The National Galleries of Ancient Art and the Borghese Gallery are collaborating to allow the public to continue enjoying the heritage preserved on the first floor of the Borghese Gallery during the ambitious renovation and conservation project made possible by the funds of the PNRR.
This initiative is a unique and unmissable opportunity to bring together two collections that share a similar history, linked to two crucial figures of the Roman political and cultural life of the seventeenth century, Maffeo Barberini and Scipione Borghese, in an ideal historical, cultural, and not least, geographical proximity.

Absolute masterpieces, such as the Portrait of a Man by Antonello da Messina, the Madonna and Child by Giovanni Bellini, the Madonna with Child, St. John the Baptist, and Angels by Sandro Botticelli, the Portrait of a Young Woman with Unicorn by Raphael, Susanna and the Elders by Peter Paul Rubens, Sacred and Profane Love by Titian, the Preaching of St. John the Baptist by Paolo Veronese, just to name a few, will continue to be accessible to the general public.

"An event of the highest institutional value as a testimony to the closeness, not only geographical, but also professional, that links the two museums," said Thomas Clement Salomon, director of the National Galleries of Ancient Art, who continues: "Following in the footsteps of Scipione Borghese and Maffeo Barberini, who would rejoice in this initiative today, we hope that the public can admire the Borghese masterpieces at Palazzo Barberini and celebrate this exhibition that will be difficult to repeat in the coming decades."
"In carrying out important interventions of the PNRR that will change the appearance of the first-floor Pinacoteca of the building, the Borghese Gallery, with an exceptional effort by all its staff, will never close and will remain open to visitors during the works. The exhibition at Palazzo Barberini will make the Gallery's heritage always visible and establish relationships and resonances with another exceptional Baroque collection and another great museum institution," says Francesca Cappelletti, Director of the Borghese Gallery.

At the Borghese Gallery, after the restoration of the facades, the PNRR works will involve the replacement of tapestries and the modernization of fixtures with a focus on energy efficiency, the expansion of cultural accessibility, the updating of storage facilities, and the restoration of some large canvases. The project, in its complexity, will be presented as a prologue to the exhibition at Palazzo Barberini.

At Palazzo Barberini, the temporary dismantling of the rooms in the South Wing will be an opportunity for an in-depth photographic and preventive conservation campaign of the works normally exhibited in these spaces: from the Neapolitan seventeenth century to the eighteenth-century collection, from Mattia Preti to the painters of the Grand Tour.