Caravaggio’s practice of working directly from posed models, dispensing with the elaborate use of drawings and cartoons, was viewed by his contemporaries as revolutionary. It opens a new chapter in the history of European painting. In this lecture Keith Christiansen will look at the tradition and circumstances of working directly from the model that impacted Caravaggio’s approach; the ways in which this practice was taken up by later artists; and its implications for painters of the next generation, with an emphasis on Valentin de Boulogne, who will be the subject of a monographic exhibition at the Metropolitan and the Musée du Louvre in 2016–17.

Christiansen is the Cynthia Hazen Polsky/Metropolitan Museum of Art Visiting Curator at the American Academy in Rome, and John Pope-Hennessy Chairman of the Department of European Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.