The Scuderie del Quirinale present Barocco Globale. Il mondo a Roma nel secolo di Bernini, an imposing and previously unseen exhibition of international importance dedicated to cultural connections in 17th century Rome, highlighting the city's cosmopolitan vocation and dialogue with different and distant realities.
Curated by Francesca Cappelletti and Francesco Freddolini, the exhibition, based on a rigorous scientific-historical approach, displays one hundred masterpieces by great Baroque artists - Bernini, Van Dyck, Poussin, Pietro da Cortona, Lavinia Fontana, Nicolas Cordier, Pier Francesco Mola and others - together with drawings, engravings, tapestries, sacred vestments and artefacts from the most prestigious museum institutions worldwide, which tell of the influence of culture in Rome on the arts of the time.
The exhibition, whose title evokes the cross-cultural relations between the city and other artistic worlds, opens with the evocative display of the polychrome marble Bust of Antonio Manuel Ne Vunda by Francesco Caporale, depicting the diplomat Antonio Manuel Ne Vunda - preserved in the Basilica of Saint Mary Major and exceptionally on loan at the behest of Pope Francis - which introduces the first section dedicated to the interpretation of the African continent in the 17th century, with works such as Cheerful Company with Fortune-Teller, (1631) by Valentin de Boulogne, The Moor (1607-12) by Nicolas Cordier, Caesar restoring Cleopatra to the Throne of Egypt (circa 1637) by Pietro da Cortona. Following is a focus on Bernini and the commission of the Fountain of the Four Rivers with the monumental model of the work.
Also on display are Peter Paul Rubens' Portrait of Nicolas Trigault, the altarpiece with the Adoration of the Magi by Giacinto Gimignani, the copies of the icon of the Salus Populi Romani by Chinese artists and Carlo Maderno's Saint Cecilia by the Indian Nini in the section investigating the contribution of religious orders in establishing cross-cultural relations. The exhibition explores ambassadorships and relations with Islamic cultures, with Lavinia Fontana's unprecedented and majestic portrait of Ali-qoli Beg, Persian ambassador to Rome in 1609, and otherness between imagination and literature, with Jacob Ferdinand Voet's Portrait of Maria Mancini Mazzarino as Armida, Pier Francesco Mola's Oriental Warrior and Rutilio Manetti's Andromeda Freed by Perseus. Also on display are objects from faraway lands, such as the Mitra of San Carlo Borromeo and the sacred vestments of Santa Maria in Vallicella, the portraits of Sir Robert Shirley and his wife by Anthony Van Dyck, and the painting Hannibal Crossing the Alps on an Elephant by Nicolas Poussin (c. 1630), closing the exhibition.
For the occasion, the Presidency of the Republic, on the initiative of the Secretariat General, organises a series of special visits to the Salone dei Corazzieri, where you can admire the cycle of frescoes dating back to 1616 by artists including Agostino Tassi, Giovanni Lanfranco and Carlo Saraceni, depicting the ambassadors from Africa, Asia, the Near and Far East received in the early 17th century by Pope Paul V.
Barocco Globale. Il mondo a Roma nel secolo di Bernini is organised by Scuderie del Quirinale and Galleria Borghese with the institutional collaboration of ViVE Vittoriano and Palazzo Venezia and Gallerie Nazionali d'Arte Antica Barberini Corsini, with the extraordinary participation of the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major.
Photo: Bartolomeo Manfredi (Ostiano, 1582 – Roma, 1622), The Fortune Teller, © Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit
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