Born to Giuseppe (1762-1809), a versatile and politically committed architect, and to Isabella Breccialdi he was one of the couple's nine children; one of his brothers, Paolo Emilio, is remembered as a painter. From the documentation of the Roman parish of SS. Vincenzo and Anastasio, with whom the artist was registered, there are conflicting elements regarding the date of his birth: 1785 as the death certificate would indicate or 1789 as it would result from numerous Easter censuses

Michelangelo had a childhood tested by painful circumstances. The mother, in 1793, was imprisoned in the Viperesche monastery (an institute founded in 1668 by the noblewoman Livia Vipereschi with educational purposes for orphaned and abandoned but also elderly girls, spinsters and widows), while the father, during the Roman Republic (1798 -99), he suffered the shame of an accusation of embezzlement from which he was acquitted but which led him to decide the transfer to Paris of the whole family (for Giuseppe's activity as an architect in the Napoleonic age see Fabio Benedettucci, 2008 ).

From the French capital, the Barbers returned to Rome after the political amnesty granted by Pius VII.

To date, no document has been received that allows us to know the training path of the young man both in terms of study and in the field of mosaic art.

As for the latter, Faccioli (1972) mentions an Aguatti as his teacher without specifying his name. It is known that there were two Aguatti mosaicists: Cesare and Antonio. The first documented in the second half of the eighteenth century and the second from the beginning of the nineteenth century. The uncertainty about the personal data of both the artist and the two Aguattis does not help to clarify the question. Pietrangeli in a small mosaic study (1972) traces a brief profile of Barberi indicating his birth in 1787 and assigning his training to Cesare Aguatti, probably assuming an apprenticeship completed at a young age.

From the facts that characterize his life and his professional successes, Barberi appears as a man of brilliant talent, amiable, cultured, with a vocation for music and a talent for bel canto.

The first part of his life took place between Italy, Russia and France.

Relations with Russia were long and fruitful: among his admirers and clients we must remember Tsar Nicholas I (1796-1855) and Tsar Alexander II (1818-1881). Particularly propitious was the meeting in Moscow, during the second decade of the century, with Princess Zenaide Volkonski (1792-1862) thanks to whose support, returning to Rome in 1817, he opened the mosaic workshop in via Rasella n. 148. His first masterpiece was born in this context and was the circular plan depicting The Triumph of Love completed in 1823 and executed on a cartoon by the Russian painter Fëdor Antonovič Bruni (1800-1875).

The Triumph of Love was purchased in 1826 by Empress Alexandra Fedorovna, wife of Nicholas I and is now in the Hermitage. The work is signed Opus equitis Barberi -A. 1823 Rome.

In 1828 Barberi returned to Rome from Paris where he had arrived the year before from Moscow. The artist had had to leave the Moscow city due to a serious and dangerous illness. The news can be read in the Diary of Rome (News of the Day column on Thursday 17 July 1828). The editor explains that the departure from Moscow took place precisely at a time when a larger field "presented itself to the artist so that his talent would shine more, while he had been commissioned by the Russian government to restore that part of the Kremlin building to its state. which was inhabited by Tsar Alessio Micailovitc in the tenth seventh century. Cav. Barberi sent, when he was about to leave, some drawings and various instructive and learned notes, in order to make the work to its end. We are pleased to announce that this sending Emperor Nicholas was welcomed and fully satisfied: what adds new luster to our fellow citizen ". A few months later, the same newspaper (n.46, Rome Thursday 13 November 1828), in the column dedicated to the Fine Arts, announces that the mosaic painting of H.R.E. and King Nicolas Emperor of alla Russia was completed under the direction of the Cavalier Michelangelo Barberi (now in London, Victoria & Albert Museum).

The announcement is followed by words of praise for the author defined as a very versatile genius in letters and arts and very deserving of the same. With regard to the portrait of the emperor, it should be noted that the artistic value of the painting is due to the use of the "ordegno" enamel and not of the furnace enamel, as was customary in ancient times. This new procedure was an innovation developed by Barberi together with his pupil Giuseppe Mattia. In practice, the enamel was spun using a goldsmith's lamp rather than the heat of the furnace.

