Our Director

Francesca Cappelletti has served as the General Director of the Galleria Borghese since November 2020.

She studied at La Sapienza University in Rome; at the Warburg Institute in London; and at the Collège de France in Paris, and is a full professor at the University of Ferrara. Her research has focused primarily on Italian art collecting from the Renaissance to the 19th century, 17th-century landscape painting, and foreign painters in Italy. Her studies on the Mattei Collection contributed to the rediscovery of Caravaggio’s painting The Taking of Christ, currently on view at the National Gallery in Dublin. She has served as a curator and contributed to exhibition catalogs in Italy and abroad, including, among others, Nature et Idéal. Le paysage à Rome 1600–1650, Paris, Grand Palais – Madrid, Prado, 2011; Bassifondi del Barocco, Rome – Villa Medici and Paris, Petit Palais, 2014 – 2015. Since 2009, she has collaborated with the Getty Research Institute (Los Angeles) on two projects exploring the history of art collecting in Italy. The first culminated in the 2014 publication of Display of Art in the Roman Palace, 1550–1750, edited by Gail Feigenbaum; the second resulted in the online publication of the digital humanities project Pietro Mellini’s Inventory in Verse, 1681. Moreover, she has led numerous seminars on the history of museums and Baroque culture at universities and cultural institutions in Italy and abroad (most recently: Sorbonne I, Paris; University of Vienna; Wallace Collection, London; Morgan Library, New York; Musei Civici, Bassano del Grappa; Aspen Institute–American Academy in Rome).

During her tenure at the Galleria Borghese, she devoted herself to creating the Galleria Borghese’s online catalog, which – after four years of intensive work – is now among the most advanced and scientifically accurate in the world, and launched digital projects involving all the museum’s departments, which were recently presented at the MIC. She has been particularly committed to promoting educational and accessibility initiatives, while also supporting an extensive public program of conferences, meetings, and lectures on the museum’s role and history. Among others, she has curated the exhibitions Timeless Wonder: Painting on Stone in Rome between the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, with P. Cavazzini; Caravaggio 2025, with T.C. Salomon and M.C. Terzaghi; Global Baroque, with F. Freddolini; and Metamorphoses, with Frits Scholten, currently on view at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The exhibition, the result of a collaboration between the two museums, will open at the Galleria Borghese on June 23. Some of her most recent books include: Galleria Borghese, Artem 2023 (second edition 2025) and Caravaggio. A Life in Ten Paintings, Mondadori 2026.

Together with Elena Fumagalli, she coordinates a research project aimed at a comprehensive reexamination of the Borghese documents in the Vatican Apostolic Archives, based on a research agreement signed with the Archives, which is carried out thanks to scholarships funded by fundraising initiatives.

In June 2024, she received the honor of Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic from the President of the Republic.