Rivalta's monumental vision and the “Keyhole”: a new perspective on the world's most famous dome

Embedded in the heart of the elegant Aventine district, the gardens of the Sovereign Order of Malta's Magistral Villa have welcomed one of Davide Rivalta's majestic bronze lions, in homage to Pope Leo XIV, thanks to an agreement between the Order and the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, over whose entrance they have been keeping watch, sly and good-natured, since 2017.

One of Rome's most iconic panoramas is thus enriched with a new and surprising element that, through the famous ‘keyhole’ of the great portal decorated by Giovan Battista Piranesi in 1765 in Piazza dei Cavalieri di Malta, accompanies the gaze towards the dome of the world's most famous basilica.

If you bring your eye closer to the ‘keyhole’, you will now be able to admire not only the profile of St. Peter's Dome, but also the figure of the king of natural beings captured in all his grandeur: a majestic and discreet presence that, between art, nature and spirituality, silently pays homage and reverence to the Pope ‘qui sibi nomen imposuit Leonem Decimum Quartum’.

The Bolognese sculptor (b. 1974) is known for his monumental representations of lions, gorillas, wolves and buffaloes, mainly made of bronze, aluminium and fibreglass, capturing the mighty animals as if suspended between realism and symbolic presence. His creatures, intensely expressive and profoundly elegant, protect and observe the public and institutional spaces on which they are placed, like the two lions exhibited under the portico of the Cortile d'Onore of the Quirinale Palace.