Narcissus, Caravaggio (1599)
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610), known mononymously as Caravaggio, was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life.
The classical myth of Narcissus had been frequently represented since antiquity, but the version by Caravaggio is distinguished by its unusual compositional scheme, conceived rather like a playing card: the lower half is a mirror image of the upper, as if the painter had turned the upper part of the canvas through 180 degrees to obtain the figure’s reflected image. The composition is appropriate to the story of the young hunter who fell in love with his own image mirrored in the water.
