A truly extraordinary occasion opened up on the 16th November in Milan to end on the 14th December. Indeed, in the Sala Alessi of Palazzo Marino a wonderful and unfortunately hardly known work by Caravaggio will be exhibited: “The Conversion of Saul”. A work that proves to be the only relevant example of painting on panel by the great Lombard master.
Executed in 1601, it has had a rather tormented history. It was commissioned by Tiberio Cerasi for his personal chapel in S. Maria del Popolo in Rome, where the work was never exposed due to the protracting of the works and to the sudden death of the cardinal himself. Afterwards, it ended up in Spain, was then bought by the Balbi family from Genoa and finally, in the Fifties, it returned by way of heredity to Rome as the “pearl” of the Odescalchi collection.