My favorite painting ever and the key to my portrayal of Caravaggio's death in my novel about the great Italian artist.

To coincide with the paperback publication of my Caravaggio novel A NAME IN BLOOD, I'm posting each of the paintings that appear in the book each day this month. This stunning painting has a number of names, The Madonna and Child with St. Anne or the Madonna dei Palafrenieri (after the papal grooms for whose chapel in St. Peters it was commissioned.) It's one of six (if I'm counting right) Caravaggios at the Galleria Borghese in Rome. For me it's the greatest of Caravaggio's works, and it plays a key role in my novel because it represents a moment in which the artist fell in love with the model for his Virgin. She was named Lena Antognetti and she's (no spoilers) very important to the plot of my book. Here's Caravaggio's point of view as he's working on the painting:

He had never been so happy. Something had become free in him. He ascribed it to the liveliness the Antognettis brought to his studio and his love for them. The way Lena tickled the boy when Caravaggio wasn’t watching, the boy’s fascination with the painter’s mirrors, the old woman’s pride in the talent of her daughter’s man. He could see his own contentment in the paint too, feel it in his brush. On the canvas, every fold in the women’s skirts seemed entirely true to him. He wanted to step into the painting. He knew the Madonna would welcome him. In spite of all the wrong he had done in his life, she would draw his head to her breast, just as Lena did every night.