as a carafe of flowers, two palmi high, which was bought at the 1628 sale of the Del Monte collection in a lot that included the Musicians, but it has not been heard of since. It is interesting that he would devote such care to a painting of flowers, as he did also to the Basket of Fruit in the Ambrosiana, and that he was not averse to doing this, as is illustrated by the fact that he introduced the carafe of water with the same reflections into the canvases of the A Boy bitten by a Lizard, without regard to the position of the figure in front of the light sources. Since the artist spent, according to Bellori, four or five years in Rome doing repetitious devotional images, and copies of portrait heads ‘un grosso l’uno’, it was natural for him to repeat his own inventions when he arrived at this sensational new technique of copying reality, from a virtual image, instead of other people's compositions. The parabolic mirror, probably the same one that Della Porta had had constructed in Venice in 1580, which had produced some sensational effects and led to the development of the camera obscura, was probably no larger than an eye-glass, but it made it possible to make a mosaic of naturalistic images that was extremely compelling; the technique also explains the shallow focus of Caravaggio's compositions. See also 100 Great Paintings List of paintings by Caravaggio Footnotes References V. Giustiniani, Discorsi sullearti e sui mestieri. ca.1620 & ca. 1628 [1981], edited by A. Banti, Milan; G. Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, 1620 [1956], 2 vols. Edited by A. Marucchi, Rome p. 108; G. B. Baglione, Le vite de’ pittori scultori et architetti, dal Pontificato di Gregorio XIII del 1572; in fino a’ tempi di Papa Urbano Ottavo nel 1642. (Manuscript written c.1625, cf. Marini 1987), Edited by V. Marini. Rome p. 136; G. P. Bellori, Le vite de’ pittori, scultori e architetti moderni, Rome 1672; C. C. Malvasia, Felsina pittrice: Vite de’ pittori Bolognesi, Bologna 1678, 2 vols.; O. Sitwell, “The Red Folder. Parts I & II”, The Burlington Magazine, vol. LXXX, May 1942, pp. 85–90, 115-118; R. Longhi, Il Caravaggio, Milan 1952.; L. Salerno, “The picture gallery of Vincenzo Giustiniani.”, The Burlington Magazine 102, pp. 21–27, 93-104, 135 - 48.; C. L. Frommel, “Caravaggios Fruhwerk und der Kardinal Francesco Maria del Monte”, Storia dell’arte