CHIARI, Giuseppe Bartolomeo

The powerful Colonna family had lived on the western slope of the Quirinale in Rome since the Middle Ages. Over the years it managed to link together the various houses it had built and purchased over time into a unified ensemble of palaces, courtyards, and gardens. In the seventeenth century, the art-loving cardinal Girolamo I Colonna (1604-1666) began turning the complex into a Baroque residence. Construction began in 1650. The south wing, containing the Grande Galleria, was built between 1661 and 1700 at the behest of the cardinal’s nephew Lorenzo Onofrio (1637-1689).

The most important room in the palace is the gallery (Grande Galleria) on the second floor of the south wing. It is more than a story and a half in height, and it receives light from both sides. It has two separate anterooms, marked off from the main space by pairs of columns. These extensions and the wall arrangements of the room with large pilasters produced the most magnificent secular space from the Roman Baroque.

The painting of the gallery was begun in 1665 and lasted until 1685. The pictorial program unfolds in the vaults of the trio of rooms and it is supplemented to this day with the original statues, paintings, and elaborate furnishings. The paintings of the two anterooms (Sala Inferiore at the west and Sala Superiore at the east) was commissioned after 1689 by Filippo I Colonna, the oldest son of Lorenzo Onofrio. The west anteroom was painted by the young Sebastiano Ricci in 1693-95 with the Allegory of Marcantonio Colonna’s Victory at Lepanto. In the east anteroom Giuseppe Bartolomeo Chiari painted in 1698-1700. the Apotheosis of Marcantonio Colonna.

Chiari chose to stage Colonna’s apotheosis not as a dramatic spectacle, but rather as a dignified, measured scene following the conventions of solemn ceremonial.

For bedroom ceilings the typical Baroque depiction was that of Aurora. However, Aurora, who as the forerunner of the sun-chariot heralds the day, managed to free herself from this limited private sphere and became - thanks to Guido Reni’s Aurora in the Casino Pallavicini - an allegory, ambiguous and applicable in many contexts, of ascent, new beginnings, or triumph over the powers of darkness, impressively staged by Guercino in the Casino Ludovisi and by Giuseppe Chiari in the Palazzo Barberini.

Chiari was Carlo Maratti’s close collaborator in the latter three decades of Maratti’s life. The present composition derives from Maratti’s designs for his paintings of the same subject.