Procession of the Prince Giovanni Battista Borghese for the 1664 Carnival of Rome

In February 1664, on the Thursday before Lent, Prince Giovanni Battista Borghese rolled a gigantic gilded float through the streets of Rome for the carnival. It was designed by Johann Paul Schor, an artist from Innsbruck who had made his name in Rome working alongside Bernini and Pietro da Cortona on the great Baroque decorations of the age. The float was pure spectacle, built to dazzle for a single day and then be dismantled, the kind of lavish, throwaway magnificence that Baroque Rome adored. Schor also painted this canvas as a lasting record of it, and in his signature he noted that he had made both the carriage and the picture. The float itself is long gone, and this painting is the only place it still exists. The Uffizi bought the work in 2017 for its museum of historic carriages.