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.
The assumption that opulence, heroic sweep, and extravagance are not present in Caravaggio's paintings is required for the proper conclusion of the argument.