In 1829 Michelangelo was again in Paris. It is during this stay that he meets the Irish writer Sydney Owenson known as Lady Morgan who will dedicate an interesting page of her opera France in 1829-30 to him.

The writer speaks of him as a person well introduced to the Parisian musical environment and praises the singing skills demonstrated in the interpretation of Rossini's music. She also remembers his activity as a mosaicist by writing that she had visited his studio in "rue de Tournelle" where he had been able to admire minute mosaics that could be set in a ring, views of Rome and a portrait of the Tsar of Russia in natural size. For the latter work, the identification with the portrait mentioned in the Diary of Rome in November 1828 can be considered certain.

In the same 1829 or early 1830 Michelangelo moved to Russia to then return to Rome where he began a new phase of life by marrying the twenty-year-old Adelaide Garofolini, daughter of the lawyer Michele. Four children will be born from the marriage: Isabella, Teresa, Emilia, Alessandro who are all baptized in the parish of SS. Vincenzo and Anastasio in Trevi.

The laboratory in via Rasella fully resumes its activity. Although we do not have direct information on its organization, it must be assumed that more mosaic artists worked there. Over time it was also equipped with its own enamel factory by the two Bonafede brothers, the same ones who, towards 1857, moved to St. Petersburg to open a similar factory there. Under the direction of Barberi, the laboratory also served as a mosaic school. From 1847 to 1851 it welcomed four students of the St. Petersburg Academy of Art: Vasili I. Raev (1818-64), Igor G. Solnzez (1818-64), Stepan F. Fedorov (1810-65), Ivan S. Shapovalov (1810-65). The four made, on a cardboard by Barberi himself, two copies of different sizes of the floor mosaic in the Sala Rotonda of the Vatican Museums. One copy intended to decorate a floor and the other a table top. Floor and table are now both in St. Petersburg.

The works carried out in via Rasella were many and of great commitment. Barberi himself provides ample news of them by publishing a sort of catalog with the title: Some musaics released by the Studio of Cav. Michelangelo Barberi, Rome 1856 Tiberina Typography.

The first page of the catalog is dedicated to the Young mosaicists:

To you scholars of mosaic art, I dedicate these compositions of mine, the result of many years of study. This art, which seems easy at first to those who want to make a profit, is just as difficult, indeed very difficult, to those who want to treat it artistically and philosophically. You who have a long future ahead of you, you must not limit yourself only to the mechanical part of the mosaic but you must carefully give yourselves to the drawing, the brush, and the letters. Then you will render to yourselves and to Rome, which is already beginning to make this art a lucrative trade, a very great service: and it will be a very sweet satisfaction to me to have opened a path that will lead one day to balance the large sums that we send abroad for frivolous things.

Among the Barberian masterpieces, the table tops now preserved in St. Petersburg (Ermitage) and London (Gilbert Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum) stand out for the originality of the iconographic invention and for the refinement of 'Love, The Beautiful Sky of Italy, Twenty-four hours in Rome, chronological Rome, The flora of the two Sicilies.

The beautiful sky of Italy was made in two copies. The first for Tsar Nicholas I (1825-55) who had asked the artist for a work in memory of his trip to Italy in 1845 and the second for the English nobleman Lord Kilmorey. In the first example - today in St. Petersburg, Ermitage - in the center of the floor stands the portrait of Tsarina Alessandra (1798-1860) in the second - now in London Gilbert Collection - four putti bearing the attributes of music, architecture, painting, sculpture. This latter was presented at the London Exhibition of 1851, where it obtained the great medal of the Council (the first prize) the only one awarded to the Papal State.

In his catalog, Barberi illustrates Bel cielo d 'Italia made for the tsar with the following description:

In the center, portrait of S. M. Empress of Russia carried by a group of geniuses. On the plan, to form a circle, 8 views of Italian cities: 2 dedicated to Rome (San Pietro and Colosseum) and the others to Florence, Milan, Venice Genoa (port) Palermo (S. Rosalia), Naples (Riviera di Chiaja) .

