News from Italy
The great exhibition Caravaggio 2025 has opened in Rome
Would you like to retrace Caravaggio’s (1571-1610) Italy’s social, cultural, religious and artistic journey at the time? Caravaggio 2025, the great exhibition at Palazzo Barberini in Rome from 7 March to 6 July.
The exhibition, which will open from 7 March until 6 July 2025, in conjunction with the celebrations for the Jubilee 2025, was created in collaboration with Galleria Borghese and benefits from the support of the Directorate General of Museums, the Ministry of Culture and the support of Main Partner Intesa Sanpaolo: the project is undoubtedly among the most important and ambitious dedicated to Michelangelo Merisi known as Caravaggio (1571-1610), given the high number of autographed paintings and with the exhibition of works that are difficult to see and above all new discoveries, especially in one of the symbolic places of the connection between the artist and his patrons, namely Palazzo Barberini.
On the occasion of the Jubilee 2025, the National Galleries of Ancient Art presented the exhibition Caravaggio 2025 in collaboration with the Galleria Borghese. The exhibition, which aims to be one of the most ambitious ever dedicated to Caravaggio, is curated by Francesca Cappelletti, Maria Cristina Terzaghi, and Thomas Clement Salomon.
By bringing together some of the most famous works alongside lesser-known but equally significant ones, the exhibition aims to offer a new and in-depth reflection on the Master’s artistic and cultural revolution, exploring for the first time in such a broad context the innovation he introduced into the artistic, religious, and social panorama of his time.
The works on display include the Portrait of Maffeo Barberini, recently presented to the public over sixty years after its rediscovery, now for the first time alongside other paintings by Merisi, and the Ecce Homo, currently exhibited at the Prado Museum in Madrid, which will return to Italy for the first time in centuries.
Here is what to expect in the gallery:
Other masterpieces, thanks to exceptional loans, are also exhibited, such as Saint Catherine from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, a masterpiece already in the Barberini collections that will return to the Palace that hosted it, and Martha and Mary Magdalene from the Detroit Institute of Arts, for which the artist used the same model as the Judith preserved in Palazzo Barberini, exhibited for the first time all next to each other.
The exhibition will also be an opportunity to see together again the three paintings commissioned by the banker Ottavio Costa, Judith and Holofernes from Palazzo Barberini, the Saint John the Baptist from the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City and the Saint Francis in Ecstasy from the Wadsworth Atheneum of Art in Hartford, and works linked to the history of the Barberinis’ collecting, such as the Cardsharps from the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, which returns to the Roman Palace where it was long kept.
The selection closes with a vital loan granted by Intesa Sanpaolo: Martyrdom of Saint Ursula, Merisi’s last painting, created shortly before his death.
The exhibition is divided into thematic sections that explore various aspects of Caravaggio’s production, revealing new discoveries and critical reflections. Central, starting from the first works of the itinerary, is the innovative character that the artist meant in the context of the production and market of works of art between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, ever since the disruptive impact of his Roman debut.
The exceptional sequence of masterpieces also highlights the transformation and revolution of Caravaggio’s language, with that unmistakable use of light that tears through his representations of sacred or profane themes and opens new paths to interpreting truth.
Caravaggio 2025 represents a unique opportunity to rediscover the Master’s art in a new key, offering an exhibition experience that integrates historical discoveries, critical reflections and a close comparison with his masterpieces.
