as "Giovanni Battista [John the Baptist]" and after his death bequeathed it to Cardinal Francesco Maria Bourbon Del Monte (1549-1927), The provocative and sensual depiction of the saint as a naked, almost erotic-looking street urchin was a scandal at the time and was rejected by the guardians of public morals because it violated the decorum of the time, In addition, John is otherwise depicted in the presence of a lamb, which stands as "Agnus Dei [Lamb of God]" for Jesus, in the present motif Caravaggio lets his John embrace an unmistakably adult male ram, the painting captured in excellent chiaroscuro and captivating naturalism with its unconventional, yet intense imagery fascinated contemporaries because of its highest artistic quality and thus transported under the guise of a saint painting an almost blatant homoeroticism, to which the artist and probably also the client himself adhered, fine, slightly pastose copy, almost original size, oil on canvas and stretcher, bottom left indistinctly signed and dated "2009", unframed, folding dimensions approx. 131 x 97 cm.