Scholar Details Rediscovery Of Lost Caravaggio Painting In Paris

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Art historian Maria Cristina Terzaghi has provided her most comprehensive account to date regarding the rediscovery of a Caravaggio painting, Young Man with a Carafe of Roses, which had been considered lost for nearly two centuries. Three years ago, on a gray winter day, Terzaghi, a professor at Roma Tre University and a leading Caravaggio scholar, encountered the grimy work in a back room of a Parisian gallery and recognized it immediately.

Writing in La Repubblica on Sunday, Terzaghi detailed her reasons for attributing the painting, created in the 1590s, to the Italian Baroque master. The work depicts a curly-haired young man in a white shirt, leaning against a table laden with fruit, an artichoke, and a glass carafe of roses, his mouth slightly open and one eyebrow raised as if about to speak. A notable detail within the composition is the reflection of a window and another young man, possibly Caravaggio himself, visible in the carafe.

Scholars have been intrigued by this composition for nearly a century, with four known copies existing, including one at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Terzaghi asserts that the newly identified canvas is the missing original, painted around 1596 or 1597, during Caravaggio's early career in Rome. Her research indicates the painting was listed in a 1607 inventory of works belonging to Giuseppe Cesari, known as Cavalier d'Arpino, in whose workshop the young Caravaggio was employed.

Cesari later faced legal issues, accused by papal authorities of illegal weapons possession and orchestrating a street brawl that“disfigured a painter” named Pomarancio. He surrendered his art collection to avoid prosecution, with the works eventually passing to Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V. The painting was documented in the Borghese collection in 1693, and Terzaghi believes it remained with the family until at least 1831, after previous sale restrictions were lifted. The trail of ownership then goes cold until the early 20th century, when the painting appeared in the collection of a Paris bookseller.

Following the bookseller's death, his widow put the work up for auction in 1909, cataloged as a work by an anonymous Italian painter. An ancestor of the current owners acquired it, and it has remained in their family since. Terzaghi sees a strong connection between this painting and Caravaggio's Boy Bitten by a Lizard, another early work featuring a young man with an elaborate still life. Some scholars have suggested these two compositions might belong to a series representing the five senses, with the lizard symbolizing touch and the roses representing smell.

For Terzaghi, the painting's exceptional quality is the strongest evidence of its authenticity. She highlights the young man's expressive face, the shimmering white fabric of his shirt, and the remarkable depiction of light through the water-filled carafe. The floral arrangement also closely matches a description of Caravaggio's work by his contemporary and rival Giovanni Baglione, who noted the artist's unique treatment of water, glass, and dew-covered flowers.

This discovery is not entirely new to the art historical community. In January 2025, Spain's Ars Magazine reported that a French family believed they owned the missing Caravaggio. Terzaghi also referenced the painting in the catalog for the Caravaggio 2025 exhibition in Rome. However, her account in La Repubblica provides a much more detailed explanation of the attribution and the extensive provenance research.

Remaining questions include the exact route the painting took from Italy to France. As with most newly attributed Caravaggios, other specialists will need to evaluate the evidence before the work achieves broader acceptance. This news follows a particularly active period for Caravaggio scholarship. On Saturday, another Italian art historian, Gianni Papi, attributed a Portrait of a Young Man to the artist during a conference in Montepulciano. That painting had previously been sold at Dorotheum as a 16th-century Tuscan school work, and Papi has yet to publish his supporting evidence.

We previously reported:

Paris's Galerie de l'Institut is presenting a spotlight exhibition of French figurative painter Jean-Pierre Cassigneul, on view through November 24, 2026.

Five oil sketches by Peter Paul Rubens, lost for over 80 years after World War II, are now reunited for exhibition at Germany's Ducal Museum in Gotha.

Six Picasso prints, valued at over $112,000, were recovered in the French Riviera under a pile of clothes, nearly a month after their theft.

Source: ARTnews

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