Caravaggio: The Shakespeare of Painting

The ever rebellious Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio, was born in Caravaggio, Lombardy in 1571. He studied briefly in Milan, then moved to Rome in his early 20s. He soon had a number of commissions from the city’s churches and aristocrats and became one of the most sought-after artists in Rome. He received two prestigious public commissions for the churches of San Luigi dei Francesi and Santa Maria del Popolo. 

At 25, he killed a man during a game of pallacorda, a form of tennis, and fled to Naples and then to Malta. There, because of his artistic achievements, he was accepted into the order of the Knights of Malta but was soon brawling again and thrown into prison. He managed to escape and fled again to Naples where he awaited the pope’s pardon, sick and despairing. He tried to return to Rome but never arrived, dying in Porto Ercole. He was only 38.

That’s the short version of his life with questionable dates. We know little of it and much is speculation. It is thought that he only produced 64 paintings. His acute mastery of chiaroscuro is most certainly one of the greatest in all of painting history. 

He is the Shakespeare of painting, portraying heroic drama, intrigue, revenge, cheeky humor, and divine grace. Dramatic moments in Biblical history are seen in The Taking of Christ and Flagellation of Christ. And, there’s the levity in Bacchino malato, believed to be a self-portrait, Narciso (Narcissus), and The Cardsharps.

At Rome’s 2025 Jubilee celebration, in Palazzo Barberini, 24 of Caravaggio’s masterpieces are on exhibition in Caravaggio 2025. The Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica, in collaboration with Galleria Borghese, mounted an exquisite display of his genius. Structured around four thematic rooms that chronicle Caravaggio’s artistic evolution, the museum has garnered an impressive number of loans as well as two rediscovered paintings. 

The opening section highlights Caravaggio’s arrival in Rome in 1595 and his early struggles to make ends meet. During this period, he worked in various workshops, most notably that of Giuseppe Cesari/Cavalier d ‘Arpino, where he painted still lifes primarily of flowers and fruits. The second room creates visual dialogues between the paintings of Judith Beheading Holofernes, Martha and Mary Magdalene, and Saint Catherine of Alexandria.

In the third and fourth rooms are three distinct Saint John the Baptist paintings, each remarkably different in mood and execution. These underscore the shifting complexity of his style and deepens our awareness of the ongoing debates surrounding attribution. In the last room are Portrait of Antonio Martelli, Knight of Malta, and Saint John the Baptist. This room centers on Caravaggio’s ambition to obtain ecclesiastical honors, a goal that led him to Malta. It also explores his yearning to return to Rome after receiving news of the papal pardon, complicating the myth of his absolute aversion to the Church.

The walls of the exhibition are dark, providing a backdrop to the paintings’ extraordinary depth of color, light, and shadow, haloed by gold frames. Each room is heightened theatre. His flesh lives; the bodies are in motion; the eyes see and the lips speak. I’d love to see Othello played out in front of Caravaggio’s paintings, The Epic and the Tragic. 

Speaking with Alessandro Giardino, author of The Caravaggio Syndrome and Professor of Italian & Francophone Studies, he said, “What the exhibition largely omits is the environment of forgers, counterfeiters, and opportunistic dealers surrounding Caravaggio. He relied on forgers, counterfeiters, and opportunistic dealers during times of trouble, injury, or haste. Figures like Louis Finson and Abraham Vinck, active in Naples and known for producing Caravaggio copies, complicate attribution. A superstar work in this exhibition is the Ecce Homo, from a private collection and resurfaced only in 2021. Whether the painting truly was depicted by Caravaggio remains unproven. A new and more nuanced approach to attribution, I think, is necessary.”

Despite the widespread tendency to over-attribute paintings to Caravaggio with ambiguous, contested, or inconclusive evidence, what we think of as a Caravaggio today, and in this exhibition, is truly the work of a master painter. Perhaps we will never absolutely know. 

Caravaggio 2025 runs through July 20, 2025 at Palazzo Barberini in Rome. It is curated by Francesca Cappelletti, Maria Cristina Terzaghi, and Thomas Clement Salomon.