Rome, a focus on the Roman Baroque at Villa Mondragone

Committal and Devotion: a focus on six paintings of the Roman Baroque, is the title of the educational exhibition scheduled from March 26 to July 17, 2022, at Villa Mondragone in Rome curated by Giovan Battista Fidanza, professor of History of Modern Art, University of Rome “Tor Vergata” and director of Villa Mondragone and Guendalina Serafinelli, Instructor in Liturgical Art and Architecture, The Catholic University of America, Rome Center.

The paintings of the exhibition organized at Villa Mondragone, famous for having been the extra-urban residence of Pope Gregory XIII and since 1981 owned by the University of Rome “Tor Vergata,” are displayed in the former “Gallery of Paintings,” which after more than two hundred years, thus returns to its ancient vocation. The room, in fact, was built by Cardinal Scipione Borghese (after the purchase of the Villa in 1613) as the seat of his collection of paintings and statues, but from the early nineteenth century it lost this function.

The exhibition

Designed primarily for university students and seminarians, secondary school students and the general public of art enthusiasts, tourists and connoisseurs, the exhibition aims to provide methodological tools to “read” a sacred image through the reconstruction of the historical, devotional and liturgical context in which it was commissioned and produced. To this end, six paintings on canvas by some of the major representatives of the Roman Baroque have been selected, on which the curators have promoted special research of a historical, documentary, iconographic and technical nature, giving rise to individual case studies to be examined, in front of the original works, together with students and other possible visitors

Andrea Sacchi ’s Saint Francis of Paola and Saint Nicholas of Bari comes from Camerino (Civic and Diocesan Museums); Valentin de Boulogne ’s Saint John the Baptist in the Desert from Apiro (Collegiate Church of Sant’Urbano); Guido Reni ’sEcce Homo from Pontifical Irish College in Rome; Carlo Saraceni ’s Rest during the Flight into Egypt from the Eremo Tuscolano in Monte Porzio Catone; Carlo Maratti ’s Annunciationand Andrea Camassei ’s Martyrdom of St. Agapitus from Palestrina Cathedral. Three of these works (those by Maratti, Camassei and Sacchi) were loaned by their owners in exchange for restoration, which was accompanied by careful diagnostic investigations.

With the exception of the canvases by Valentin de Boulogne and Carlo Saraceni, the others have never been displayed in an exhibition. The exhibition also intended to reflect on the relationships between painters and patrons and the religious, as well as social and political, use of the paintings, recontextualizing them in the place for which they were executed. The main intent is to convey the concept that a sacred image should be firstly considered, and studied, as a repository of historical, liturgical and devotional meanings, to which the stylistic element can be placed side by side in a second phase of in-depth study, especially to interpret the language the artist used to fulfill the client’s requests.

The exhibition is organized by the University of Rome “Tor Vergata,” The Catholic University of America and Pontifical Irish College, Rome.

Pictured is a detail of Guido Reni’sEcce Homo .

Rome, a focus on the Roman Baroque at Villa Mondragone

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