nted his largest work, The Beheading of St. John the Baptist, and his last surviving portrayal of St. Jerome. This canvas, which shows the saint seated on the edge of a bed writing, now hangs in the museum of the Cathedral of Malta. The painting was commissioned by Ippolito Malaspina, a Prior of the Knights of Malta, in 1607.
Walter Friedlaender chronicles the Catalogue Raisonne, the official listing of Caravaggio's work which accepts only those works mentioned in all three of what are considered to be the most accurate of the literary sources on the artist's work. One of these chroniclers is Giovanni Pietro Bellori; he discusses a companion work that complemented St. Jerome Writing, a portrayal of Mary Magdalene. This portrayal has been lost and is not mentioned in the writings of the two other chroniclers, Caravaggio's contemporary, Giovanni Baglione, and Giu
...