About 430 years after that the Lombard artist Michelangelo Merisi, better known as Caravaggio, entered Rome to enchant and land, well -positioned patron with his daring but intimate intimate art, Caravaggio is again grabbing the spotlight, with a successful exhibition at the National Gallery of the ancient art of the art of Palazzo Barberini.
Organized chronological, the exhibition, entitled “Caravaggio 2025”, keeps trace of the artist’s meteoric career from his arrival in Rome, when he could only afford to use himself as a model, at most thread times, when he was done by a rich bankers and cardinals, in his last years on the run, after killing a man and attempting through art to earn a papelio.
Thomas Clement Salomon, director of the National Gallery, said that with his four Caravaggi and what he defined the most important collection of paintings by Carovaggesque in the world, the institution was a natural choice to host a extravagance of Caravaggio.
Returning to the building after centuries there are three works: “The Cardharps”, owned by the Kimbell Art Museum of Fort Worth; “Concert” (or “The Musicians”), of the Metropolitan Museum of New York; and “St. Catherine of Alessandria, “from the National Museum of Thyssen-Bornemisza of Madrid-which was once part of the collection of Cardinal Antonio Barberini, a long-standing resident of the 17th century building.
More than 60,000 tickets have already been sold to the exhibition, which will open on Friday and will take place until 6 July, a testament both to the charm of Caravaggio’s ferocious originality, and to his reputation as a bad boy with Baroque’s sword.
Of the 24 works on display, nine come from foreign financiers (five only from the United States). “There is a lot in America in this show,” Salomon said in an interview.
“The American museums were very generous”, giving “very important loans”, including a “St. Francis in Ecstasy” from Wadsworth Atheneum of Art of Hartford, in Conn., A “Martha and Mary Magdalene” of the Detroit Institute of Arts and a “St. Giovanni Battista” of the Nellon-Agins Museum of Kansas City, Mo. Curators to bring together three of the four known representations of Caravaggio di San Giovanni Battista.
Loans have allowed some interesting juxtapositions. Caravaggio was known for the use of people he knew like his models, often by low social classes and including courtiers, such as Fillide Melandroni di Siena, who at the time was famous in Rome. It was identified by scholars such as the model for the “St. Catherine di Alessandria” in Madrid, the woman who holds the mirror in “Martha and Mary Magdalene” by Detroit and the protagonist in Barberini’s “Judith Deheading Holofernes”, who are shown here together.
“For me what is exciting is to see how Caravaggio behaves like a director,” said Maria Cristina Terzagi, also curator of the exhibition, describing how Caravaggio could use the same model in different costumes and lighting to create dramatically different works.
The curators said that obtaining so many works by Caravaggio under the same roof should allow scholars to resolve different open questions – some more techniques, such as the dating of some pieces, but also more difficult issues in which the scholarship is divided on attribution. In the case of two works in which Caravaggio’s paternity is in doubt – a “narcissus” and a “portrait of Maffeo Barberini as a protonotary apostolic” – the comparison together with the universally accepted works can determine if they pass.
The show also includes two paintings that have recently emerged from private collections.
One is another portrait of Maffeo Barberini, made public last year, that the National Gallery is negotiating to buy. “It would be a dream,” said Salomon. The inclusion of the painting here, together with a “portrait of a knight of Malta”, underlines the void in Caravaggio’s studies when it comes to portraiture.
Archive sources suggest that Caravaggio has painted many portraits, but very few works remain. “It is part of his production which was very difficult to nail,” said Francesca Cappelletti, director of the Borghese Gallery in Rome and another editor of the show.
The other painting is an “Ecce Homo” that emerged at the auction in Madrid in 2021. The suggested initial offer was set at 1,500 euros, or about $ 1,800, but the Spanish government pulled the painting after several retailers and art historians have temporarily identified the work as a Caravagio. After it was restored, the painting was purchased by an anonymous customer who lent work to the Prado Museum in Madrid, who in turn sent him to Rome. The attribution seems to have kept since the painting became public, but the show will allow scholars to see it in the context of other works.
“This is a very scientific exhibition; It’s a lot for scholars, “said Cappelletti.
Other questions – beyond attribution, copies and origin, to appoint some – are discussed in the catalog, a compendium of a sort of recent Caravaggio scholarship. “‘Caravaggio 2025’ wants to take stock of what we know today about the teacher and the idea we have of him today,” said Terzaghi.
Scholars agree on about 60 paintings that can be definitively attributed to Caravaggio, said Terzaghi, and just over a third of them are included in the show. Many others are visible in museums and Roman churches. “If we all calculate them, I would say that the two thirds of his work are now in Rome, so if you want to study Caravaggio, they must come during this period,” he said.
The Borghese gallery has given three works for the show, but still has three more at home thanks to Cardinal Scipione Borghese, a first fan of Caravaggio. And the Doria Pamphilj Gallery in Rome has two works.
Caravaggio’s stakes are found in four Roman churches, although in the case of one, a copy of a “deposition” is hanging instead of the original, which now belongs to the Vatican museums. Three paintings of altar for the Case chapel are in the French church of San Luigi, its first, important religious commission that made it the speech of the city.
His second religious commission consisted of two lateral paintings in the Cerasi chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo. The first versions, of the “Crucifixion of Peter” and the “conversion of Saul” (both 1604-05), were rejected, say the scholars, because they were painted while the chapel was built and did not adapt to space. He repainted both subjects. Subsequently, the “crucifixion” was lost, but the first version of “conversion”, which belongs to a private collection in Rome, is included in the show at Barberini.
“We did not ask any church to lend their paintings; It is a year of Jubilee, “said Salomon, referring to the Holy Year of the Roman Catholic Church which takes place every 25 years and should bring millions of faithful to Rome and the Vatican in 2025.
Come to the end of March, visitors to the show will also be able to get tickets on the weekends to see the only known mural of Caravaggio, depicting “Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto”, in the Casino Boncompagni Ludovisi a short walk. In addition to this fresco by Caravaggio – which painted for the first owner of the villa, Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, in 1597 – the villa has ceiling frescoes of other Baroque masters, including Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, better known as Guercina.
Although the show was difficult to put together, Salomon said: “Our greatest joy is to be able to offer this exhibition in the difficult moments in which we live today”.