Gallery vault

The picture shows the vault of the Galleria Mattei painted by Pietro da Cortona with a cycle of “quadri finti” narrating the story of King Solomon and framed with rich fictive stucco decoration by Pietro Paolo Bonzi.

A narrative scene painted on a wall as a framed picture was referred to as a “quadro riportato,” which to seventeenth-century thinking suggested that a framed panel painting had been translated into the medium of fresco. If a picture with the perspective of a panel painting is shifted to the ceiling, it is called a “quadro finto” (fictitious picture). In such a case the painted architectural framing is replaced by a painted or three-dimensional picture frame.