A murderer on the run, a master in exile, and a painter who changed the course of art forever: this is Caravaggio. A manic, violent genius, Caravaggio’s mesmerizing paintings sent shockwaves through the Roman art world of 1600, and their raw drama remains undimmed over 400 years later.
Caravaggio’s works vividly capture the urban tapestry of Baroque Rome, a place where sordid squalor and profound grace lived side by side. His dark imagination heaves with saints and sinners navigating dangerous barroom shenanigans and brutal, chillingly real acts of violence. The extraordinary Caravaggio 2025 exhibition at Palazzo Barberini brings together 24 absolute masterpieces from the artist’s oeuvre, loaned from collections around the world, offering up a once-in-a-lifetime chance to trace the artist’s career from his arrival in the Eternal City to his tragic, untimely death. This is history in the making.
Today in our blog we’re profiling 12 paintings that make the Palazzo Barberini exhibition unmissable (in truth all 24 are superb, but we had to draw the line somewhere!). Consider this your essential Caravaggio hit list.
And remember, if you want to see the exhibition for yourself then Through Eternity are excited to be offering small group and private tours of the Barberini show led by an expert art historian. Interest in the exhibition is off the charts and tickets are selling out fast - be sure to book your place now so you don't miss out!
Boy Peeling a Fruit, c. 1592
On loan from the Longhi Collection, Florence
Before the dramatic chiaroscuro, before the violence, before the masterful altarpieces that seemed to bend the art world around them with their irresistible force, there was this: a boy lost in the act of peeling a piece of fruit. One of Caravaggio’s earliest known works, the scene is apparently a simple one - yet already Caravaggio’s eye for life’s quiet details is at work.
The curl of the peel, the translucency of the skin, the moist sheen of the boy’s lips - all are rendered with an almost supernatural realism that bewitches the eye. Even here, in his youthful experiments, we glimpse the revolutionary naturalism that would soon make Caravaggio Europe’s most famous painter.
The Cardsharps, c. 1594
On loan from the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth Texas
Rome, 1594. Caravaggio hasn’t been in the Eternal City for long, but is already the finest interpreter of its seedy underbelly. In this superb genre scene, on display thanks to a loan from the Kimball Museum in Fort Worth Texas, a gullible young noble is about to learn the hard way that you trusted nobody in the rough and tumble world of the Eternal City.
An oblivious dupe fails to hold his cards close to his chest, and it’s the work of a moment for the seasoned cheat behind him to signal to his roguish mate across the table the meagre contents of his hand. The rogue, for his part, easily whips a new card from his back pocket, safe in the knowledge that his opponent is miles out of his depth. A lesson learned, hopefully, where nothing was lost but pride and a few coins.
As Caravaggio would himself soon learn though, the stakes were often far higher for those who plied their trade on the city’s mean streets - prison, exile and even death.
Judith Beheading Holofernes, 1599
Palazzo Barberini, Rome
In what is arguably his most famous painting, Caravaggio distills sex and violence into a stupefying rendering of Judith’s righteous execution of the Assyrian general Holofernes. The act is clinical yet chaotic: Judith, her steely gaze fixed in determination, saws through the throat of a bleary-eyed Holofernes as ribbons of blood spurt and stain the sheets. The old servant Abra looms beside her, complicit yet coldly detached.
Caravaggio’s Judith is unmistakably contemporary, as much streetwise Roman courtesan as virtuous biblical heroine. The painting’s first viewers must have recognized in the painting too the ghost of Beatrice Cenci, the young noblewoman recently beheaded in Rome for the murder of her abusive father: her tragic fate was one of the era’s great causes célèbres, and it seems no great stretch to imagine Caravaggio himself gazing awestruck on the scene of execution. With typical disdain for decorum, here was Caravaggio smashing the sacred into the sordid - and forging a new kind of religious painting in the process.
The Taking of Christ, 1602
On loan from the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin
A moonlit betrayal, a flash of metal, the Bible brought to life with the immediacy of a Hollywood thriller. The Taking of Christ is one of the Barberini exhibition’s most exciting highlights, dragging biblical history into the shadows of a Roman back alley. Caravaggio’s scene is almost unbearably claustrophobic - Judas lunges forward, his kiss of betrayal already planted on the Messiah’s cheek, as soldiers close in.
A lantern cuts dramatically through the darkness, illuminating faces contorted with shock and fear. Look closely and you’ll see that it is Caravaggio himself, holding the light, staring straight at us. He is both witness and accomplice. In this world, no one is innocent.
