Barocco globale. Il mondo a Roma nel secolo di Bernini

The catalogue accompanies the exhibition presented at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome from 4 April to 13 July 2025.

The richly illustrated volume and the works on display bring out the historical and artistic complexity of the Baroque age in Rome, and connect it to the broader global context, beyond Europe’s borders: from the Americas to Africa and Asia.

This is the context in which Gian Lorenzo Bernini, with the Fountain of the Rivers, gave tangible form to the relationships that linked Rome to the then known world. With this cardinal work for the development of the artistic culture of the West, evoked in the exhibition by spectacular sketches, the world was brought to the centre of Rome, and Rome to the centre of the world. Bernini’s masterpiece, which is the subject of a special insight, is joined in the second part of the catalogue by the study of a selection of other works that lead the reader on a journey with broad interpretative implications, between religion, power, literature and the arts of the time.

Notable among the rich collection of illustrations are the many maps of the known world at that time, while the catalogue gives an account above all of the varied range of works on display, comprising paintings, sculptures and sacred vestments made from feathers and fabrics. They bear witness to a historical period when cosmopolitanism and transculturalism were salient features of the social and political fabric of the city.