The Giustiniani collection was one of the most influential collections of the European Baroque period. It was assembled by the brothers Vincenzo and Benedetto Giustiniani, during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The collection was founded with a small number of works, which the brothers inherited from their father. The collection included fifteen paintings by Caravaggio,and, to mention only the more famed artists, Domenichino, Carracci, Veronese, Dosso Dossi, as well as works attributed to Titian and Raphael. The brothers particularly valued works by northern artists. Honthorst, Terbruggen, Duquesnoy, and Poussin all completed commissions for them. In total, Benedetto and Vincenzo Giustiniani owned some six hundred paintings, and some two thousand antiques. In addition, the Palazzo Giustiniani contained valuable decorations, and their villa in Bassano Romano included frescoes by Tempesta, Albani and Domenichino. Numerous artists, from all over Europe, either worked for the brothers, or visited their collection. As a result, the Giustiniani collection had an extraordinary influence on the establishment of a common European culture. The brothers influenced the artistic taste of an epoch, with their wide-reaching personal relationships and friendships.
During the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, the collection was gradually dispersed. In 1815 the Prussian King , Friedrich Wilhelm III, aquired one hundred and fifty-seven pictures from the collection. Fourty-two of these can be found today in Berlins Gemäldegalerie, and a further twenty-five in the Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten in Potsdam. Approximately half of the pictures from this once rich stock, were either destroyed during or after the second world war, or are still missing. Numerous other museums and private collections also own works from the Giustiniani collection.