For centuries the painting had vanished from public view until its remarkable rediscovery in 1990, hanging unrecognized in a Jesuit residence in Dublin. Expert analysis soon confirmed the unthinkable: this was one of the most sought after lost masterpieces in Caravaggio’s oeuvre, hidden in plain sight. Since then it has featured as the climax of Dublin’s National Gallery, and only rarely goes out on loan. What a treat to see it here!
The Conversion of Paul, 1601
On loan from the private Odescalchi Balbi Collection, Rome
In art, conversion is often a happy affair, heralded with angels and trumpets. Here, Caravaggio was having none of it. Instead of celestial splendor, the artist gives us a world seen from the dirt. Saul - soon to be Paul - falls to the earth, body in collapse, hands covering his suddenly blinded eyes.. Christ himself leans down from the clouds, demanding the soldier’s soul. This is revelation at ground level, urgent, unsentimental and overwhelming.
This version of The Conversion of Saint Paul was Caravaggio’s first attempt for the Cerasi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo, but it never made it to the church. Either the client deemed it unsuitable, or the practicalities of the space forced a rethink. Caravaggio thus painted another version, itself an absolute triumph that hangs in the chapel to this day.
The panel on display here slipped into private hands, and for many Caravaggio fans like myself it’s become something of a white whale - seen in unsatisfying black and white reproductions in books, but never in the flesh. Its presence here alone makes the Barberini exhibition’s price of admission worthwhile.
Martha and Mary Magdalene, c. 1598
On loan from the Detroit Institute of Arts
This jewel-like meditation on faith, transformation, and sisterhood sees Caravaggio at the very height of his powers, a dazzling example of technical skill. The scene is intimate: Mary, the soon-to-be-reformed sinner (here modeled by the famous Roman courtesan Fillide Melandroni), listens as Martha earnestly describes Christ’s miracles, the two caught mid-argument. As with the Conversion of Saul, here is another sinner about to be changed, this time without any grand drama - it happens instead in domestic conversation, in the quiet persuasion of a sister’s love.
What makes this painting truly remarkable, though, is Caravaggio’s handling of surface and texture. Velvet glows, gold shimmers, glass refracts, light catches seductively in flowing auburn curls... This is one painting you want to reach out and touch.
Portrait of Maffeo Barberini, c. 1599
On loan from a Private Collection
Before he was Pope Urban VIII, Maffeo Barberini was a rising star in Rome’s power circles - and one of the city’s great patrons of art. Here Caravaggio captures him at his most shrewd, his sharp gaze meeting ours with an intensity that brooks no nonsense. Caravaggio’s portrait captures the young prelate with striking immediacy, his face emerging brightly from the darkness, lips slightly parted as if caught mid-speech - likely dictating a response to the letter he clutches in his left hand. This is the face of an ambitious man, poised at the cusp of a glittering career.
Despite Barberini’s eventual elevation to the papal throne, Caravaggio’s portrait drifted into obscurity, its whereabouts uncertain for centuries. Only midway through the 20th century did it resurface, its importance confirmed by the scholar Roberto Longhi who linked it to descriptions in early inventories. Today it’s on public display for the very first time, and helps rewrite our understanding of Caravaggio’s skills as a portraitist. It stands here beside another portrait of the cardinal, tentatively attributed to the earliest phase of Caravaggio’s Roman career.
The Flagellation, 1607
On loan from the Capodimonte Museum, Naples
A nightmarish vision of suffering, Caravaggio’s Neapolitan masterpiece strips Christ’s scourging down to its brutal essentials. The hulk of Christ’s luminous, muscular body stands at the center, a classical ideal drawn from the golden age of antique sculpture trapped in an ugly, visceral world.
The Messiah’s tormentors feel chillingly real - one thug yanks his hair as another binds his wrists, their faces cruel and coarse. The violence is immediate, tactile; the air seems thick with sweat and dust. This is a painting meant to be felt as much as seen.
Naples took notice; after its unveiling in the church of San Domenico Maggiore, Caravaggio’s influence on the city’s artists was absolute - another city conquered by his masterful brush.
Ecce Homo, c. 1605
On loan from a Private Spanish Collection
Another of the show’s great surprises, the Ecce Homo is a painting that hasn’t been on even the keenest Caravaggio watcher’s radar until recently. Looming out from the darkness, Christ stands draped in a crimson robe, bloodied and resigned beneath his crown of thorns.
