Palazzo Barberini

Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica

Carlo Maderno (Italian architect, ca. 1556 - 1629)

Francesco Borromini (Italian architect, 1599-1667)

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Italian sculptor, architect, 1598-1680)

J. J. Olivier

Rome, Lazio, Italy

Rione Trevi

Piazza Barberini

54.393889

Italy

1628-1633 (creation)

1671-1679 (alteration)

17th century

detaill section of oval staircase, sections

The Palazzo Barberini, begun in December 1628, was the last and most complex of Maderno's palace designs, although it was largely executed by others. The basic idea for this palace, with two separate wings in an H-plan, was conceived by its owner, Taddeo Barberini, nephew of Pope Urban VIII. The site is sloping and the piazza lies on a lower level. Although many others contributed to the design, Maderno was in charge of design development. Here again can be seen his characteristic planning of eminently functional suites, closed axes (most notably in the deep, apsed entrance portico, the passage through which was cut only in the 1670s), the complex, three-dimensional arrangement of rooms on the several levels of the palace and the linking stairs. The great three-storey, seven-bay loggia of the west façade is surprising in the context of Maderno's oeuvre (or that of any other Roman architect in the 1620s), but the whole exterior is rendered in his distinctive style with such details as columns set within channels in the walls, splayed jambs (resembling those at the stair entrance in the Palazzo Mattei) in the third storey of the loggia, and the superimposed frames of the north portal. Between 1671 and 1679 the palace was extensively remodelled, apparently under the direction of Angelo Torrone.

line drawings (drawings)

Architectural Documentation

palazzi

town houses

houses

dwellings

residential structures

sections

Baroque

Italian

architectural exteriors

rulers and leaders

Urban VIII, Pope, 1568-1645

Letarouilly, Paul Marie. Edifices de Rome Moderne. Paris: A. Morel, 1868, 185.

Public Domain

Maderno, Carlo

Borromini, Francesco

Bernini, Gian Lorenzo