Portrait of Maffeo Barberini, later Pope Urban VIII

Caravaggio's portrait of the young Maffeo Barberini from around 1598, later Pope Urban VIII, documents a fascinating early encounter between two men who would both be central to the Roman cultural scene for the next decades. Barberini was in his late twenties when Caravaggio painted him, a rising churchman from a Florentine banking family whose cultural ambitions were as striking as his political ones. He would become Pope in 1623 and spend his pontificate as one of the great art patrons of the Baroque, commissioning Bernini's most celebrated works. His youthful portrait by Caravaggio captures a man of intelligence and ambition at the beginning of his ecclesiastical career.

The painting demonstrates Caravaggio's characteristic dramatic lighting, with the sitter's face strongly illuminated against a dark background. The naturalistic treatment of the face conveys Barberini's alert intelligence, while the careful rendering of ecclesiastical vestments establishes his status.