forms "thrown" into the foreground, with great emotional impact. The gesture of Thomas and the hand of Christ that accompanies him explode in an extraordinary "zoomata", enhanced by the light coming from the left (the light of Revelation) that illuminates the doubt, the astonishment (in the fronts of the apostles) and the reality of the living flesh of the Saviour. Painters came to Rome, especially from the Netherlands, to study Caravaggio's work. Rembrandt, who never visited Italy, became acquainted with Caravaggio's painting style through the Utrecht Caravaggists. He can also be regarded as a representative of Caravaggism, albeit a rather late one. His turn to a radical realism, which he adhered to until the end of his life, is hardly conceivable without the example of Caravaggio and his successors. This also applies to Rembrandt's use of light. Caravaggio's paintings also left a deep impression on Peter Paul Rubens. Among the painters influenced by Caravaggio, apart from the Utrecht Caravaggists, are Orazio Gentileschi, Artemisia Gentileschi, Bartolomeo Manfredi, Georges de la Tour, Rembrandt van Rijn, Jusepe de Ribera and Johann Ulrich Loth. Caravaggio's influences are also evident in paintings by Jan Vermeer, Diego Velázquez and Francisco de Zurbarán. This pictorial motif is probably related to Saint Matthew and the Angel (1602) and the Sacrifice of Isaac (1603), all having a model in common. The Potsdam painting belonged to Vincenzo Giustiniani before entering the Prussian royal collection, surviving the Second World War intact. History Potsdam Version (Secular) In 1606, the banker Vincenzo Giustiniani mentioned this subject in a copy in Genoa, and twenty years later the painting was mentioned in the inventory of the Giustiniani collection, suggesting that the banker himself commissioned the work, a hypothesis confirmed in some sources. Incidentally, the sombre realism of the work could only have been welcomed by one of Caravaggio's greatest followers. From the Giustiniani inventory of 1638 we learn that there is "in the Stanza Grande de Quadri Antichi...un quadro sopraporto di mezze figure con l'Historia di San Tomasso che toucca il Costato di Christo col dito depito in tela alto pal. 5 pal.larg.6 by the hand of Michelangelo da Caravaggio with a black frame profiled and guilloché with gold" Bellori wrote of the Potsdam painting in 1672: "St Thomas placing his finger in the wound at the Lord's side, placing his hand close to the wound and exposing his breast with a cloth, removing it