Resumen de Prospero Orsi, interprète du Caravage
A reassessment of Prospero Orsi's relationship to Caravaggio. There are numerous references to Orsi, in documentary sources and in Seicento inventories, as a painter and a friend and supporter of Caravaggio. The superficial character of Orsi's works, with their glass carafes of water and fruit and flowers in a slightly primitive perspective, have always been linked to Caravaggio's few still lifes. However, it appears as though Orsi, a slightly older painter from Stabio in the Ticino, was supportive of Caravaggio when he arrived in Rome, and he painted works in this genre before Caravaggio made his sensational discovery that these details could be observed and copied in a different manner. In his turn, Orsi made a living by doing interpretations of the famous Caravaggios, evidently with the master's approval if works like the two paintings brought back to France by Ambassador Béthune in 1605, and recently discovered in Touraine, are by him.
