It was a strange time to be visiting Rome for an exhibition, Caravaggio 2025 at the Palazzo Barberini. The city was thronged with people lining up to view the casket of Pope Francis, who had just passed away. The cardinals had gathered for a conclave. Life and death, faith, and especially Catholic religion were suddenly very much on the minds of visitors to Rome—the city where, four centuries ago, popes brought both fame and condemnation to one of the greatest artists that Rome has witnessed.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) spent his life serving Roman patrons and the Vatican popes. His artistic life revolved around commissions for paintings glorifying religious contemplation, humility, mercy, submission, and acceptance of punishment. His private life was punctuated with drunken brawls, fights over a woman or an insult, imprisonment for slander, and, finally, condemnation for murder. Even when he was finally pardoned for this cardinal sin against the commandment of “thou shalt not kill,” Caravaggio never got his final absolution from his papal patron—he died, alone, in the small seaside town of Ercole, trying to board a ship back to Rome. The man who painted so many moving images of gaining and maintaining faith, from his St. Matthew paintings to The Conversion of St. Paul and The Ecstasy of St. Francis, did not resolve his conflicts with the prescriptions of his faith until his untimely passing.

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