This past Friday, art historians Maurizio Bernardelli Curuz and Adriana Conconi Fedrigolli made public their astounding discovery of one hundred Caravaggio drawings from his boyhood.

Baroque artist Carravaggio lived a troubled life, died young, and left behind about 90 monumental paintings.

Yet with the possible doubling of Caravaggio’s portfolio, art experts and Italian officials have met Curuz and Fedrigolli’s claims with sheer skepticism. One leading curator even dubbed the entire discovery as “a total invention.”

Caravaggio’s tendency to leave his work unsigned, and the lack of any known comprable Caravaggio drawings, make the validation of the discovery difficult.

But as a possible trove of drawings from a young Caravaggio runs the gauntlet of art world scrutiny, The Bare Square shares with you the artwork of master artists from when they were in their teens.

Before he co-founded the cubist movement and disfigured human anatomy with oil paint, Pablo Picasso started off painting fairly realistic portraits of his family members at age fifteen.

Portrait of the Artist’s Mother by Pablo Picasso, age 15

At only eighteen years old, Claude Monet began his prolific career with a realistic landscape painting. Nearly ten years later Monet founded the French impressionist movement!

View At Rouelles Le Havre by Claude Monet, age 18

Rembrandt van Rijn, considered one of the greatest painters in European art history, created his first masterpiece at age nineteen!

The Stoning Of St. Stephen by Rembrandt van Rijn, age 19

With these young painting prodigies becoming several of the most esteemed artists in the world, we can only hope for similar success for nine-year-old Kieron Williamson who is already being compared to Picasso and Monet:

- Ava Cotlowitz