Most commentators on Baroque painting consider Caravaggio an early practitioner of that style, believing that his realism and novel use of the interplay of light and shadow broke sharply with current styles of Caravaggio' s time and significantly influenced seventeenth-century Baroque painting
One must ttherefore either abandon the opinion of this majority of commentators or reject Mather' s definition of Baroque painting, which says that for any painting to be considered Baroque, it must display opulence, heroic sweep, and extravagance
A painter who makes use of the interplay of light and shadow need not for that reason be considered a nonrealistic painter.