The Barberini Tapestries: Woven Monuments of Baroque Rome

FAIN: GI-50664-14

Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine (New York, NY 10025-1798)
Marlene Eidelheit (Project Director: August 2013 to June 2018)

Implementation of a traveling exhibition, a catalog, and programs examining tapestries produced in the 17th century by the private workshop in Rome founded by the Barberini, the family of Pope Urban VIII.

To support the exhibition of the 17th-century Barberini Life of Christ Tapestries in the collection of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine. The exhibition is a collaborative project between the Cathedral and the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon. Phase I focuses on recently-completed conservation of the Life of Christ set by the in-house Textile Conservation Laboratory, plus didactic material, a scholarly catalogue, and an interactive digital interface. Phase II, at the Schnitzer Museum and then at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, will unite examples from each of seven tapestry cycles produced on the Barberini looms, along with paintings, cartoons, drawings, prints, medals, 17th century documents and an interactive digital component that offers the visitor an opportunity to delve further into the Barberini papal era. This exhibit promises to be the most important display of Roman tapestry since the 19th century dispersal of the Barberini collection.