Pietro da Cortona

Pietro da Cortona (1596-1669) was a painter and an architect, and on the ceiling of the great hall of Palazzo Barberini in Rome he painted the Triumph of Divine Providence, one of the great frescoes of the Baroque. His real name was Pietro Berrettini and he took his name from the Tuscan town where he was born; in Rome he worked above all for Pope Urban VIII and his family, the Barberini.

In this collection you will find his Romulus and Remus, the story of the twins who founded Rome, printed on handmade Amalfi paper.

The same story was painted by Carlo Maratta, a pupil of Andrea Sacchi, the painter who in Rome stood for a more classical and restrained art than Cortona's; for the Baroque Rome of squares and churches, see the views by Giovanni Paolo Pannini.