THE EXHIBITION
From March 7 to July 6, 2025, in conjunction with the 2025 Jubilee celebrations, the Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica, in collaboration with Galleria Borghese, with the support of the Directorate-General of Museums of the Italian Ministry of Culture and the backing of its Main Partner Intesa Sanpaolo, present Caravaggio 2025 at Palazzo Barberini, curated by Francesca Cappelletti, Maria Cristina Terzaghi and Thomas Clement Salomon. One of the most important and ambitious projects featuring Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio (1571 – 1610), with an exceptional number of autograph paintings and an itinerary of difficult-to-view pieces and new discoveries in one of the places symbolizing the connection between this artist and his patrons.
Examining the context that drove Caravaggio to the forefront of world art, Palazzo Barberini will be hosting these works in a display that highlights the power and modernity of his painting, one of the greatest painting masters of all time. By bringing together some of his most celebrated works, alongside others that are lesser known but equally as significant, this exhibition offers new, in-depth reflections on this master’s artistic and cultural revolution, exploring for the very first time and within such a broad context the innovation he injected into the artistic, religious and social landscape of the time. The works showcased include: the Portrait of Maffeo Barberini, recently put on public display over sixty years after its rediscovery and now shown alongside other paintings by Merisi for the very first time; Ecce Homo, currently displayed at the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid and returning to Italy for the first time in centuries; alongside other exceptional loans such as the Saint Catherine of Alexandria from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, a masterpiece once already part the Barberini collections which will be returning to Palazzo Barberini, where it was housed; and Martha and Mary Magdalene from the Detroit Institute of Arts, featuring the same model the artist used in the Judith and Holofernes preserved in Palazzo Barberini, all displayed side-by-side for the first time. The exhibition is also an opportunity to see three paintings commissioned by the banker Ottavio Costa reunited again: Judith and Holofernes from Palazzo Barberini, Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness from the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City and Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy from the Wadsworth Atheneum of Art in Hartford, as well as other works connected to the Barberini family’s history of art collecting, such as The Cardsharps from the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, which will be returning to the Roman palazzo where it was once long conserved. The selection of works concludes with an important loan from Intesa Sanpaolo: The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula, Merisi’s last painting done shorty before his death.