Pietro da Cortona
1596–1669 · Grand Duchy of Tuscany · Baroque
The story
Rome in the 1630s was a Barberini city. The Barberini family had one of their own on the papal throne as Urban VIII, and they were building a vast palace to match. To crown its great hall they turned to Pietro da Cortona, and he gave them a ceiling that seems to have no ceiling at all.
His 'Allegory of Divine Providence' opens the roof into a swirling sky where painted figures tumble past a fictive stone frame, the whole thing a soaring advertisement for Barberini glory, complete with the family's heraldic bees. It took most of a decade and helped set the template for High Baroque ceilings across Europe.
Cortona was also a serious architect, designing the jewel-like church of Santi Luca e Martina near the Roman Forum. He moved easily between paint and stone, and when he died in 1669 he left money for that church, where he was buried under a floor he had helped to build.
