4 April - 13 July 2025
An exhibition that explores 17th-century Rome as a crossroads of artistic dialogues and contaminations between Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. An event that analyzes the multicultural identity of the Baroque from an international perspective. Rome becomes the stage for an unprecedented artistic production, fueled by the presence of artists such as Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Pietro da Cortona, and Nicolas Poussin.
Scuderie del Quirinale, Via Ventiquattro Maggio, 16
In the heart of papal Rome in the 17th century, at the height of its political and cultural influence, an artistic dialogue is constructed between seemingly distant worlds. “Global Baroque” stages this extraordinary historical moment, in which ambassadors, missionaries, intellectuals, and artists from all over the world meet and engage with one another.
Curated with the contribution of the Galleria Borghese and numerous international institutions, the exhibition offers a journey that, through masterpieces by artists such as Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Nicolas Poussin, Pietro da Cortona and many others, testifies to the transnational dimension of Baroque art.
The exhibition reconstructs a Rome animated by intercontinental journeys and global diplomacy, where cultural diversities blend into a shared and renewed visual language. It is an opportunity to understand how 17th-century art was not only the result of an internal European flowering, but also an expression of encounters, relationships, and exchanges of knowledge that traced global routes.
The word “Baroque” evokes a world full of theatricality, movement, light, and color. But behind this spectacularity lies a profound intellectual spirit: an art born from the Catholic Church’s desire to assert itself through emotion, but also to represent a world in transformation. The 17th century is the century of scientific discoveries, the Counter-Reformation, and Catholic globalization. In this context, Baroque art becomes a tool for universal communication.
No other city embodied the Baroque like Rome. Under the pontificates of Urbano VIII Barberini, Alessandro VII Chigi, and other patron popes, Rome became the visual laboratory of the new art. Its churches, squares, and palaces transformed into stages for the spiritual and temporal power of the Church. But it was also a destination for travelers and intellectuals from all over the world, who made it a space for contamination and dialogue, as this exhibition recounts.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Naples, 1598 – Rome, 1680), the undisputed genius of the Baroque, is among the key figures of the exhibition. His works, in which matter comes alive with motion and spirit, reflect the tension between the sacred and the profane, light and shadow. The Baldachin of Saint Peter, The Fountain of the Four Rivers, The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa are emblematic examples. In the exhibition, Bernini is presented not only as an artist but as a symbol of Rome open to the world, capable of welcoming and reinterpreting distant influences.
Pietro da Cortona (born Pietro Berrettini, Cortona, 1597 – Rome, 1669) brings Baroque to the monumental pictorial dimension. His Triumph of Divine Providence frescoed in the main hall of Palazzo Barberini is a lavish vision of papal glory. But it is also a visual reflection on power as image. His painting, layered, illusory, and full of symbolic meanings, shows a constant dialogue with other cultures, particularly through the representation of universal allegories and exotic personifications.
Nicolas Poussin (Les Andelys, 1594 – Rome, 1665), though of French school, worked in Rome for most of his life. His Baroque is intellectual, dominated by order, measure, and stoic philosophy. In the exhibition, his works are placed in dialogue with the more spectacular ones by Bernini and da Cortona, to show the variety of voices that animated 17th-century Rome. Poussin embodies a cosmopolitan dimension of the Baroque that unites classical rigor with a drive toward universality.
The exhibition path is divided into different thematic sections, each exploring a specific aspect of cultural and artistic interaction in 17th-century Rome. Also present are works by Asian, African, and American artists who arrived in Rome, or whose cultures profoundly influenced European art. Interest in the Orient, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Americas emerges in iconography, materials, and subjects. Jesuit missionaries, Ethiopian ambassadors, Tibetan monks, Chinese scholars populate the documents and artworks, restoring a polycentric world in which art acted as a bridge between civilizations.
The exhibition opens with a section dedicated to papal Rome as a global capital. Maps, paintings, manuscripts, and art objects illustrate the arrival of travelers in the city from every corner of the world. Historical figures such as the Jesuit Matteo Ricci, the Japanese Hasekura Tsunenaga, and the Persian diplomat become protagonists of a narrative in which Rome becomes the center of a network of intercontinental relations.
Diplomatic gifts, artworks commissioned by foreign delegations, and portraits of ambassadors and travelers tell the story of diplomacy expressed through art. The image is a vehicle of dialogue, seduction, exchange. Baroque Rome hosts, celebrates, and visually returns the encounter between civilizations with extraordinary works:
Commissioned by Pope Francis, the polychrome marble bust of Antonio Manuel Ne Vunda, ambassador of the Kingdom of Congo, was sculpted by Francesco Caporale in 1608. Originating from the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, it tells the story of an African diplomat welcomed in Rome as a symbol of the spread of Christianity across the world.
The terracotta sketch of the famous fountain in Piazza Navona, designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, includes a personification of the Rio de la Plata with African features, a testimony to the artist’s awareness of the African diaspora.
In the painting Hannibal Crossing the Alps by Nicolas Poussin, the elephant Don Diego – born in India and brought to Rome – is more the protagonist than the historical subject itself. Commissioned by Cassiano dal Pozzo, the painting demonstrates the Baroque fascination with the exotic and the spectacular.
The exhibition offers concrete examples of how art served as a vehicle of exchange and transformation, presenting portraits of such diverse and distant figures painted by great masters.
