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Twin Innocents
at the
Galleria Doria Pamphili,
Rome, Italy
All roads no longer lead to Rome, but modern visitors to the city cannot help but understand why they once did. Strolling the city's storied streets, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the relentlessness of the spectacle. There is almost too much to see: the ruins of the Forum Romanum, where ancient Rome once conducted its business; the Coliseum, where some men lived and others died and the rest were brutally entertained; the Pantheon, two thousand years old and still vibrant proof of architecture's ability to make hearts soar; Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, where a single man did superhuman work; and how many churches, and fountains, and monuments?…so many that one can quickly be overwhelmed. In such an instance, it's best to change the scale of one's ambitions and seek smaller pleasures, such as those to be found in a special room in a corner of the Galleria Doria Pamphili.
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Galleria Doria Pamphili, Rome, Italy
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Near the Piazza Venezia, in Piazza del Collegio Romano, lies the Palazzo Doria Pamphili. While one may visit a few rooms of the vast private apartments, the main attraction here is the art collection in the Galleria in which a flock of minor canvasses art peppered with masterpieces: a Tintoretto here, a Hans Memling over there, or a Caravaggio, just around the corner.
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But the biggest surprise is in a tiny room that many visitors miss. You enter the space and suddenly your eyes flood with color: you are face to face with one of the great portraits in Western art-- "Pope Innocent X" (1650), rendered by the 17th century Spanish master Diego Velázquez, at the peak of his powers.
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Diego Velázquez. Portrait of Pope Innocent X. 1650.
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Innocent sits in an elaborate gold and velvet chair. He appears massive and immutable, in abundant white skirts, papal ring glimmering. His face is a study in intensity and power: lips pursed, brow furled, dark eyes staring directly at the viewer with an unsettling ferocity. If you step back a few paces, perhaps out of fear that the Pope might reach out from the canvas and cast you into Purgatorio, you're in for another surprise. You will bump into a sculpture that you missed when you walked into the room: a remarkable bust of a very familiar man--Pope Innocent X, once again--but this time by the hand of the 17th century Italian sculptor Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini. |
Gianlorenzo Bernini. Pope Innocent X. 1650.
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Bernini's "Innocent" (also 1650), feels more delicate, with a lavish beard and a less imperial air. There is a placidity to Bernini's cool stone, in marked contrast to Velázquez's luminous surface.
To stare between these varying versions of a man long gone, but kept very much alive by two different masters, is an experience over which one peacefully lingers, and regrets to leave.
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