Welcome to One Fine Show, where Observer highlights a recently opened exhibition at a museum not in New York City, a place we know and love that already receives plenty of attention.
A few years ago, I was lucky enough to visit the Louvre during their partnership with the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples. The exhibition brought sixty major works to Paris, and these were integrated with other works from the 15th to the 17th Centuries. Together, the collections offered a much more comprehensive look at Italian painting, most notably in the Grande Galerie, where the Neapolitan works by Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652), Francesco Guarino (1611-1654) and Mattia Preti (1613-1699) were folded into the Louvre’s collection of works by Titian (c.1488-1576), Annibale Carracci (1560-1609) and Guido Reni (1575 – 1642). The works were organized chronologically and all quite lively. Then, who should arrive on the scene but Caravaggio (1571-1610)?
As one progressed down the hallway, one couldn’t help but notice the blacker blacks, the most emotionally resonant darkness imaginable, as Caravaggio’s colleagues rushed to implement, and perhaps overdo, his new chiaroscuro technology. A new show at the Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica at Palazzo Barberini in Rome brings together twenty-four works by the master and, through its title “Caravaggio 2025,” implies that the painter born Michelangelo Merisi still has much to teach us.
Organized around Caravaggio’s complicated biography, the works range from the religious art to portraiture—from the classics to the newly rediscovered Ecce Homo (1605-09) attributed to Caravaggio in 2021. This curatorial approach is admirable, as Caravaggio’s paintings can be so intense and sublime that it’s hard to remember that an actual person made them. However, the inclusion of works like Portrait of Antonio Martelli, Knight of Malta (1608) reminds us that, in fact, a very human person made them. Caravaggio painted that one to ingratiate himself with the Knights of Malta when he had to flee Rome after killing someone in a fight. He became a Knight but spent only 15 months on Malta before he had to hastily leave that island under similar circumstances.
The works in this show come from museums and private collections around the world, joining Caravaggio hits such as Saint Francis in Meditation (c.1604), Saint John the Baptist (c.1604), Judith Beheading Holofernes (c.1598-1599) and Narcissus (1597-1599), all of which are part of the permanent collection of Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica. By coincidence, these are very inward-gazing works, with the look on Judith’s face equally disgusted, fascinated and distracted, as if she has errands to run after this. Caravaggio is a known master of emotional turmoil.
Contrast those with the rarer works in this exhibition. One of the more important ones is Portrait of Maffeo Barberini (c. 1598), which has never before been seen in public. It captures a man with thick fingers and a distinct swagger, his shiny robes tumbling down his body as he points to someone just out of frame. The Ecce Homo, which I saw last year at the Prado, is naturally exhibitionistic. Christ is unveiled by two gawping extras who have been promoted to starring roles, their extreme earthiness jarringly similar to that revealed in the man wearing the crown of thorns.
Saint Catherine of Alexandria (ca. 1598-99) now also lives in Madrid, though the Palazzo Barberini was her original home. She is back at the palazzo with a sword, a broken wheel and a halo she knows more about than she would ever let on. She might be the closest thing we have to a self-portrait in this ambitious assemblage of work.
“Caravaggio 2025” is on view at the Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica at Palazzo Barberini through July 6, 2025.
