Ceiling vault in the Salone

The picture shows the painting on the ceiling vault of the Salone in the Palazzo Barberini. It depicts the Triumph of Divina Providentia - Apotheosis of the House of Barberini and the Papacy of Urban VIII.

In 1625 the Barberini family purchased the Palazzo Sforza and other properties in the area which was to be incorporated to the Barberini palace we see today in Rome. Upon the death of Carlo Maderno, the first architect of the project, Gian Lorenzo Bernini succeeded as chief architect in 1629. Bernini’s is the conception of the high central “salone’, which extends through two stories of the palace. The salone culminates in the great vault on which Piero da Cortona frescoed his Divine Providence, a pictorial celebration of the spiritual and temporal glories of the Barberini. Cortona also had a hand in the building of the palace complex: the largest of his contributions was the design of the theater wing, demolished in 1926 with the opening of the modern Via Barberini.