A 111×68 panel that was auctioned in 2021 for a few hundred euros, then the doubts of the Spanish authorities and the painstaking work of expert critics revealed that what they had in their hands was a priceless work value. This is the recent history ofEcce Homo which from May 28th will be exhibited at the Prado Museum in Madrid until next October. Not a work by the student José de Ribera, as initially believed, but by the master Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio. The 60th attributed to him has reached us. In April three years ago, it was the same Spanish museum that reported to the Ministry of Culture that that painting at auction for Ansorena for around 1,500 euros deserved to be the subject of a more in-depth study, because it could be a priceless work. value. «After an in-depth diagnostic investigation conducted by Claudio Falcucci», a nuclear engineer specialized in the application of scientific techniques to the study and conservation of cultural heritage as the museum itself explains, «the restoration was carried out rigorously and every decision was supported by an exhaustive evaluation of the work’s materials and the conservation history of the painting, reiterating the initial attribution to the Italian master”. Now theEcce Homomade between 1605 and 1609, was lent by the anonymous new owner to the Prado and will be available to the public for the first time, as explained by Alessandro Masi, general secretary of Dante Alighieri and art historian, who in the video above it also recounts the artist’s “Roman events” – from unpaid rent, to murder, to his escape from Italy to his death near Orbetello.
