Caravaggio's work purchased by the State arrives at the Senate. It will be on display until 21 June

As had happened to Antonello da Messina's Ecce Homo, now also the Portrait of Monsignor Maffeo Barberini arrives at the Senate where it will be shown to the public as part of the celebrations for the 80th anniversary of the Republic. The two acquisitions (of absolute value) made by the Ministry of Culture in recent months are part of a broader project to strengthen the national cultural heritage. "The goal is to make more accessible to citizens great works of art, known and studied, often displayed in temporary exhibitions or reproduced in specialised texts, but not always permanently contextualised within museum institutions," this is the spirit of the initiative, echoing the words of Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli who inaugurated the exhibition together with Senate President Ignazio La Russa.

Scholarly tradition generally places the work around 1599, at the stage when Caravaggio was already established on the Roman scene. The exhibition re-establishes a deep historical connection with the places of the Senate. In fact, during his Roman years Caravaggio lived with Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, who lived in Palazzo Madama, and frequented the area between Piazza Madama, Piazza Navona and San Luigi dei Francesi. Alongside the canvas, archival sources documenting Merisi's presence in that urban and social context are also recalled. According to Giuli, what was done with Caravaggio and before Antonello is part of the vision of culture "as a common good and as an instrument for the growth of the community. It is a choice that interprets art as an investment for the future, as a heritage for our young people'.

"It is easy to grasp its beauty, it imposes itself with immediacy, through its expressive force, its topicality and the feeling it arouses. One only has to look at these works to feel fully involved. It is a further confirmation of the extraordinary ability of Italia, custodian of an immense heritage, to offer everyone a cultural legacy that we have a duty to honour and preserve," La Russa said when presenting the painting. The painting, which was taken from the market last March, will be assigned to the National Galleries of Ancient Art in Palazzo Barberini, and this in fact reconstitutes the historical and artistic link with Barberini's patrons and the nucleus of Caravaggio's works conserved by the Galleries, among the most important in the world. The inauguration was attended by the Secretary General of the Senate, Federico Silvio Toniato; the Head of the Cabinet of the Ministry of Culture, Valentina Gemignani; the Head of the Department for the Enhancement of the Cultural Heritage, Alfonsina Russo; the Director General of Museums, Massimo Osanna; the Director General of the Cabinet, Caterina Bova; the curators of the exhibition, Thomas Clement Salomon, Director of the National Galleries of Ancient Art in Rome and Roberto Vannata, Director of the Museums Directorate, and the Deputy Head of Cabinet, Valerio Sarcone.

The painting's arrival at the Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica "has all the sense of a historical reparation", comments Giuseppe Porzio of the University of Naples, speaking of the work "restored to Caravaggio by Roberto Longhi in 1963 with a memorable intervention in the pages of Paragone and which remained inaccessible to studies for decades".

"Net of a troubled conservation history, this is an acquisition of great importance, not only for the stature of the painter and the prestige of the effigy, which stretches out towards the viewer - in Longhi's words - "in its almost aggressive truth", but also because the painting, executed on the crest between the 16th and 17th centuries, is one of the very few autonomous portraits of certain autography by the Lombard master". To quote Longhi again, 'not a memorable document of mere resemblance or amplifying and rhetorical presentation', the Maffeo Barberini shows, perhaps for the first time, 'that even the portrait had to be action, a representation of drama in nuce'