From November 23, 2024 to February 23, 2025, a historical loan from a private collection will be hosted in the spaces of the National Galleries of Ancient Art: in the Landscape Room of Palazzo Barberini, the Portrait of Monsignor Maffeo Barberini, attributed by leading scholars to Caravaggio, will be exhibited to the public for the first time.

In the portrait, Maffeo Barberini is seated on a chair placed diagonally and is illuminated by a beam of light converging from below, emerging powerfully from a bare and essential space. The monsignor, in his thirties, wears a beret and a cassock in shades of green, over a pleated white robe. His left arm is resting on the armrest of the chair and his hand holds a folded letter, while in the foreground, highlighted by the light, a roll of documents is placed on the chair.

The head with an impatient gaze, the slightly open mouth, and the almost sudden gesture he makes with his right hand, piercing the space, tell of a dynamic personality, suggesting that he is giving an order to someone off the scene. The refined chromatic experimentation, the way the figure is set diagonally against the background, the contrasts of light and dark, the design of the rounded hands, the luminosity of the skin, and the technique of constructing the eyes on which a brushstroke of white lead is applied to intensify the gaze, are the hallmarks of Merisi's autograph highlighted by all critics.

With few strokes, Caravaggio depicts a portrait in motion and reveals the mood and personality of the protagonist, an intellectual of the highest social sphere, monumental in his presence, but devoid of rhetoric.