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| Pietro da Cortona Glorification of the Reign of Urban VIII, or, Triumph of the Barberini ceiling fresco, 1630s Palazzo Barberini, Rome |
I first took note of this ceiling fresco in 2011 here, after having stood under it in sheerest marvel at Palazzo Barberini in Rome. Recently I came across Francis Haskell's history and description of the ceiling. It was the first thing I had read that ran parallel to my own extreme response to this gigantic and overpowering work of art. I quote small sections of his text below.
"Urban VIII [Maffeo Barberini] was a handsome, cultivated and friendly man liable to fits of extremely bad temper. ... He combined deep religious feeling with an element of crude superstition, and he dabbled extensively in astrology. But his leading characteristics were extreme vanity and over-powering ambition unaccompanied by any compensating strength of will. His rule is disfigured by acts of petty meanness and a complete failure to achieve that aggrandisement of the papacy which had been his original aim. The society in which he lived was one calculated to accentuate all his defects of character, yet to that society and to those defects we owe some of the most splendid monuments of his patronage."
"The proposals for the great hall were grandiose – indeed the most spectacular that had ever been seen in a work of the kind. The Pope's favorite poet, the Tuscan Francesco Bracciolini, was called in to devise an elaborate programme to the glory of the family. ... In the center, Divine Providence, the sovereign of the Present and the Future, of Time and the Fates, obeyed by all the Virtues, commands Immortality to crown them with a halo of stars as they form an escutcheon borne aloft by Faith, Hope and Charity. Above, Religion, with her keys, and Rome, holding the papal tiara, add their tribute to the reigning family."
"Pietro da Cortona's ceiling opens a new chapter in Baroque decoration: the whole vast expanse is covered with one single fresco instead of being broken up into separate compartments; the painted 'frame' appears to be deliberately defied by a swirling crowd of figures, whose grandeur and richness of colour awe, almost crush, the visitor with the feeling of his insignificance; writhing masses of raw, red, tumbling giants convey the impression of some tremendous conflict being waged only just above his head so that he too is inextricably involved in the Pope's strenuous war against the forces of evil."
"Throughout Uban's reign the papacy was losing power and prestige and yet it still (for the last time) appeared to be an important force in international politics. The end of the Thirty Years' War and the arrogance of France were soon to change all that. Meanwhile court art reached a new pitch of grandeur and flattery. Religious imagery was used to buttress secular claims, and new techniques of illusionism were devised to overwhelm the onlooker. For all its apparent optimism and opulence there is perhaps a touch of hysteria about Pietro da Cortona's ceiling in the Barberini palace. Certainly no later pope was able to go so far in self-glorification."
– from Patrons and Painters : a Study in the Relation between Italian Art and Society in the Age of the Baroque / by Francis Haskell (2nd edition, 1980)
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| Pietro da Cortona Glorification of the Reign of Urban VIII, or, Triumph of the Barberini ceiling fresco, 1630s Palazzo Barberini, Rome |
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| Identification of principal figures in Pietro da Cortona's ceiling fresco at Palazzo Barberini |
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| Pietro da Cortona central motif of Barberini Ceiling with Papal Arms assembled of airborne living elements 1630s Palazzo Barberini, Rome |