Palazzo Barberini Opens Up with Show Juxtaposing Renaissance and Contemporary Art

Giulio Paolini's contemporary "Eco nel vuoto" (Echo in the void)
 in the same room as Caravaggio's "Narciso" (Narcissus) (1597-99) (also below right).

Palazzo Barberini - that staid old lady in the Centro housing major Renaissance paintings and sculpture - has something new to offer. Following an accord between the Ministers of Cultural Heritage and Defense, the entire South wing of the building, comprising 10 rooms and a small chapel, has been turned over to public use.

From 1934 until this agreement in 2015, the "circolo" - or social center - for the Armed Forces occupied these rooms, perhaps not their highest and best use. We saw some of these odd uses when we highlighted the grounds of the Barberini in a 2014 post. Pursuant to this unusual agreement, the Defense Ministry contributed almost €2 million (about $2.3 million). And they get to use the rooms for 40 days/year - for "reasons of high representation."

That curious story aside, the rooms are magnificent and the opening show - which closes at the end of this month (Oct. 28), is a great one with which to open the South wing. Titled Eco e Narciso ("Echo and Narcissus"), it's a creatively curated matching of Barberini Renaissance works and contemporary pieces. I admit, I'm a sucker for that type of juxtaposition dating from when I saw a show entitled "Antiques in the Modern Home" - or something like that - in the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence in the 1960s.

Bernini's sculpture of Pope Urban VIII flanked by Yan Pei-Ming's
paintings of Pope John Paul II (2005) and Mao (1999?)

Paired for example are Gian Lorenzo Bernini's sculpture of.Pope Urban VIII (Cardinal.Francesco Barberini) with paintings of Pope John Paul II and Mao by Yan Pei-Ming; Renaissance paintings of women with Kiki Smith's sculptures; a room richly frescoed by Pietro da Cortona with Luigi Ontani's "Le Ore" ("The Hours").

Ontani's "Le Ore" (1975) in the large salon with
 da Cortona's ceiling fresco, "Allegory of Divine
 Providence"  (and Barberini Power), 1633-36.

The theme is portraiture and self-portraiture, and certainly Ontani about whom we've written before, fits the "Narcissus" theme.

Signature works by Caravaggio and Raphael are also prominent in this show, which features 19 more masterpieces from the collection of the Gallerie Nazionali, in dialogue with 17 contemporary works from MAXXI or loans, with three works realised for the occasion (including 2 for which there are photos here - by Giulio Paolini (top photo) and Yinka Shonibare (last photo).

Ontani again.

The juxtaposition of works was created by a Renaissance art curator and a contemporary art one: Flaminia Gennari Santori, of the Barberini/Corsini galleries, and Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, director of the 21st- century MaXXI Arte.  There's another piece to the show at MAXXI, featuring one Renaissance and one contemporary work.

Kiki Smith's "Large Dessert" (2004-05) against the backdrop of female portraits
by Rosalba Carriera and Benedetto Luti (both late 17th to early 18th centuries).

After the current show closes, the entire collection will be re-arranged. For those familiar with the Barberini, this likely is welcome news.  For those of us who visit intermittently, we probably won't notice the difference, except for one change - visitors now will enter on the Bernini stairs and descend on the magnificent Borromini stairs (left), until now closed to the public.  

More pictures of the show below. 

Dianne 

Pierre Subleyras, "Nude from behind," 18th century, paired with
Stefano Arienti's piece below.

Arienti's "SBQR, netnude, gayscape,
orsiitaliani..." 2000.

Yinka Shonibare's "The Invisible Man" (2018) with Marco Benefial's "Portrait of the Quarantotti Family (The missionary's family)" 1735.

Exclusive: Sabine Women Live Happily Ever After

For millennia, disgust was the only reasonable emotion to have for what happened about 2700 years ago to the women of the Sabine, a people that occupied an area centered to the northeast of Rome, from the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Adriatic. Their story of Il Ratto delle Sabine (The Rape of the Sabines) was told and retold, by Plutarch and Ovid, by Renaissance painters Bartolome di Giovanni, Ludovico Caracci, Pietro da Cortona, Tiepolo, and many others--all featuring Roman soldiers struggling and tussling with the young ladies of the Sabina, often in sexually provocative positions. Later work--Primo Conti's 1925 depiction of the event--was more explicitly sexual, with the Romans presented as dark-skinned predators. Franco Gentilini's 1934 version resembles a Victorian picnic gone bad.

Forget all that, or most it, anyway. The "true" story--in any event, another story, another "myth" one might say--was told recently in an exhibit (now closed) at the Vittoriano. This narrative, with elements of the old one, but with more historical context, begins with the founding of Rome by Romolo (Romulus), and with Romolo's plan to increase the population of his new city by scouring the countryside for brides for the oversupply of Roman men. A not unreasonable goal, and for a while the thoughtful Romolo pursued it through diplomacy; he negotiated with surrounding territories, urging them to send their young women to the big city. When that didn't work, the clever Romolo gave a huge party, big enough to attract the Sabine women (and their escorts). At a prearranged signal, the Roman soldiers pounced on the Sabine entourage, scaring the men off and taking the women--only the unmarried ones, of course, so no families were split up, and everything should have been fine. Not so. Inexplicably, the Sabine men were furious, and they made war on Rome. BUT--and here we get another twist to the new story--the war was ended by the Sabine women themselves, who brought the two sides to the bargaining table. Perhaps they realized that despite that inauspicious beginning, life with the boys of Rome wasn't so bad after all.

More recently, we learned from the exhibit, the story of the Sabine women has found its way onto the silver screen. An early effort was Il Ratto delle Sabine (1945), dir. Mario Bonnard, then, by the same title, a 1961 film directed by Richard Poitier, featuring a young Roger Moore as Romolo. The Taviani Brothers took up theme in 1969 with Sotto Il Segno delle Scorpione (Under the Sign of the Scorpion).

But the real gem, from which we offer you a brief excerpt, is Stanley's Donen's frantic musical, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), starring Jane Powell, Russ Tamblyn, and Howard Keel. The film was influenced by a 1938 Stephen Vincent Benet novel, The Sobbin' Women, and it is set in Oregon Territory in 1850, with the Romans transposed into a family of horny but genial mountain men. Bill