Life and the Arts in the Baroque Palaces of Rome: Ambiente Barocco.

Stefanie Walker and Frederick Hammond, eds. Life and the Arts in the Baroque Palaces of Rome: Ambiente Barocco.

New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999. xvii + 284 pp. + 100 color pis. And 200 b/w pls. index. illus. bibi. $70 (cl), $40 (pbk). ISBN: 0-300-07933-8 (cl), 0-300 07934-6(pbk).

One of the most promising fields to emerge in recent years is the study of Roman Baroque decorative arts as an art historical discipline. Although the diverse types of works in this genre have traditionally been studied individually by medium and provenance, their artistic origins and meaning within a larger historical context have only recently come under scrutiny. As this innovative yet meticulously documented catalogue and collection of essays attests, the recent focus on interdisciplinary methodologies has provided particularly fruitful lines of inquiry. By studying the decorative arts within the context of their original setting in the great palaces of Baroque Rome, these essays provide a wide range of valuable information, from their common sources of artistic influence to their function as bearers of social and political meaning.

The seven essays and ninety-seven object entries that constitute this catalogue are nicely organized around the role of the decorative arts within the context of life in the Roman Baroque palace, encompassing activities from dining to theatrical spectacle to private devotion. As the introduction by the catalogue's coeditors rightly notes, palace culture in Baroque Rome was the locus of contemporary artistic taste and was thus crucial in forming that of cardinals, popes, the nobility, and foreign ambassadors, who in turn ensured its dissemination throughout the absolutist courts of seventeenth-century Europe. This organizing principle lends cohesion to the wide array of objects in the catalogue, which range from intricately-worked marriage caskets to designs for monumental sugar sculptures.

The ambitious first essay by exhibition curator and catalogue coeditor Stefanie Walker provides an insightful overview of the artistic sources of the wide variety of objects collectively described as "Baroque." In addition to her formal analysis of the artistic influence of Bernini, Pietro da Cortona, and Borromini, she also traces that of their followers and workshop members, including Johann Paul Schor and Giovanni Giardini. Her analytical approach is refreshingly clear; she not only sorts our the major characteristics of Bernini's influence on contemporary Roman decorative arts, such as the idea of metamorphosis, but also suggests a working classification of the artistic vocabulary of Roman Baroque decorative arts into figural, vegeral-floral, architectural, and heraldic categories. Throughout, she describes objects relative to their intended role within palace culture; a Schor bed design for Maria Mancini Colonna is described as "staging the princess under a huge gathered curtain" (9).

Among the established scholars contributing to die volume is Patricia Waddy, whose groundbreaking Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces: Use and the Art of the Plan (1990) established unparalleled standards for discussion of the layout, furnishings, and function of domestic space in Baroque Rome. Her essay in the catalogue emphasizes the role of the decorative arts as indispensable props for the domestic activities and elaborate social rituals enacted within the palace. Similarly, Thomas Dandelet's essay explores the ways in which Rome's palaces provided a social and physical setting for the great political rivalry between France and Spain during the seventeenth century. Frederick Hammond provides a close reading of the festivities staged at Palazzo Barberini in 1656 to politically "spin" the arrival of Queen Christina of Sweden, the papacy's most coveted convert to Catholicism; Eduard A. Safarik explores the interconnections between decorative objects and their architectural setting in a related series of lush Roman still-lives; and Maria Giulia Barberini examines the symbolic aspects of displays of arms and armor in the Vatican and in the palaces of the Roman feudal nobility. Finally, Edward J. Olszewski provides a focused case study of an individual ambiente barocco, the apartments of papal vice-chancellor Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni in the Palazzo della Cancelleria.

Ultimately, the work's importance derives from the interdisciplinary methodology of its contributors, who undertake the twofold task of detecting artistic lines of influence in Roman Baroque decorative arts while explicating their use and symbolic importance in their original context. One unexpected dividend of this approach is the catalogue's pedagogical use; the essays present an incisive yet thoroughly readable alternative to many available texts on Baroque art, which tend to compartmentalize the material according to genre and artistic biography. As a promising example of current trends in art history, it is hoped that this work will provide impetus for future studies in the field.