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by Caravaggio in Naples, but its tight, dry, highly finished style is utterly at odds with the brusquely abbreviated technique that characterizes the known works of the first Neapolitan period, such as the Seven Acts or The Crucifixion of St Andrew. Poised and somewhat theatrical, with its crowd of anxious paupers clustered in supplication at the feet of the Virgin and Child, The Madonna of the Rosary must have been painted considerably earlier in Caravaggio’s career. Figures and forms are clearly delineated, the play of light and shade in the drapery far more sharply defined than such passages in any of the painter’s later works. The red drapery bunched above the head of Mary is more precisely described even than the similar swag of red cloth in Caravaggio’s last Roman altarpiece, The Death of the Virgin.

Caravaggio was an artist compelled to be true to himself, incapable of stretching to the ventriloquistic impersonation of his own earlier manners. As he grew older, his style moved inexorably towards simplification, abbreviation, occlusion. The Madonna of the Rosary is closest in spirit and appearance to The Madonna of Loreto and The Entombment. It breathes the same air of unclouded popular piety as those pictures of 1604.

Given the prominence of St Dominic in the legend of the Rosary, this large and imposing work was perhaps commissioned as the altarpiece of a Dominican church somewhere in or near Rome. Its appearance in Naples can best be explained by another of the rejections that occurred so frequently during the painter’s years in Rome. The naked and conspicuously dirty feet of the kneeling paupers in the foreground were probably to blame. Caravaggio may have taken the large and valuable canvas with him when he fled from Rome after the killing of Ranuccio Tomassoni.

Worship of the Rosary had begun in Italy in the early years of the twelfth century. According to tradition, the Virgin appeared in a vision to St Dominic one night in 1208, holding a string of beads in her hand. She showed him how to use the beads in prayer and instructed him to preach the technique to Christians everywhere. Each bead represented a different mystery in the life of the Virgin or of Christ. As the worshipper moved the beads along the string, one by one, he or she was to visualize one particular mystery at a time, to bring it forth in the mind’s eye and focus devotion upon it, while reciting the Ave Maria and the Pater Noster. Protestants disapproved of the Rosary, but during the second half of the sixteenth century the cult went from strength to strength. At a time when the Church was actively seeking to strengthen its hold on the mass of ordinary believers, the distribution of Rosary beads was recognized as a cheap and effective way of encouraging prayer and piety at every level of society.

Caravaggio stressed the inclusive nature of the cult by giving great prominence to the huddled crowd of the poor, reaching out in unison for the strings of beads held out by Dominic in both hands. In most depictions of the subject, the saint is shown himself receiving the Rosary from the Madonna. But here she acts the part of a heavenly overseer, supervising its distribution to the people. Supporting a plump Christ child on her knee, she points down towards the bottom-left-hand corner of the picture, in the direction of a mother who, like herself, is accompanied by her young son. The Virgin seems gently concerned that they should not be forgotten in the clamouring press of people.

On the other side from St Dominic stands St Peter Martyr, distinguished by the head-wound of his martyrdom. He was a Dominican friar, who had been killed by a stone thrown by a heretic. Accompanied by another darkly cowled and inscrutable member of the order, he gestures towards the Madonna and child and looks out at the viewer with a yearning, soulful expression on his face.

One other figure also looks at us. With the bearing and demeanour of an aristocrat, dressed in black and wearing a fine lace ruff, he kneels at Dominic’s elbow and stares meaningfully out from the