A portrait attributed to Italian painter Caravaggio has gone on view in Rome, marking the first time it can be seen by the painting’s existence was made public 60 years ago. The painting depicts Maffeo Barberini, a Florentine aristocrat who was coronated as Pope Urban VIII in 1623. By papal standards, his reign was illustrious reign. Barberini expanded the church’s territories through armed force and keen politicking, even weathering 21 years of the Thirty Years War. Urban VIII was a major patron of the arts (he often commissioned Gian Lorenzo Bernini), though the same was not true for science. Under pressure from the Vatican, Galileo publicly recanted his astronomical breakthrough, itself derived from the Copernican heliocentric model also rejected by Urban VIII. Related Articles Caravaggio met the one-day pope as a young, ambitious man. Dated to 1598, the painting shows a 30-year-old Barberini wearing a black biretta—a three or four-peaked cap worn by Catholic clergy—and a green sleeveless cassock, another traditional Catholic signifier. Bright-eyed and grasping a letter, he had already obtained a law doctorate …