Who is Claudia Farini

Pietro da Cortona's The Triumph of Divine Providence, a fundamental text of 17th-century art

When, in August 1623, Maffeo Barberini (Florence, 1568 - Rome, 1644) ascended to the papal throne with the name of Urban VIII, many intellectuals, scientists and artists rested their hopes on this learned and refined man, hoping for a cultural renewa...
Read more...

Tempo Barocco: an intelligent exhibition in one of the most important places of the seventeenth century in Rome

At Palazzo Barberini, one of the two venues of the National Galleries of Ancient Art in Rome, until Oct. 3 it will be possible to visit Tempo Barocco, an exhibition dedicated to time as it was investigated, interpreted, and told by some of ...
Read more...

The many lives of the Mausoleum of Augustus, from the dawn of the imperial age to the present day

After a full fourteen years of closure , the Mausoleum of Augustus in Rome will reopen to the public in March 2021. The famous structure dates back to the first century BC, and was erected at the behest of the founder of the principality, Oct...
Read more...

The essence of winter in a painting: the Hunters in the Snow by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

In 1565 the Dutch painter Pieter Bruegel (Breda, c. 1525-Brussels, 1569), at the height of his career, produced a series of paintings devoted to the theme of the months of the year for the wealthy merchant Niclaes Jonghelinck, who later had to ...
Read more...

Bernini's dark years and his revenge with marble: the Truth of the Borghese Gallery

On February 5, 1629, with the reigning pope of the House of Barberini, Urban VIII, Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Naples, 1598 - Rome, 1680) was appointed as the new architect of the Fabbrica di San Pietro, just days after the death of his predecessor Car...
Read more...

The Transport of Christ to the Tomb. The complex making of an early masterpiece by Raphael

In the early sixteenth century an Umbrian noblewoman, Atalanta Baglioni, found herself involved as much in a bloody episode that destroyed her family, profoundly marking the history of the city of Perugia, as in the artistic affair that contr...
Read more...

When Michelangelo's Moses told himself to Freud.

In Rome, one of Michelangelo Buonarroti's best-known sculptural creations is housed inside the Basilica of St. Peter in Vincoli, to which the evocative Borgia climb leads from Via Cavour: the Moses. The artist began work on the statue during the...
Read more...

"Canova. Eternal Beauty." The long-awaited return of the Venetian master to the Urbe.

In 1787, commenting on the mausoleum of Pope Clement XIV that Antonio Canova had just completed in the Basilica of the Holy Apostles in Rome, the learned writer and theorist of neoclassicism Francesco Milizia wrote in a letter, "Canova is an an...
Read more...