The portrait of Raphael's girlfriend
Rome's Palazzo Barberini serves as half of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, a collection of Old Masters from Raphael to Caravaggio
When a Barberini finally made pope (Urban VIII), the fabulously wealthy family celebrated by hiring Carlo Maderno in 1624 to build them a huge palace, which both Borromini and Bernini later embellished with window frames and doorways.
Since 1949, it has housed half of Rome's National Gallery of paintings, works that span the 13th to 17th centuries (the other half's in Trastevere’s Palazzo Corsini). The masterpieces are numerous, but while you're admiring the paintings hung on the walls, don't fail to look up at the ceilings, many of which were decorated by one of the masters of Roman baroque frescoes, Pietro da Cortona.
Keep an eye out especially for the Great Hall, where Pietro frescoed his masterpiece, the allegorical Triumph of Divine Providence (1633–39). It celebrates the Barberini dynasty in a sumptuously busy but masterful trompe l'oeil space open to the heavens with the Barberini bees swarming up to greet Divine Providence herself, who's being crowned by Immortality (most baroque pontiffs were not known for their modesty).
As for the works on the walls, you'll pass icons of art like Filippo Lippi's Annunciation and his Madonna and Child; Andrea del Sarto's Holy Family; Peruzzi's Ceres; Bronzino's precision Portrait of Stefano Colonna; Guido Reni's Portrait of a Lady believed to be Beatrice Cenci (who was condemned for the murder of her own father); and three Caravaggios, including a Narcissus and a gory, action-packed Judith beheading Holofernes, along with an attributed St. Francis in Meditation.
But the star painting has to be Raphael's bare-breasted Fornarina, held to be a (rather racy) portrait of the artist’s girlfriend, a baker's daughter named Margherita. Some critics say it's actually a painting of a courtesan by Raphael's pupil Giulio Romano, but this would not explain why the lass wears an armband bearing Raphael's name.
Other great artists represented here include Filippino Lippi, Sodoma, Beccafumi, El Greco, Tintoretto, Titian, Paul Brill, and Luca Giordano.
Via Barberini 18//Via Quattro Fontane 13 (just up from Piazza Barberini)
tel. +39-06-482-4184
Closed Mondays
www.galleriaborghese.it/barberini/it/default.htm
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This article was last updated in January 2007. All information was accurate at the time.
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Copyright © 1998–2008 by Reid Bramblett. All rights reserved.
