ROME — Four centuries after St Peter’s Basilica was consecrated, a new exhibition in Rome reconstructs the partnership that gave birth to the Baroque and transformed the Eternal City into Europe’s artistic capital.
“Bernini and the Barberinis,” assembles more than 70 works from international museums and private collections, many shown in Rome for the first time. Curated by Andrea Bacchi and Maurizia Cicconi with a large scientific team, the show traces how 17th century Pope Urban VIII (born Maffeo Barberini) recognised the talent of the young Gian Lorenzo Bernini and pushed him beyond sculpture into architecture, painting, set design, and urban planning. The show runs from February 2 to June 14.
A patron’s eye for genius
Barberini was no casual admirer. A trained lawyer with deep cultural education, he began commissioning marble sculptures from Bernini as early as 1617 when the artist was still working in his father Pietro’s workshop. He encouraged the young sculptor to break from his father’s virtuosic mannerism and develop the naturalism, physical energy, and emotional directness that would define Baroque art across Europe.
“The relationship between artist and patron takes the form of an ongoing dialogue, based on a deep intellectual harmony and a shared conception of art as a tool for persuasion, celebration and affirmation of power. Bernini became the privileged interpreter of the Barberini family’s ideological programme, translating their ambitions into an innovative visual language capable of combining pathos, theatricality and symbolic rigour,” director Thomas Clement Salomon explained.
The Baldacchino
A giant photographic reproduction of the Baldacchino of St Peter’s anchors the exhibition. Bernini did not build St Peter’s, which was primarily the work of Michelangelo and Maderno, but he defined the basilica as the world experiences it today, creating its towering Baldacchino, the theatrical Cathedra Petri in the apse, and the sweeping colonnade of Piazza San Pietro that embraces visitors as they approach. He was barely 25 when he received the Baldacchino commission.
The show also presents eight busts of Urban VIII, gathered from international collections and displayed together for the first time. The rarest is carved in red porphyry, a marble whose colour recalls imperial purple and has symbolised power since antiquity, with a bronze head, dating from 1630–32.
While the Thirty Years’ War devastated much of the continent between 1618 and 1648, Rome under Urban VIII experienced an extraordinary period of artistic production. The pope’s 21-year reign turned the city into a stage for wonder, spectacle, and monumental ambition, a legacy this exhibition now makes visible in concentrated form.
