Retrato de Maffeo Barberini

Caravaggio painted this around 1598, when the sitter was a rising churchman of about 30, not yet anyone the wider world would recognise. Maffeo Barberini came from a powerful Florentine family, wrote poetry, and moved in the same Roman circle as the cardinal who was Caravaggio's early patron. He is caught leaning forward, one hand raised as if mid-sentence, alert and impatient. In 1623 this man became Pope Urban VIII, the pope who would later summon Galileo before the Inquisition. The strange thing is how little anyone saw this picture. It sat in a private Florentine collection for generations, absent from every major Caravaggio show, known mostly to specialists. It went on public view in Rome only in 2024, and the Italian state bought it for Palazzo Barberini in 2026, for 30 million euros.