In a sense, the methodology employed by [Met curator Keith] Christiansen in his attribution of the picture [Portrait of Maffeo Barberini, above] can be deemed “canonical,” that is, characteristic of an illustrious tradition of connoisseurship. And yet, this canonicity is about to become a literal rarity. The nonchalance with which mediocre paintings continue to be ascribed to Caravaggio is undoubtedly appalling. Stone describes the possible impact of this spreading amateurishness upon future scholarship in rightly alarmed terms: “my worry is that, as fewer and fewer scholars devote themselves to problems of connoisseurship, the stage is being set for future generations of students to take these exhibition catalogues off the shelves and write term papers—even dissertations—about pictures Caravaggio almost certainly did not paint.”