the energy of that season. In the combination of themes, the harmony of the spheres is represented figuratively by Apollo the Luteplayer, where the spring equinox and the spring flowers are balanced by the fruits of autumn on the table - from the autumn equinox - under the sign of Libra, when the forces of nature are once again in equilibrium. It is easier to see the effeminate beauty of the shepherd as corresponding to Del Monte's personal aesthetic taste, than as the work that Ciriaco Mattei commissioned shortly afterwards for his first-born son, named indeed Giovanni Battista, a painting that is to be sought in one of the many paintings of St John the Baptist that Caravaggio executed. There was such a picture, painted for the Mattei family and later also bought by Cardinal Pio from the Del Monte collection, an oblong composition with St John playing with a lamb, and with a reed cross on his shoulder, that was eventually sold to Gavin Hamilton in 1777. The idea of "correspondences" that informed so much of contemporary natural philosophy, means that the globe of the carafe with its reflections, like a crystal ball, would have been seen as a parallel with the celestial globe on the ceiling with the Elements above. This feature, described in the painting of the Luteplayer that Baglione saw presumably in situ with Cardinal Del Monte, is absent from the Hermitage version. Elements of the composition of the Apollo Lute Player are repeated not only in the Hermitage work (with several counterpoint variations), but also in the glass carafe in the lower part of the two paintings A Boy bitten by a Lizard, most especially in the version in the National Gallery, London. There the central rose and white jasmine is quite close to these elements in the present work, while in the Longhi Foundation picture the rose is a white one. The lower daisy in the present work has been repositioned, and in fact a prominent pentiment exists 3 cm above, and that is the position it has in the Hermitage painting of the Luteplayer. It could well be that the original flowerpiece that we know Del Monte owned of Caravaggio's, which he seems to have bought even before he met him, probably through the local picture dealer Maestro Valentino, could have been the continuing source of these variations. It was a painting described