Caravaggio at Palazzo Barberini: Dark Dramas in Baroque Rome

Overview

Genius. Visionary. Murderer. Step into the dramatic world of Caravaggio on an exclusive guided tour of Rome’s most electrifying exhibition. With 24 extraordinary masterpieces gathered together at Palazzo Barberini — including newly attributed works and long-lost treasures - this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to witness Caravaggio's dangerous and uncompromising vision up close. From bloody martyrdoms to streetwise tricksters and dazzling portraits, join our expert guide to dive into the drama, the innovation and the scandal that fueled Caravaggio’s revolutionary art. This is the must-see event of the year - don’t miss out!

Description

 

A Once in a Lifetime Blockbuster Show

 

The Caravaggio 2025 exhibition at Palazzo Barberini is a true once-in-a-lifetime event, bringing together an unprecedented selection of the artist’s masterpieces from around the world. 

Caravaggio paintings are such hot properties that they very rarely go out on loan, so with no fewer than 24 autograph paintings on display - including newly rediscovered works as well as paintings that haven’t been seen in Italy for decades or even centuries - this exhibition offers a rare chance to see Caravaggio’s genius unfold in the glorious surroundings of one of Rome’s finest Baroque palaces. 

Join us to witness the evolving style of a master whose revolutionary approach to light and shadow and commitment to gritty realism  transformed the art world at the turn of the 17th century. Our expert guide will illuminate the stories behind the paintings as we trace Caravaggio’s career from his arrival in Rome up to his untimely death in 1610. This is one show you won’t want to miss!

 

The Rough and Tumble World of Rome in 1600

 

Caravaggio’s early years in Rome saw him carve out a niche as the great chronicler of the city’s underbelly. Trying to make his name in the ruthless Roman art world, the young artist gravitated to the taverns and backstreets where fortune-tellers plied their trade and gamblers played their hands for high stakes. 

His early genre scenes pulse with the energy of the streets: in The Fortune Teller, a smirking gypsy slips a ring from the finger of an unsuspecting youth, while the wide-eyed dupe in The Cardsharps (on loan from the Kimball Museum in Fort Worth Texas) learns the hard way that Rome was a city where you trusted no one. 

The Sick Bacchus and Boy Peeling Fruit are wonderfully intimate portraits of the everyday, while the Portrait of Maffeo Barberini, on public display here for the very first time, hints at the complex social world Caravaggio was navigating - where the city’s elite rubbed shoulders with the disreputable artists who beautified their palaces. 

Through expert storytelling, our tour will position Caravaggio’s art in the context of the city that defined him - splendid and squalid in equal measure - connecting his masterpieces to the streets he walked and the motley cast of characters he encountered in these formative years. 

 

The Bloody Visions of a Rising Star

 

As Caravaggio’s stock rose, we’ll see how the artist began taking on more prestigious commissions. The artist’s grand altarpieces offer up a new and dark vision of religious art where faith is forged in the fire of suffering, where saints and sinners are caught in the grip of pain, terror, and human frailty. 

The Taking of Christ - one of the show’s highlights on loan from Dublin - drags biblical history into the shadows of a Roman back alley, a claustrophobic night-time arrest lit by a single lantern in Caravaggio’s signature chiaroscuro technique. Judith Beheading Holofernes meanwhile presents a gut-churningly visceral scene of execution where a gushing arterial spray of blood soaks the canvas in livid red paint.

Caravaggio’s art was inseparable from his own violent, rebellious existence, and later works on show here offer up deep insights into how the artist’s travails - forced to flee Rome after murdering a rival - shaped his radical vision. 

In the Naples Flagellation of Christ, Jesus’ noble body writhes under the weight of blows from his grisly tormentors. The Martyrdom of St. Ursula on the other hand captures the saint’s moment of death in a frenzied whirl of pigment, Ursula gripping at the fatal arrow wound in her chest with what almost seems like fascination. With a shock we recognize, finally, the features of Caravaggio himself staring back at us from the disembodied face of Goliath in one of the master's final works.

Through gripping stories and expert insight, you’ll see how Caravaggio forged a new language of religious painting where the world of the Bible was unflinching, violent and disturbingly real.

 

A New Way of Seeing the Sacred

 

But there was a lot more to Caravaggio than blood and guts, as we’ll see in this fabulous exhibition. For Caravaggio, holiness was never something remote - it lived in the faces of ordinary people, in bodies that carried real weight and were governed by the base forces of a material world. Our guide will take you through his groundbreaking depictions of faith, discovering how he transformed sacrd tales into human dramas that still resonate today.

In the Odescalchi St. Paul, hidden from view in a private collection for generations, the saint’s conversion is not a moment of triumphant revelation but a sudden and disorienting collapse into blindness. Saint Francis in Ecstasy shows religious experience as something quieter, a flickering presence in the gloom caught somewhere between heaven and earth.

The superb, jewel-like Martha and Mary Magdalene meanwhile, another loan from the United States, takes religious transformation out of the realm of vision and into the domestic world: the sisters are caught in mid-conversation, conversion arriving simply in sisterly exchange. Saint Catherine of Alexandria, too, is no ethereal ideal but a flesh-and-blood woman rendered in beautiful chiaroscuro, the broken wheel beside her a stark reminder of her martyrdom.

Saint John the Baptist is clearly a Roman lad from the streets, a half-naked and brooding youth stripped of all idealization, while Christ appears before us as a weary traveler in the marvelous Supper at Emmaus on loan from Milan.

 

Rediscovered Masterpieces and Hidden Gems

 

Even if you’re a seasoned Caravaggio watcher, the Palazzo Barberini exhibition will offer up a version of the master that you’ve never seen before. In the centuries after his death, Caravaggio’s reputation suffered, and his works faded into obscurity. Many paintings were misattributed, lost, or dispersed far from the city where they were conceived, slipping through the cracks of history until sharp-eyed scholars and chance discoveries brought them back to prominence.

This show returns dozens of masterpieces to the Eternal City after decades abroad, offering an unprecedented opportunity to see them in dialogue with one another. Alongside well-known works, newly attributed paintings and long-hidden treasures are unveiled to the public for the first time. Art lovers will feel the thrill of discovery gazing upon Ecce Homo, recently identified in a private collection in Madrid, and the Portrait of Maffeo Barberini, on display for the very first time - an extraordinary addition to our understanding of Caravaggio’s portraiture.

Don’t miss the biggest show in town - this is history in the making!