Cardinal Francesco Maria Bourbon Del Monte Santa Maria was an early patron of the young artist. For Del Monte as well as a number of his polyvalent circle, Caravaggio painted several cabinet works. Del Monte was a highly influential churchman whose sexuality was constantly in question--so much so that it is reputed that it cost him the Papal election on at least two occasions. Although it is said that in his early life Del Monte had a mistress, he developed more than a fatherly interest in young boys in his later life. This intimate circle of Del Monte included the important and like-minded Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani who at the end of his life owned fifteen Caravaggios as well as the famed poet Giovanni Battista Marino. Both Giustiniani and Marino, reportedly possessed a dubious reputation and discretely participated in a broad range of sexual delights. During this short period--i.e., 1792-1599--Caravaggio painted, among other works: Boy Peeling a Fruit (c. 1592), Young Sick Bacchus (1593) (See below), Boy with a Basket of Fruit (1593) (See below), A Boy Bitten by a Lizard (1594), Bacchus (c. 1595), The Musicians (1595), and The Lute Player (1596). Towards the end of the series of cabinet paints Caravaggio began to employ religious subject matter. Among these are: St Francis of Assisi in Ecstacy (1595), The Penitent Magdalene (c. 1596), Rest on the Flight into Egypt (1597), St. Catherine of Alexandria (1598), Martha and Mary Magdalene (1598), Judith Beheading Holofernes (1598), Sacrifice of Isaac (1598), David and Goliath (1599) (See below), and Supper at Emaus (1601) (See below). It was probably the Cardinal Scipione Borghese who backed Caravaggio in the rejected altarpiece of Madonna and Child with St. Anne (Madonna with the Serpent) of 1606. Its rejection, apparently was based on three “problems:” the wrinkled visage of St. Anne, the neckline of the Madonna and the uncircumcised Christ. Cardinal Scipione Borghese (born Caffarelli) was the nephew of Pope Paul V and a member of Del Monte’s circle, had a notable collection of homoerotic paintings and was more than once plucked from a potentially disastrous homosexual scandal by his uncle, the Pope.