Boy Bitten by a Lizard, c.1595/00 Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610)

We create our paintings with museum quality and covering the highest academic standards. Once we get your order, it will be entirely hand-painted with oil on canvas. All the materials we use are the highest level, being totally artist graded painting materials and linen canvas.

We will add 1.6" (4 cm) additional blank canvas all over the painting for stretching.

High quality and detailing in every inch are time consuming. The reproduction of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio also needs time to dry in order to be completely ready for shipping, as this is crucial to not be damaged during transportation.
Based on the size, level of detail and complexity we need 8-9 weeks to complete the process.

In case the delivery date needs to be extended in time, or we are overloaded with requests, there will be an email sent to you sharing the new timelines of production and delivery.

TOPofART wants to remind you to keep patient, in order to get you the highest quality, being our mission to fulfill your expectations.

We not stretch and frame our oil paintings due to several reasons:
Painting reproduction is a high quality expensive product, which we cannot risk to damage by sending it being stretched.
Also, there are postal restrictions, regarding the size of the shipment.
Additionally, due to the dimensions of the stretched canvas, the shipment price may exceed the price of the product itself.

You can stretch and frame your painting in your local frame-shop.

Once the painting Boy Bitten by a Lizard is ready and dry, it will be shipped to your delivery address. The canvas will be rolled-up in a secure postal tube.

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The paintings we create are only of museum quality. Our academy graduated artists will never allow a compromise in the quality and detail of the ordered painting. TOPofART do not work, and will never allow ourselves to work with low quality studios from the Far East. We are based in Europe, and quality is our highest priority.

A sharp intake of breath seems to hang in the air. The boy’s mouth is caught open, not quite a cry, not quite a laugh, as his whole body recoils from the small outrage on his finger. Caravaggio freezes the instant when pain turns a pretty pose into truth: the shoulder jerks forward, the hand flails, the face scrunches into an expression so specific you can almost feel the sting yourself.

Notice how close everything is. Depth barely has time to form before it is shoved up against us: cheek, sleeve, fruit, glass. Against a plain, shadowed background, the light arrives like a sudden announcement, picking out the warm flesh tones and the cool whites of the shirt, then glancing off cherries and the slick skin of plums. That polished fruit is not decoration. It sits in the foreground with all the authority of a figure, a reminder that this young Caravaggio had honed his eye in still-life painting, and that he refused the old hierarchy that treated such things as lesser.

Look hard at the glass vase. Its curved belly holds a tiny, distorted reflection of the room, a little world trapped in a bubble of light. It’s a deliciously quiet detail in the middle of the drama, and it tells you how much he enjoyed the exactness of looking. Paint handling shifts accordingly: soft transitions in the face; firmer, slicker touches for the fruit; and, in the jasmine’s pinprick blossoms, a kind of calligraphic precision.

What does it mean? Boy Bitten by a Lizard (c.1595/00) has never settled into a single explanation, and that feels right. Perhaps it’s a warning about desire - the rose tucked behind the ear, the lush mouth, the sudden punishment that arrives with beauty. Perhaps it’s simply an experiment in extreme expression, daring for the late sixteenth century, closer in spirit to the candid shock of a street encounter than to the measured grace of Annibale Carracci.

Seen at the National Gallery London UK england united kingdom, the painting still has the shock of something overheard. Caravaggio makes you remember that touch can hurt, that sweetness can bite, and that a moment can smell of crushed leaves and summer fruit even as it turns sour.