In a more external band there are famous statues and paintings. The paintings are Raphael, La Poesia (Roman school); Michelangelo, a Sibyl (Florentine school); Titian, La Bella (Venetian school); Leonardo, La Modestia (Lombard school); Guercino, a Sibyl (Bolognese school); Correggio, a cupid (Parma school); Salvator Rosa, the Belisario (Neapolitan school); Guido Reni, the Cenci (without indication of school). Sixteen medals with portraits of illustrious men: Romulus, Numa Pompilius, African Scipio, Regulus, Caesar, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Tacitus, Dante, Tetrarch, Galileo, Tasso, Colombo, Alfieri, Napoleone.

And so it is intended to form almost a chronology of those many geniuses that is capable of producing the beautiful country that part of the Apennines and the sea surrounds and the Alps.

The content of the description and above all the final Petrarchian quotation express the feeling of a romantic patriotism with a Risorgimento flavor.

Among the Barberian mosaics of the 1950s we must include those made for the Villa Demidoff di San Donato in Florence. Some of them are described in the catalog of 1856. The historian Cesare Da Prato recalls (1886) that a room of the villa housed thirteen views of Rome created in mosaic by the artist.

Among the clients of Barberi there was also the papal government for which the artist oversaw the restoration and reuse of ancient mosaics. He was responsible for the arrangement in the room of the Battle of Constantine in the Vatican of a mosaic floor coming from excavations carried out at the Scala Santa. In this undertaking the artist had as collaborators the mosaicists Pietro Palesi, Cesare Ruspi, Eugenio Mattia, Adamo Fantuzzi (completion of the work December 30, 1854).

In the documents concerning him, Barberi is always remembered with the title of knight. He held prestigious positions for the Academy of Virtuosi at the Pantheon and in 1856 he received the commendation of the order of St. Silvestro from Pius IX.

He also did his utmost in pious works as evidenced by his association with the archconfraternity of the Souls of Purgatory, of which he was Guardian, at the church of S. Nicola in Arcione.

He died in Rome in 1867. His remains after the solemn funeral celebrated in the parish of SS. Vincenzo and Anastasio in Trevi found rest in S. Nicola in Arcione where they remained until the early twentieth century when the church was demolished. The artist's burial was then transferred to Verano and adorned with a mosaic portrait, of which no trace exists anymore, executed by Pietro Bornia.

List of the works described by Barberi in the catalog of 1856

1. The Bel Cielo d’Italia, circular table top

2. Twenty-four hours in Rome, circular table top

3. The Flora of the Two Sicilies, circular table top

4. Greek or allegorical trophy, circular table top

5. The garland, circular table top

6. Chronological Rome, circular table top

7. Souvenir of the walks in Rome, rectangular table top

8. 16th century basin, circular table top

9. The halo, circular table top

10. Rectangular table with the protagonists of the reconstruction of St. Peter's Basilica

11.Circular table top with 5 views of Rome, festoons and pairs of hippogriffs (made for mr lucy in 1841)

12. Antique table, circular table top

Mosaics for the Villa Demidoff di S. Donato near Florence

13. Lion lying, floor in front of a malachite fireplace

14. Eagle on the snowy peaks of the Alps, floor in front of a lapis lazuli fireplace, 1852

15. Trophy of Arms and wreath of flowers on a moon base, floor in front of an antique red marble fireplace, 1854

16. Two small fauns for decoration of a fireplace, 1853

17. Panorama of the Roman Forum, painting 1854

Appendix of the works carried out in the Russian imperial study model for the mosaic in great principiate in Rome in 1847 transported to Petersburg in 1851 under the direction of cav. Michelangelo Barberi. Works carried out from 1847 to 1851 by Russian artists entrusted by His Serene Highness Mr. Prince Gregorio Volkonsky to Cav. Barberi so that they were trained in mosaic art and then worked in the large mosaic studio founded in St. Petersburg by his Majesty the emperor Nicholas I.

1. Reproduction of the ancient mosaic found in Otricoli and reused as the floor of the round room of the Pio Clementino Museum in the Vatican.

2. Five roundels depicting the half-length figures of the Virgin Annunciate and the Evangelists.

3. Two rectangular tables respectively decorated with double-headed eagle and geometric ornaments.

4. St. Nicholas of Bari copied from the existing mosaic painting in St. Peter's in the Vatican.