Bernini and Barberini, between ritual and spectacle

Sometimes art history went faster than usual because two families found each other and recognised each other. The Roman Baroque was born precisely from that alliance that has the character of mutual choice. On the one hand, the Bernini, a workshop of Tuscan sculptors transplanted to Rome; on the other, the Barberini, an ambitious and cultured family determined to inscribe their name in the city of the popes. The meeting between Gian Lorenzo and Maffeo Barberini - the future Urban VIII - is the point at which their genealogies stop being private and become European destiny.

The exhibition Bernini and the Barberini family, on until 14 June in the rooms of Palazzo Barberini, puts this original knot back at the centre with an interesting family plot that makes it possible. Maffeo, even before ascending to the throne in 1623, senses something in the young sculptor that goes beyond expertise. He removes him from the orbit of his father Pietro, encourages his autonomy, and offers him a horizon that is not only economic but symbolic: the possibility of embodying a new idea of Roman greatness.

Photo Alberto Novelli

The Barberini know the value of images. Having arrived from Florence, they bring with them the Medici model of magnificence as language. They founded libraries, protected men of letters, built a court that was a cultural workshop. The bees in the coat of arms are not mere heraldry, but indicate a productive order, an industrious community that finds its legitimacy in form. Bernini understands that this emblem demands movement, multiplication and - therefore - splendour.

Before the Baldacchino, before the bronze turns into the space of St. Peter's, the turning point is already visible in the marble. The Saint Sebastian paid for by Maffeo in 1617 vibrates with a tension that no longer belongs to Mannerist composure. The surface becomes skin, the body leans towards the beholder and there is no longer contemplative distance, but involvement. It is here that the Caravaggesque lexicon and discipline are absorbed and surpassed in a language that aims to persuade through wonder.

With the election of Urban VIII, the family understanding became a monumental programme. The building site of St. Peter's offers Bernini the definitive theatre and the Baldacchino establishes a new hierarchy between the arts: architecture, sculpture and decoration fused into a single organism. It not only covers the papal altar, but constructs a scene that orders space and the gaze. Rome recognises itself in this orchestrated centrality, in this ability to hold ritual and spectacle together. The Baroque takes shape as a system.