color, in caravaggio's work, is very important. and color is achieved--you have a very natural representation. in other words, the artist is introducing real colors, actual colors, colors of the object. it is used naturally. and he is introducing nature in his representation of these figures, natural flesh tones, for example, and actual color of the drapery. now, if we go back to the vermeer's work, we see that in the vermeer's girl, color is complemented through use of light. they are integrally interwoven. they work together to create a very distinct impression. light bounces off. notice the metal, the shapes, the wonderful reflections in the translucent pearls. and all of these create the wonderful feeling of-- they're achieved through color, but light is a very important element and a very important part. but color is used naturally. he's observing light. there is a window that's implied. it's directly behind the girl-- or in front of her, and it's casting a shadow. and it is illuminating the young lady. now, color can be used,

, and through caravaggio, rembrandt.two other paintings of this period have come down to us-- the portrait of cecilia gallerani, the mistress of the duke, and the portrait of a musician. the painting of cecilia gallerani is known as the lady with the ermine. the ermine was one of il moro's symbols, so that the portrait becomes a representation of the love of the duke for this woman who was so close to him before his marriage to beatrice d'este. the animal she holds, so lithe and feminine a creature, could almost rival her own delicate beauty and the splendid hand that caresses the creature. the portrait of the musician was painted soon afterwards. the figure is not finished, but the beautiful head, and in particular the eyes, hold one's attention as one looks at the picture. it's almost as if one had picked out a stranger with a glance, as we've all done sometimes, and found it difficult to cut off the silent communication that only the eyes convey. "music is the shape and form of the invisible," leonardo said. he was a

. >> i'd like to introduce you to the one and only caravaggio, my number one drinking buddy at the metropolitanuseum of art. if you had to decide where the light is coming from in this painting, where is the light coming from? see how there's the "v" between their shoulders? it looks like there's some orange thing sort of spurting up there. there's a fireplace back there. so part of where the light is coming from, is that the fireplace is bouncing off the dude's chest and shining onto their faces. and what he's doing is reflecting light and putting shiny ( bleep ) into the corners just to sort of keep it real. he was also known for theatrical lighting so if you're like a filmmaker or something he was sort of like the inspiration for that. >> taking them to a piece like this amazing sculpture of diana that's in the courtyard of the american wing at the metropolitan museum of art, and how do we compare her to maybe kim kardashian. and how do we talk about other objects in the museum and put them in a light that people can understand and can laugh about? it's creating these points of accessibility