The Influence of Caravaggio

Valentin de Boulogne, Fortune Teller, c. 1628 (Louvre, Paris)

Excerpt from Michael Fried's new book After Caravaggio published by (Yale University Press).

The excerpt focuses on the painter Valentin de Boulogne. Fried writes: "I want to use Valentin’s canvas [Valentin de Boulogne, Fortune Teller, c. 1620s (Musée du Louvre, Paris)] as point of reference for a series of remarks about what I take to be a distinctive Caravaggesque pictorial “system” or, perhaps more accurately, pictorial poetics, one which I want to suggest possesses an internal consistency and rationale such as have never, to my mind, been fully acknowledged. "