At Palazzo Barberini on display 24 iconic works by Caravaggio

Twenty -four works, as many as they were exhibited at the Scuderie del Quirinale in the 2010 exhibition, the last monographic dedicated to the artist who revolutionized the painting of the 17th century. In a fundamental place in the life of a master of painting that still surprises.

Michelangelo Merisi, called Caravaggio (1571-1610), returns to Rome. And he returns with a review of breathtaking paintings from public and private collections around the world, in conjunction with the Jubilee. There is the Caravaggio never seen, the ‘Portrait of Maffeo Barberini’, oil on canvas of a private collection of which the Italian state is dealing with the purchase.

There is the martyrdom of Sant’Orsola ‘exceptional loan of Intesa Sanpaolo of his iconic masterpiece in Gallerie d’Italia Napoli, whose cleaning for the occasion has reserved new surprises. There is the ‘flagellation’, one of the paintings symbol of Capodimonte. From tomorrow to 6 July 2025, in conjunction with the celebrations of the Jubilee 2025, the national galleries of ancient art, in collaboration with Galleria Borghese, with the support of the Directorate General Museums of Culture and with the support of the main partner Intesa Sanpaolo, present at Palazzo Barberini ‘Caravaggio 2025’, edited by Francesca Cappelletti, Maria Cristina Terzaghi and Thomas Clement Salomon.

One of the most important and ambitious project dedicated to the painter formed in Milan, but ‘discovered’ in Rome where he had prestigious clients and also violent adventures, fleeing to Malta, with long stays in Sicily and Naples. The exhibition boasts an exceptional number of autograph paintings and a path between works that are difficult to visible and new discoveries in one of the places of connection between the artist and his patrons.

The goal is to offer a new and in -depth reflection on the master’s artistic and cultural revolution – reads the presentation of the national galleries of ancient art, exploring for the first time in such a broad context the innovation that introduced into the artistic, religious and social panorama of his time.

The ‘Portrait of Maffeo Barberini’, recently presented to the public over sixty years after its rediscovery, for the first time alongside other paintings by Merisi, together with the ‘Ecce Homo’, which from the Prado di Madrid which will return to Italy for the first time after centuries, the ‘Santa Caterina’ of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum of Madrid, a masterpiece already in the Barberini collections that will return to the Palazzo. He hosted it, is Marta and Maddalena ‘of the Detroit Institute of Arts, for which the artist used the same model as Giuditta preserved in Palazzo Barberini. Exceptional loans exposed for the first time all next to each other.

The exhibition will also be an opportunity to see the three paintings commissioned by the banker Ottavio Costa, ‘Giuditta and Oloferne’ of Palazzo Barberini, the ‘San Giovanni Battista’ of the Nelson-Aons-Museum of Kansas City and the ‘San Francesco in ecstasy’ of the Wadsworth Atheneum of Art of Artford, and works related to the history of the collectibles of the Barberini, such as I ‘Barberi’. Kimbell Art Museum of Fort Worth, who returns to the Roman palace where he was long preserved.

A path in the painting of one of the artists who have marked the history of art and the imagination of the general public with its chiaroscuro, the narrative light, the close perspectives, the bold compositions and its harmonious and unconventional life. The route, divided into four sections, guides the public to discover the entire artistic parable of Merisi, covering a chronological arc of about fifteen years, from the arrival in Rome around 1595 to death in Porto Ercole in 1610.

To what will be seen in the family building that belonged to the Barberini, among the patron of Caravaggio, is added the possibility, throughout the period of the review, is added the possibility of admiring the ‘Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto’, the only mural painting performed by a very young Caravaggio in 1597 inside the Casino dell’Auro di Villa Ludovisi, at the time belonging to Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, It is more passionate patriser-protector of the artist. A wonder never accessible.