CAMPIDOGLIO AND CAPITOLINE MUSEUMS, Capitoline Museums Art Gallery

As I mentioned, we say the "Capitoline Museums" because the complex includes several collections: one of the most valuable and ancient is the Capitoline Art Gallery that was founded in the mid-18th century and offers a collection of paintings of different ages. It has many great works from the Venetian masters of the sixteenth century, including Titian and Lorenzo Lotto, and especially Italian and European masterpieces from the 17th century: Velázquez, Van Dyck, Guido Reni, Domenichino, and an immense painting by Guercino that was originally destined for St. Peter's Basilica. But the museum's pièce de résistance are two masterpieces by Caravaggio that I'll tell you about right now.

The first is called The Fortune Teller and is perhaps the first work where Michelangelo Merisi, also known as Caravaggio, portrayed two figures interacting with each other. It shows a scene of everyday life that was typical of the streets of central Rome: a young and smiling gypsy captures the attention of a naive young man of a good family, and while pretending to read his hand, she skillfully steals a ring from his finger. The model depicted in the picture was a good friend of Caravaggio's, as well as a painter that was well known above all in his native Sicily....