Ali-qoli Beg, the Persian nobleman, is portrayed by Lavinia Fontana in a striking painting recently rediscovered and never before exhibited. Nicolas Trigault, the French Jesuit missionary, is painted by Peter Paul Rubens in Chinese attire—an emblem of cultural and religious intersection. Robert Shirley and Teresia Sampsonia, portrayed in Rome in 1622 by Anthony Van Dyck, the couple—an English ambassador in Persia and a Circassian princess—are represented in Persian garments and fabrics in a work that fuses Venetian painting with Roman cosmopolitanism. The paintings come from the British National Trust. Cleopatra in Ancient Egypt, in Caesar Restoring Cleopatra to the Throne by Pietro da Cortona, frames Egypt as an exotic backdrop for Baroque narratives. The Ethiopian Andromeda in European Dress, in a painting by Rutilio Manetti, the princess Andromeda is depicted with European features and hairstyle, attesting to cultural reinterpretations.
According to the curator, 17th-century Rome reveals itself as a global city, animated by ambassadors from the Congo, Persia, Japan, and India, and by a worldview that blends exoticism and wonder into every artistic expression. On display is also a feathered Central American mitre donated to Saint Charles Borromeo, as well as Chinese and Indian replicas of famous Roman icons, such as the Salus Populi Romani and Saint Cecilia.
This section focuses on the role of Rome as a hub of diplomatic and cultural exchanges. Historical documents, maps, and art objects illustrate the relationships between the Eternal City and delegations from Africa, Asia, and the Americas. These encounters not only influenced political dynamics but also enriched Rome’s artistic landscape, introducing new iconographies and techniques.
An entire section is dedicated to the fascination with Asia. Chinese motifs, Japanese textiles, and travel narratives from the East Indies enter the Roman artistic repertoire. The representation of the exotic is not merely fantasy: it often stems from direct testimony, from objects that actually arrived in Europe.
This section explores how and to what extent Eastern motifs were assimilated into Roman Baroque art. Works depicting exotic figures, precious fabrics, and Oriental art objects attest to the attraction and curiosity of Baroque artists toward distant cultures. A notable example is the “Oriental Warrior known as the Barbary Pirate” by Pier Francesco Mola, which represents a fascinating fusion of Western and Eastern elements. The exhibition also includes Ming porcelains, liturgical vestments embroidered in Asia, and illustrated manuscripts—evidence of a concrete knowledge of the East.
Africa is present in Baroque Rome through embassies from the Congo, the Kingdom of Ethiopia, and through the work of missionaries. Representations of African sovereigns, Congolese crucifixes in syncretic style, and portraits of freed slaves who became Roman intellectuals convey the complexity of a relationship that was not free from asymmetries, but rich in exchanges and mutual recognition.
This part of the exhibition analyzes the impact of African cultures on Roman art. Sculptures, paintings, and artifacts highlight how the encounter with these civilizations stimulated new forms of representation and symbolism in Baroque art. The presence of ambassadors from these regions facilitated a cultural exchange reflected in the artworks of the time.
In Roman Baroque we find both allegorical figures of Africa, framed by exotic animals and symbols, and realistic portraits of Africans who actually lived in Rome. This duality is examined rigorously in the exhibition to distinguish between stereotype and direct testimony.
The exhibition documents, through works, texts, and educational materials, how Roman Baroque was also nourished by this flow of ideas and images from the New World. Art thus becomes the witness of an era in which Catholicism expands beyond Europe, transforming into a global phenomenon, and in which Rome, although at the center of this process, opens up to the world with a receptive and surprisingly modern gaze.
During the 17th century, the American continent entered forcefully into the European imagination and artistic system through Jesuit missions in Paraguay, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, and Peru, which became centers of artistic and cultural production, blending Christian art with local expressive forms.
Wooden sculptures, embroidered altar frontals, carved crucifixes, gilded retables, and liturgical objects that arrived in Rome astonished for their craftsmanship and offered a more complex representation of the American indigenous figure. Among the works exhibited are rare examples of indigenous sacred art from South America, which testify to the actual circulation of these objects in Rome.
The final section is dedicated to analyzing the legacy of this period of intense cultural globalization. It highlights how the integration of diverse influences helped create a universal artistic language, whose effects can be traced in subsequent eras and in contemporary art.
This exhibition allows for a re-reading of the Baroque not only as a European style but as the outcome of a globalized world. It is an opportunity to understand how art acted as a medium between cultures, producing hybrids that still speak to us today of the power of art to transcend boundaries. “Rome is the only place where every foreigner feels at home,” wrote Michel de Montaigne in his Journey to Italy (1581).
The exhibition features prestigious loans from international museums and rarely accessible collections, including: the Galleria Borghese, partner of the initiative; the Gallerie Nazionali d’Arte Antica Barberini Corsini; and VIVE Vittoriano and Palazzo Venezia, with the extraordinary participation of the Papal Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.
It is worth noting that the exhibition includes works never before shown in Italy, juxtaposed with masterpieces from Roman collections in a layout that highlights the richness of visual and conceptual dialogue. The Presidency of the Republic also participates in the event: throughout the duration of the exhibition, the special itinerary “The World in Rome in the Quirinal Frescoes” will open to the public important areas of the Presidential Palace, such as the Hall of the Cuirassiers, the Pauline Chapel, and the Mascarino Hall.
Scientifically curated by Francesco Freddolini, art history professor at Sapienza University of Rome, and Francesca Cappelletti, director of the Galleria Borghese and full professor at the University of Ferrara, and designed for a broad audience, the exhibition lends itself to multiple levels of interpretation: from historical and iconographic insights to spectacular elements and contemporary reflections on globalization and multiculturalism. It is an exhibition that speaks to the present through the images of the past.
Your opinions and comments
Share your personal experience with the ArcheoRoma community, indicating on a 1 to 5 star rating, how much you recommend "Global Baroque: The World in Rome in the Age of Bernini"
Similar events