This collage shows what Caravaggio could paint if he were working today. It extends the comparison between Caravaggio and Ryan Idol from the past into the present.
Idol reclines nude across a bank of cut flowers. One leg is raised and his body twists toward the viewer as he looks back over his shoulder. The pose is close to Caravaggio's own nudes. Saint John the Baptist (1602, Capitoline Museums, Rome) shows a nude youth twisting toward the viewer and smiling over his shoulder. Amor Vincit Omnia (1602, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin) shows Cupid with one leg raised, facing the viewer directly.
The flowers are part of Caravaggio's story too. When he first arrives in Rome, he paints fruit and flowers in another artist's workshop. Here the flowers return as the ground for the nude.
Caravaggio's nudes always carry a title from religion or myth: a saint, a god, Cupid. That title is what allows the body to be shown. This figure has no saint's name and no myth. He is a man posed for a viewer who wants to look at him. Four hundred years after Caravaggio, the subject can be shown without a title to cover it.
The blue moon and the flying saucer carry over from the earlier collages and mark the image as part of the same series.
— Behan
