Giorgione from Budapest to Rome

29 November 2025 - 08 March 2026

From 29 November 2025 to 8 March 2026, Palazzo Barberini welcomes an exceptional guest: the Portrait of a Young Man, also known as the Portrait of Antonio Brocardo and attributed to Giorgione, on loan from the Szépmüvészeti Múzeum / Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest. Painted around 1503, the work arrives in Rome as part of the exchange programme developed by the Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica with leading Italian and international institutions, offering the public a rare opportunity to encounter the art of one of the most enigmatic masters of the Venetian Renaissance.

Donated to the Hungarian museum in 1836 by Archbishop János László Pyrker but originally from Venice, the Portrait of a Young Man preserves the aura of mystery so characteristic of Giorgione: questions remain regarding its precise date, the identity of the sitter, and the deeper meaning of the image. Despite these uncertainties, the painting stands as a testament to the artist’s role in the development of Italian portraiture at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

At Palazzo Barberini, the painting enters into direct dialogue with the celebrated Double Portrait by the same artist, now housed at Palazzo Venezia and exceptionally loaned by VIVE Vittoriano e Palazzo Venezia as part of a collaboration agreement between the two institutions of the Ministry of Culture. The close encounter between these two masterpieces allows visitors to observe the distinctive innovations of Giorgione’s portraiture, marked by a new psychological sensitivity, an intimate rendering of the sitter, and the ability to evoke rather than explicitly define.

Building on this comparison, the exhibition extends to other works in the permanent collection, inviting visitors to explore the various expressions of portraiture in the early sixteenth century: from the formal male portrait, represented by Bronzino, Bartolomeo Veneto and Metsys, to Holbein’s state portraiture, and finally to the sentimental and erotic current initiated by Giorgione himself and masterfully interpreted by Raphael in the Fornarina.

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