From Leonardo to Caravaggio — In China for the First Time

For 200 Years, They Decided What a Great Painting Looks Like

The Renaissance was the most-cited bracket in Western art history. Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Botticelli — these names form the entirety of most people's mental image of what a "masterpiece" is. Portraiture, mythology, the Madonna, the beauty of the human body: the intuition ordinary people carry today about what a great painting should look like was largely set by this group over two hundred years.

Standing at the end of that bracket is Caravaggio — the figure who closed the door on the Renaissance and pushed open the door to the Baroque. Rembrandt, Vermeer, Velázquez: the radical light and shadow you see in their paintings all traces back to Caravaggio.

This exhibition runs from Botticelli to Caravaggio — exactly from the opening of this history to its turning point. This summer, the Uffizi is lending 36 original works to China for the first time. They're at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing.

That Apple: What You See on a Screen vs. What You See Standing There

Raphael's Portrait of a Young Man with an Apple, c. 1505 — painted when Raphael was 22, barely two years into his time in Florence. A young man in a dark tunic, loosely pinching an apple at his fingertips, his expression calm but somehow hard to read.

The apple is not ordinary fruit in Renaissance visual language. It's the Forbidden Fruit of Eden. It's Paris's apple, the one that decided who was most beautiful and triggered the Trojan War. It's also the token exchanged between Florentine aristocrats as a betrothal gift. Three meanings — Raphael never specified which one he intended. He left the apple hanging there and the question with it.

The original is 47 by 35 centimeters, barely larger than an A3 sheet. It's not a painting you step back from — it's one you lean into, close enough to see the detail at his fingertips. That sense of scale doesn't translate to a screen.

Leonardo's Drawing: A Surviving Fragment of a Lost Fresco

Knight, Centaur and Soldiers in Battle, c. 1504, chalk on paper. It's a preparatory study for Leonardo's Battle of Anghiari — widely regarded as one of his most ambitious projects, and ultimately a failure. The paint fell from the wall; Leonardo abandoned it. Vasari later painted over the surface. The fresco is gone.

What survives are copies and studies like this one. It's among the most complete preparatory drawings from that project: human soldiers, mounted warriors, and — centaurs. Leonardo placed creatures from Greek mythology into a study for a historical battle scene, without explanation. This work is rarely loaned. It's in Beijing right now.

From Botticelli to Caravaggio: 150 Years in One Visit

The exhibition moves chronologically through three halls: early Renaissance in Hall 5 (Botticelli), the High Renaissance in Hall 3 (the three giants), the Venetian School and Caravaggio in Hall 7. This 150-year span — from the first stirrings of humanism to the revolution of light and shadow — can be walked in a single afternoon.

Botticelli's Madonna della Loggia (c. 1467) is among his earliest complete compositions; The Birth of Venus was still twenty years away when he painted it. The characteristic melancholy is already in her face, even if the technique isn't fully mature.

Caravaggio's Portrait of Antonio Martelli, Knight of Malta (1608–09) is the opposite extreme. Caravaggio was a fugitive when he painted it, sheltering in Malta in exchange for portraits. Four hundred years later, that old knight's gaze hasn't softened once.

How to Visit

National Art Museum of China, 1 Wusi Street, Dongcheng District, Beijing — Halls 3, 5, and 7 on the first floor. Open 9 AM to 5 PM daily (last entry 4 PM), closed Mondays except public holidays. Tickets are 120 yuan full price, 60 yuan concession, available on Damai or the museum's official mini-program. Exhibition runs April 28 to August 28, 2026.