Bernini e i Barberini

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Monsignor Francesco Barberini, ca. 1623, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

Bernini e i Barberini explores the extraordinary relationship between Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Maffeo Barberini, his first and most influential patron, who took the name Urban VIII upon his election to the papacy in 1623. It will offer an unprecedented opportunity to reconsider the birth of the Baroque through the privileged lens of the artistic, political, and personal dialogue between Bernini and Pope Urban VIII, key figures in the establishment of the Baroque language. The event also coincides with the four-hundredth anniversary of the consecration of the new St. Peter’s Basilica (1626), a landmark moment in the history of Roman Baroque and in Bernini’s career.