Art historian Roberto Longhi first published the portrait as an autograph work by Caravaggio in 1963. His research found that the painting was in the Barberini family collection from the time it was painted until around 1935 when much of the great collection was dispersed. It has been in a private collection in Florence for decades and has never been loaned to a museum or shown to the public. The owners are so secretive that they literally refused to answer calls or open the door to Caravaggio experts. People who have written books and papers on Caravaggio and have seen everything else he painted a thousand times have never caught so much as a glimpse of this one. Even now that they have at long last agreed to loan it for exhibition, the owners have chosen to remain anonymous.
Caravaggio’s works consist almost entirely of religious and mythological subjects. While he is thought to have made a number of portraits of patrons in the Curia, friends and at least one lover during his time in Rome, only five of them, all of them of clerics, are known to have survived. He painted the Barberini portrait early in his career. It is one of the first three portraits in his catalogue and was an important step in the development of Caravaggio’s signature style. Art historian Giovan Pietro Bellori wrote in 1672 that Caravaggio first began to “intensify the darks” in this portrait, creating the vivid contrast of light and shadow that characterize the “chiaroscuro” technique that define his oeuvre.
The Portrait of Monsignor Maffeo Barberini depicts the subject seated in an armchair at angle that propels him out of the inky dark background into a beam of light. His misaligned eyes look to the side and points in that direction with his right hand, while he clutches a folded letter in his left. His side-eye and hand gesture suggests he’s engaging with someone to his right, and the intensity in his gaze and hands convey a dynamic naturalism that was unusual in portraiture for the period.
Caravaggio. The Portrait Unveiled exhibition opens at the Sala Paesaggi of Palazzo Barberini today and runs through February 23, 2025. The portrait will be in the same gallery as three other iconic works by Caravaggio which are part of the museum’s permanent collection: Narcissus (1597-1599), Judith and Holofernes (ca. 1599), Saint Francis in Meditation (1606-1607). It’s a unique opportunity for Caravaggio pilgrims to view bucket list masterpieces and one they may well never have another opportunity to see again, although Italian Culture Ministry officials are hoping against hope that now that the owners have given an inch, the state might be able to take a mile and persuade them to sell.
* This article was originally published here
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