To coincide with the paperback publication of my Caravaggio novel A NAME IN BLOOD, I'm posting each of the paintings that appear in the book each day for the next month. At the center of the novel is Caravaggio's relationship with his model for this painting The Madonna of Loreto, which is in the Church of Sant'Agostino in Rome. Her name was Lena. Caravaggio's portrayals of her, as a Virgin who was also a poor woman living in a slum, were controversial -- even dangerous. Here he sees her at her door for the first time:

At the burnt sienna towers of the Church of Sant’Atanasio, he cut onto the Via dei Greci, into the Evil Garden. The low morning sun struggled to drive the night from the narrow street. A pair of beggars knelt at the rough gray step of a small house, their fingers steepled, beseeching charity. The young woman in the doorway held a three-year-old boy on her hip. The boy was naked, half wrapped in a towel, as though the beggars’ call had interrupted his bathtime.

Caravaggio approached, watching the girl. The house was dark behind her. Daylight seemed to penetrate the street just for her, illuminating the eggshell clarity of her neck and chest. She crossed her bare feet and went up and down on her toes, pivoting from her hip to swing the boy as she listened to the old woman’s story. She let her head drop to her left so that her chin touched her collar bone, as she looked down upon the kneeling woman with compassion and reassurance.

He recognized her. The maid who had been cleaning the floor at del Monte’s palace. She’s turning her hips the opposite way to her shoulders, he noted, as though she knows about the contrapposto pose. She has found the grace of classical form without anyone having to teach her an academic term for it.

Caravaggio leaned against the wall by the threshold. The plaster had come away beside the chipped travertine of the doorway, exposing the brick beneath. He smiled and was surprised by how little calculation there was in his open look.