Ensconced like a pearl within the marble drapes and folds of Palazzo Barberini, the site of the National Gallery of Ancient Art in Rome, is a light, bright and flamboyantly decorated Rococo apartment. Compared with the Baroque opulence and soaring spaces of other areas of the palace, these five small, low-ceilinged rooms are so cozy – an adjective rarely used to describe roman 17th- and 18th-century interiors – as to seem, given the times, positively eccentric. Conceived by Cornelia Costanza Barberini as a love nest for herself and her husband, they are a testament to the creativity of one of the most resourceful and irreverent women of her generation.
Born a few days before Christmas of 1716, Cornelia lived her childhood under a dark cloud. Her father, Urbano Barberini, Third Prince of Palestrina, was so violent and debauched that one of his wives was forced to find refuge in a nunnery for fear of being poisoned. He was also a gambler and spendthrift. The family palace was commissioned in the mid-1620s by his great uncle Pope Urban VIII, planned by the Baroque architect Carlo Maderno (who looted the Colosseum marbles for its façade) and completed by the arch-rivals Bernini and Borromini. It became, thanks to Cornelia’s father, one of Rome’s wildest party venues. One chronicle, dated 24 August 1704, describes an all-nighter during which hundreds of mimes, actors, musicians and inebriated guests, all wearing colourful costumes, emerged from the palace courtyard at 2am on gondola-clad carriages and paraded through the city.
Cornelia was six years old when her father died leaving a mountain of debts. The sole heir of the Barberini dynasty, she became the object of contention between her mother, Teresa Boncompagni, and her uncle Francesco, a cardinal. To salvage the family name and fortune, and ensure a future to both, he insisted on sending the child to a nunnery until he found a suitably wealthy groom. What followed – plotting, spying, nightly ambushes, kidnappings and papal interventions – is straight out of a cloak-and-dagger novel. Having steadfastly refused all the suitors her uncle proposed, at the shockingly young age of 12 Cornelia married a Roman aristocrat, Giulio Cesare Colonna di Sciarra, 11 years older than her. His sweet nature provided a safe escape route from all the family drama. All too happy to take the back seat, Giulio Cesare left the reins in his young wife’s hands. A force of nature, Cornelia managed the family’s rural estates, the palace, its gardens and the immense art collection with a hands-on approach. A lover of nature, she tended to wear trousers even to Sunday mass, something the church frowned on, to no avail. By the time the couple’s tenth child was born, her parsimonious administration had replenished the family coffers and she was planning a new apartment in the palace’s south wing.
Situated on the second floor, it is accessed via Borromini’s grand helicoidal staircase. This ode to Baroque, however, vanishes at the entrance, only to be replaced, once inside, by the floral swirls and arabesques of the new Rococo style. Cornelia was among the first Romans to embrace this sensuous and light-hearted style, which was viewed with suspicion in the city because of its association with the Enlightenment ideas that were circulating in Paris at the time. Though the murals in the central living room pay tribute to the Colonna family battles and victories, everything else, including the naked allegorical representations of continents on the ceiling, speaks the language of nature, sensuality and intellectual pursuits. The fumoir, where men went after dinner, was complemented by a far more sumptuous room where Cornelia and her lady friends retreated to converse and play music and games. Decorated with hand-painted silks representing idealised scenes of Native American life (inspired by the watercolours of the pioneering British traveller John White), it pays tribute to Jean Jacques Rousseau’s philosophy on the essential goodness of humans. This tone of hopeful levity finds its apotheosis in the loggia, where floral themes are painted on fabric, engraved on wood and mimicked in elaborate stucco swirls. ‘These decorations,’ says art historian Paola Nicita, who curated a beautiful volume on this apartment, ‘encapsulate the extraordinary flowering of Roman decorative arts during that period.’
The marriage between Cornelia and Giulio Cesare lasted until his death 60 years later. Judging by their tiny alcove, surrounded by a cupola-shaped canopy held up by black Aquitaine-marble columns, it was a happy one, too. In the late 1770s Cornelia Costanza, remaining true to her avant-garde taste, decorated a tiny living room in the burgeoning Neoclassical style where she hung several family portraits, including one of herself and one depicting her husband. Though unflatteringly realistic, her portrait is a breath of fresh air among the many sombre faces that surround her. Her humorous expression, the knowing glint in the eye, tell the tale of a life well lived, against all the odds.
For information on the Galleria Nazionale di Arte Antica in Palazzo Barberini, Rome, visit barberinicorsini.org
