Bildnis Papst Pauls V.

Caravaggio painted this some time between May 1605, when Camillo Borghese was elected Pope Paul V, and May 1606, when Caravaggio killed a man in a brawl and fled Rome for good. So it belongs to his last, most precarious months in the city. The pope sits in his chair, heavy in red and white, one hand resting, the eyes slightly narrowed. Those narrowed eyes have made some viewers read him as cold or suspicious, but the likelier explanation is simpler: Paul V was badly short-sighted. For a long time scholars doubted this was really by Caravaggio at all, finding the pose too stiff and formal for him. The counter-argument is telling. Paul V was a grave, controlling man unlikely to let a painter arrange him freely, so the stiffness may be the sitter, not the artist. The Borghese were Caravaggio's protectors, and this portrait has hung in their Roman collection since at least 1650.