Palazzo Barberini (RM)
Part of the National Galleries of Ancient Art in Rome, Palazzo Barberini once housed one of the most important private collections of ancient art in the world, of which absolute masterpieces such as Raphael’s La Fornarina are still visible today together with new acquisitions from other illustrious bequests.
One of the most important palaces in Rome, its history begins when Maffeo Barberini was elected pope in 1623 with the name of Urban VIII and commissioned Carlo Maderno to build the new family palace. The architect, instead of demolishing the pre-existing villa, incorporated it into a new and visionary architectural project.
Among the features of the noble residence that are worth a visit, we find the majestic reception room frescoed by Pietro da Cortona, which is accessed by a square-shaped staircase, designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. While on the exit side, following the museum route, visitors leave the building from another extraordinary staircase: the oval-shaped helical one designed by Francesco Borromini and among the most photographed in the world.
A palace that celebrates the eternity of beauty through its collections that today span six centuries of history.
Over the years, the powerful Barberini family put together one of the most important collections of the time, which unfortunately, over the centuries, was dismembered due to the financial difficulties of the various dynastic branches. The original nucleus of the National Galleries that today we see at Palazzo Barberini was therefore formed in 1883 following donation to the State of the Corsini Collection, then located in Palazzo Corsini (the other Palace part of the National Galleries of Ancient Art) and other works from prestigious Roman collections: Chigi, Torlonia, Mattei, Odescalchi, Sciarra.
In 1949, the Italian State purchased Palazzo Barberini from the family’s heirs and in 1953 the new headquarters of the National Galleries was opened, which today exhibits a collection of works from the 13th to the 18th century with absolute masterpieces.
For pure divertissement, we mention the main works on display that originally belonged to the Barberini Collection. First of all, La Fornarina by Raffaello Sanzio from around 1520, which depicts, according to tradition, the artist’s lover and muse: Margherita Luti, daughter of a baker from Trastevere, a painting among the first to be purchased by the Barberinis.
Also famous is the painting from around 1650 that portrays, allegedly, the young woman condemned to death for having killed her incestuous father, Beatrice Cenci, of whom Goethe wrote: “In this face of Cenci there is more than I have ever seen in any other human face”, recently attributed to the Bolognese painter Ginevra Cantofoli and entered the Barberini Collections in 1818.
Among the works that are part of the Barberini Collection almost “by chance”, we find La Vestale Tuccia called La Velata by Antonio Corradini from around 1743, very famous because it served as inspiration to the Prince of Sansevero for his Veiled Christ, now preserved in Naples in the Sansevero Chapel.
The work was sculpted in 1743 in Rome in Corradini’s studio which was located near Palazzo Barberini, where it remained when the sculptor moved to Naples to work on the Sansevero Chapel where he created La Pudicizia shortly before his premature death in 1752.
Among the works that come from other collections, such as the Corsini one, we find those by Caravaggio, the painter of Light, with the masterpieces Judith and Holofernes, Saint John the Baptist, Saint Francis in Meditation and Narcissus, exhibited in a setting that emphasizes the revolution that the artist triggered in the city of the popes.
Inside the garden of the Palace, in its 19th-century greenhouses, there is also a splendid café, the Serre Barberini, the perfect place for a charming break immersed in the greenery.
The Secret
From around 1620, numerous craftsmen worked on the interior decorations continuously until the mid-eighteenth century, when the last direct heir of the family, Cornelia Costanza, had a rococo-style apartment built on the top floor. The descendants of the Barberini dinasty lived in the eighteenth-century apartment of the palace until the 1960s.
Useful Info
Palazzo Barberini
Via delle Quattro Fontane 13
00184 Roma
Tel. +39 06 4824184
Ticket: 15 euro Palazzo Barberini + Galleria Corsini