Pilate, leaning over the parapet, is apparently caught in indecision, his half-gesture toward the prisoner like that of a man trying to rid himself of responsibility. He knows Christ is innocent, but pragmatism will lead him to give the unseen baying crowd what they want. Behind them, a soldier’s mouth twists agape in an ambiguous gesture - whether in fury or doubt, we cannot tell. Everything seems to be happening at unbearably close quarters. The tension is suffocating.
Painted shortly after Caravaggio was forced to flee Rome in the aftermath of murdering a rival, Ecce Homo seems to reflect the artist’s state of mind at the moment when he lost everything - hunted, judged, and at the mercy of forces beyond his control. The canvas disappeared into obscurity for centuries, before causing a sensation while being auctioned as the work of a minor artist in Madrid in 2021. Is it an autograph Caravaggio? Thanks to the Barberini show you can judge for yourself!
Supper at Emmaus, 1606
On loan from the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
Caravaggio’s first version of this subject, when Christ reveals himself to his stupefied apostles after his resurrection, is one of the most famous examples of the artist’s penchant for high drama. This later version, however, showcases a humbler, darker take on the miraculous meal. Gone is the theatrical revelation of the London canvas; here, the risen Christ is barely recognizable, a haggard traveler weary after long days trudging dusty roads. The moment of recognition is subdued, and the reactions of the disciples are quiet, almost hesitant.
What had changed since the barnstorming London panel? In the interim, Caravaggio had gone from the world’s most feted painter to a fugitive on the run with a price on his head. This is Emmaus after exile, a miracle cut to the size of a world riven by doubt and the loss of youthful certainties. A quieter Caravaggio, perhaps, but no less brilliant.
The Martyrdom of St. Ursula, 1610
On loan from the Intesa Sanpaolo Collection, Naples
Caravaggio’s final work is a masterclass in narrative compression: the moment of death distilled into a single, agonizing beat. The saint, transfixed by the fatal arrow lodged in her chest, clasps the wound with an air of disbelief, her face ghostly pale. Her assassin, an enraged Hun king, glares as if furious at his own cruelty. The other figures—soldiers caught mid-motion, an onlooker bathed in a spectral glow—are frozen in shock.
But it is the figure whose face is spotlit against the inky background on the right of the scene that really catches our eye. Just as he had in The Taking of Christ, Caravaggio has included himself as a witness to the violence. Mouth agape in surprise, Caravaggio strains for a better look at the crime with a mixture of revulsion and grim fascination: his obsession with the darkest impulses of humanity had never been clearer.
The painting was met with universal acclaim - a contemporary report recounts how all who saw it were ‘astounded’ - but it would prove to be the last Caravaggio would ever paint. He was dead within months, his life’s final chapter as tragic as the paintings he left behind.
David with the Head of Goliath, 1609-10
On loan from the Borghese Gallery, Rome
A self-portrait like no other. Ostensibly this is the narrative of David and Goliath. The scene is stripped down and bare, and unlike Caravaggio's earlier scenes of biblical violence, here the bloody deed has already been completed. Unlike Michelangelo and Donatello’s iterations of the heroic shepherd boy turned savior, there is no hint of triumphalism in Caravaggio’s young David: he appears instead as a solemn executioner, staring at the head almost with a sense of mourning. But why is it so melancholic?
The answer lies with Goliath. In this startling work, Caravaggio paints himself not as the hero, but as the condemned. In the features of the giant’s severed head, eyes sunken and lifeless, we unmistakably recognize the artist’s own. Caravaggio, exiled and hunted, pleads for mercy through paint.
The painting was intended as a gift and petition to Cardinal Borghese, nephew to the Pope and Rome’s kingmaker, a desperate attempt to paint his way back into favor and to win his pardon. The ruse worked, but redemption never came - Caravaggio perished in mysterious circumstances on his way back to Rome, destined never to pick up his brushes again.
Caravaggio's life was coming to an end - but as the extraordinary Palazzo Barberini exhibition shows, the story of his art was just beginning.
Want to experience the Caravaggio exhibition for yourself? Through Eternity is thrilled to offer small group and private tours of the Barberini show. Join our expert guide to uncover the fascinating stories behind Caravaggio’s masterpieces - but act fast, with demand through the roof, tickets won’t last long!
MORE CARAVAGGIO CONTENT FROM THE BLOG:
- On the Trail of Caravaggio in Baroque Rome
- Artist on the Run: Where to See Caravaggio in Naples
- Caravaggio in the Borghese Gallery: The Complete Guide
- Caravaggio, Bernini and Borromini in Rome
- Caravaggio's Rest on the Flight to Egypt in the Doria Pamphilj Gallery
